Page 302 of Romeo

I couldn’t walk into a marriage while Jasper still stood on the other side of it.

I caught my lower lip between my teeth and watched his eyes follow the nervous movement.

“Before I answer, I need to tell you something.”

Jasper sighed and started to smile. “Baby, whatever you tried tellin’ me before we left can still wait. I told you already, unless there’s a trail of dead husbands somewhere⁠—”

“No.”

The word stopped him.

I put my hands against his chest—not pushing him away, only needing the small space between us so I could look at him properly. “Not this time. If you’re asking me to marry you, you need to know everything.”

His expression changed immediately.

He didn’t argue again.

I took a breath, but the words I had rehearsed so many times still refused to arrange themselves neatly. There was no clean way to tell the story because nothing about it had been clean while I lived it.

“Charlie isn’t only my nephew.”

Jasper didn’t move.

I watched his face so closely that every tiny change felt enormous. The slight pull between his eyebrows. The way his mouth settled. His attention narrowing completely onto me.

I nearly lost my nerve.

“I gave birth to him.”

For one horrible second, Jasper gave me nothing to hold on to.

He didn’t joke or interrupt, and the longer he simply watched me, the harder it became to keep talking. Still, I made myself tell him. Not every detail. He didn’t need the entire history of Billy, foster homes, CPS, or all the strange turns that eventually made Frank my brother and Claudia my sister-in-law.

I gave him the pieces that mattered. Pregnant at fifteen, alone by the time Charlie was born, and painfully aware that loving my baby wasn’t enough to give him the life he deserved. I told Jasper how I had chosen Claudia because I had watched her long enough to know what kind of woman she was, how I had made sure she found Charlie and stayed close until I knew he was safe, and how the life that came afterward eventually gave me the privilege of remaining in my son’s world as his aunt.

The entire time, I watched Jasper instead of losing myself to the memories. Every small change in his face became something I wanted to interpret. His jaw tightened when I mentioned how young I had been, and I immediately wondered if that was judgment. His eyes changed when I explained why I chose Claudia, and I couldn’t decide whether I was seeing understanding or pity. The worst part was that he never pulled away. His hands remained on me, steady and warm, and somehow that made me more frightened because I kept waiting for the moment when they wouldn’t.

By the time I finished, my throat hurt from trying to keep my voice steady. I made sure he understood the one thing that mattered most to me. Charlie was Frank and Claudia’s son. They were his parents, exactly as I had always wanted them to be, and nothing about telling Jasper the truth meant I wanted that to change.

My fear had never been about Charlie or the decision I made for him. It was about Jasper looking back over the last year and realizing that every photograph I sent, every story I told, and every time I called Charlie my nephew, had carried a truth I hadn’t trusted myself to give him yet.

“Charlie is theirs,” I said quickly. “I need you to understand that. I don’t want him back. I have never wanted to change his life. Frank and Claudia are his mom and dad. I get to love him. I get to be his aunt and spoil him and watch him grow up knowing he is safe and wanted. That was what I wanted for him from the beginning.”

I had stopped watching Jasper’s whole face by then. I was watching pieces. His eyes. The set of his mouth. Whether his hands remained on me.

They did.

“I should have told you sooner. Every time I sent you a picture of him, I thought about it. Every time you asked what Charlie was doing or we talked about someday having children, I knew there was something you didn’t know.” My voice dropped because this was the part Devlyn couldn’t promise would be okay. “You don’t lie to me, Jasper. Even when you avoid telling me something, you work so hard not to actually lie. And I kept letting you believe Charlie was my nephew.”

“He is your nephew.”

The words surprised me enough that I stopped.

Jasper’s brows pulled together. “Frank’s your brother. Claudia’s his wife. They’re his parents. That makes Charlie your nephew.”

“Yes, but...”

“And you gave birth to him.”