Page 115 of Who's Your Daddy?

“Uh...I don’t want to get accused of—”

She stops to think about it, seemingly very hesitant to take me up on the offer. The fact that she’s mentally weighing up whether she’d be better off at a shelter rather than staying at my house shows just how acrimonious things have become between us. I’m sure the only reason she caves is because staying here allows her to spend more time with Ambrose. Eventually, she gives a small nod, and we walk back together.

I stay a few steps in front of her and remain quiet the whole way back. I thank Brenda once we get back to the house, and she must pick up on the tension, because she leaves without saying a word.

Doubt starts to rise the second I close the door. I don’t know where she’s been all this time. I don’t know why she came back. And she has given me absolutely no reason to trust her. To avoid regretting this decision in the future, I need to make sure we’re on the same page.

She’s already on a mission to locate Ambrose again, but I grab her arm before she reaches the living room and turn her to face me.

“Let’s just establish some house rules, shall we?” I say, crossing my arms over my chest. “And the rules are that there are no rules. Come and go as you please. Help yourself to anything you need. Do whatever you want. Go wild. I honestly don’t give a shit. But if you try to take my kid from me...” I step closer, purposely trying to intimidate her so that she knows I’m one hundred percent serious. “...I will hunt you down and choke the last breath out of you myself. If you leave again, you leave alone. Are we clear?”

Her eyes widen. I never would’ve threatened her before, and I guess she’s just as shocked as I am at just how far we’ve fallen.

Her eyes search mine for even a dim ember of what we once had, but she finds nothing. “He’s...he’s not your—”

“Yeah, he is. He’s got a deadbeat father who refuses to take responsibility and a mother who abandoned him. I’m the only parent he’s got.”

“I didn’t abandon him!” she screams, frustrated that she can’t get this point across. “I was going to come back, but—”

“Save it. I don’t want to hear your excuses, because what you did was inexcusable.” I ignore the hurt in her eyes and walk back to the living room to get Ambrose. “You can have your old room back. Your clothes are in there too.”

I don’t know why I said that. It was never her old room because she only slept in there for two nights, but things are not how they used to be, and we need to get accustomed to a new living arrangement.

The rest of the evening is an awkward dance of us tiptoeing around each other, speaking when spoken to, yet not saying anything at all. We’re both doing things for Ambrose but consciously ensuring we don’t do them together. I feed him. She bathes him. I have a session of tummy time with him. She reads him a story.

Slowly, the evening draws to a close, and she doesn’t object when I come into the nursery to tell her it’s bedtime. She reluctantly stands up but doesn’t make any attempt to leave.

Instead, she toys with her fingers, and I can sense her trepidation as she debates something internally with herself. “Do you...do you still have the backpack that, uh, that I left here with him? I put a picture in the front compartment.” Her eyes brim with tears, but she uses every mechanism to stop them from falling. “It’s the only picture I have left of my parents.”

It finally clicks. I finally understand why she’s so obsessive about taking pictures. This is my chance to be spiteful. I could hurt her, crush her, put her through the same pain and loss she put me through when I found out he wasn’t my son. The fact that I’m only hearing about this picture now reinforces how much information she’s kept from me.

I want to tell her I destroyed it, threw it out, burned it...but I can’t bring myself to do that to her. “It’s in there with the rest of your stuff,” I reply curtly. “Just check in the bags.”

The breath of relief she exhales is palpable enough for me to feel it. “Thank you, Peter.”

Her composure cracks. A tear escapes and rolls down her cheek, but she quickly swipes it away and walks across the hall to her bedroom. I push the whole interaction out of my mind and focus on the task at hand.

“How about some Dionne Warwick tonight?” I ask Ambrose.

I switch it on, and the soft melody mixes with the sound of the shower running in the background. Having a third person in the house is going to take some getting used to.

When he’s semi-asleep, I make myself comfortable in the rocking chair. The rhythmic back and forth lull me into a state where I’m almost dozing off, but my eyes flutter open when I hear a light tap on the door.

My face and body remain neutral on the outside, but that’s definitely not my reaction on the inside when my eyes take in the sight of her. She has put me through the absolute worst. I used to think that Isabella inflicted the most egregious form of torture on Dylan, but Lia stepped up to the plate and told Isabella to hold her beer. She has put me through more agony than any man should have to endure in one lifetime. And afterallthat, she still has the audacity to walk in here wearing pajamas.

And of all the pajamas, she chose that one. There’s nothing inherently sexy about them. It’s just a simple crimson cotton tank top with striped crimson pajama shorts. But I have been craving her softness for months, and now her thighs are on full display, and she’s exposing just the right amount of cleavage. I’m seeing too much skin, yet the outline of her pert nipples proves that I’m not seeing nearly enough.

“Would you mind if I came in and kissed him goodnight?”

“No.”

She ignores my clipped response and walks over to us. The smell of her shampoo wafts through the air and mingles with the scent of her skin. God, she smells amazing. She tucks her wet hair behind her ear and leans over to kiss his forehead. I stiffen when her smooth thigh brushes against my forearm. My hand clenches into a tight fist. I shut my eyes to the sight of her and breathe through my mouth, so I don’t get even the slightest whiff of her. I am a man on the edge.

Ihateher for everything she’s done. I’m tense. I’m edgy. I’m livid to the point of boiling over. But that doesn’t make me want to fuck her any less. My body’s unperturbed by my inner turmoil. It doesn’t care that she lied to me. Right now, it’s responding to lips and tits and thighs. It knows how she smells, how she feels, how she tastes, how she moans when I slide inside her. It knows that it’s gone without all those things for way too long. And it knows that she’s the only woman who can give me what I’m yearning for.

“Goodnight, my precious boy,” she whispers, kissing him again. “I love you.” She straightens and looks at me. “Thank you again...for everything.”

She leaves me with that and goes back to the room across the hall. Once the door closes, I throw my head back in frustration.

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