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“You what? Whose son am I?” I ask her slowly. My heart thuds wildly. My entire body is tingling, and my head is swimming.
“Hayes, it’ s not that simple—” she starts.
“Yes. It is.” My hand slams down on the table before I even realize it’s in motion. Confidence jumps up and comes to stand beside me. She puts a hand on my shoulder and I want to shake it off.
I don’t want comfort. I want answers.
Gigi starts to cry softly.
“Whose child am I?” I ask her again.
“Hayes …” She’s weeping loudly now.
So is my queen. I watch her. Want to go to her. But not until I have answers.
“Gigi, tell me. Now,” I ask, and the words taste like ash in my mouth.
“Mine,” she sobs, and I drop the phone.
I don’t remember sitting down, but I must have.
“Okay, Gigi, okay,” I hear Confidence saying, and then I hear the phone clatter into its cradle into the counter.
“My life is a lie. All of it. I’m a lie. I’m …” Bombs are exploding somewhere inside me. My memories are imploding. My father disappears from the memory of learning to ride a bike. He vanishes from the conversations we had about the birds and the bees.
“You are Hayes Rivers. You’re a brother, a son, a friend, a lover, a father.” She takes my hand and puts it over her stomach.
“A father.” I pull her to me and press my face into the soft, tiny swell in her abdomen.
“I’m going to be okay,” I say. She’s like a shot of valium, and my pulse starts to slow.
“Hayes, the worst is over,” she says, and like the fool I am, I believe her.
HISTORY
GIGI
“I will begin by saying that I am only sorry for the deceit and the fact that I had to live my life pretending that you weren’t mine,” I say slowly and force my eyes to stay on Hayes’s face. I want to look away so badly.
Those green eyes are shuttered and as cold as chips of emerald. Except, those are his father’s eyes and they have never been able to hide the fire that is always burning inside of him. The curiosity, the feeling, the passion, the thirst for better, the compassion, and right now, the anger.
“So, you suffered?” he asks.
I nod. “Good,” he snaps and I smile. Because, there I am. That cold, unforgiving streak that makes me a Rivers and him my son.
He’s been a mirror to everything I’ve lost, and yet has reminded me how lucky I was to have had any of it in the first place.
“I did what I did for you,” I continue.
He laughs and my patience snaps. I stand up and walk over to him, plant my feet and stare down at him.
“I know I owe you a lifetime of explanations and apologies, but no matter what I have done, I have loved you first,” I say through lips that are barely moving, and a jaw that is so tightly clenched that I know I’m probably doing some real damage to my teeth.
“Yes, so much that you let someone else raise me for the first half of my life and then lived with me for the second half but lied the entire time,” he says sullenly.
“Hayes, there are some things that are more important than our individual needs or wants. Now, please, I’m here because I wanted to tell you this face-to-face. Will you let me?”
He opens his mouth to speak and Confidence’s hand slides over his and she says, “Yes, he will,” and squeezes his hand when he starts to contradict her.
