Page 32 of Faking with the Bad Boy Billionaire

"Yes, I did. You did not eat much while we were out, and I was not sure you had even touched the muffins I brought this morning." He looked away from Lucas, and she watched their son start to get upset.

"Dada." He said it angrily, but Lucas said it.

Josephine almost dropped the pizza on the floor. "What did my son just say?" She went to set the pizza on the counter and walked up behind them.

"I believe he just said, 'Dada.'" Steven was wearing a gigantic and obnoxious grin.

"Nope." Josephine walked back to the counter and flipped the pizza box lid open. She shoved a slice into her mouth and bit off some of it aggressively. "There is no way he got that so much faster than Mama." She was ready to cry, both happy and frustrated. One day, with Steven, Lucas was completely in love with his father.

"Sorry, love. I think that he did." Steven turned back to look at her. He stopped smiling when he saw her eyes full of tears. "Oh, shit. I'm sorry." He got up slowly to avoid jostling Lucas. He walked over to her and gave her a quick squeeze. She pushed him off of her and took another bite of pizza.

"It's fine. One day, and BOOM, super dad to the rescue." Josephine heard the anger in her voice.

"You know, it's not even like that. He heard me say it a million times today." Steven grabbed a slice and started eating. Josephine got Lucas into his highchair and fed him before giving him a bottle and putting him to bed.

She walked out of Lucas's room quietly. She was ready to talk with him a bit, but she was unsure how to approach the subject with kid gloves. "Steven, we both have not handled this how we probably could have, but we can't go back and change things."

"I know. I wish we could, though. I would have brought you with me when I left." Steven said it so effortlessly that Josephine was taken back a bit.

"Steven, you knew I was not going to leave my life behind, and I was not going to ask you to leave yours." Josephine never thought they would be having the larger conversation right away. "Neither of us would have been happy uprooting ourselves."

"Maybe you're right. However, we will never know how it would have turned out if we did make a choice in that moment." Steven spoke the words she had wondered for years. He had wondered just like she did.

"Can we just hang on to that conversation for a bit longer?" Josephine took a bite of the cheese-filled crust and set the crust down in the box. "Right now, we just need to focus on how to be good parents for Lucas." Josephine hopped up on the counter and spun to face him, crossing her legs.

"Agreed." Steven took another piece of pizza and bit into it.

"Okay. So, how often will you be back here to spend time with Lucas?" Josephine narrowed her eyes a bit.

"I actually live here now." Steven stood tall, and she stared him dead in the eye.

"Since when?" Josephine could not believe what he was saying to her.

"For the past six months. I am opening a sister club here. The original one is still open, but I planned to be here anyway. This is just an incentive to finish the official move faster." Steven was not even taking a second to think about any of it.

"I am glad that you will be close by for him." Josephine was trying to figure out how she missed his club opening a secondary location. Lucas started fussing, pulling her attention from Steven. He settled himself quickly, and Josephine shifted her focus from the monitor back to the man in front of her.

"Today was a good day, Josie." Steven smiled and looked down so he would not have to look her in the eye.

"Today was a good day." Josephine accepted the fact that it was a good day. She would even go so far as to categorize it as excellent, even given how it started out with the two of them. She started moving around to clean up the house when she noticed Steven beginning to help her. She chuckled a bit while he was fumbling around with all the toys.

"What?" He dropped the pile back to the ground and tripped clumsily over one of them.

"I never thought I would see you doing something so domestic." Josephine started laughing.

"Well, this is the new normal, right?" Steven picked everything up again and put it back. "Can we devise a schedule for me to come over and do things with Lucas?"

Josephine stopped moving and stared at him for a minute, "I guess we can discuss it at some point, but can we just count today as a win and move forward from here? Slowly?"

"Sure, we can do that." Steven's words were like a weight off of Josephine's shoulders. She had gone through enough emotional rollercoaster-type things for one day and was not emotionally prepared to make a schedule to share Lucas with him.

Chapter twenty

Steven

Stevenwashappytotake part in Lucas and Josie's life. She agreed to let him come over two nights a week for dinner with their son and one family day activity on the weekend. It was something that he looked forward to constantly. He started the next countdown the second he left their apartment. They had gone to the aquarium twice in the last three months, celebrated Lucas's first birthday together, went to the zoo more times than he could count, and even started having a sleepover on Fridays so he could be there for the entire day on Saturdays.

Steven was not sure when family life got a firm grip on him, but at some point, all he wanted was to run the clubs from the background and focus on his family. Then came the day of the park. They had spent the morning in their usual routine. Steven showed up with breakfast for them all so they could get moving as fast as they could into the day's adventure. Josephine watched him with a look he had not seen in a long time. He looked over at their son, and then he looked back. He did not see it on her face anymore.

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