Page 82 of The Drummer's Heart

“And you were the father?”

I nodded.

“Wow. Okay.” She jotted something down. Probably,holy fuck.

“I realized then and there that life as I knew it was over. I knew Nicole, and Iknewshe wouldn’t be able to handle this.” I shook my head slowly. “Not because she didn’t love me enough, but just the opposite. She loved me too much to stand by andwatchourdream unfold…with me and someone else. And I hated the thought of her experiencing that.”

“Oh, Atticus… What a tough situation. How did you tell her?”

My chest constricted. This was the hardest part for some reason. “I told her there’d been a change of plans, and instead of her coming to L.A., I flew to New York. I didn’t want to give her that kind of news away from home, where she didn’t have a support system.” I closed my eyes and breathed for a moment. “When I got to her apartment, she opened the door with the most beautiful smile on her face. She took one look at me, though, and knew something was very wrong.” I cringed at the horrible memory and had to stop.

“Then what happened?” Dr. Jensen prompted a few seconds later.

“Then I had to have the most difficult conversation of my life.” I paused. “I told her everything. She cried. I cried. And exactly what I knew would happen did. I hurt her so badly, and there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t fathom how I was supposed to be a father to that child when it felt like I’d lost everything—lost my soul, lost my entire life as I knew it.”

“But somehow, here you are, still standing.”

I laughed angrily. “Barely, but yeah.”

Dr. Jensen’s eyes widened. “You have a child now…”

“A son.” I smiled. “Christian.”

She leaned back in her seat and crossed her arms. “All this time you’ve kept that from me.”

“Well, I would’ve had to tell the whole story, and I wasn’t ready.”

“When we first started working together, that had to have been around the time you found out about him. I remember you would refer to things you couldn’t talk about, and we focused on your general anxiety, but it’s no wonder we weren’t able to make much progress if you were holding back something so major.”

I looked away. “It’s not that I was ashamed of him. I was mainly ashamed of my own actions, and I couldn’t talk about how badly I’d let down the person who means everything to me. In order to talk about him, I would’ve had to talk aboutthat.”

“So, after you told Nicole you were going to be a father…what happened?”

“She didn’t want to see me for a while. I went back to L.A., feeling as horrible as you might imagine. When she was finally willing to talk to me again, we had a couple of long conversations where the conclusion was basically what I already knew—that she couldn’t handle it, and it was better if we went our separate ways—for good this time.” I felt my eyes water.Fuck.“And if you thought things couldn’t get worse after that, you’d be wrong.”

Her brows drew together. “What happened?”

“Months later, I found out Nicole had reconnected with a guy we’d both been friends with years before. Julian had grown up in our town in New Jersey but had moved to the city for work. That sent me spiraling—acting out on tour, sleeping with women. I hadn’t been with anyone sexually since Giselle, until I found out Nicole was dating Julian. It felt like my life was over and I’d lost her forever. But then I had a new baby, and I had to find a way to focus on that, despite still being a mess.”

She nodded and wrote a few things down. “Tell me about when Christian was born.”

“When Giselle went into labor, I flew to New York. It was hard being close to Nicole geographically yet feeling worlds away. I wasn’t in the room when he was born. I didn’t want to be. But they called me in after he arrived, and the moment I held him, I fell in love. It was the first time in months that I’d felt like I had a reason to live. I was still heartbroken and messed up, but he gave me a little bit of strength back.”

“And you and Giselle…did anything ever happen there?”

I shook my head. “Not at all. She’s a nice person, but I never had feelings for her like that.”

“How old is Christian now?”

“He’s two. He still lives with his mother in New York. She’s engaged to a great guy now, David. We all get along and do our best to make this work. I go back to the city whenever I can to visit my son. Obviously with my schedule,whenever I canis not really enough. But I’m pretty much bicoastal when I’m not traveling or recording. I have an apartment not far from where he lives.”

She just looked at me for a few seconds. “I can’t believe I never knew you’re a father.”

“While my son is a blessing, I still have a lot of trauma about everything I lost in the process.”

“Nicole, you mean…”

“Sheiseverything, yeah.”

---