Page 21 of Secret Daddies

Her eyes widened, already glistening with excitement at the thought of the gossip that was about to come her way. She planted a hand on her chest.

“Cross my heart,” she swore to me. “What’s happening? Is it something on set…?”

“Sort of. I…” I trailed off. Shit. What did I even tell her? Where did I even start? Even to me, most of it sounded totally outrageous, and I could only imagine what she would make of the truth. I reeled it back, squeezing my eyes shut for a moment, and tried to work out where would be the best place to start.

“So, I was working on Taylor, right? One of the main guys,” I explained. “And I got a call from Matty’s school. And…”

I caught her up on everything that had happened in the last week or so—Matty falling ill, him meeting Taylor, and Taylor setting up a get-together with my son and the rest of the cast a few days later. She listened, nodding along, watching me curiously.

“So it went well, right? I mean, the guys were all nice to him?”

“They were all great to him,” I sighed. “But I…”

“But what?” she prompted me. God, this was harder than I’d thought it would be. I had held the secret of Matty’s paternity so close to my chest for so long that coming out and saying it felt wrong. I knew Lana, of all people, would never judge me for it, but it still felt like I was betraying some fundamental secret I shouldn’t dare to share.

I turned to her, meeting her gaze seriously. “You really won’t tell anyone?”

“I really won’t,” she promised me. “Come on, Maya, you’re starting to freak me out. What could be so bad that?—”

“Devon’s his father.”

She stopped. Fell silent. Stared at me for a moment.Reallystared at me, like she was expecting me to bust out laughing and take it all back. But I didn’t. I just stared back at her, nibbling on my lip, waiting for her to react.

“How does that work?” she asked, lowering her voice and shooting a look toward Matty, as though she might suddenly be able to see a resemblance between them if she just looked hard enough.

“We worked together on a set years ago, when both of us were just starting out,” I confessed, the words spilling from me faster than I could stop them. “And I…we were just hooking up, just seeing each other, I don’t think either of us expected it to be anything more than that. But I guess…I guess we should have been more careful, because I got pregnant, right as he left to take a job somewhere else. I never heard from him again after that.”

She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead, frowning as she tried to take it all in. “You never told him?”

I shook my head. “Not after he just took off like that with no warning,” I replied. “It didn’t seem right. And I didn’t want him to come back into our lives, not if he was just going to leave again. I didn’t want to do that to Matty, or to me.”

“And you didn’t think about changing your mind on that? When he started to get big, I mean? You could have taken him for so much damn money?—”

“Yeah, and I would probably have pulled Matty into the middle of some big custody battle in the process,” I pointed out. “I didn’t want that for him. I wanted his life to be as simple as it could be, even if he did happen to be the kid of some movie star. I…”

“Shit,” she muttered, running a hand through her hair. “And you didn’t know that he was working on this movie before you?—”

“Before I signed all the contracts and made it so I couldn’t get out, yeah,” I replied with a sigh. “Trust me, if I’d had any idea, I wouldn’t have gone through with it. I wouldn’t have even entertained it.”

“Holy hell.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.”

She fell silent for a moment, her eyes wide as the sound of children’s laughter filled the air—it felt almost comically incongruous with the conversation we were having right now.

“So why did you introduce them?” she asked, changing the subject. “I mean, it’s not like you had to do that. You could have just turned him down when Taylor offered to set up a meeting with all of you guys?—”

“Oh, I don’t think Matty would have stood for that,” I laughed. “Not after he knew that I was working on the Trio movie.”

“Come on, you could have,” she replied, leaning toward me. “Why did you let them meet? If you really want to keep them apart…”

I hesitated. I didn’t know quite what to tell her, because I wasn’t certain I had an answer for that question myself. Sure, there was a part of me that could just dismiss it as a chance for my son to meet his heroes that I didn’t want to deny, but I knew there was more to it than that. Far more than I ever wanted to admit.

“Because…because I wanted to see how he would react,” I confessed finally. “I wanted him to know, I guess.”

“And does he?”

“Not…exactly.”

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