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“Probably forever,” she says, the words so raw that they cut. I don’t like that tone on Luna’s lips. I know she was hurt, but I was too. Why would she be so bitter? If anyone should be bitter, it is me. She moved on with Atticus for fuck’s sake.
“I was a kid. You were a kid. We both made mistakes,” I tell her, trying to keep a level head, to guide this conversation to the topic that matters the most.
“Just leave, Gavin. It’s too late. Anything we once needed to say, is just…. It’s pointless now.”
“I can’t leave. Not until you tell me why you told your son about me.”
Her head drops down, and I see a shudder move through her body. It visibly rakes through her and then her fists clench tight—to the point they go stark white with the force.
“I could hate you for this, Gavin,” she says, and I was wrong. Before, I thought her voice was raw. Now, her voice is not only raw it sounds like a different person, one that is so full of pain and anguish that it empties into the room, darkening it with her emotion.
“Luna—”
“Just because you wanted nothing to do with Josh, it doesn’t mean he didn’t deserve to know about you, Gavin. I wanted him to have that. I made sure he had that.”
“Why? Surely you and Attius both hated me enough that—”
“Atticus never had anything to do with the decisions I made concerning my son, Gavin. It wasn’t his place—ever.”
“I don’t understand—”
“I wanted Joshua to know his father, to have memories of him, at least good ones that I had. He deserved more, but that was all I could give him.”
“I…” I stop talking because it feels like my heart stops beating. Words bubble up from deep inside and I try to speak them, but my throat is clogged with them, thick with emotion and pain. Slowly as if a small flickering flame of hope has sprung into life deep inside of me and begins to push through to find light, I open my mouth to ask the question that I’m desperately afraid to hear the answer to—and desperately afraid not to. “Luna,” I ask, my voice cracking, my hands trembling. “How old…” I have to stop, my mouth going dry. “How old is Joshua?”
She looks at me, confusion so clear on her face that it’s blinding.
“I don’t understand,” she whispers, and I struggle to keep from yelling at her to answer.
“How old is Joshua?” I repeat, my question barely more audible than a low breath.
“He’s twelve, Gavin, but you know that.”
Twelve. He’s twelve.
Luna’s boy is twelve.
Suddenly the impossible is not only possible, it’s staring me right in the face.
“Joshua is my son,” I respond, speaking the words out loud, having to sit down before my legs give out on me. I look up at Luna, waiting for her to deny it, waiting for her to take this pain away. I thought Luna having a child with Atticus was the most pain I would ever have to endure.
I was so stupid.
“Gavin?”
“Joshua is my son, isn’t he, Luna?”
She frowns, her forehead scrunching up in confusion, but I can’t decipher that. All I can grasp is that Luna is not screaming at me that I’m wrong. She’s not denying it. She’s not laughing… she’s staring at me.
“Gavin, what’s going on here?”
“Answer, me Luna. Is Joshua my son?”
Tears sting my eyes, but I don’t bother holding them back. I’m not sure I could even if I wanted to. It feels like my next breath hinges on Luna’s answer.
“He’s my son, Gavin.”
“Luna,” I prod her, my lungs burning. “Is Joshua our son?”
“Of course he is. I don’t understand what’s going on with you, Gavin.”
Of course he is….
Of course he is….
Emotions surge through me—too many to name, too quickly to count. All the years between then and now slap me across the face. Our goodbye, the years of loneliness and pain, of trying to find what I had with her elsewhere and always—fucking always—coming up short. It all hits me. Then, the most painful thing of all slams into me with the force of a hurricane.
Joshua.
My son is nearly thirteen and I didn’t get to spend one of those years with him. Not one. Everyone knew—had to know. Luna, Atticus, my so-called father, they all knew and not a one of them fucking told me. My hand grabs the table lamp beside my chair, and I curl my fingers around it and hurl it across the room, the plug yanking out of the wall so violently that sparks fly. When it lands against the wall it shatters into a thousand pieces. Only then, do I raise my eyes to look at Luna.
“You kept my son from me?” I roar, stabbing a finger to my chest, my words sounding more animal than human, but that’s what I am. A wounded animal and right now… I could kill her.
