“I know what you’re thinking,” Stacey said.
“You have no idea what I’m thinking. Because if you did, you wouldn’t be sitting so calmly in your seat. You’d be trying to figure out how to get the hell away from me real fast.” I looked up at her and found her staring back at me through narrowed eyes. “I’m not an angry man. In fact, I’m generally pretty laid-back. But you’ve robbed me of what? Close to four years of his life, I’m guessing. If my memory serves me correctly, that would be about right.”
“You have to understand, I didn’t know at first.” She leaned forward, lowering her voice. “I went a little crazy after I left here. I’m not proud of the road I went on once I left, but I was finally free of this place, and like I said…” She paused as her hands fidgeted on the table in front of her. “I met someone after I left,” she confessed.
“Yeah, I know,” I replied a little too quickly.
“How do you know?”
“I had a weak moment and went after you.” I thought I could change her mind. I had never intended to follow her to California and stay permanently. “I saw the two of you together. That’s when I knew for sure that what we had was nothing special.”
She had the audacity to look wounded by my words. “How could you say that what we had wasn’t special?”
“Because you jumped in bed with the first man you met, that’s how.” I glared at her and fought like hell not to go off like a madman, spouting all kinds of shit at her. She wasn’t worth my time, but because of my son, I had to tolerate her. Austin was making a race-car ramp out of the napkin holder as he made little revving sounds with each leap of his toy cars. He was occupied with his task, and I was thankful he seemed to be oblivious to the tension in the room.
Bill sat a bowl of ice cream on the table in front of Austin, and the boy’s eyes lit up. Silence set in as he grabbed for the spoon and dug in.
“His name was Liam,” Stacey said. “I know I hurt you, Noah, but you have to know I never intended to. If I’d stayed, we both would have been miserable.”
She took a shuddering breath as I continued to watch Austin take bite after bite. I was completely mesmerized by his every move.
“Liam resembled you in a lot of ways. He even had the same blue eyes. Like I said, I’m not proud of how quickly I moved on with him, but he was good to me.”
I shifted my eyes from Austin to the woman who at one point in my life I thought I would marry. Looking at her know, I felt nothing but pure hate and disgust.
“I truly thought Austin was his. You and I were always so careful, and that wasn’t the case after I left,” she said.
I chuckled sarcastically. “So some strange man raised my son for the last four years because you couldn’t take the time to figure out the truth. Because one damn phone call to me, to let me know he might be mine, was just too much to expect. Didn’t I deserve to have that? Was I so terrible and life here so bad that I shouldn’t have been given the chance to know for sure?”
I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of my tears, but goddamn it I couldn’t hold them back. She’d taken four years of his life that I’d never get back without so much as a second thought.
“Why now?” I asked. “What changed?”
She took a few minutes to calm herself before she answered. “Liam’s father never liked me. In fact, no one in his family did.” She cleared her throat and took a drink of water. “I guess they had been pressuring him for years to get a paternity test, and he finally caved. After we talked about it, we figured it would be the only way to get them off our backs and let us live our lives.”
She shrugged, and her eyes filled with tears. “When the results came back, you got to know, Noah, I felt like the worst kind of person.” She was playing out the feel-sorry-for-me routine, but I wasn’t biting. “Things went a little crazy after that. His family made it out like I was using him for money and support, and in the end he chose to believe their lies.”
“I don’t know what your plans are after this, but I can guarantee you, you’re not taking my son away from me again.” I refused to feel sorry for her. She meant nothing to me, but my son meant the world. It may have only been an hour since I found out he existed, but he did, and that changed everything. “So if you have any intention of leaving Livingston, let me just assure you right now that you will have one hell of a fight on your hands.” I tried to keep my voice to a low whisper. Austin didn’t need to hear our exchange.