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“No,” he conceded. “But you have to know how my choices make me feel today.”
“I have to?”
He flashed a smile, that charming smile that used to make me soften from the inside out. “No, but it does. From the moment I chose to walk away, I knew it was the wrong decision. I knew I would live to regret it and I have, every day for the past five years.”
“Six,” I corrected.
“Excuse me?” His blond brows dipped into a confused frown.
“It’s been six years, almost seven if you want to be accurate. You made the choice when I was still pregnant, and Titus will be six in a few short months.”
“Right.” Ferguson almost folded unto himself in the wooden kitchen chair as he reached for his wine glass. “It’s eaten at me all these years and I hate myself for it. I understand why you hate me now.”
The oven timer sounded and busied myself pulling the food from the oven and transferring it all to serving dishes, while I figured out how to say what I needed to say. Finally, we were seated across from each other, a platter of steaming food between us. “I don’t hate you, Ferguson. I love being a mother. It’s fun and amazing, and always rewarding. I think it sucks that you chose a woman over your son, but I’ve made peace with it.”
“Have you?”
I nodded slowly and took a sip of my lemon water. “I have. Hating you would only eat me up and Titus deserves more than that. My patients too. No offense, but you’re not worth a lifetime of hate, Ferguson.”
He let out a bitter laugh. “You’ll get no argument from me.”
That was weird, but I let it go and turned the conversation back to him. “So why do you suddenly want to meet Titus? Why now?”
He took another long sip from the wine glass and sighed. “Sabrina and I have three children together, two boys and a girl.”
“Okay.”
He flashed a nervous smile. “Our youngest, Steven, has had some health problems over the past couple years and we decided to do some preemptive testing in case we need to donate a kidney to him.”
I knew exactly where this conversation was going and I shook my head. “Don’t even think of Titus as an option, Ferguson.”
“I’m not, and even if I were he wouldn’t be a good fit.” He laughed, and it was abrasive and bitter. “Turns out that Steven isn’t my child. Neither is Paul, our oldest. Only Lydia, the girl, is my biological child.”
His words hung in the air and I listened in shock. “What? But how can that be?”
“Sabrina is not the woman I thought she was. Turns out she spent most of our marriage torn between her feelings for me and her ex, Paul and Steven’s father.”
Wow. “That sucks, Ferguson. I’m sorry you’re going through that, but that doesn’t tell me why you’re suddenly interested in Titus.”
“I made a mistake, Persy. Walking away from Titus was, no is my biggest regret. I’m sorry that I did that to you and I’m sorry I wasn’t man enough to stand up to her.” He shook his head and muttered incoherently into his wine glass. “The fucking irony. The hypocrisy.”
A small part of me felt sympathy for Ferguson for all he’d gone through, but not enough to reach out to him or offer him physical comfort. “You don’t owe me an apology, Ferguson. If you owe anyone, it’s Titus. Rising him has been my absolute pleasure. He brings joy to my life every single day. I’m grateful to have him in my life.”
“I want to know him, Persy. I need to know my son. Please.”
That please almost got me, but I wasn’t the same naïve little girl desperately in search of love anymore. Titus was my main priority. His happiness. His well-being. “All right, let’s say I let you get to know him and be in his life. Then what? You and Sabrina reconcile and you go back to Canada to play happy families with her and those three kids, leaving my son feeling neglected and heartbroken? I can’t let that happen, Ferguson. I won’t.”
“That’s not what I’m asking, I swear. I want to know who he is as a little boy. Are there parts of him that he inherited from me? What does he like to do? To eat? I’m curious about him.”
I let out a huff of laughter and stabbed a roasted baby potato. “That doesn’t sound like you want to be a father to him, it sounds like you’re looking for a friend.”
His head fell forward. “I’m looking for redemption.”
“That’s not what kids are for.” This was getting old, but if we didn’t hash it out tonight, Ferguson might decide to make my life difficult for a few more weeks and I certainly didn’t have time for that.
