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Hadn’t she wanted to tell Zeke about his son five years ago, the moment she’d first discovered she was pregnant?
And she would have, if not for that night.
‘Jesus, Tia. I have a son.’ He started forward. Determination and anger etched onto his face.
She didn’t know how she found the strength but suddenly she was blocking his way, her hand pushing back against his shoulders.
‘Not here. Not like this. You can’t meet him when you’re like...this.’
He turned an incredulous black gaze on her. Tia swallowed hard.
‘Zeke, I’m sorry. Sorrier than you can ever know. But please. Don’t go in there like this. Don’t do that to Seth.’
Zeke didn’t answer. His eyes slid back to the closed door, to the happy, high-pitched voice inside, assuring her that her son was oblivious to what was going on out in the hallway. The silence spiralled around her, coiling and menacing. It felt like an eternity before anyone spoke again.
‘Seth,’ Zeke echoed quietly at last. As though he was rolling it around his head. Letting it sink in. Letting it take root.
‘Seth,’ she repeated quietly. ‘And you will meet him. I promise. But...not like this.’
He turned to look at her again. As though he were seeing her for the first time. And it wasn’t a good experience. A shiver rippled over her body.
‘I have a child? I’m a father? And you kept him from me all this time?’
‘I... I can explain.’ It sounded so hollow. So inadequate. ‘If you give me a chance.’
For another painstakingly long moment, neither of them moved or spoke. And then, abruptly, Zeke stumbled backwards, out of the front door and onto the drive. As if he didn’t know where he was going, but was afraid that if he didn’t leave now, he might barge her out of the way and walk into that room to see his son.
‘Now, Tia. You will explain it to me now.’
Without thinking twice Tia released the door handle, snatched up her car keys and followed him out of the door.
She had one chance to get this right. And so help her if she made a mess of it.
CHAPTER FOUR
HE HAD A CHILD.
A son.
Zeke had repeated it a hundred times. A thousand. Scarcely knowing what to make of this incredible revelation. Trying to understand what this...thing was that spiralled deep within him, as though it were slowly boring its way out of some pitch-black, fathomless pit he had long pretended didn’t still reside inside him.
Yet he suspected he knew exactly what the thing was. It was a flicker of light, even just a spark, but potentially powerful enough to cast a glorious light over his life. Joy. And pride.
He had a child.
He, who had long since resigned himself to the fact that he would never be a father. What was the point? When five years ago he’d pushed away the only woman with whom he could ever have imagined himself being?
He had believed he was doing the right thing, the honourable thing. Sparing her from the burden of being with a man so much less than the one she’d married. He’d been a soldier, strong and fit and whole. After the accident, he had barely been able to stand looking at himself in the mirror; he certainly hadn’t been able to bear seeing her look at him with that expression of...sympathy. As though he was less than.
Pushing her away, sparing her from ha
ving to take responsibility for him, had been the one thing he could do back then to prove he was still strong. Still fiercely independent. But even so, realising he had succeeded, that his Tia had walked out of his life for good, had hurt beyond anything he could have believed.
Until now.
Had he really pushed her away? Or had she been only too relieved for the excuse to get him out of her life? To ensure his son never knew that he had a failed soldier as a father? The suspicion eroded in like the leaking battery acid on the engine of his very first motorbike.
Had she been pretending all those times she’d visited in the first few months after the accident? Or had she secretly been looking for a way out with the son she’d never told him about?
