“How the hell do you have this?” he asked, holding the document up in front of my face. “Where did you get this?”
“Look, I know there are a lot of questions running through your head right now, and I’ll answer them, but first, I need to know. Did you know you had a daughter?”
His bright blue eyes were bubbling with confusion, and it seemed like he was overwhelmed. His body was betraying his emotional state in ways he wasn’t recognizing, and I was starting to get worried about him.
“Zach, let’s go sit down.”
I slowly backed him into his cabin and shut the door. I guided him to a chair and sat him down before I opened his fridge and got him a beer. I popped it open and handed it to him, watching as his eyes dropped to the copy of the birth certificate.
I didn’t have a choice but to fill him in on the whole truth now.
“She just stopped by,” Zach said.
“Who did?” I asked.
He pointed to the name of the mother on the birth certificate.
“Marlie Hayworth was here?” I asked. “Why?”
“She’s dying,” he said numbly. “And she wants me to take care of Blithe.”
“Your daughter,” I said.
“Apparently so, according to this birth certificate you have.”
“Zach, I can explain—”
“No offense, but there are some things that are bigger than you right now,” he said.
I was taken aback by his tone of voice, but if he didn’t want me to explain, then I wasn’t going to force it on him. He was dealing with enough right now, and the one thing I knew I could do was be there for him.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked.
“There’s nothing to talk about. Marlie’s got cancer. She was diagnosed about a year ago. Stopped treatment two months ago. She’s trying to get everything in order now.”
His eyes glossed over, and it took my breath away. Every cell in my body ached for him. I couldn’t imagine the overwhelming emotions he was experiencing right now, or all the questions he must have that he didn’t have answers to.
“Did she tell you why she never told you about her pregnancy?” I asked.
“Paige, I was a mess when she met me. She thought she was doing the right thing for her, for the baby, and for me by not saying anything. She was right. Had she told me, I probably would’ve encouraged her to get an abortion or something.”
“Zach, you don’t strike me as—”
“You don’t know a damn thing about me, Paige.”
Which wasn’t true. Not in the slightest. If he would let me explain why I had been in Brookings in the first place, he would know how much I really did know. He would know how intimately I’d come to know him and how much I had come to cherish our interactions.
I reached out to take his hand, but he slid it off the table, his eyes focused on me but looking straight through me. He was lost in his mind, swimming around in an endless abyss of questions that swallowed him whole.
I didn’t know what else I could do but watch.
“She needs an answer by tomorrow,” he said as he looked down at his beer.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because it still gives her time to try and have Blithe adopted before she—” His eyes squeezed shut, and my heart lurched into my throat.
“I’m so sorry, Zach,” I said breathlessly.
“I can’t take her.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“I don’t know the first damn thing about raising a child.”
“No one does,” I said. “It’s something you learn as you go along.”
“I don’t know how to be a good father, Paige. You know why. I didn’t have the best role model for that growing up. I refuse to let that beautiful little girl be ruined by me.”
“Why would she be ruined by you?” I asked.
He drew in a shuddering breath that shook his shoulders, and I was helpless to do anything about what he was experiencing. I wanted to take this all away from him and shoulder it for myself so he could get some rest.
The life Zach had led had been hard and full of pain and regret. The last thing he needed was to feel like he needed to make another life-altering decision based on ideas about himself that weren’t true.
“How does that saying go?” he asked. “You’ll end up just like your parents?”
“You think that when you become a father, you’ll become abusive?” I asked.
“Isn’t that how it works? The cycle of abuse or some shit?”
“The term, ‘cycle of abuse,’ is only used when people talk about trying to break it. I’d like to think I know people well, Zach, and you are the furthest thing from abusive.”
“Yeah, well, I thought I knew you,” he said as he brought his beer to his lips.
“I know you’re upset with me right now, and any questions you have, I’ll answer on the spot,” I said.
“Like I said, more pressing things at hand.”
He was closing himself off from me. I could feel the barricades slamming down around him. He was locking me out. Instead of wrapping me in his arms like I was hoping he would do, he was keeping distance between us, and the rift just kept on growing.
“Would you want to be raised in a foster home?” I asked.
“Hell no,” he said.
“Good, because it fucking sucked. I may not have suffered physical abuse, but I was in plenty of fucked-up homes. Homes with people who kept locks on their pantries because they thought foster children were thieves. Homes where I was nothing but a warm body that brought them a monthly paycheck. Homes where I was the one doing everyone’s laundry and I was the one serving everyone food and I was the one sleeping on the couch and living out of a trash bag. A trash bag, Zach. My stuff was trash to people.”
His eyes slowly rose from the drink in his hand and connected with mine. I knew I was becoming more emotional than I needed to be. I knew I had no right to feel the way I did. But Zach needed to understand the reality of the situation. The reality of what his daughter might just slip into.
“I’ve got no right to tell you what to do,” I said. “But before you make this decision for your daughter, I figured you should hear what things are really like from someone who endured it.”
I wiped at a tear before it fell down my cheek and tossed my gaze out the one window in this whole damn house. I didn’t know what I was doing anymore. I didn’t know why I was still trying to help Zach. I didn’t know why I was still wanting to help him or why I was still being drawn back to him.
But there was a part of me that was still hoping he would wrap those strong, tattooed arms around me and pull me into his body.
“Come on,” Zach said. “There’s somewhere I want you to go with me.”
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Just get up,” he said.
I grabbed my car keys and shoved them into my pocket before we got on his motorcycle. Forty minutes later, we were teetering on the Oregon-Washington state line on the back of his bike. I took advantage of the fact that I got to wrap my arms around him.
I pressed deeper into his body than I ever had because something in my gut told me it would be the last time. I could feel Zach’s body shaking with energy. I could feel his body tensing with every mile that blew past our bodies.
The moment we pulled into the cemetery parking lot, I knew where he was taking me.
“Zach, are you sure?”
“Just shut up, and come on,” he said.
He didn’t offer me his hand, but instead, walked in front of me. The trees were rustling in the breeze as we walked down a winding path. We passed gravestones that were massive and mausoleums built in honor of entire families that had passed away.
I looked away from the tombstones that were far too little to be in a place like this. My heart sank to my stomach as we worked our way to the edge of the cemetery, to a plot with a small headstone coming into view. It was shaded by the trees that outlined the entire cemetery.
My eyes scanned over the headstone, and I sighed. It was plain, with no embellishments and no quote carved into the granite to signify something important about the life Zach was remembering. All that was engraved was the birth and death date of the woman whose name was carved into the top of the headstone.
“Melissa Harte Laine,” I said. My fists clenched at my sides as we continued to stand there in silence.
“My father is Kent Laine, of Kent Enterprises,” Zach said.
“I know,” I said lightly.
He slowly turned his head to look at me, and the guarded stare he gave me broke my heart. Whatever it was I was fruitlessly clinging to was gone.
The look of adoration he had once given me had turned to ice and fallen away the moment I slammed that birth certificate into his chest. In the back of my mind, I knew this was going to happen. It was why I kept putting off telling him the truth in the first place.
It didn’t make his expression hurt any less.
“There’s a lot going on in my life right now,” he said. “There always has been, but right now, it’s overwhelming me.”
“I can only imagine,” I said.
“Whatever you thought you’d find coming back here, it’s not going to work. I can’t make things work between us.”
“I understand,” I said.
“Between this stuff with Marlie, and you living in Seattle, and the fact that I apparently don’t know you at all, I can’t make it work.”
I had to swallow back my tears at his words as my eyes traveled along his body. “Zach, you don’t have to explain anything to me. I get it.”
“Do you really?” he asked.
His entire face turned toward mine, and I committed every detail to memory. I took a mental photograph of his beautiful eyes and studied the strong features of his face. He must’ve looked like his mother because there wasn’t much of his father in his features. I reached up to touch him, and he flinched away. Then he stood up straight again.
My fingers brushed his hair away from his forehead, and I sighed as I dropped my hand. He had his father’s forehead, and I started wondering if he wore his hair long to cover it up.
“You must look like your mother,” I said.
“I’m all him,” Zach said.
“No,” I said. “You’re not.”
His eyes connected hard with mine, and his face melted into stone. I dropped my gaze to his chest and conjured the memory of his warmth one last time. Once I walked away from this cemetery, I would never see Zach again. He would be gone, traveling his path alone as I scrambled to figure out where the hell my life was taking me now.
I wanted to tell him I’d quit my job, and I could stay here longer and help him figure things out. I wanted to throw my arms around him and beg for his forgiveness and tell him that I was still the woman he had gotten to know. That nothing about myself as a person had been a lie.
“Why did you bring me here?” I asked. “What was the point?”
Zach’s eyes hardened before he turned his gaze back down to his mother’s grave. “I made my mother a promise, and now I’ve kept it.”
I knew better than to ask what that promise was, but it didn’t stop me from wondering.
I nodded. “I’ll catch a cab.”
“I’ll take you back. Don’t worry.”
“No. You should stay here. To be with her and seek out her soul.”
He heaved a heavy sigh, but he didn’t deny what I was saying.
“Take care of your little girl,” I said.
“I haven’t made a decision yet.”
“And when you do, take care of her.”
His eyes turned toward me, but I just walked away. I pulled out my phone and called for an Uber as I walked back through the cemetery. Tears crested the rims of my eyes, and they fell down my cheeks. My sorrow matched the mood of this place. I knew Zach was going through a lot, and I knew better than to push anything else onto him, but I wanted to help.
I wanted to be here to guide him through all this shit.
I stood by his bike and took one last look at it. I placed my hand on the helmet I’d worn getting here just as the Uber driver pulled up. I sniffled and wiped my arm across my face before I turned back toward Zach, taking in his distant form at the edge of the cemetery.
“Take care of yourself,” I whispered.
A gust of wind kicked up around me and blew in Zach’s direction, as if to carry my whispered words directly to his ears. It swirled my hair around my face and almost knocked me off my feet. I braced myself against his bike as I stumbled, and the smell of his body that had soaked into the leather seat trickled up my nose.
It was a scent I would never forget, and I committed that one last detail to memory before I pushed myself up, wiped away my tears, and got into the car that was waiting for me.
Zach had a life to live on his own, and I had to come to terms with that. What had bloomed between us was only temporary. I just wished it hadn’t been.