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“Good,” I said with a grin and planted one more kiss on her lips. “Get out of here before I drag you into the bedroom instead.”
Jade giggled.
“Bye, Ben!” she called into the apartment.
“Bye, Jade!” he called back without coming to the door to hug her.
Jade walked to the elevator, pulling her wheeled suitcase behind her. I watched her go––she was delicious in every way.
She smiled at me one more time before the elevator doors closed, and she disappeared.
I shook my head, grinning when I returned to the apartment to watch some television with Ben. Tomorrow, she would come to be Ben’s nanny. This week I would try to figure something out so that I could either replace her as a nanny or we could figure something else out. It would take a bit of time to figure out the logistics, but I didn’t want Jade to be the nanny anymore. I wanted to bump her up to girlfriend status, which meant taking her off my payroll. I needed to be very clear about where we stood, and I wasn’t going to pay her to be mine.
That would just be wrong.
Someone knocked on the door, and I smiled.
“Did you forget something?” I asked, walking to the door. “Ben, you have five more minutes.” I pointed at the clock against the wall. “Check the time, and when your five minutes are up, I want you in that room. Got it?”
Ben nodded. “Got it.” He glanced at the clock before his eyes slid back to the screen.
I opened the door with a smile, but my smile faded when it wasn’t Jade in front of me.
My stomach twisted before it dropped, and my blood ran cold.
The woman before me was the spitting image of Ben, with sandy hair, bronze skin, and a curvy figure. She looked at me with cold blue eyes, and her lips were puffier than they’d been before.
“Hello, Aaron,” she said.
I swallowed hard. “Sabrina.”
“Are you just going to stare at me, or are you going to invite me in?” she asked when I didn’t move, frozen at the sight of her.
I finally jerked into action, but instead of inviting Sabrina in, I stepped out of the apartment and shut the door behind me.
“What are you doing here?” I asked tightly.
“Is that how you greet the mother of your child?” she asked and flicked her sandy hair over her shoulder. She wore designer clothes that screamed money and taste, but her eyes were lifeless, her jaw set, and her expression was hard as nails.
I didn’t answer her––I wanted an explanation.
She sighed. “I’m here for Ben.”
“What?” I asked, shocked.
“You heard me. I’m here for my son.”
I shook my head, trying to understand what she was saying.
“It’s been nine years. You can’t just show up here and demand Ben. Where the hell have you been all these years? He hasn’t heard anything from you, not a phone call, a card in the mail, nothing. Now you want him? What does that even mean?”
“I’m his mother, Aaron,” Sabrina said.
“No, you’re not. You’ve been missing in action for nearly a decade. You have no right to come here and claim any right to his life. For all I knew, you could have been dead. And you are––you’re dead to me.”
Sabrina folded her arms over her chest. “You have no right to keep him from me. I’ll take you to court if I have to, but I wanted him.”
“Why now?” I asked. My head spun, and my emotions were all over the place. Seeing Sabrina was like a blast from the past. I’d been heartbroken when she’d chosen someone else over me. I’d been shocked, rocked to my core, when she’d dropped Ben off, leaving him on my doorstep. I’d lived for nine years in the aftermath of her poor decisions, with the mistake I’d made of being with her. I wouldn’t change a thing––I loved Ben to death, and he was everything that completed me when I’d thought I was enough on my own––but Sabrina had ruined my life in every way possible.
