Quarterback's Secret Baby(98)

"What's that?" He asked, lifting my fingers to his mouth and kissing the tips, one by one.

"I forgot to tell you Henry's full name. You know he's Henry after Henrietta for my mother, but his second name is Kaden. I put it on the birth certificate."

Kaden leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes and it took me a few moments to see that he was trying not to cry.

"Don't mind me," he said, his voice thick. "I'm not crying, I think I'm just overflowing a little. Really, Tasha? His second name is Kaden?"

I nodded. "Yes, really. He looks exactly like you. You're his dad. It was the only thing to do."





Chapter 35: Kaden


Six months later, I married Natasha Greeley at the church in Little Falls where her mother had been attending services since she was a little girl. We managed to keep it almost entirely under wraps, even after the story of our son, and our engagement, had broken in the media.

I was nervous that day, more nervous than I expected to be. The church was packed - with our family and all our friends and I remember standing at the altar, looking out over all the faces and feeling - knowing - that I was the luckiest man on earth. My parents had come around to the idea surprisingly quickly, especially after they met Tasha's family and got to know them. Tasha's mother and my mother got along like a house on fire, always chatting away about this or that handsome doctor at the local hospital. It was important, I think, for both of them to finally have a friend who truly understood living with disabilities. Henrietta Greeley even taught my mother the family cornbread recipe. If ever there was a sign of a true merger between the Barlows and the Greeleys, it was that.

Henry helped, too. Both my parents fell instantly and hopelessly in love with the little blue-eyed, caramel-skinned boy with the dimples in his chunky cheeks. I can still remember my father's face when he met Henry for the first time - shock, at first, as he stared from me, to Henry, to Tasha and back again, and pronounced his grandson a perfect blend of his proud parents - and then tears, for the second time ever, when he held him for the first time.

Henry, being the stubborn, charming boy he was, took it all in stride. More fans? More people to dote on him and hang on his every gesture? He would take them.

And then there was Tasha. I was determined not to cry at my own wedding - and I managed to succeed - but the sight of her as she appeared at the church doors in the white silk gown I'd flown her to Paris to have fitted, was almost too much. Her brother Ray walked her down the aisle as Roberta Flack's 'The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face' played and I swallowed, hard, even as half the people in attendance started reaching for their tissues. Our eyes met and we held each other's gaze the entire way, all the way through our vows and then afterward as the church filled with clapping and cheers and we made our way out to the town car waiting to take us to the reception.

She was beautiful. Tasha was always beautiful, even if she was in sweatpants and a t-shirt and functioning on less than five hours of sleep. But that day she was radiant, and it didn't have anything to do with the makeup artist. She lit up the entire church, the whole town of Little Falls and it all came from within. When we were sitting in the car sipping champagne as we were being driven to the reception she caught me looking at her with awe.

"What?" She giggled, giddy after the formality of the ceremony. "Why are you looking at me like I'm from Mars?"

I sat back, taking it all in - taking her in. "Because it's not enough for me to say you're beautiful right now," I replied. "It's not just the surface, it's the inside, too. You're glowing."

"Am I? Glowing?" She smiled. "Good. I feel like I'm glowing."

We were almost there. I took Tasha's hand and looked her in the eyes, suddenly serious. "I am never going to forget this," I told her. "I mean that - just you, sitting there in your wedding gown full of light and love - until the day I die I will not forget this image of you, right now."

The reception was raucous, to say the least. Raucous in a good, warm way. Henry - who was toddling by then - and Rosa ran around with the other children and the older folks sat back chatting, sipping champagne and generally looking on as the generations below them reached for the reigns. Tasha danced all night, most of the time with me but with everyone else, too. The next morning, after having not slept a wink, we made our way straight from the reception to the airport to catch our flight to a private island in the South Pacific. She'd mentioned it a long time ago when we were in high school, that she'd seen a photo of the night sky taken on one of the South Pacific islands and how she had, ever since then, had this image in her mind of standing on a tropical beach at night, with an ocean breeze on her face and all the bright southern stars over her head. Even at the time, I had known from the wistful tone in her voice that she didn't think she would ever get to see it for herself.