Page 79 of Last Comes Fate

I nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

He looked me over. “How far along are you? Still not showing much.”

I put a protective hand on my belly. “Not quite four months. I’ll probably pop in another month or two.”

Adam nodded, looking slightly uncomfortable. “And Xavier is…”

“Inside,” I confirmed. “Making dinner with Sofia.”

He didn’t need more updates than that. I wasn’t interested in whatever he might carry back to his mother and, therefore, Georgina.

“Are you done spying?” I asked more bitterly than I expected. Just the idea made me angry.

Adam blinked. “I wasn’t…” He sighed. “I’ll go. Sorry to bother you. I’ll give this Derek guy a call. See you, Frankie.”

He turned to leave, shoulders slumped with dejection.

“Adam, wait,” I called before I could stop myself.

At the bottom of the stoop, he turned. “What’s up?”

“There’s one thing that’s been bothering me,” I said. “In England. Before I left. You said something about how you stayed in America to ‘watch and wait’ to see how things turned out.” I cocked my head. “Did you mean me? Since you knew…about Xavier, I mean?”

He blinked through his horn-rimmed glasses, then muttered something like “shit” to himself. “I…sort of.”

“What does that mean?”

He took a step toward me but was smart enough not to come all the way back up. “I knew who you were,” he said. “When we started working together at Carroll Elementary.”

“Yeah, I gathered,” I said. “Because you’d been stalking Xavier, or whatever.”

“No, it wasn’t that,” he said, tugging at his beard nervously. “I know it looks that way, but I honestly didn’t follow Xavier beyond keeping up with Kendal and basic curiosity. But I…yeah. I recognized you from something else.”

I reared. “From where?”

He sighed again. “I did my master’s in teaching at Columbia. I, um, was at the bar. The night you met Xavier. Total coincidence, I swear it…but, yeah. I was there.” He tipped his head, almost looking charming. “Can you blame me for not telling you? You’ve already accused me of stalking Xavier. Next, you’d think I was watching you like that.”

I frowned. Was he lying? There was no way that could be true.

And yet, I never recalled telling him I met Xavier at a bar. Or that it was near Columbia. How would he know if he hadn’t been there, for any kind of reason?

“You had on a red shirt,” Adam said. “I remember thinking you were really cute, and I was about to talk to you when this other guy stepped in. The same guy who had stolen literally everything else from me my whole life.” He shook his head. “I can’t even tell you how pissed I was. I cross a fucking ocean to get away from the guy, and Xavier Parkerstillmanaged to slide in and steal the girl.”

“He didn’t steal me,” I said. “He couldn’t have stolen me if I wasn’t yours to begin with.” Lord, I was getting tired of men talking about me like a book on one of their shelves.

Adam just shrugged. “Anyway, I swear I didn’t follow you or anyone else after that. I had no idea who you really were until you started working at Carroll Elementary. And then I remember thinking maybe my luck was changing. Maybe it was fate. You were different, of course. You’d had a kid, and you obviously weren’t looking for a relationship. But I still recognized you. I figured if I waited long enough, you’d eventually be ready.” He shrugged. “I was right. But again, just a little too late.”

I opened my mouth to tell him he was wrong. That I wouldn’t have been ready for anyone at that point. That I wasn’t sure I ever would be, and he shouldn’t have wasted his time.

But what good would that do now?

“One more question,” I said as a last thought occurred to me. “How did you know about Sofia, then? That she was his, I mean? If you weren’t, um,followingXavier’s life?”

Again, Adam looked considerably uneasy as he worried his hat between his hands. “I’m not going to lie. I didn’t know it for sure…I only suspected.” He shrugged. “But when you brought her around school, I was pretty sure. She looks just like him.”

I cocked my head. “So, did everyone in England know?”

He snorted. “If you’re asking if I told my mother, the answer is no. But it did make me wonder if one day he would be back. I might think Xavier’s an asshole, but he’s also loyal. He wouldn’t have abandoned his own kid. So yeah…I did sort of…watch and wait.”

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