When I ran up to the entrance of Anna’s building, I was immediately greeted by her doorman, who smiled and said, “Good morning, Miss Cole. It’s nice to see you.”

“Morning,” I replied, completely out of breath.

I rushed into the lobby and went over to the elevator where I slammed my finger on the button, hoping it would open quickly.

“Do you want me to call Miss Shay and let her know you’re here?”

The elevator arrived, and I stepped inside, pressing the button for Anna’s floor. “No, I’m sure she is asleep and won’t answer.” I rested my hand on my chest, trying to calm the anxiety surrounding my heart.

“Have a good day,” he said.

I waved as the door closed. Then, I used the same hand to grip the safety bar behind me, needing it to bear some of my weight.

The heaviness of my body was becoming too much.

I was grateful Anna worked nights and was always home in the morning. The short window between dropping Lucy off and my first meeting was the only time I ever had available to come here. I was even more grateful of that today because I needed my best friend.

The elevator stopped on her floor, and I used the set of keys she’d given me to open her door. I darted past the kitchen and went right to the guest room where I always checked for her first. Even though she kept her nursing license active, Anna now worked as a fetish model where she was paid to show her feet on a live cam. Often pulling all-nighters, she would sometimes be filming when I arrived. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case now. The lights had been turned off, the props had been put away, and the red light was missing from the camera.

Had she been in the middle of a scene, it could have been hours before she was able to talk.

That was another thing I was grateful for this morning.

I continued down the hallway and slipped inside her room, taking a seat on the other side of the mattress. My hand fell against her arm, and I shook it to wake her.

She groaned and pulled the blanket over her head. “I worked until five this morning—which was, what? An hour ago I’m guessing? So, unless you are hot, single, and have the most glorious penis in Miami, or you have a coffee that’s a minimum of sixty ounces, let me sleep.”

“Anna,” I whispered.

“Oh, fuck.” She tossed the blanket off and immediately faced me. “You sound like shit. What happened?”

Now that I was here, sitting so close to her, the memories from the last hour started screaming inside my head again.

* * *

“Does she have your eyes?” Jack asked as his mouth left mine.

“Who?”

“Lucy.”

“No, she has her father’s eyes.”

* * *

I couldn’t breathe.

It felt like a pair of hands were around my throat, squeezing all the air out of me, and there were feet stomping on my chest, putting too much pressure on my heart.

“Samantha.” She grasped my shoulders, observing my face, scanning my eyes, as she looked at me like I was a patient. “What’s going on? You’re worrying me.”

I shook my head, trying to force out my thoughts. “I want him, and I want him to be in our lives.”

“Pause for a second.” She got up from the bed, went into the bathroom, and returned with a box of tissues. She took several in her hand and blotted them against my face, catching tears that I hadn’t realized had fallen. “You’ve made a decision. Finally. That’s a good thing, babe.”

“No.”

I tried to swallow, but the spit wouldn’t go down. My throat was too constricted. My breathing was becoming shallow, air barely passing through.

“Why are you so upset?”

I shook my head again, trying to reach for the thoughts, but when I opened my mouth, they wouldn’t come out. A sob burst through instead, and I felt myself panting, and my skin turned flushed, clamminess covering me.

“Samantha, you need to take a few deep breaths, or you’re going to pass out.”

This was the nurse in her.

But, this time, unlike so many others, it wouldn’t heal me.

Nothing could.

Her hands moved back to my shoulders, and she squeezed. “Big breaths.”

“I can’t,” I huffed.

Her fingers went to my chin, and she held my face, so I was forced to look at her. “You have to. Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Focus, Samantha; it’ll make you feel better.”

“No,” I cried.

It wouldn’t. I was so sure of that.

But I still tried to follow her instructions, bypassing the tightness and making the thoughts stop spinning for just a second. When I did, things started to loosen.

“That’s it,” she encouraged. “Just a few more deep breaths, and the panic attack will pass.”

It had been years since I had one.

Eight years to be exact.

The last one had felt just like this.

Ironically, they were over the same person.

“I fucked up so badly,” I said once I was able to take in enough air.

“Honey, how?” She put a tissue in my hand and held another against my face to dry my cheeks. “I’m sure it’s not as bad as you think.”

I looked down, the shame tearing me apart. “You know I went over to Jack’s last night to talk to him about Lucy?”

“Yes. I know.”

“Well, we discussed her.” I paused, the tightness returning. I tried swallowing it down, and all it did was get worse. “Anna”—I finally looked up at her again—“I couldn’t tell him. I had the perfect opportunity, and I wanted to so badly. The words were there; they were on my tongue, I just couldn’t say them out loud. I was just so scared.” The strangling returned, and so did the feeling of someone stepping on my chest. “He asked me this morning if Lucy had my eyes, and I couldn’t get out of his condo fast enough. I told him I had a meeting, and I rushed downstairs. I held on to my bag, and I ran all five blocks to your building.” My body started to rock back and forth. “What have I done? How the hell am I going to fix this?”

“Oh God.”

“He asked about her father. I told him he wasn’t in the picture anymore and…”

“You lied.”

Tears fell from my chin as I nodded. “He’s never going to forgive me this time. I had a chance to come clean, to make this right, to tell him the truth. And I blew it.”

“Samantha—”

“How do I tell him, Anna? How do I look him in the face and say, You’re Lucy’s father?”

She grabbed another handful of tissues, but I didn’t want them. I placed them on the mattress and let the tears soak in, let the spit fly from my lips, let the snot run from my nose.

The guilt of never telling Jack about his daughter had been eating me alive for eight years. I knew, no matter what I said to him or Lucy, keeping this secret was the most selfish act a mother could commit. No amount of tissues or deep breathing could take away my deceit. I could only hope that, one day, they would both forgive me.

“She’s seven years old,” I said in a hoarse voice, my throat so restricted. “She’s never met her father. She only knows the fairy-tale image that I’ve painted of him. When I got pregnant, I thought I was doing what he wanted, and that was staying away from him. But I’ve lived with this regret for too long. I can’t do it anymore.”

“You should have told him.” Her tone forced my eyes to lock with hers.

She was always on my side, always had my back.

But not now.

I saw the disappointment on her face, and that hurt so much.

Yet I deserved it. Every bit of it.

“You’re absolutely right. I should have told him,” I said.

“Now, you have to go do it. Because that man needs to know that gorgeous little girl is his.”

The tightening clenched even harder.

My chest felt like it was going to explode.

My entire body shook.

And it got even worse as I pictured my daughter in my head.

She was so beautiful.

She had her father’s stunning, big blue eyes. His smile. His charm. His wit.

I had to tell him.

And then, somehow, I had to tell Lucy.

I found my purse on the floor. I didn’t even remember dropping it before I had crawled into her bed. I dug around inside until I found my phone. “I’m going to ask if I can see him tonight.”

“Who’s going to watch Lucy?”

“My parents.”

I set the phone on her bed, and another thought hit me. This one hurt as much as the others. “Oh my God, I’m going to have to tell my family, too. What are they going to think when they find out that Jack is Lucy’s father?”

Everyone thought her father was a boy from the University of Miami. A one-night stand whose name I never knew. But, to Lucy, I had described her father in a much different way. She knew more than anyone else.

“Let’s just take this one day at a time because this isn’t going to be pretty. At all,” she said. “But you have to do it. You can’t put it off any longer.”

My world had changed the night of the NFL draft.

It had changed again the night of the Super Bowl.

And it would change once more tonight.

“You’re going to be all right, no matter what,” she said. Her hand was on mine, our fingers linked, my tear-soaked skin dampening hers. “We survived your pregnancy, Lucy’s birth, and seven years of her life. We’ll get through this, too.”

I nodded, but I said nothing.

I couldn’t.