Page 60 of Second Chance for the Single Mom

Instead of having hot, meaningless sex, I finished in my head.

I grinned at her. “Yeah. Me too.”

We both went in for a hug at the same time. Agoodhug, pressing our bodies together warmly. For a few heartbeats, it was like the past seven years hadn’t happened. I was struck with the overwhelming sense that Haley feltrightin my arms, like that’s where she belonged.

She pulled back, hands lingering around me. We smiled at each other, faces mere inches apart. I desperately wanted to kiss her, to get some sort of release from the complex swirl of emotions inside me.

I desperately wanted toknow.

But the context was wrong. It was the middle of the day. It was lunch, not arealdate. And with pedestrians walking past us, it wasn’t exactly romantic.

I pulled away, said goodbye, and walked toward my office building.

Ugh. I wish I had kissed her.

31

Haley

Ugh, I wish he had kissed me.

That wasn’t how I thought the lunch would end when we’d agreed to meet, but now it was all I could think about.

Lucas had grown up.

He was totally different, yet totally the same. It was like someone had waved a magic wand and deleted all the things I disliked about him, while deepening all of his attractive features. It almost felt too good to be true, and it left me desperately wanting to see him again.

There was just one complication: Bran.

If my son wasn’t in the picture, I would have asked Lucas out on a date. We could try to rekindle things. After all, we knew we still had the same sexual chemistry. It made me wonder if we wereemotionallyandintellectuallycompatible in ways we weren’t seven years ago.

Bran made that impossible.

I’d made the decision to raise him alone because I never expected to see Lucas again. It made perfect sense back then, and I still felt strongly that it was the right choice at the time.

Now that he was back in my life, though, that lie of omission was more glaring. And it got worse the more time I spent with Lucaswithouttelling him the truth.

“I don’t know what you want me to tell you,” Sara said while we sat on her porch that night after baseball practice. I’d already put Bran down for bed—it was easier since he began playing baseball, the sport wearing him down so much that he didn’t protest against bedtime.

“You’re supposed to have the answer,” I complained. “You’re the one who convinced me to hook up with Lucas again.”

“I did no such thing!” she protested.

“You’re right,” I said dryly. “You didn’t convince me. You stole my phone and initiated the entire thing while I was in the bathroom!”

She smiled happily. “I regret nothing!”

“That’s good. Now tell me what I should do.”

“I honestly don’t know,” Sara admitted. “If you’re going to let him back into your life, then he deserves to know about Bran. So, the way I see it, you either need to tell him about his son, or cut off all contact with Lucas entirely.”

“Well I definitely don’t want to cut off contact.”

My sister gestured. “Well, then there you go. You have to tell him.” She pointed at me. “And before you say anything, yes, he might react poorly. He might be upset that you kept it from him. He might want nothing to do with Bran. But you’ll never know if you don’t tell him. Until you do that, you’re going to be stuck in limbo.”

“I don’t like how much sense you’re making,” I muttered.

“I always make this much sense. You just usually don’t like listening.”

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