Page 29 of Secret Daddies

“Yeah, before,” Devon replied. “Years ago. When both of us were first starting out. We had this…thing when we were working on a set together, just a fling really, but it was…it felt like something…”

He trailed off. It was obvious that he had never really talked about this with anyone. He didn’t know how to put it into words, whatever had happened between them. The weight of it still hung heavy over his head, and it made sense, now I thought about it. He had seemed to avoid Maya as much as he could, and if she was some kind of ex of his, it made sense why.

“I don’t know. Whatever. I thought we might pick it up again when we saw each other again, when we worked together, but it just never happened. She left the industry?—”

“To look after her kid, right?” Lee remarked. “That’s what she said to me.”

“Yeah,” Devon replied, his voice hollow. “When she had the kid. After she was with me.”

The words hung in the air for a beat as all of us tried to make sense of them. And then, it clicked.

“Shit!” Lee exclaimed. “You don’t think—you’re not that kid’s father, are you?”

Devon shrugged. My hands tightened into fists at my sides. What in the holy fuck was going on…?

“I don’t know,” Devon admitted. “I tried to ask her about it, but she just shut me down, first chance she got. Told me that since I’d left, I didn’t deserve an answer, some shit like that.”

“And you just let her?” I exclaimed. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Everything I’d come to know about Maya—and granted, it wasn’t a lot—she seemed really sweet, smart, decent. A good mom, a good person in general. But a good person would never have tried to hide the truth of a child’s parentage from a guy who deserved to know. If the timeline lined up for when Devon had been with her, he had a damn good reason to want to find out if he’d been the dad to that kid all along without knowing about it.

Devon’s head snapped around to me. “No, I didn’t just fucking let her,” he replied, angry. “But how the hell am I meant to get an answer out of her if she won’t tell me? Not like I can just swipe a DNA test of that kid and run it against mine. And even if it turned out that I was the father, she clearly doesn’t want me to have a thing to do with either of them.”

He shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. I suddenly noticed dark rings under his eyes, like he had been tossing and turning night after night as he tried to piece it together.

As a father myself, I could imagine some of the hell he was putting himself through. When it came to kids, to the children you had brought into the world, you deserved to know about it, even if there was some kind of tension between you and the person you were raising them with. I didn’t know how everything had gone down with him and Maya when they were together, but I knew one thing for damn sure—he deserved to know whether or not her son was his.

I leaned back in the truck, the words spinning around my head—I matched them with what she had told me about her relationship with the father, about how complicated it was. Shit, if this was anything to go by, then it was more than complicated, it was a stone-cold fucking mess.

But it was one that Devon needed to clear his head on, one way or another. It was one that she needed to be honest with him about, even if it was difficult to admit what she had done and what she had chosen.

One way or another, I was going to get to the bottom of it. I was going to get her to come clean. I didn’t stand for people who lied, especially not to friends of mine like Devon.

And especially not when it came to kids.

15

MAYA

“See you tomorrow!”I called to Paula as I hooked my bag over my shoulder and headed for the door of the trailer. She vaguely waved her hand over her shoulder to see me off, but it had been such a busy day I knew I was lucky to get even that.

It was starting to get dark outside, and I had to get home and let off the babysitter who’d been taking care of Matty since he got home from school—though, honestly, I was planning on taking my time to walk home, to give myself a hot second to clear my head before I had to slip into Mom mode. I was still trying to find the balance between the version of myself at work and the version of myself at home, especially now that I was the center of some major gossip unfolding on set.

I had done everything I could to shut down the speculation about what might have happened between Lee and me. I should have known it wasn’t going to be that easy to brush people off and convince them it was all in their heads, but shit, I wasn’t used to peoplecaringthis much about it. It felt like I couldn’t turn around without someone pouncing on me to ask about those damned jeans and where I had come across them, and ifit was true that I’d spent the night with Lee. My approach so far had been to deny, deny, deny, but I wasn’t sure how long I could keep that up before people started getting suspicious.

Worse, Lee and I hadn’t had a chance to talk about it properly. Both of us had been so busy that stealing a moment to discuss what happened had been impossible, and I wasn’t sure when we were going to find time in our schedules to make it happen. I wanted to see him again, of course I did, but at the same time, I knew the scrutiny on us was going to make it harder to sneak around together without being caught.

Still. I could deal with all of that tomorrow. What mattered now was taking in a little fresh air—as fresh as the city could offer, at least—and then spending tonight with Matty, relaxing, and?—

“Hey, Maya.”

A voice caught my attention—for a second, I thought it was one of the makeup artists, following me to let me know I had forgotten something back in the trailer. Instead, to my surprise, I found myself faced with Taylor. And judging by the arms crossed over his chest and the look in his eyes, he wasn’t entirely happy with me.

“Hey,” I greeted him, furrowing my brow in confusion. “Everything okay? What’s up?”

“We need to talk.”

“Well, here I am,” I replied, gesturing to myself and letting out a slightly nervous laugh. “What’s going on?”

“About Devon.”

---