Page 43 of My Song for You
“He’s your son.”
At those three simple words, it was as if the air in my lungs had been squeezed out and not a single molecule of oxygen remained. It felt like a lifetime before I was capable of taking another breath. “So what now?”
“It’s up to you, but I suggest you talk to Callie first before you proceed. For starters, you need to find out the legal relationship between Callie and Logan. The answer will affect how we proceed next. But I ask you one more time, as your legal counsel and friend: Are you sure you want to proceed with this?”
Logan giggled from the platform and waved at me, a wide grin on his face. My heart, which was still slamming hard against my ribs, swelled for a second. “I’m positive.”
“Okay, I’ll wait for your call.” We spoke for another minute or two before ending the conversation. I inhaled deeply and walked over to…my son. Shit. What the hell did I know about being a parent? I was just getting the hang of being an uncle to a toddler. A father to a four-year-old who happened to be deaf was completely different.
And how was I supposed to tell Logan that I was his father? I couldn’t just blurt that out on the playground:Hey, guess what? I’m the asshole dad who hasn’t been around in your life.I needed to talk to Callie first, and then I could tell him the truth. Somehow.
Logan rushed over. “Can we eat lunch with Mommy? Want fries and milkshake.”
My insides tightened at his request. Ever since the incident with the kiss and then the damning birth certificate, I’d avoided Callie as much as possible. When I arrived at her apartment so she could go to work, she hadn’t had time to talk to me before she had to rush out. And those few moments we did have had been filled with tension. I could only guess that she was still upset about the kiss.
Well, the kiss was now the least of her problems.
“Sure,” I told Logan. “Why not?”
We said goodbye to Ben and Tony and drove to the diner. Alice took us to the same booth as before. Callie showed up a couple of minutes later with the chocolate milkshakes.
She gave me a hesitant smile. Even with the lies and betrayal circulating between us, the smile gave me a weird sense of hope. Added to that was the desire to taste her mouth again—only this time I craved more than a brief kiss.
I seriously needed to haveIDIOT RESIDES HEREtattooed on my forehead.
Like last time, Callie returned with our food and sat next to Logan. “How was preschool?” my deceptive ex-friend asked.
“It was good.” Logan popped the milkshake straw in his mouth and sucked down a good portion of his drink.
“Mrs. Rogers called this morning. She’s feeling better and will look after you again starting tomorrow.” She paused. “I thought maybe we could cook dinner for Jared tonight, to thank him for everything he’s done for us.”
My milkshake went down the wrong way and I started coughing.Sure—I donate the sperm, and you make me dinner to say thanks.
“Are you okay?” she asked with more concern than she had the right to feel.
“I’m fine. Dinner sounds great.” And because I felt like being an asshole, I asked, “So what exactly happened to Alexis and your parents? How did they die?” For a second, regret kicked me hard in the chest, both for being an asshole by asking Callie the question while she was at work and because her parents and sister weren’t just statistics. They were people I knew and cared about in one way or another.
Callie pressed her teeth into her lower lip again and glanced at Logan. He was too busy shoveling fries into his mouth to notice. Callie’s voice came out as a pained whisper. “They were driving up to visit me when I was living in San Francisco.” Her voice wavered. “A cement truck failed to stop at a red light and hit them. They…they didn’t make it.”
Even though I already knew that they had all died, just hearing how it had happened and hearing the guilt in Callie’s voice, as if she was personally responsible for their deaths, was too much. It felt like someone had dropped me into the depths of the frigid ocean, and the intense water pressure was squeezing the air out of my lungs. Holy fuck. My hand slammed against my mouth. I wished again that I had known about the accident. I could’ve been there for her. For my son too.
She stroked her hand over Logan’s hair. He smiled at her, but it was clear he had no idea what we were talking about or that it impacted him.
“So, Logan, do you have any grandparents?” I asked, despite knowing the truth.
“No,” Logan said. “Just me and Mommy and Mrs. Rogers.” He reached for another fry and beamed at me. Then he returned his attention to his milkshake.
To Callie I said, “Did your parents die before he was born?” I just wanted to see if she would admit the truth—or if she would compound the lies she’d already told me with more lies.
“Um…” Her eyes grew wide. “Yes. Yes, they did.”
“When did they die?” I knew I had her. Now I wanted to see how long it would take her to figure out how much I’d pieced together.
She swallowed hard. “Just before he was born.”
I ignored what she had said. To my ear, my tone sounded cool and calculating, nothing at all like the usual me—but nothing about this situation was usual. “And then to end up with Logan after Alexis died…that must have been tough.”
When I was eleven, my sister and I had been playing catch in the living room, which was strictly forbidden. Kristen had thrown the ball at me, but her aim was way off and the ball flew into the glass vase on the bookshelf—the vase that our grandmother had given my mom shortly before Grams was diagnosed with the cancer that later claimed her life. Mom loved that vase. I had been positive my sister would suffer a heart attack from the panic at what she had done.
