Page 76 of My Song for You
“About what?”
“About Logan.”
Kristen pushed the giggling Emma in her swing. “He’s a cute kid. I guess I’m just surprised. I hadn’t realized you and Callie had hooked up. And I’m especially surprised that you would have sex with a sixteen-year-old when you were twenty-one. Wouldn’t that have made her a minor?” A twinge of disappointment laced her tone.
Logan called out my name from the slide and waved. I returned the wave and watched him go down it. He ran back to the steps and climbed up again.
“I never had sex with Callie.” At least not back when Logan was conceived. Never mind that she would’ve been seventeen, not sixteen, when it happened. That was beside the point.
Logan waved at me again and slid down the slide once more.
“Oh, God.” Kristen’s gaze swung to mine and her eyes widened. “He’s Alexis’s son, isn’t he? And she’s dead.”
“Yes, but he doesn’t know that. And he doesn’t know yet that I’m his father.”
Logan bounded over to us and pointed at the swing. I picked him up and hugged him, then placed him on the seat.
I could tell Kristen was itching to question me about her nephew and my relationship with Callie, but she wisely kept her million questions to herself. While the odds were good Logan wouldn’t hear them, it was a risk I didn’t want to take. I still had to figure out how to tell him the truth.
And I still had to figure out how this would all work out in the end. With Logan. With the band. With Callie.
Chapter 31
Jared
Thursday I spent the morning on my couch, working on the song that had played in my head for the past week. Once Pushing Limits hit the road, the days of writing new material would be over. The more songs we’d written before then, the easier it would be for the third album…if there was a third album. That depended on sales forTangled,which was the name of both our second album and its title track.
I strummed the chord combinations I’d written so far, and made a slight adjustment from the D to the G chord. Better. My cell phone pinged a few times, but given that it was Mason, it could wait until after I picked Logan up from preschool. I’d promised to teach him how to play the guitar today. He had asked me how old I was when I’d begun playing, and when he discovered I’d been the same age as he was now, he asked me to teach him.
The kid-sized acoustic guitar sat proudly in the corner of my bedroom. Logan would feel the vibrations when he played, or at least that was the plan. Whether he could create music was anyone’s guess.
I finished the lyrics I’d been polishing for the past hour and left for Logan’s school. Raindrops splattered against the car windows, which made me think of Callie. Who was I kidding? Everything these days made me think of Callie.
Callie used to love jumping in puddles. The bigger the splash the better. She would say that puddle jumping made everything all right with the world, even if only for a few minutes. To her, it was worth the soaked shoes and socks. I wasn’t so sure about that.
The usual group of moms was already in the waiting area when I entered. Sarina nudged the mother next to her and gave a brief nod in my direct. As a single unit, they looked over at me, and I instantly knew something was wrong. The first thought was that it had to do with Logan, but if that had been true, Callie would have called me.
“Is it true?” Sarina asked.
I shrugged. “Is what true?”
“You’re Logan’s father and Callie is just his aunt?” But the way she said it suggested it wasn’t a question. Even if it was a lie, she had already made up her mind that it was the truth.
My body stiffened. “Where did you hear that?”
“It went viral about an hour ago.” Around the same time Mason started texting me.
One mother handed me her smartphone. The picture on the screen had been taken when Logan and I were at the playground with Kristen and Emma. I was hugging Logan by the swings. Fortunately, my sister and niece had been excluded from the shot.
I scrolled down and read the article from an online tabloid. In it, my relationship with Logan was outed, and the article mentioned that a high school sweetheart, who died in a traffic accident a few years ago, was his real mother. My mouth dropped open at how much information had been revealed, along with a few bonuses that were far from the truth, but since I couldn’t prove this, I’d have problems getting a retraction. Not that it mattered at this point. The truth was out there for the world to see, and it was out there before Callie and I had told Logan.
Fuck.
“Is it true you’re fighting Callie for the custodial rights to your son?” Sarina asked. “I can’t believe the nerve of her, thinking she has any rights to him. She’s only his aunt.” She made a huffing noise, like the whole idea personally wounded her.
My cell phone pinged. This time I did read Mason’s text:Would you goddamn respond???
The song I had programmed for Nolan played. “What’s up?” I answered, walking away from the group.
