Page 122 of Mistaken Intention

And that’s going to take some time.

“I’m gonna go for that walk.”

Hunter steps up in front of me, blocking my path. “You don’t think you should talk to Josie first?”

“No. I will talk to her… but not yet. Please, Hunter. I need to be by myself for a while.”

He nods his head, stepping aside, and I stride off, heading across the grass, away from the cottage.

Right now, there are so many thoughts and emotions rolling around inside of me. I’m mad. I’m boiling mad. But I’m also confused and scared and disappointed. Josie was right. I need to come to terms with the information I’ve been given before I can do anything else.

I don’t know where I’m going, but I put one foot in front of the other, and I keep on doing that, the steady, monotonous rhythm giving order to my thoughts.

First and foremost, I’m a father.

The little girl whose picture is in my house, is my daughter. She’s not my niece, and I guess, when I think about it, that makes sense. I would have pictures of my own child, wouldn’t I? And while I might not have any memory of her, I know she’s beautiful, with a shock of dark hair and the clearest of blue eyes. I try to picture myself holding her, but I can’t. It’s an alien feeling, but I guess it’s one I’ll have to get used to.

Because she’s mine.

I also have a sister. Ella. And I’m an uncle, too. That’s not quite such a shock. I believed myself to be an uncle already, to the baby who, it seems, is my own.

My baby…

I shake my head, struggling to get my head around the idea that I have a child… that there’s a small person on this planet for whom I’m responsible.

It’s strange. I told Josie I wanted us to have children together, and I meant every word. I was excited at the prospect of the two of us becoming parents, even though I thought we’d only known each other for a few days. Pictures formed in my head of a pregnant Josie lying in my arms, of me cradling her bump… our child. I imagined us holding our newborn baby between us, kissing and marveling at the life we’d created… untilit all came tumbling down, when she told me she can’t have children.

Now, it seems that dream is already a reality… at least for me.

Only I don’t know what to do with it.

I don’t know what to do with Josie, either.

No… that’s not true. I know I’ll always love her, just like I loved her in the past, it seems, before all this.

But as for her deception…

There’s so much of it, it’s hard to know where fantasy ends and reality begins.

I know she was doing what the doctor told her… as was Hunter. But whether it was in my best interests, I have yet to be convinced. It doesn’t feel like it at the moment.

I still have too many unanswered questions. I’ve been given so much information, and yet there’s still more I don’t know, and while it’s okay for Josie to tell me not to think about the blanks, that’s easier said than done. Especially as the blanks feel so huge… and so vital to my understanding of who I am.

I suppose that’s the thing that worries me the most.

Who am I?

Despite everything I’ve been told, I still don’t feel any closer to knowing the answer to that. It’s been plaguing me for ages. Even before today’s revelations, I’ve wondered what kind of man I was before the accident.

The fact that I got Lexi pregnant doesn’t augur too well. Hunter may have said it wasn’t something I routinely did, but when you bear in mind, I made love with Josie countless times before I remembered I hadn’t used a condom, it doesn’t fill me with confidence. Obviously, in Lexi’s case, she was sick, and it sounds like I was unaware of that. And in Josie’s case, I wasn’t to know she couldn’t have children. I was just reckless with her safety…

Was I always like that?

Does my brother know me as well as he thinks he does?

Is he right when he says it was a first for me, or was I really an inconsiderate asshole?

Questions, questions, questions. There are so many of them.

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