I yank my own hair. Hard. The sharp pain at my scalp grounds me back to the present in this room, in this bed, with this man who is nothim.
Z is gone.
Z pulled a gun on me and my son, and I shot him.
He is not in this room. He is not in any room I will ever be in again.
My eyes return to Caleb’s sleeping face. Caleb who doesn’t touch me like he hates me. He touches me like I’m something he wants to be oh so careful with. Like every time I let him into my body it’s a gift he’s still not sure he deserves.
That thought cracks something open in my chest I immediately want sealed shut again.
Because here’s what nobody tells you about gentleness after a long time of cruelty: it doesn’t feel like relief.
It feels like standing in a room with no walls.
Like suddenly I’m aware of how small and hunched over I’ve become, how much I learned to brace my body in careful stillness. I’m not sure I know how to… To justexistin space without waiting for the next shock to the system.
And underneath all of it—underneath the nightmare and the relief and the particular vertigo of waking up in Caleb Graham’s bed after a shocking orgasm that I actually stayed in my body for—there’s the thing I’ve been carrying ever since I left Dallas.
Caleb is Bruiser’s father.
The photos at Helen’s memorial. Caleb’s childhood face, the identical twin of my son’s, and the bottom dropping out of my entire understanding of the last ten years.
I’ve been running it over and over in my head how Z could’ve done it. Because I looked at those official paternity results straight from my email.
On the phone I shared with Z.
And while Z might not be as smart as I always gave him credit for, he loves computers and has always been a competent gamer and basic programmer. He must have doctored the resultsbefore I saw them.
He was my oldest friend, and I trusted him more than anyone else in the universe. A fact he constantly used against me, clearly. It never once occurred to me that he would?—
Clearly it never occurred to me.
I was too overwhelmed to tell Caleb right away.
But now… God, I’m a bitch for keeping it from him this long. Sure, I was locked in a closet, and had a gun pulled on me, and was running from a dangerous motorcycle club, but still.
Every time I’ve opened my mouth to tell Caleb the truth, I found some fresh excuse not to.
And now I’ve slept with him multiple times without telling him the truth.
I drop my face into my hands.
When exactly was I supposed to tell him?My brain still rings with excuses.Hey, great work with the tactical response leaping through the window like a sexy commando. By the way, that cool kid you just met is actually yours. Congrats, you’re a father! So sorry I didn’t lead with that.
The sarcasm doesn’t help. It never actually helps; it just gives me something to do with the anxiety while I avoid dealing with the thing causing it.
Caleb has money. He has resources. He has friends who own security companies.
What happens if he decides to fight me for custody when he finds out? I’d have no shot against the kind of lawyers his friends could help him afford.
Then what happens to the life I’ve built with nothing but my own hands, if he decides I’m an unfit mother? Especially considering all the evidence of the last week alone?
Are you an unfit mother?
The question burns in my chest like a hot coal.
I landed my son in a situation where a gun was pointed at him. I spent ten years with a man who named my child with a motorcycle club nickname before he could walk.