Page 125 of Northern Stars

“You owe me! Or are you forgetting why you even have a wife still to this day? If Laurie knew the truth, she would’ve left your ass years ago. I just need a few hundred dollars and—”

“No, Jake. We’re done here. I’ve more than paid you back for what you did. You can’t keep showing up like this.”

“I can, and unless you give me what I want, I’ll tell Laurie what happened. How you came out to visit me in Los Angeles—” he warned.

“Stop it, Jake,” Samuel cut in.

But he didn’t stop. The more Jake talked, the more my heart pounded in my chest.

“The way you were supposed to be auditioning, but you got so wasted that you missed the audition. The way you fucked a woman on my couch and got her knocked up. Who cleaned up that mess for you? Who came up with the plan of lying so your wife wouldn’t know you cheated? That was me! You wouldn’t have this life if it weren’t for me pretending to be Aiden’s father, so you wouldn’t look like the bad guy. So until I get what I want, I will keep showing up and—”

I dropped the bag of trash, causing a loud bang.

The two men went quiet.

“What was that?” Samuel asked.

I covered my mouth with my hands and tried to be as quiet as possible, but when Samuel and Jake rounded the corner to see me, I panicked.

“Hailee,” Samuel said.

“Oh shit,” Jake muttered, running his hands through his hair. “You think she heard anything?” he asked his cousin.

“Are you fucking stupid? Of course, she did,” Samuel snapped. “Leave, Jake.”

Jake stood straight. “What about my money?”

“Leave,” Samuel barked. Jake grumbled a bit and stumbled off, leaving me there with Aiden’s father.

His father.

His biological father.

Oh my gosh.

Samuel grimaced and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Hailee, I…”

“You’re his dad,” I gasped. “You’re Aiden’s biological father.”

“You can’t tell anyone,” Samuel ordered, leaving me in shock.

“What?”

“You can’t tell Aiden this. You must keep this between you and me. Otherwise, it would ruin his life. You cannot tell a soul about what you overheard.”

Just like that, I was transported five years prior. I was that scared teenager afraid of ruining the love of my life’s world. Samuel was asking me to betray Aiden all over again, only this time, I knew better. I was smarter and wiser and wasn’t the scared little girl I’d once been.

“No,” I replied.

He stared at me, flabbergasted. “Excuse me?”

“I said no. I’m not going to keep this from him. I love him, Samuel, and years ago, you convinced me that if I loved him, I’d lie to him and tell him I didn’t have feelings for him to convince him to go after his dreams. I lied to him and broke my own heart in the process of trying to do what I thought was right. I was just a kid who wanted the best for him. But I refuse to listen to you anymore. Back then, I thought your choices were being made for your son’s best interest, but now I see they were just for you. You are a selfish, cruel man, and I will not keep this from Aiden. The second he returns, I’m telling him.”

“I’ll tell him first,” he swore. “The moment he gets here, I’ll tell him the truth. Just let it come from me. At least give me that chance.”

I didn’t want to give him any chances. I didn’t want to be anywhere near him. He’d used and abused his son throughout the years, shaping Aiden’s life into Samuel’s dream world. He’d watched how his son struggled and cried over a bad relationship with Jake. He sat through Aiden’s panic attacks as a kid about Jake not showing up for him only because he didn’t want to look like the bad guy.

He allowed his son to experience trauma because he was too selfish to tell the truth.

---