Chapter Six
Oh. Fuck.
Sixty minutes had never felt so short in his life…except that lying on his stomach on the massage table was seriously starting to hurt.
It wasn’t simply from a little innocent blood flow due to being so relaxed he felt like he was melting. It was all because of her touch, her fingers stroking every part of his body except the one that was pressing into the table like a hammer, hard enough to break it in two.
He’d gotten plenty of massages for his shoulder before, and he could guarantee that this had never happened. When she brought her lips close to his ear and said, softly, “Take your time getting dressed,” he thought he might actually explode, hands free, right there on the sheets.
Turning over with Claire still there in the room wasn’t an option. She didn’t need to know the effect she still had on him. Not when he’d messed her life up in ways he hadn’t even imagined. He had to force himself to keep it together until the door clicked shut behind her and he was alone.
He sat up, slowly coming to. His limbs felt rubbery and warm. He rolled his shoulder and could already tell how much looser it was, that knot of pain no longer there. He couldn’t believe she hadn’t gone back to college or become a lawyer. And yet she radiated happiness here, and she was clearly damn good at her job.
He felt terrible that she’d had to leave him to find her path. But he was grateful she’d found it, all the same.
He put on his jeans, a button-down shirt, and laced up his black leather boots. He was taking her seriously about not rushing. He needed all the time he could get for Mr. Happy to calm the fuck down.
She was waiting for him at the front desk when he finally made it out of the massage room, a worn-out hoodie thrown over his arm. Claire glanced at the sweatshirt, a hint of a smile crinkling her eyes.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.” She shook her head.
He raised an eyebrow. She’d never been able to weasel away from him before, and although he knew he shouldn’t be thinking this way, he was not-so-secretly delighted that she couldn’t do it now.
“You may have updated from sneakers, but some things never change.”
She gave him an obvious once-over, and he felt that hard press against his fly returning. Fuck, he couldn’t believe how good it still felt to know she was looking at him.
He gave a little shrug. It was warm in the office, and he rolled up his sleeves. But as soon as he did so, he saw her eyes move from the sweatshirt to his forearm.
“What’s with the tats?” she asked without missing a beat.
He looked at his arm. He had no idea what to say. He’d just barely seen her again, for the first time in years. Laying everything on her was way, way too much.
Especially when as soon as he walked out of here, he’d be heading straight to the airport. He’d gotten his wish to see her this once. He might never see her again.
“I got it four years ago,” he said evasively. Four years, two months, and twenty-seven days ago, to be precise. That was how long he’d been sober, out of rehab, and making it on his own.
“What happened four years ago?”
Everything.
“I moved to Chicago.”
She looked up from the desk in surprise. “Chicago?”
“I left New York.” He ran a hand through his hair and looked down, away—anywhere but at her. “I needed a change of scene.”
“That must have been a big move.”
Oh, sweetheart, he thought. You have no idea.
“Something like that,” he said, and pulled out his wallet.
But she held up a hand, stopping him.
“On the house,” she said. “For old friends.” She paused. “Or something.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Of course you can.”
He passed her a credit card. “I’m either paying for this massage, or I’m leaving you a hundred-dollar tip. Or both, but I don’t have cash, so you have to charge me something so I can make good on my threat.”
She couldn’t hold in her smile. God, he used to fucking love making her smile. He wanted to say something about that basement apartment, how the idea of spending a hundred dollars on anything back then would have made them both laugh, cry, throw up, or all three.
But he had no right to go talking like that. And anyway, he knew it would take the smile right off her face. They’d had no money because they were a waitress and a musician with no college degrees, no savings, no family support, and no idea what to do.
Even more than that, they’d had no money because he spent it all. Sure, he had built-in excuses—rent, groceries, his agent, his manager, the instruments and gear and studio time he needed because they were building a name.
But he and Claire both knew where her tips went. Just because rotgut whiskey was dirt-cheap didn’t mean that shit didn’t add up.
She, too, seemed to hesitate, and he wondered if she was remembering the same thing—everything he’d done to deserve waking up to her bare half of the closet, despite how much he’d loved her.
“Just take it,” he finally said, and she nodded and reached for the credit card he was handing her.
This was business. That was the only reason she’d put her hands on him. So he’d better get that hard-on out of his mind. He’d better forget the way he used to feel when she was near.
She rang him up then groaned when the machine started sputtering halfway through.
“Sorry,” she said, tapping her fingernail against the desk like she couldn’t wait for him to get out of there.
“You don’t have to apologize to me,” he said.
About anything.
A faint flush crept up her cheeks. She must have known what he meant, even when he couldn’t say it out loud.
“I need to call the wireless people and figure out what’s wrong. Add it to the never-ending to-do list.”
“You must be busy.”
She snorted. “You can’t imagine.”
He wondered what that was supposed to mean. Obviously, she was busy, running her own business with who knew how many clients a day. She didn’t have a ring, and she hadn’t said anything about another person in her life—although he hadn’t had the balls to ask. So what else was taking up so much of her time?
He inhaled, about to say, “Try me,” when he saw her eyes flit over to something on her desk, fast, then back again. Her cheeks reddened, and her finger tapped faster, desperate for the transaction to go through.
Ryan followed her eyes. When it was clear she was deliberately avoiding looking at him, he leaned over the desk to see what had caught her attention.
“What have you got there?” he asked, unable to stop from being nosy—and from inhaling the sweet lavender scent of her skin while he was close.
She didn’t answer. But she didn’t have to. Ryan saw the framed photograph on her desk and picked it up. He didn’t know what he’d expected. Another man, to be honest. That clean-cut guy she deserved.
But it wasn’t a man.
It was a child. A girl, pumping her legs on a swing set. She had long, dark hair and an enormous grin that made her gray eyes squint. The credit card machine finally spat out the receipt, but neither of them moved.
He kept having to swallow as if something were clawing up his throat. Not vomit—not exactly. More like his entire heart.
She wasn’t saying anything.
Why wasn’t she fucking saying anything?
“Claire.” He thought of himself as a pretty steady guy. He’d been through a lot, and he’d still come out the other side. But suddenly his voice was trembling, just like his hands.
“Her name is Maya,” Claire said, so quietly Ryan had to lean forward to hear her, relying on the edge of the desk to hold him before his legs gave out.
“She’s beautiful,” he said.
“I know.”
“She looks like you.”
Claire shook her head. “She has your eyes. Your hair. And definitely your temper.”
“My what?”
She smiled with a trace of sadness. “Don’t pretend you’re a saint.”
Yeah. She had him there.
“Claire,” he said again, because that was all he could manage. She wasn’t telling him what he needed to know, what should have been obvious except he still couldn’t wrap his head around it. “She’s…mine?” he had to ask, even though it felt so stupid to utter the words.
“Christ, no,” Claire said, a sudden fierceness ripping through her, and Ryan stepped back, startled. Had he totally misunderstood?
But then she said, “You may be the father, Ryan. But that child is all mine.”
Just hearing the word father kicked his pulse into overdrive. Was she kidding? But nothing about her face, or her words, said this was any kind of joke.
He swallowed, heart pounding. This couldn’t be real.
But he looked at the photograph again, at that small, beaming girl with Claire’s smile, Claire’s joy, and something heavy and solid flipped over in his stomach.
Or maybe it was he, himself, who’d been turned upside down.
“How could you not have told me?” he said, a million emotions crashing through him at once.
Her eyes widened in shock. “Are you serious? Of course I told you!”
Now he was even more confused. He ran a hand through his hair, trying not to totally freak out. Trying to think through what had happened.
“You didn’t,” he insisted. “You just…left. I came home that day, and you were gone and I—”
“You didn’t come home,” Claire said. “You were there when I packed. You were just passed out.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and he genuinely meant it.
“At some point, you were puking.”
Fuck. “Also sorry.”
“After you walked out on me the night before.”
“Again, still sorry.”
“And when I asked you what we were going to do about the baby, you said—”
He winced and held up a hand. He shouldn’t have tried to revisit the past. He really didn’t want to hear what he’d done.
But Claire obviously wasn’t the same eager-to-please girl she used to be, because she kept right on going.
“You said, and I quote, Christ, Claire. Don’t you know I have a headache?”
He dropped his hand. “I said that?”
“It’s not the kind of thing a person forgets.”
He knew he’d done some shitty things in the past, things people hadn’t hesitated to tell him about when he tried to make amends. But on a long list of bad, this was worse than he’d ever imagined.
He brought a hand to the back of his neck, feeling the tension tightening again. “Jesus, I was such an asshole.”
She didn’t try to make him feel better with some kind of platitude about how it wasn’t that bad, or she was sure he had changed. She just leveled her eyes at him and twisted that knife as deep as it would go. “The real mystery is why it took me so long to figure that out.”
He looked away, feeling her words like a physical ache. He didn’t want to know what else he’d done or what else she thought of him. He didn’t want to say another word. He just wanted to run out of there, head straight to Chicago, and never look back.
But that photograph. His daughter. It still hadn’t sunk in.
“Did you really tell me? That you were pregnant?”
Claire folded her arms. “Why do you think you got so trashed that night?”
“Little White Lie had just signed with our label.” He may not have remembered half their relationship, but he certainly knew that.
Claire, though, shook her head. “That’s why you were late, despite promising me up and down that you’d be home because I was making dinner and had something I really needed to talk to you about. It’s also why you were already drunk.”
He didn’t know what to say. He wanted to die on the spot.
“But that’s not why you were so trashed that day. It was my bundle of good news that drove you out until the following afternoon.”
He winced, wishing he could go back to the kid he used to be and shake him until his brain fell into place. “You couldn’t have waited until I was a little more together to spring that on me?” he asked, biting back anger and regret.
Claire let out a laugh. “Ryan. If I had waited for you to be sober, I would have been pushing that baby out of me before you had a clue. And even then, it’s doubtful.” She arched an eyebrow, waiting for him to disagree. But he couldn’t.
He shook his head. “I don’t know what else to say besides I’m sorry.”
He picked up the photograph again, studying that mix of him and Claire, as well as something so bright, it was all her own.
He was aware of Claire studying him just as hard. And he got now why she looked like that, eyes widened in fear. She probably thought he was going to swoop in and steal her kid or something. His kid, he corrected quickly. Their kid.
God, this was confusing.
But he didn’t even know how to talk to anyone under the age of twenty, let alone what kind of toys to buy. His own dad had been so absent, he had zero models for how to not fuck up stuff like that up. She seriously had nothing to worry about.
And yet there was no way he could put down that photograph, tell Claire how nice it was nice to see her, and be on his way.
“When can I meet her?” he said before he lost his nerve.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Ryan—”
He held up a hand. “I’m sober now, Claire. Completely. I know it doesn’t change the past, but you don’t have to worry about me”—he looked around, not sure what to say—“doing anything stupid.”
She took a deep breath. “I’m very happy to hear that.”
Ouch. He knew he didn’t deserve anything more than that. He was being impulsive. Crazy. But if she thought he could look at that photograph and just walk away, she’d clearly never known him at all.
“We should at least talk about it,” he said.
“We are talking.”
“I mean later.”
She shook her head. “I’m booked all day.”
“Tonight,” he countered immediately. “Let me buy you a drink.”
Please, he thought. He had no idea what he was doing or what he thought was going to happen. But he wasn’t going to leave Gold Mountain without at least laying eyes on his own flesh and blood. Another giant wave of holy shit rolled through him.
Claire rolled her eyes. “You just told me you weren’t drinking. Or did you already forget?”
“That’s not what I meant. Come to the hotel where I’m staying. You’ll have a Chardonnay, I’ll have coffee, and we’ll get dessert.”
“That’s not fair,” she said.
He felt his eyes softening as he looked at her. Didn’t she understand? “I don’t care if you have something when I don’t. I’m a big boy. I can handle it.”
“I mean, it’s not fair to bribe me with chocolate.”
He knew he didn’t always smile for real. It was hard sometimes to feel it all the way. But this was one grin he couldn’t tamp down.
“Still got a sweet tooth?”
“What hotel are you staying at?” she asked, completely sidestepping his attempt to remind her how well he’d once known her.
“The Cascade.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Your label is putting you up there? Square One must be doing well.”
He couldn’t deny that part was sort of true, but he had to shake his head.
“This one’s on me. I was supposed to be in Seattle last night, flying to Chicago today.”
There. The truth.
He could see how much it stunned her to realize he’d stayed for her—and was still staying for her. And for Maya. He could also see how quickly she tried to recover.
“So you’re saying it wouldn’t be very nice of me not to see you tonight,” she said.
“And you, Claire Collins, are still the sweetest girl I know.”
He leaned over the desk. To put the photograph back, sure, but also to get close enough to remind her that he was no stranger. That once, all she’d wanted was to put her hands on him—and not nearly as chastely as what had just happened in the massage room. She couldn’t let him get on that plane without granting him this one small thing. A chance to meet his daughter and to show Claire he wasn’t the man he used to be.
And a chance for him to see first-hand the life he’d missed out on before he’d understood all he was throwing away.