I cut him off with a laugh. “Excuse me?”
He shrugs. “I made a mistake. We acknowledged, and we moved on. I can do the same for you. I’m not a hypocrite.”
I suck in and blow out a big breath, trying not to scream at him. “Connor. When I slept with someone else, it was after you dumped me for not fitting into your brand. We were not together. We have not been together for over nine months?—”
“And whose fault is that? I tried to make things right between us?—”
“Stop.” I wait until I have his full attention again. “I didn’t cheat on you. I did sleep with someone else, and that someone is the father.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do know that. I know exactly who their father is, and it’s not you. You and I hadn’t slept together for over two months before I got pregnant.” I push the ring box back across the table. “And I don’t want to marry you. I didn’t want to marry you when we were together, and I don’t want to now. And my babies are not your legacy. You need to find that in yourself.”
His expression cycles through several things. Hurt, then stubbornness, then something that looks, briefly, like he actually heard me. “Who is he?”
I open my mouth. Close it. The babies are sleeping, and he will lose his shit when I tell him. “That’s not a conversation for right now.”
“I think it fucking is. Who is he?”
Fine. He won’t let it rest, and the sooner we get this over with, the better. Probably.
“Dr. Ronan Callahan.”
He chirps a laugh at first. But when I don’t respond, his face goes slack. “You’re fucking joking?—”
“I’m not.”
He’s shaking his head before I even say the words. “You are. Because that’s fucked up, even for you.”
Not sure what he means by that, and honestly, I don’t even care right now. “Believe me or don’t, but it’s the truth.”
“My dad. He’s the father of your kids. You slept with my father.” He turns a little green.
I nod once.
He wants to push, but instead he puts the ring back in his pocket and stands up. “For the record, I don’t fucking believe you. When you’re ready to talk about this like an adult, call me.”
There’s nothing else to say, so I walk him to the door, and he goes, which is the most mature thing he’s done in a while, and I lean against the closed door for a moment in the quiet.
Then I go and check on the babies, who have slept through the entire thing and are still breathing their loud, reliable, perfect breaths.
I’m in the middle of feeding Baldy when someone knocks on the door again.
Fuck. It’s Connor. Has to be. Here to nag me into marrying him, I’m sure of it.
I put the baby against my shoulder and call through the door. “Connor, I am not marrying you. I will never marry you, and I need you to go home.”
In an accent that is very definitively not Connor’s, a man calls out, “I’m not Connor.”
I open the door.
Ronan is standing on my front step in a dark coat, no scrubs, looking like he hasn’t slept in days. He looks at me, then at the baby on my shoulder, and smiles. “I wanted to see how you were settling in.”
“That’s—” I step back to let him in. “That’s actually really nice. Come in.”
He comes in, and I close the door, and the cottage feels immediately different with him in it. Warmer, somehow. More settled. I’m not sure what to do with that, so I hand him the baby and go to put the kettle on.
I listen to him from the kitchen. He doesn’t know I’m listening, or maybe he does—he’s a perceptive man. But I can hear him talking to her, low and unhurried, the same tone he uses with all three of them, like he’s just having a conversation rather than trying to soothe. Like he thinks they’re worth talking to properly, even now, even at three days old.