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She shook her head. “Joss isn’t a string between Trace and me.”
“Trace? That’s his name?”
Chrissie nodded. Hearing her best friend say Trace’s name for the first time felt good in an odd sort of way. As if it somehow made him more real. As if she hadn’t imagined this past weekend and the man who had rocked her world.
Of course she hadn’t. Proof really did lie in her arms.
“He doesn’t know about Joss.” Why she blurted that particular tidbit out Chrissie wasn’t sure. But she did blurt it out. She also had fire burning her face.
Savannah’s thin brows veed. “Why didn’t you tell him?”
Wishing she could fan her face, she shrugged. “Probably for the same reasons you didn’t tell Charlie you were pregnant those first few months.”
Chrissie’s comment had Savannah relenting a little, but only a little.
“Chrissie, you need to tell him. He is Joss’s father. I know I didn’t tell Charlie to begin with, but I should have. The longer I waited, the more difficult admitting the truth became.”
Savannah had found out she was pregnant on the very day Charlie had told her he had taken a job two hours away and was moving. Without her. It had taken a while for Savannah and Charlie to work out their differences, but now Chrissie’s friend had her happily-ever-after.
Chrissie winced. “We were only supposed to be an affair. He doesn’t want to be burdened with a kid.”
Her friend fixed her with a glare. “Is that how you feel about Joss?”
“Of course not!” She tightened her hold around her sleeping son. “Joss is my whole world.”
Savannah gave her another sharp look as if to say, Exactly.
“Fine, I see your point, but you don’t understand. He works with Doctors Around the World and he’s leaving soon.”
“Then you really should have told him while you were in Atlanta.”
In between their sneaky kisses or perhaps by the stream? Or maybe right before she’d left Atlanta.
See you later, Trace. And, oh, by the way, we have a three-year-old son you know nothing about.
Wrong. She shouldn’t have told him anything. He was leaving. He didn’t want kids. She’d done him a favor.
“Does this have to do with your father and what happened when you were young?”
“No,” she denied. “Maybe.” She realized the tears she wasn’t going to shed had made their way down her cheeks. “Possibly. I don’t know, Savannah. I wanted to tell him, but he told me four years ago that he planned never to marry or have children. He still feels that way. Still, I thought about telling him of Joss but never could say the words. He wouldn’t really take Joss away from me. At least, I don’t believe he would. But my mom never would have left me with my dad if she’d thought he would kidnap me either.”
Not that Chrissie had realized at first what her dad had done. He’d told her they were going on a special vacation together and she’d always craved her father’s attention, so she’d been a happy little girl. It was only days later, when he still hadn’t let her call her mother, would get angry that she wanted to, had slapped her when she’d started crying for her mother, that she’d started questioning their vacation that wasn’t much more than sleeping in different cars, cars she’d later learned he’d stolen along their way, and long hours on the road.
“Most men aren’t like your father, Chrissie.” Savannah shuddered and kissed the top of Amelia’s head. “Thank God.”
“Trace lives a very different life from most men, Savannah. He’s with DAW and goes into dangerous places. He is a good man, would feel obligated. Not knowing is better for him.”
Only, if the roles were reversed, she’d want to know. She’d want to be a part of Joss’s life. Would Trace?
“I don’t have his number or any way of getting in touch with him,” she said as much for her benefit as for Savannah’s.
She didn’t have Trace’s number. There had been no need for number exchanges at the event. Not before and not this time. To have exchanged numbers would have implied a future they didn’t share.
Only, she did have Alexis’s cell-phone number and she knew the beautiful Atlanta cardiologist had Trace’s number.
“Chrissie, I can see how much you are struggling with this. Which tells me what I need to know. You have to tell him.”
Feeling overwhelmed with emotion and fatigue, she shook her head. Too much had happened in Atlanta. She needed to think, to figure out exactly what she wanted to say to Trace, to be sure of whatever decisions she made because those decisions forever impacted her son.
