Page 94 of Her Football Star Ex

She had forgiven me for cheating on her. She had forgiven me for betraying her and our marriage vows.

But she wouldn’t be able to forgive this.

I had created a baby with another woman. I’d given another woman the one thing Emerson had craved the last few years—a baby girl. And if I knew her like I thought I did, there would not be a second olive branch extended to me from her.

The black fog that filled my body over the next hour as Amberley explained everything and introduced me to the baby—Evelyn—was like something I hadn’t ever experienced before.

Fifteen seconds was all it could take to alter a person’s life forever.

Fifteen seconds and life as I knew it was over.

I would get a paternity test, just to make sure that this woman I’d never met before was telling me the truth. But even with that in mind, I knew the moment I laid eyes on this little girl that she was mine.

Yes, she had Victoria’s button nose and heart-shaped face. But her eyes were the same dark brown as Jaxon’s and mine, and the way her dark hair was already showing a little curl was just how mine had been at that age.

“Anyway, I realize this was such a huge bomb to drop on you,” Amberley said, setting Evelyn in my arms after telling me everything she knew about her and her routine. “And I wish Victoria would have been a little more responsible and figured out this whole paternity test long ago. But…” She sighed, her shoulders dropping as what looked like another wave of emotion swept over her. “I guess we always think we’ll have more time than we really have.”

I swallowed and nodded, the weight of this fifteen-pound infant feeling much heavier in my arms than it should have.

I have a daughter.

I kept saying the words in my mind over and over, but they still didn’t seem real.

And I felt like such a horrible person, because when I’d found out Emerson and I had been expecting that baby we lost, I’d been overjoyed. I had been over the moon and anxious to welcome him or her into our family. But with this sweet, innocent baby who hadn’t done a single thing wrong in the world, I just wanted to go back to this morning where I didn’t know she even existed.

Amberley looked at her watch. “I have a plane to catch. But if you need anything, you can call me on the number I left in the diaper bag and I can do my best to help.”

“Thanks,” I said, feeling numb as I stood to walk her to my door.

Before leaving, she turned back to look at Evelyn in my arms once more. “Be a good baby for your dad, okay?”

Evelyn just smiled and continued to slobber all over her fist, happy to have the attention.

And then a moment later, Amberley left and I shut the door to my apartment, wondering what the heck I was going to do with a baby.

Sure, I had been there when Jaxon was born, but I’d had Emerson to help me out then. And since she’d nursed him the full first year, I didn’t even know how to make a bottle.

But I didn’t have much time to think about how this baby was going to survive with such an inept and unprepared father because a minute later, Jaxon’s bedroom door opened and Emerson’s footsteps sounded in the hall.

I held my breath as I waited for her to turn the corner. When she came into view, her eyes were rimmed with red like she’d been crying.

My stomach rolled at the sight of her pain.

“Can we talk?” I asked, when she got closer.

But she just shook her head and wiped her mascara-streaked cheek with the back of her hand. “Not right now,” she said, her voice wavering. “I’m going to go pick up Jaxon so your mom has time to run her errands before her shift at the hospital.”

“Can we please just talk for a few minutes?” I grabbed her arm when she made a move to walk past me. “I’m going crazy here and just need to know what you’re thinking right now.”

When she looked up to meet my gaze, I saw the same stoic look that I’d seen in them the night she had told me to get out of her house.

“I don’t think you want to know what I’m thinking right now.”

I let go of her arm and took a step back, feeling much like I did after a surprise tackle in a game. But I said, “You’ve reached your forgiveness threshold where I’m concerned then?”

“I don’t know how I can come back from this, Vincent.” And when she glanced down at the baby in my arms, the flash of pain in her eyes gutted me.

She looked back at me. “That should have been my baby,” she whispered, her voice coming out sounding so tortured that it ripped me apart. And with those words, tears started streaming down her cheeks. “I should have been the only woman you had a child with.”

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