“As sure as I am that you were the one that took me to the hotel room, fucked me—admittedly, pretty well—and then let me to be pregnant and a mom on my own.”
I bit my lip. I hadn’t missed the small compliment in there, but it was the definition of small potatoes.
“And you know, the worst of it is, I’d always wanted a family. I’d tried like hell for years and years to have a child with my ex. Never happened. And then you come along, fuck me senseless, and give me a child. And now you look like you’re just begging for an excuse to get the hell out of here.”
“I am, damnit!”
Don’t you dare fucking lose your control, Liam. You’re better than this.
“Oh, now you get to be upset about it?”
“Yeah, just a bit.”
The self-talk was not working at all. I didn’t even know why I was so upset about it. I mean, I could take some fucking guesses at it.
“Just a bit. Now multiply that by a hundred, and you’ll get a sense of how I’ve fucking felt for the last two years!”
“Yeah, and I’m sure it’s sucked for you. Tell me how you’d think you’d feel if you got called in for a professional meeting, only to feel like you’re on some bullshit reality TV show!”
“Well, unlike you, I’ve been a good parent, so I don’t have to sit with myself and think about the answer to that question.”
That one stung. And what was getting worse was that the more we talked, the angrier I was getting. And the angrier I got, the harder it was to maintain any sense of professional decorum—not that I was sure we had any left.
“I don’t even understand why you’re upset. You don’t have a right to be upset.”
No. You don’t understand. You don’t know.
“Come on,” I said, grabbing her by the arm.
“What? You going to fuck me in a hotel room again?”
“I’m taking you to a hotel room again. I’m not going to fuck you. But I’m not telling you this in public.”
I let go of her arm and walked outside, giving her a choice to follow me or not. She’d wanted to meet the father of her child? She’d gotten her fucking wish. It was up to her now whether she did anything with it or not.
I let a minute pass. I was fuming. If she knew what my childhood was like, if she knew how much I’d always yearned to be a good father…only for me to also believe I would never be that…
She came out the front door. I left all the bullshit in my head behind.
“Come.”
She followed me to a different motel than two years ago—I wasn’t that fucking mean—and led her to a room.
“You don’t know anything about me, Kelly. You don’t know what I’ve been through, and you don’t—”
“Save it,” she said. “I’m sorry for whatever you have been through, but it’s not going to make up for you being so damn absent!”
There was something about the way she looked at me as she spoke—like there was an intensity to it that she could not help, a fire in her eyes that went past what her words said, that made me almost wonder if there was something more to it than what I had suspected. No, that was fucking stupid. The heat of the moment was making me think things that just weren’t true, and I needed to get over myself.
“You think I want to be a deadbeat dad?” I snapped. “You think I like knowing that your child is my child, and I’ve just been out in the world for two years? You think I fucking enjoy knowing I have a daughter and that I don’t even know her name?”
“Charlotte,” she said, surprisingly softly.
The way she said her name, for the briefest of moments, almost seemed to put a spell of some kind on me. Like it made me forget my anger toward Kelly and, most of all, toward myself. It made me focus only on the fact that I had a little girl. I’d brought someone into this world I needed to care about.
“Her name is Charlotte,” Kelly said. “And you would have made a great father. If you’d actually stuck around.”
And just like that, whatever sweet moments, whatever hope had come that we could say something more had vanished just like that.
“I’m so glad you fucking called me once in a while; oh, wait, that’s right, you fucking didn’t. You waited a whole year of Charlotte’s life before you even tried to find me!”
“You think I didn’t want you before?”
“Yes!”
“Bullshit!”
I was starting to think not even a motel room was going to give us the privacy that we wanted. Not with the way that we were yelling at each other. Not with our unwillingness to shut the fuck up.
“All I ever think about is that night two years ago,” she said. I didn’t like how this was making me feel. I was getting energized, not just in anger, but I was getting turned on. The beast within me craved the chance to dominate her. “Best fucking sex of my life. Years before that, I was depressed. Couldn’t have a kid. And then, bam. You show up. You fuck me. And I have a child. And look at you now?”
“Look at me?” I said.
I got right on the bed next to her. She fell backward. Almost without realizing what I was doing, I was crawling on top of her. The scene felt familiar—pleasantly familiar.
I was wading into the worst kind of danger, the danger that I’d so heavily judged Scott for succumbing to. And right now, I did not give two fucks. I didn’t fear the fire; I wanted to play with
