MATT LET HIMSELF into the apartment, went to the bathroom, splashed water on his face and then just stood there, holding on to the sink. Holding on, on, on.
Was he in shock? It felt like he might be. He needed a cup of something warm to take the ice out of his veins. Or someone to hold him and tell him everything would be okay.
He laughed at that. A harsh, ugly, mirthless sound. Who was there to do that for him, when Romy was the architect of his pain?
Funny, he’d been so busy telling himself a baby would make him irreplaceable to Romy, too busy thinking she’d always been his and always would be his, to consider what he’d actually be to the baby once some other man came on the scene. He’d just assumed he’d never be off the scene. But now he knew he couldn’t act the part of the benevolent godfather from a world away, smiling from the sidelines while some other guy lived with his kid, loved his kid, was loved by his kid.
Godfather. What did that even mean? He couldn’t remember who his own godfather was—some guy who’d been a friend of his parents twenty-eight years ago but hadn’t been in their lives for at least twenty years. Easily forgotten.
As he would be.
“Aaarrrggghhh!” The cry tore out of him, doubling him over. His child, oh God, oh God, his child wouldn’t be his. He couldn’t breathe; it hurt too much to breathe, hurt so much he wanted to die.
How could Romy think it would be okay for some guy to adopt his kid? How could she tell him she loved him and then give his baby to someone else? How could she sit there with her parents and listen to them tell him they wanted to love him, too, and then let them talk about someone else taking his child as though it was as easy as scrawling a signature across a page, cutting him out of the picture?
He raised his head, looked at himself in the mirror. His face was white, bloodless, and yet there was a wildness in his eyes he recognized. His father’s wildness, his father’s eyes. He wished he could tear the mirror off the wall, smash it and use a piece of the broken glass to cut them out and deny that truth.
But what difference would that make? The evil wasn’t in his eyes any more than it was in his red hair. It was bred in him deeper than the bone.
And there it was—the truth of that quicksilver glimmer of disquiet he’d felt when he’d seen Romy with her parents in the restaurant and wondered what his child would look like. The truth was it didn’t matter if his child was a hazel-eyed redhead or a green-eyed brunette or anything else—what mattered was the hidden stuff, the soullessness he might pass down. The soullessness that wasn’t just part of him, but had been actively encouraged by his parents. What right did he have to want to spawn a child let alone raise one, hammered as he was on both sides of the nature/nurture debate?
He heard the door open...close...then nothing.
But he knew Romy. She’d be wanting to talk, ready to convince him that adoption would be a good thing, that it was all about protecting him, that this way there was nothing that could impinge on his lifestyle. She’d tell him she’d make sure the child was as happy as she’d been with her adoptive parents. She’d say he could still be as involved as he wanted, if he was sure that was what he wanted, as long as there was certainty because children needed certainty! Well, the best way to give her certainty was to take himself out of the picture altogether. Because Romy, for all her comments about his revolving bedroom door and his jumbo boxes of condoms and the moans, grunts and squeals she was tired of hearing and the women she was tired of him flaunting in front of her, didn’t know the half of what he’d seen, what he’d done, what he was.
But it was time she did.
He straightened. Splashed more water on his face. Shook out his hands. Reset his brain.
She was out there, preparing to talk things through. And this time, he would talk. He’d tell her everything at last, and end the game of make-believe he’d been playing with her for ten years so that she finally saw him as he truly was: not a superhero, but a soulless, heartless, worthless bastard.
And all it would cost him was his child.