He drags a hand over his jaw. “Ask.”
“Cherry first.”
His eyes flick once. Pain. Guilt. Control. Then he nods. “Okay.”
“Was the baby yours?”
He doesn’t freeze this time.
“I believed it was mine,” he says.
Not what I expect.
My eyes narrow. “That isn’t what you said at Vice Ink.”
“I know.”
“Try again before I throw this coffee at you.”
“The timing made sense. She said it was mine. I had no reason to call her a liar while she was bleeding on a clinic bed.” His voice roughens. “There was no test, Lady. No proof. So if you’re asking blood and science, then the honest answer is maybe. If you’re asking what I did with it, I claimed it. In my head. In that room. In the only way I had time to before it was gone.”
The answer cuts different.
Sharper, somehow.
“For a minute I thought there was a whole hidden family story.”
“There was a hidden grief story.”
“Don’t get poetic. I’m Latina and pissed. I can out-drama you.”
His mouth almost moves.
He stops it.
Smart.
“I would’ve claimed the child,” he says. “If she had carried. If she had handed me a baby and said it was mine, I would have stood there. No matter what. Maybe I would’ve been a shit father. Maybe I would’ve learned. But I wouldn’t have run.”
That hurts.
It should make me feel better.
It doesn’t.
“Would you have claimed Cherry too?”
“No.”
The answer is immediate.
I wait.
He understands now. Fast isn’t enough.
“No,” he says again. “I would’ve done right by the baby. Money. Name. Protection. Time. Whatever was needed. But I would not have made Cherry my woman because that would’ve been another lie.”
“But you let her think maybe.”
