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“What does that mean?” Jamey asked, taking a hesitant step toward us and erasing the instant anxiety I’d felt. Of course he wouldn’t know what that means. He’s four, for Christ’s sake.
Sophie looked at me, her brows knit and body rigid, unsure how to answer the question. I didn’t know how to either. On the one hand, I didn’t want to explain it to him, to confuse him and make him think Sophie and I were together. On the other, he’d probably be hearing it quite a lot in the coming weeks to months, and his questioning would only get worse. Better for us to explain it to him than someone else.
“It’s… a game we’re playing,” I explained, crossing the kitchen and dropping down to his height, my knees pressing against the hardwood floor. “Engaged means that two people are getting married. But in this case, Sophie and I are pretending?—”
“You’re getting married?” He asked, the excitement only growing as I watched him begin to bounce on his feet.
“No, no, we’re pretending to?—”
“Is Sophie going to be my mommy?” The words came out more as a screech than anything else, and I winced at how they bounced around in my eardrum.
I looked back at Sophie, and dammit, she looked flustered beyond belief. Neither of us knew how to handle the situation. “Jamey, listen to me,” I said, turning back to him and grabbing his little bouncing body in my hands. “Sophie and I aren’t getting married. We’re just playing a game. Other people, like your grandma and pops, are playing too. We’re all pretending like Sophie and I are going to get married, okay?”
Jamey wiggled from my grasp, ducking under my arms and making a beeline for Sophie. He slammed into her with too much force, nearly knocking her over as he wrapped his arms around her legs. “I always wanted a mommy. Can I call you that now?”
Sophie stared down at him, her hands shaking, and even from where I stood across the room I could see the tears welling in her eyes. God fucking dammit, this wasn’t going well, and now he was hitting her in the most vulnerable spot she had. Seeing her like that threw me into action and released a bout of adrenaline I didn’t even know I had. “Jamey, stop.” I lifted myself from the floor and pried him off of Sophie’s legs, heaving him up so I could sit him down on the counter. “You’ve misunderstood, bud. We’re not actually getting married, okay? We just… we need you to play along.”
He looked between me and Sophie with a blank expression on his face, literally nothing clicking in his head. “I don’t get it.”
————
“I don’t know where to go from here,” I sighed, clutching a half-empty glass of whiskey in my palm as I sat back down on the couch. Sophie sat on the other end, her knees to her chest, her eyes focused wholly on the wine in her hands. That little moment of relief had come crashing down, and now neither of us could relax even though Jamey was in bed, asleep.
“Me either,” she breathed. She’d hardly taken a sip, the glass in her hands still the one from dinner she’d barely touched. “I don’t want to confuse him.”
“He’s already confused.” I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees and holding my glass between them. The irritation was already bubbling inside of me, the stress hitting me of having to deal with this miscommunication and how our fake engagement was seeming to affect every part of my life now. “I can’t do this, Sophie. I can’t get his hopes up and break his heart.”
“I know.” Her voice was small, too small, and she set her glass down before wrapping her arms around her knees. Her eyes were everywhere but on me. “I’m so sorry, Hudson. I don’t want to hurt him either.”
“I can’t be involved with you. We can’t do this anymore. All of this, every single part, it’s fake. It has to be fake. I’m not going to do that to him.”
The silence that fell was thick, heavy. I glanced at her, my grip nearly hard enough to crush the glass in my hand, and I swear for just a moment her lip quivered. “It’s fake,” she nodded, the words barely more than a whisper. She sniffled as she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I don’t want this to get any worse. I just want a baby, Hudson, that’s it. Nothing else.”
I steeled my jaw as I forced myself to look away from her. I knew deep down, if I watched her cry, if I watched her suffer the guilt she obviously felt about confusing my son, I’d want to take that away. I’d want to fix it, to make her feel better, to tell her it was fine. But it couldn’t be fine. I had to put Jamey first, always. “I think the best way forward is to cut everything off.”
“What do you mean?”
“No more sex. No more sneaking around when he could stumble in on us. That day in my office was too close, your moans are too risky. We can’t keep doing that,” I said, already hating every word of it but knowing it was the right thing to do.
I could feel her eyes on me. It made my skin crawl, but not in a bad way. It was everything I wanted. “Yeah,” she breathed. “You’re right. We have to stop.”
“Are you okay with that?” Why are you asking? It shouldn’t matter. None of this should matter.
“Yeah. Like I said, I just want a baby. It’s fine.”
She moved, and I watched from the corner of my eye as she stood from the couch, smoothing out her cardigan where it fell around her hips. “Sophie?—”
“It’s fine. Really.”
I looked up at her, hating the way it made me feel to see the hard line of her jaw, her lips straight, her eyes glassy. “You don’t have to go yet.”
She turned from me, getting up from the sofa and standing in place. When she spoke, she didn’t look at me, didn’t pause. “I think it’s best I go home now.”
I didn’t watch her as she gathered her things. I listened as I heard the familiar jingle of her keys, the little keychains she kept on it clanging together, and headed toward the door. The silence in the house was nearly deafening, but I could hear as she slid on her slippers, as she opened the door and went out into the rain, closing it softly behind her so she didn’t wake Jamey.
Chapter 20
Sophie
