LEXI
Bailey stops with her champagne flute halfway to her mouth. “What do you mean he doesn’t know?” she asks as she lowers it back down to the table.
“I mean just what I said. Tyler doesn’t know about Gabe. It was a one-night-stand. He disappeared the very next day. He’s a Marine and had no intention of coming back to Brookside Ever. For any reason. He was pretty clear about it, actually. I never thought it was worth hunting him down because I knew I could raise my kid without his help.”
Plus, I was heartbroken. I thought I found someone to fall in love with. Someone different from everyone else out there. And then he left in the middle of the night without so much as a goodbye.
“Lex…” Michelle folds her hands in her lap.
“How do I not know about this?” Bailey finishes off her champagne before setting the glass back on the table. “I feel like this is definitely something I should know about.”
Maybe I should have kept that last nugget of information to myself.
“I totally admit that you should have known about this before now, but can we please skip the part where you’re mad at me and get to the part where we figure out what to do before he sees me?” I fold my hands together like I’m praying and plead with my friends with my eyes. “And really, Bay. The last thing I want to do is ruin your wedding.”
Bailey snorts. “My wedding is not ruined, but Tyler’s day is about to be. Michelle and I are going to go tell him what’s what.”
“Lex…” Michelle sounds more insistent now.
“Please don’t go tell him anything,” I say. “Not one thing. Gabe and I are fine and we don’t need a stranger suddenly feeling responsible for what happens in our lives.”
“Lex!” Michelle drops a hand on the table and Bailey and I jump in surprise. “You have to tell him. You have to let this guy know he has a son.”
“No way. I stand by my original decision. Gabe and I are fine without him.” I shake my head, terrified at the thought of how much disruption it would bring into our lives if Ty finds out about Gabe. “The only thing I have to do is get out of here before I cause a scene. Or. Well. A bigger scene.” I stand and my two friends stare up at me.
Bailey looks distraught. “Please don’t leave. That actually would ruin my wedding.”
Well, shit.
Hello, rock.
I’d like you to meet hard place.
I drop back into my chair and put my head in my hands. “Why is he even here?”
Michelle clears her throat. “I can answer that. He’s back in Brookside for a week because his sister just had a baby. He’s staying in our guest room at the farm.”
“He’s staying at the farm?” I lift my head and stare at her. Talk about a mindfuck. “How is that even possible?”
“Ty has been friends with David and Colton since high school. They were on the football team together and used to get into all kinds of trouble. And then, in his Freshman year of college, Ty joined the Marines and went into Officer Candidate School—”
“He’s an officer?” I can’t help it. I look right at him. He’s laughing at something David or Colton just said, his head thrown back and his eyes closed. His dress shirt stretches across his broad chest and his hand dwarfs the glass he’s holding. I see Gabe in that face and my heart clenches.
“Yep.” Michelle nods. “And apparently, he’s a very good one. He’s seen combat and saved lives on more than one occasion.” She lays her hand on mine. “It sounds like he’s a good guy, Lex.”
“It doesn’t matter if he’s a good guy or not. He doesn’t know about Gabe and Gabe doesn’t know about him and that’s the way it needs to stay. If he’s all Semper Fi all the time and he’s going to be gone again in a week, what good will it do if they find out about each other? It’ll bring a lot of upheaval for all of us only for nothing to change in the end.”
Doubt clouds Michelle’s face. “Don’t you think he deserves to know he has a son?”
I sigh. Of course he deserves to know. Right? I mean, at least I think so. Or is it better for him to continue on in ignorant bliss? That way he’s able to do all of his Marine things the way he’s been doing for the last six and a half years without having to change anything? Gabe and I are fine. We have been fine and we’ll continue to be fine. Tyler doesn’t need to have his life turned upside down just because he happened to show up in Brookside again even though he said there wasn’t anything on this earth that could make him come back. I drop my head into my hands again.
“What if he never wanted to have kids?” I ask.
Michelle raises her eyebrows. “What if he’s wanted kids his whole life?”
“Since when are you on his side?” I sit back and sigh, my stomach flip-flopping crazily.
“I’m not on any sides. I’m just playing devil’s advocate here. This is one hell of a sticky situation. You’ve done a great job raising Gabe on your own.” She puts her hand on mine and gives it a squeeze. “A great job. But what if Tyler…” She trails off and shakes her head. “I don’t know Lex. I think he deserves to know he has a son.”
Bailey studies Tyler for a long time. “Gabe looks just like him, doesn’t he?”
I finally release the death grip I’ve had on my attention and look across the room. Why does he have to be so handsome? Couldn’t he have taken up drinking and smoking and aged horribly over the last couple years? That way I could continue to feel indifferent about him instead of this inexplicable desire to cross the room and be near him? It’s the same pull I felt when we were in Key West. It’s like we’re connected by an invisible cord that’s not just pulled taut between us, but shrinks incrementally each second, drawing us together.
“It’s almost spooky how much they look alike,” I say, answering Bailey’s question.
“How did you guys meet?” Michelle asks.
“It was when you went down to the Keys by yourself, right?” Bailey scrunches up her nose, trying to remember the bullshit story I gave her about the magical day Ty and I spent together—the one followed by him disappearing in the middle of the night with not one word spoken between us.
I nod. “I got it in my head that I needed to spend a week alone by the beach with nothing more than my bikini and a drink. I met Ty. The chemistry was amazing, but that could have been the pina coladas. We spent the day together. Then the night together. Then he disappeared and I never saw him again. Until now.” And every time I look at my son. And all those lonely nights over the years where I would replay our day together over and over before I fell asleep. But those things are neither here nor there.
Michelle sighs dreamily. “Remember when I kept running into David and you told us it was the Universe trying to get us together?”
“I do remember, but this is not that, my friend. This is an unhappy coincidence with an unhappier ending.”
Bailey sits up tall in her seat. “Oh, shit. Lex. He saw you.”
“What?” My gaze goes right to Ty and damn it, his eyes are locked on mine with nothing but complete and utter recognition dawning across his face.