Chapter Six
Shelby
One Year Later
I parked my car, looking in the rearview as I reached for my purse in the passenger seat.
"You okay back there, big guy?" I asked. He was fine; I could see his little face in the mirror. I turned in my seat to get a better look. I had a mirror that attached to the headrest of the back seat so I could look back and see him in his rear-facing car seat. He was awake; the car ride between the apartment and work was too short for him to doze off during.
I got out of the car and went around to the back to take him out. He made a little babbling noise and wriggled in his seat. I couldn't help smiling down at him, my perfect little prince. He was perfectly fine with getting strapped in, thank god. Getting to work every day already involved getting more than just myself ready so I was happy whenever he was. If he hadn't been good with the seat, I didn't know what I would have done. I still didn't know how I had kept my job when I had had to go on maternity leave just months after I had been hired.
I lifted him out of the seat and held him against my hip as I shut the door. My mornings had gotten considerably busier since I had to get us both ready in the morning but the alternative would have been paying someone to take him while I was at work. That was nine, ten hours a day when my only contact with him would be through a stranger who I would be leaving alone with my baby in my apartment. I loved having him close. If push came to shove, then I'd obviously do what it took to make sure he had care when I was at work, but it was almost unthinkable to me to be so far away from him.
A lot changed when you had a child. No, scratch that: everything had changed when I had had Damien. Everything had changed when I found out that I was pregnant. Shelby from a year ago wouldn't recognize the person I was now. For one thing, I lived in L.A. Who knew Christmas didn't have to mean sub-zero temperatures? I walked into the building and made my way to the daycare.
"Are you going to be good today?" I asked, kissing my baby's cheek. He was just downstairs if he needed anything or I wanted to see him. A lot of parents weren't as lucky as I was and I appreciated that. I couldn't help feeling greedy though. It was cliché, but they really did grow fast. The past three months had zoomed by. He had been a pink little nugget coming home with me from the hospital one day, and now he had more than doubled his birth weight and was holding his own head up. I cuddled him one last time before handing him off to Karla, the carer.
It wasn't ideal, but it worked. People made it work under much harder circumstances than I was in; I tried to remember that whenever I started feeling sorry for myself. I walked to the elevator and rode up to my floor. I changed gears, shifting into work mode. I had a meeting to get to, as much as I wanted to spend a little more time with Damien. Before having him, I had been one of those people who thought that it was possible for women to have it all: a career and a family. What they didn't say was that it really meant having a little bit of a lot of things and not really all of anything.
I got to my desk and sunk into my chair, relieved. Damien was only getting up about once a night now but that one time a night every night caught up with you. I hadn't had time that morning for coffee. I checked the time; I'd need at least one cup before the meeting if I was planning on getting anything accomplished.
"Morning, Shel," I heard someone say. I looked up from my phone and smiled.
"Davis, if one of those cups is for me, I just might have to marry you." Davis laughed a little, coming up to my desk and handing me a cup of coffee.
"Slow down, let me at least propose first," he joked. I thanked him and took a long, grateful sip of the steaming coffee. Non-dairy creamer and no sugar, just the way I liked it. Delivered to me by the sexy senior anchor of KJLA, even better.
"Not a moment too soon. You looked like you needed it today," he said lightly. I scowled at him but knew he was kidding. I might not have gotten up early enough to have had coffee, but I had at least concealed the bags under my eyes before leaving the house. He, of course, looked great and he hadn't even been to makeup yet. His hair was black, naturally curly but gelled and slicked back for work. He had eyes the color of dark liquor and a voice rich and smooth as aged whiskey.
"Watch out. I haven't had enough coffee to put up with that mouth yet," I warned playfully.
"Whenever you're ready," he said affably. The meeting was with him. We were going to go over the script together before the broadcast. There wasn't much to go over; it wouldn't take us longer than twenty minutes. We used an empty meeting room, going over the latest additions to the script and making sure he wasn't going into the broadcast unprepared. He was professional, sharp, and never made my job harder than it needed to be. We were finished in under fifteen minutes with plenty of time before he had to go into makeup before taping.
"Do you have plans tonight?" he asked, as I downed the last of my coffee.
"Not really. Why?"
"I wanted to come over if you weren't busy."
"I don't know."
"Did you want to come over instead? I know it's more convenient with the baby for you to be home but whatever works."
"It's not that. It's going to be Christmas soon, Damien's first, and I don't know. We don't have any family here. I just want to make it a little special somehow." He nodded.
"I get it."
"Sorry."
"Don't be," he said, smiling. "I'll call you." I watched him leave, relieved that he had taken it so well. We were one hundred percent casual. Between work and Damien, I didn't know whether I wanted to try and tackle having a relationship and he was an attractive, available bachelor. We had agreed to keep things loose and so far, it was working out. Not wanting to be the subject of office gossip, we weren't any friendlier at work than we had to be. If I was busy or he was busy, we just rescheduled, no hard feelings. He didn't have kids but understood that Damien was my first priority. He knew about him but mostly kept his distance and didn't ask that many questions since we weren't together like that. Davis Jacks was... he was great. He was charming and handsome and a dream to work with. He felt like my reward after the unfortunate year I had had to endure working with Jason Bowman.
Was it fair to compare the two? They worked in the same field and had had roughly the same number of years in the business so, in that way, it made perfect sense. I had worked for both, but I had also slept with both, so hell, if anyone could compare the two, I could. Jason would have had a fit if I had blown him off to spend Christmas with Damien. He would have gone on and on about how he was so young anyway; it wasn't like he'd ever remember his first Christmas. I sighed, remembering the arguments we had had. I was glad that those were just a memory I had to deal with now. He and his ego were firmly in the past and even more firmly in New York.
But then again, I thought, would he be that way if he knew that Damien was his son? I thought about it every day. He already kind of looked like him. The green-blue eyes he definitely hadn’t come from anyone on my side of the family, and his hair was blond too. It got to me and had been a lot more the closer we were getting to Christmas. If I hadn't had Damien, I knew that being alone wouldn't have bothered me as much. Christmas was for families, and if that was true, then Jason was part of mine.
I had played the scenario out in my head dozens of times. If I ever took the step to tell Jason that we had had a son then I would want him to react positively, but with Jason, who knew what would happen? He was unpredictable, and besides, how well could anyone take the news that they had a child that they knew nothing about? I knew how it sounded and a year ago, I would have judged the shit out of a person who willfully kept their baby a secret from the child's other parent. Being that person keeping the secret, it was more complicated than even I wanted to admit.
If Jason Bowman today was the same person who I had left in New York a year ago, then I didn't think I wanted him to be part of Damien's life. How could a man who was that narcissistic ever love anyone more than himself? I had tried to picture the two of us co-parenting; would he be as disagreeable in his personal life as he was in his work life? He hadn't been intending to get me pregnant that night, but it had happened. I had gotten pregnant despite having an IUD in place, which had been risky in and of itself.
He was here now, healthy despite the less than savory circumstances his parents were in. It just wasn't that simple. Nothing was black and white when you had a child. When I thought about how Jason would react if I ever told him, I knew that rejection could be a possibility. I wasn't going to force him to be a parent if he didn't want to be. I loved my son, and it was my job to protect him, even if that meant from Jason.
This wasn't the way I had thought my life would look after moving to L.A. Ready to start a new job and a new chapter of my life in a new city, the pregnancy had been a shock. I hadn't thought that I would ever be raising a baby alone. Maybe that had been too idealistic of me; I knew that many people did for many different reasons. I wouldn't give my baby up for anything, but there were things about my relationship with his father and the way that I had gotten to this point that I would change if I could have. If the past year had taught me anything, it was how to let go of what I wanted to do and come to terms with what I needed to do.
The broadcast was just about to start. I had time to think about my estranged baby's father later. I went back to my desk for my clipboard before making my way back to the studio. I caught Davis taking his seat at the news desk. He was made for this job, I thought, smiling. Truth be told, it was kind of sexy too. A lot had changed since last year, but honestly, I wouldn't go back.