The moment Elijah had come face-to-face with Nic Steele, every instinct inside him had cried out to clock the motherfucker. But he couldn’t very well do that, not when Nic might have very well saved Dylan’s life tonight. 

At least Nic’s cocky smirk had been nowhere in sight. The guilt he’d never seemed to exhibit looked heavy on his shoulders now, his handsome movie star face drawn and grim beneath the bill of his identity-hiding black cap. The two of them had made every effort to avoid meeting each other’s eyes.

Until Heidi left to get coffee while they waited for Dylan to be moved to recovery. Seger went with her.

Eli stretched his tired, aching legs out in front of him and said, “I want you to give Dylan to me, Nic.”

“What?”

“You heard me. It’s a fact we can’t ignore or hide from anymore. I can’t be Dylan’s father. Thing is, I am Dylan’s father, and you’ve apparently always been fine with that arrangement. I daresay you’ll continue to be fine with it. So we should make it legal. Terminate your rights.”

Nic’s jaw worked soundlessly for a moment. He looked helplessly in the direction Heidi had gone.

“What does she have to do with this?” Eli asked, following his gaze. “This is between you and me. You can do the right thing here, you don’t need her approval.”

“I don’t have any rights, though. Your name is on the birth certificate. You were married to her when he was born. Legally, you’re already his father.”

“Until you or Heidi get pissed enough at me for some bullshit reason to demand paternity testing. Once you’re in, I’m out.”

“We wouldn’t do that, Eli.”

“Forgive me for not taking your word for it. I’d rather have our lawyers get everything nice and squared away. Let’s do the testing and get you established. Then you sign away your rights, and I adopt him.”

“This isn’t necessary, I promise.”

“If it’s not that big a deal to you, then what’s the harm in doing it?”

“It’s just . . .why can’t we leave things the way they are?”

“Because things are no longer the way they were. We’re in a whole new world this morning.” Elijah thumbed through his phone to the page he wanted, then lifted it and turned the display around for Steele to see. TMZ. Breaking news. Bold letters. All three of their pictures: Eli screaming into a mic, Nic looking sultry, and Heidi in the middle, a shot from one of her old modeling gigs.

Nic’s eyes moved along the headline, then closed as the breath rushed out of him. “Shit.”

Poor little boy-toy, still naive to the way the world worked. Eli hadn’t been able to bring himself to read the entire article, and decided he wasn’t going to. Let the assholes talk. That was all they did. All their sad little lives allowed them to do. “I get that you probably think it will look badly on you. But this isn’t about you. This is about Dylan and what’s best for him. I’m what’s best for him.”

“I don’t think anyone here disputes that.”

“Heidi disputes it. She’d rather you step up and be his dad, let’s not kid ourselves. And if the day ever comes when she talks you into it . . .” He trailed off, watching Nic’s reaction to those words. The other man was staring blindly at some point a few feet in front of his own shoes.

“I know you don’t think highly of me,” Nic said finally without looking up, “and after everything, you shouldn’t. I get it.” He drew a deep breath and released it. “But Heidi doesn’t run me.”

“All right, then prove it. Because she will flip her shit when you say you’re doing this.”

“I know she will.” He lifted his eyes and met Elijah’s. “But I’ll do it anyway. I want to make this right by you. As right as I can, at least. I’ll talk to my lawyers today.”

Just like that, something in him quietened. It would be a long, slow process for all the hate and rage and pain to melt away. He had no doubt the remnants would always cling to the dark places in his soul, but in that moment, he finally had hope. The crippling worry eased.

It had been as simple as the two of them sitting across from each other in a hospital waiting room, having a civil conversation.

Nic could still pull an asshole move and stake his claim to Dylan once paternity was established, but at this point, Eli was willing to take the chance to get this dealt with. It had to end. He couldn’t carry the weight anymore.

“I know you’ll still be in his life,” he said. “His and Seger’s. As long as you’re good to them, I have no problems with that.”

“I’m glad. He’s a great kid. Sometimes I wish . . .” He paused, shaking his head. “I wish things could be different, but I know they can’t. We did what we did. We’ll pay for it.”

That was all anyone could do, wasn’t it? Because they’d all fucked up. Elijah damn sure wasn’t the least of them. A vision of Iris’s face swam through his mind, an echo of her laughter ringing in his memory. Yeah, he’d fucked up. He’d ruined that beautiful, sweet woman, all because he couldn’t keep his hands off her.

He didn’t doubt he’d pay for it.

She sent Eli one text: I’m home. Then she turned off her phone. She wasn’t ready to talk to him yet.

She didn’t sleep two days, as was her intention. She slept three.

Every curtain in her apartment drawn, she rose only to drink water and snack, her body running on the bare minimum of sustenance while she absorbed the silence and solace of her bed. All she wanted was to stay huddled under her covers to chase sweet oblivion. But oblivion wasn’t sweet when she dreamed about Eli.

It wasn’t that the dreams were bad. The past few weeks played out in her head like a montage in a movie. The hum of the road under the bus tires. The screams of an audience. His crooked, cocky smile. The dance-off. His parents’ house. Laser tag. Eli carrying her to bed when she’d been sick enough to die. Shopping with Talia. The taste of wine on his lips the first time he kissed her. The feel of him moving inside her.

It was the pain that came when she woke and reality came in with the sight of her own floral sheets: she wasn’t still with him, she wasn’t still with the boys. That nearly undid her every time.

The man was only a phone call away, but to the depths of her soul, she was afraid to talk to him. Afraid he would say “Come to me,” and she would go, damning herself to the life Heidi had described. Setting herself up for a future of ruin because she couldn’t separate the man she loved from the rock star he would always be, the worshiped icon whose life would forever be under a microscope.

The man she loved.

The words had flitted through her mind as if they were an irrefutable truth. And they must be, because only love could bring about this much heartache. She’d never felt this, not even when Jacob left her. That had hurt, but in some ways, it had almost been a relief to be free from his manipulations.

This was an emptiness. A void, only one made of pain.

Perhaps her biggest fear of all was that Elijah might say “Stay away,” and she would die, because once again she’d given herself to a man who didn’t care for her the same way she cared for him. Oh, he might not say it today, but he might say it someday, and it would kill her all the same. She’d been insane for ever thinking it could work between them. She’d only indulged the fantasy and kept reality at bay.

It was over only because it had to be. She had to make it be over, for her sanity, for self-preservation.

Once her body would accept no more sleep, and lying on her back staring at the ceiling grew intolerable, she dragged her heavy limbs from the bed and went to make some coffee. There were also plans to make, because she was no longer employed, and her nest egg might sustain her for a few months tops. Maybe several months, if she subsisted on Ramen and cut out shopping trips with Sara—she knew how to live frugally even if it hadn’t been the norm of late. At least Heidi didn’t plan on ruining her permanently, and Iris didn’t want to give her a reason to change her mind.

She dreaded turning on her cell phone, but it was time to face the music. While her coffee brewed, she gawked at the number of messages Elijah had sent, afraid to look at what he might have to say. He should hate her. She would probably hate her, if she were in his shoes.

But the messages were mostly updates on Dylan, who was doing well, Thank God, and requests for her to get in touch. The last one he’d sent five hours ago, though, made her eyes fill with tears.

I want you to remember what I said to you in the pool that night.

God. They’d said so much, shared so much, but she knew exactly what he meant. He’d shown her that rare glimpse of his vulnerability, telling her not to fuck with his head because Heidi had done it enough. At the time, she hadn’t known exactly how much.

What he didn’t get was that she wasn’t playing a game with him. This was her life. Maybe her disappearing act had been cowardly, but it had been necessary. There wasn’t anything else she could do.

Without even giving it a thought, she dialed Sara, who answered immediately.

“Woman. Where have you been? I haven’t wanted to bother you, but I’ve been dying for updates.”

“I’m home,” Iris said flatly. The pronouncement was met with several seconds of silence. 

“Are you supposed to be home?”

“No.”

“I’ll be right there.”

Sighing, Iris set her phone down, sipped her coffee and contemplated a shower. She didn’t really care that she hadn’t had one since she’d gotten home, but Sara certainly would. Her friend would tell her to pull her shit together first thing. So she trudged into the bathroom to make herself somewhat presentable, and felt better for the effort by the time Sara knocked on her door.

After only taking one look at Iris’s face, Sara enveloped her in her arms.

“I knew it all had to end when I let it begin,” Iris mumbled into Sara’s strawberry-scented hair. Had she even realized how much she’d missed her friend until this moment? “I knew it. And I did it anyway.”

“That’s all right, Iris,” Sara said quietly. “It’s all right to take a chance.”

“Even if it ruins your life?”

“Yes. Even then.” Sara released her, holding her at arm’s length. “Tell me everything, because you always tend to make things seem worse than they really are.”

“Well, I no longer have a job.”

“Oh. I take it the mom found out.”

“She found out.” Iris shut the door and the two of them headed into Iris’s kitchen, where she began brewing a cup of coffee for Sara, though she fully expected her to suggest something stronger soon.

“And what about Daddy?”

“God, don’t call him that. It’s creepy. I left without telling him or talking to him at all. I realized I can’t do this. The mom threatened to ruin me.”

She passed Sara a steaming cup and the two of them perched on the barstools they’d bought and reupholstered together. Iris had meant for Sara to take them, but she’d insisted they fit Iris’s decor better.

“I don’t see why you care,” Sara commented, blowing on her coffee.

“How will I live if I can’t find a job, Sara?”

“Is this nanny gig something you want to do for the rest of your life, though?”

Iris shrugged one shoulder. “All I want is to keep working with kids. It doesn’t have to be a nanny gig. I’ve always thought about going back to school.”

“Looks like you have the time now. One bright spot.”

She had the time, not the money. She didn’t relish the idea of going back into debt, though there might be no other way. “If I’m involved with a celebrity, Sar, how will that work? I don’t want to be famous. I don’t want everyone to know my name, or whisper when I walk by. Or suck up to me when they really want to get close to him. I just want him. And his kids in my life.”

“Is he that major?”

“He’s a pretty big deal, yeah.”

“So if you said his name right now, I’d fall off my stool?”

Iris stared at her for a moment. “You have no idea.”

Sara leaned back slightly, her eyebrows high in her forehead. “Wow. Go, you.”

“Crazy, right?”

“Not really.” Iris stared while she waited for Sara to complete that thought. But her thoughts seemed to take a different track. “I look at you right now, and I see a mess. I don’t care who this man is, or what kind of baggage he comes with, you’re miserable at the thought of not being with him. So is he not worth the bad? Are his kids not worth it? You won’t even try?”

“She said . . .” The tears that had never really abated welled anew. Pressing her fingertips into her eyes, Iris struggled for control while Sara waited quietly. “Nothing she said about life with him would be inaccurate. I don’t know, Sara. I don’t think I can do it. I won’t measure up. There will always be women younger than me or prettier than me throwing themselves at him. I’ll always wonder. She made me leave, and I went, but now that I’m away from him, I’m better off to stay away.”

“Tell me how he makes you feel. Forget what she says; has he given you any reason to believe things would be that way?”

Iris idly turned her half-empty mug in her hands. “He makes me feel like the only woman who exists.”

“Sweetie, then I think you have your answer.”

“She said he was only with me for revenge against her.”

“Considering he makes you feel that way, surely you don’t believe that?”

“I don’t. But this woman doesn’t want me around her children any longer. She made that clear. She has . . . some knowledge that she can use against him. I wasn’t aware of it until pretty recently.”

“I wish I could find out who this bitch is so I can throat punch her. Iris. This is who you worked for? You poor thing.”

“To be fair, she wasn’t that bad as long as I wasn’t sleeping with her kids’ dad. Says she won’t have them be a part of the scandal we’ll cause. Sara, I can’t blame her for that. She already found out about us somehow. If she can find out, other people can.”

“Who blabbed?”

“I have no idea. We tried to hide it, but obviously not well enough.”

“Jesus. What a mess.”

“I know.” She often wondered how she’d ever gotten here from her mundane start in life.

“But I can tell you this: running isn’t the answer.”

“Maybe not, but it’s a clean break. He knows my number, but he doesn’t know where I live. I can change my number. I can disappear from his life if I want to.”

“You don’t want to, though.”

“What choice do I have?”

Sara propped her chin on her hand and stared off at some middle distance, deep in thought. Seconds ticked past while Iris finished her coffee and took her mug to the sink. “My official stance is to call him,” Sara finally said. “Just talk, for God’s sake. I’ve always had a feeling about you, Iris. I always thought when it finally happened for you, when you finally found the one, it was going to be huge. Bigger than life. Because you went through a lot of shit, and you’re a good person. You deserve happiness.”

At heart, Sara was and had always been a romantic. But Elijah’s jaded words came back to haunt her then, spoken on a terrible night in a hospital hallway that seemed like part of a bad dream now. Bad shit happens, Iris, and there’s no rhyme or reason to it. She leaned against her kitchen counter and regarded her friend morosely. “A lot of people deserve happiness. That doesn’t mean they get it.”

“But you can be damn sure they’d take it if it was right in front of them.”

“That’s just it. I don’t know what’s in front of me. Happiness or more pain.”

“Nobody knows what’s in front of them. Nobody has it together that much. I mean, you’re worried about it not working out because he’s famous. If he weren’t famous, you’d be worried about it not working out for some other reason.”

“Maybe,” Iris muttered. “I don’t know.”

Sara’s eyes narrowed. “I know someone at work I’d love to fix you up with. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but I never said anything. Now you tell me. How does the mere thought of that make you feel?”

Iris practically felt the inner recoil, and she knew the point Sara was trying to make: that in her heart of hearts, she was aware Elijah Vance was the one, and no one else would ever measure up. Despite her friend’s not-so-subtle manipulations, only the truth would do here. “No. No way.”

“You’ve got it so bad.”

“I don’t need to have that pointed out, Sara. I love him. There, I said it, okay? I love him. I just can’t have him.”

“You can, but you won’t.”

Iris gazed dejectedly at her floor tiles. “Same thing.”