Page 81 of Secret Triplets for Christmas

"Did you really try to call?"

I had no illusion of a future with Oliver except for co-parenting the girls. At that realization, a sliver of fear rose up my spine, wondering if he was going to try and take them from me.

I pushed it away for now. In this moment, I needed to give him complete honesty. "When I first found out I was pregnant, I didn't know what to do. I wanted you here with me, but all I could think about was the last time I saw you, the despair on your face and the hope that you'd be able to leave all this pain behind and finally pursue your dream. I didn't want the pregnancy to take that away from you. I wanted you to finally live your life."

Anger grew in him again. He pointed his finger, jabbing it at me. "That wasn't your decision to make."

"I can see now that maybe it wasn't. And maybe it's not a good excuse, but I was twenty-one years old and it was months after finding Liam murdered in my bedroom, weeks after you told me you had to go. You abandoned me—"

"This is not my fault." Heat flared in his eyes.

I held my hands up in surrender. Until the words had come out of my mouth, I hadn’t fully understood how I'd felt when he had left. I wished he'd stayed, of course. And I really did want him to find himself and his dream.

But deep down, I felt he’d left me. "I'm not blaming you, Oliver. I'm just trying to explain."

"So far, I haven't heard that you called me."

"When I learned I was having triplets, I couldn't imagine how I would manage on my own. And yes, maybe that was the wrong reason to decide to reach out to you, but it is what it is. So, I called the number I had, only to find that it was disconnected. It was around Christmas when I finally told Mira and my father that I was pregnant, and they helped me through it all.”

“It’s not like I went to Mars. You could've found me. Your father has the resources to hire someone, for fuck’s sake."

"Maybe I should have done that." The words were difficult to get out because essentially, he was confirming to me that he hadn't wanted to be found. He wanted as far away from Boston and me as he could get. Only the pregnancy mattered enough to him that I should reach out to him.

As much as that hurt, in some ways, it was also a consolation. He hadn't loved me, despite what he'd said earlier. Not really. Not the kind of love that would've had him stay. That meant I wasn't really losing anything.

"Donovan thinks they’re Liam's kids. Is that what you told everybody?" he asked.

I looked down, wondering how long it would be before I suffocated from the weight of guilt. "I never outwardly told anybody they were Liam's. I just never corrected them."

He flinched as if I had hit him. "So, this last week, all this time we've been together, you never mentioned them. You were never going to tell me."

This time, I did move toward him, reaching for him, but he stepped out of my way. "I was going to tell you. I started to so many times, but you kept telling me you didn't want to talk."

He let out a derisive laugh. "Once again, it's my fault."

"No. It's my fault. You should've heard it from me. I was afraid."

He put his hands on his hips, his eyes narrowing as he glared at me. "Afraid. Of me?"

"I was afraid of this. Of losing you."

"Losing me? You say that as if you ever thought of me as yours. What was all this, Lindsay? A pity fuck? A way to get close to Liam through me?"

My jaw dropped in shock. “No. No.” I moved toward him again. “I told you that my love for Liam had died that summer. I cared for him and wanted him to get his life together, but by then, I had already fallen in love with you."

His breath hitched, and for a moment I thought I had reached him. But then his eyes turned dark, dismissive. "Now you're lying to me. If you loved me, you would've told me that you were pregnant. At the very least, you’d have told me about them now."

Mira came out of the kitchen. "Brett is pulling into the driveway. As far as I can tell, you are in no state to see these girls."

I closed my eyes, gathering my strength. I opened them, looking up at Oliver. "Why don't you sit down on the couch and try to hide your anger at me?"

"You don't want your daughters knowing what you did?"

"Hey!"

"It's alright, Mira. I'm going to tell them the truth, but they don't know you. And before you say it, I know that's my fault. But if they walk in here and look at you now, all they would see is a man who hates their mother, and that's going to make it hard for them to open up to you. And yes, again, before you say it, that's my fault, but if you're going to be a father, you're going to need to learn to put them first. They need to come before your anger at me."

His jaw tightened and he turned away for a moment.

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