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“Oh?” I stand to see who came into the bar, and a ball of lead settles in my stomach.
* * *
My mouth driesas I size the man up and down. In the roughly one year and eight months since I’ve seen him, nothing about Bren has changed.
“Hello, Sofia,” he says.
I have to be imagining things because he can’t be here. Can he? Not after all this time.
“Um,” Lola says to break the silence. “Hello, Bren. It’s Lola—we met a while back,” she says, offering him her hand.
“Right. Hello.” They shake hands while Addy is still in Lola’s arms, playing with her long, curly, blond hair, but Addy never turns to look Bren’s way. Bren’s eyes fix on the back of Addy’s head for one second, then he smiles and returns his attention to me. “Can we talk?”
My breathing starts to come in shallow, and I break out into a cold sweat as I stand there looking between father and daughter in the same room—breathing the same air. I never thought I’d see the day when that would happen.
“I guess I’ll get going,” Lola says. “I’ll bring—”
“Thanks, Lola!” I cut her off before she finishes the sentence. Bren seems to think the baby is Lola’s, and I need it to stay that way, at least until I collect myself. “I’ll see you later.”
Lola throws me a questioning look and mouths an ‘are you okay?’ at me. I nod, and she secures Addy back in the car seat. I watch her go past Bren as she leaves through the front door. I track them both as she walks past the bar, and only when they are out of sight does my heart calm down to a regular beat again.
“I, um—have some errands to run,” I say stupidly.
“You don’t have five minutes for me?”
I let out a breath. “Yeah, Bren. I have five minutes for you.”
“You look well,” he says and offers a small smile.
“That’s a lie, but I’ll take it. You, on the other hand, haven’t changed a bit.” He is wearing jeans and a forest green hoodie that makes his brown eyes pop. He is more handsome than ever, and I inwardly kick myself for letting this perfect man get away. We could have had it all if I could have just gotten over my fears.
Now things are different, and I can’t lie to myself and pretend my anger toward him hasn’t been building since the day he left.
“How’ve you been?” he asks.
I pause to examine him, my head tilting to the side. “Why are you here, Bren?”
His slow smile starts building. “I wanted to see you. Check in. See how you’re doing.”
“You’re not touring...wait.” I narrow my eyes at him. “Did you fly in from Germany to ‘see how I’m doing?’ Because you could have picked up a phone and saved yourself a trip.”
“Sofia—”
“I, on the other hand, couldn’t call you to ‘see how you were doing’ because you disconnected your phone—”
“I’m sorry about that. I was hurt. Being around you hurt. And I knew hearing your voice would hurt. I couldn’t...” He trails off and averts his eyes.
Despite my best efforts to stay angry at him, the tension on my face relaxes. I am still mad at him for missing out on Audrey, even if he didn’t know about her. Looking at him now, so vulnerable, softens my anger. But mostly, I also understand I broke his heart when I refused to marry him.
“I know you’re busy. Maybe we can have lunch tomorrow?” he asks.
My gut is telling me to say no. To deny him any time and send him on his way so I’d never see him again and he’d never know about Addy. As I stare at the man who so clinically cut me out of his life, a new fear slithers into my heart. Would he want custody? Of course he would want at leastpartialcustody. With him so out of my life, I never had to think about that before, and the very thought of it churns my stomach.
I can’t keep this from him, though. Not only am I not that person, but I couldn’t do that to Addy. If he wants to be in her life, I can’t deny her that. I know what it is like to grow up without a father, and though my mother did a fantastic job on her own, I missed out on a lot from his absence.
I have to tell him.
“No strings?” I ask before agreeing.
