The drive back was thirty minutes and I spent all of it inside my own head trying to figure out how to say what I needed to say when I got home.
There was no way to explain this and come out clean. There was no way to tell Brielle that the woman I had been seeing recently was pregnant with my child. It was going to hurt and it was going to be a lot and she had every right to walk out the same door she had walked in.
But we had just made each other a promise about doing this the right way.
The right way started with the truth.
Brielle was in the kitchen when I came in. She sipped a glass of water. Still half asleep, squinting at me in the kitchen light.
“Where did you go,” she said.
“Sit down,” I said. “I need to talk to you.”
She looked at my face and whatever she saw there woke her up the rest of the way. She sat down at the island.
I sat across from her and told her everything. Kyla calling. The pregnancy tests. What I had said to Kyla and what she had said back. All of it straight with nothing softened.
When I finished Brielle was quiet.
“If this is a dealbreaker,” I said. “I understand. I’m not going to ask you to stay for something you can’t accept. But I need you to know that whatever happens I’m going to be there for that baby. That’s not negotiable.”
She looked at me for a long time.
Then she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and looked back at me.
“I’m not leaving,” she said.
“Bri. You don’t have to give me no answer right now without fully processing this.”
“I’m not leaving Xavier.” She said it steady. “I can’t be mad at you for something that happened when I was with somebody else. That’s not fair and I know it’s not fair.” She reached across the island and put her hand on mine. “You’re going to be a good father. And I’m going to be by your side. I said I was going to have your back through whatever. That’s what I promised you and I meant it.”
I looked at her sitting there saying exactly what she had promised she would say and meaning every word of it.
I came around the island and pulled her in and held her and she wrapped her arms around my waist and pressed her face into my chest and we stood there in my kitchen at midnight with everything that was complicated and everything that was simple all at the same time.
This was real.
After everything. After all of these years, all the wrong timing and all the doors she never walked through.
This was finally real.
—
Two weeks later I was at a public speaking event Kyla had downtown.
She hadn’t returned a single call since the night I left her house. I had texted. I had reached out through channels. Nothing. I waited outside after the speech and caught her coming off the stage.
She saw me and kept walking.
“Kyla.” I stepped beside her. “Five minutes. That’s all I’m asking.”
She stopped but didn’t look at me.
“We need to talk about the baby,” I said. “I meant what I said. I’m not walking away from this. We need to figure out a plan that works for both of us. I wanna be at appointments, parenting classes and whatever else you need from me. I’m all in.”
She was quiet for a moment.
Then she reached into her bag and pulled out her phone, pulled up something and turned the screen toward me.
