Page 19 of Secret Daddies

Finally, there came a knock at my door, and I threw it open—and there, on the other side, holding her makeup kit in one hand, was Maya. She raised her eyebrows at me, looking me up and down.

“You don’t look like?—”

“Get in here,” I snarled at her, fighting the urge to grab her by the collar and drag her inside myself. How could she act so oblivious? She must know what was going on inside my head. She couldn’t have failed to understand how all of this looked to me. She turned up with a son just the right age to be mine, and she expected me to just brush it off like it was nothing?

“What’s wrong with you?” she demanded as she stepped inside, glaring up at me like she was daring me to come out and say it. I stood there for a moment, hardly able to believe that she had the balls to pretend like she didn’t know what was going on.

“You really don’t know?”

She shrugged, staring back at me, daring me to come out with it.

“I really don’t.”

I pushed a hand through my hair, my teeth gritted. I had managed to keep my shit together while I was right there in front of her son, but now it was taking everything I had not to lose it.

“That boy you brought in,” I spat back at her. “Matty. Is he…?”

I trailed off. I couldn’t say it. I didn’t know how. Up until this morning, when Taylor told me to put aside some time to meet with this kid, I hadn’t even known she had a child. And now, I needed to contend with the fact that he might be mine?

“Is he what?”

“You really don’t know?”

She crossed her arms over her chest, raising her eyebrows at me. “No, I don’t. You’ll have to say it.”

The silence hung there between us. I knew there wasn’t a chance in hell she was truly oblivious to what was on my mind. She might be evasive, but she wasn’t stupid, and she couldn’t pretend that she didn’t know what I was getting at.

“Is he mine?”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean…fuck it, Maya, I don’t know!”

I tossed my hands into the air, turning my back on her and pacing the trailer once more. I couldn’t think straight. I had to go back to set in just an hour or so, and I doubted I would be able to remember a single one of my lines, not with the mess that was going on inside my head right now. I needed an answer. But I didn’t know if I could take an answer when it came to me.

“I deserve an answer,” I told her finally, trying to manage my tone so I didn’t come off as too crazy. She let out a laugh, and I spun around to face her, wondering what in the hell could be so funny. “What are you laughing about?”

“You deserve an answer?” she repeated after me, taking a step toward me. “After the way you left me high and dry like that,youdeserve an answer?”

“Look, if I’d had any idea?—”

“You didn’t give a damn about me then and I’m not going to let you pretend that you care about me now,” she snapped back, cutting me off before I could go any further. “You—you walked away from me when I needed you. When I thought we really had something. You never even gave me a chance, you?—”

“Because I didn’t realize that you—I didn’t know that there might have been more going on there than just us!” I exploded back at her. “For fuck’s sake, Maya, you don’t think things might have been different if I had known…?”

“If you had known what?”

She was staring up at me now, daring me to say it, practically challenging me to come out and say the words that I could hardly make sense of myself. But what would happen then?Would she just shoot me down, tell me I was crazy and self-centered for thinking that this might have anything to do with me?

I didn’t say a word. I knew she was baiting me into a reaction. And I knew that giving it to her probably wasn’t going to do me any good in the long run. I drew my gaze away from her, shaking my head.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she snapped. “There’s nothing you can say that will change things. Nothing that will?—”

Before she could say another word, I grabbed her face in my hands, drawing her attention round to me. I needed her to hear this. Fuck, I needed her to know—that it wasn’t because I didn’t care about her that I’d treated her the way I had, it wasn’t because I didn’t want her.

“I left because I thought I could make a life for us, for both of us,” I told her, voice hot with emotion. “Because we were both working in this business, and I thought any chance I got would be one that you did too. Not because I didn’t care about you. Not because Idon’tcare about you, Maya. You understand me?”

She stared up at me for a second, her chest rising and falling hard. And before I could say another word, she leaned up and planted her lips against mine, kissing me hard.

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