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My stomach drops at that, and I know I can’t follow my heart. Not this time. She kept my child—myson—from me and from his family for fifteen fucking years.
Meeting her glistening eyes, I steel my heart to her.
I’m shutting her out. Washing my hands of everything that’s gone between us these past five days—Christ, has it only been five days—because I don’t know if I can trust a damn word that comes out of her hypnotic mouth at this point.
“I left and never looked back. Is that what you want to hear, Caden?” Narrowing her eyes, she throws her hands up in exasperation. Or perhaps, in defeat. “I left, and I didn’t care. Is that what you need me to say? Because that would be an outright lie.”
She rises from the chair in a fluid, graceful movement that makes my heart sing for her, the stupid prick. “I looked back every damn day. I longed for you. Never so much as the day I found out I was pregnant six weeks later…”
Trailing off, she steps closer, begging me with her eyes to understand. “The day I got Layla’s letter about losing the baby was the same day I took a test of my own. I’d been sick, though I thought it was homesickness initially. It came back positive. But I was in a dark place, Cade. Noah said that if I came back, the repercussions—”
“Iswear, that meddling piece of shit is going to get what’s coming to him!”
My words are low, but I feel them with everything inside of me. Noah Spellman is going to fucking pay for his interference.
“Now finish your story because Iknowyou didn’t come back here for me after all this time.”
Her eyes flash with hurt before she catches herself, noticeably standing taller, blatantly not taking my wrath lying down.
I’m fuming at myself for not being able to keep the emotion from my voice, so turn my back on her, unwilling to give her even more of myself than I already have. More than she alreadyowns.
“Noahhad set me up with a new identity, an apartment, and the money from the sale of my father’s company, but that didn’t last long. New York is an expensive place—”
My forehead scrunches up. “Wait, did you say Noah set you up with a new identity?”
She nods, wide-eyed at my fury.
The double-crossing fucker.
All those years, he’d claimed to be helping me to search for her, and he knew precisely where she was. Becausehe’dsent her there.
But why?
I file that question away for further thought when Summer begins to speak again.
“Following the positive pregnancy test, I moved from Manhattan, where Noah had set me up. But I was afraid that he could find me and change his mind. I had nightmares of him sending me to prison. Of giving birth there. Of him taking my child away from me. So, I got an apartment under a different alias and found a job in a diner where the owner took me under her wing.”
Realising her tumbler is empty, she crosses the room to the sideboard, holding the decanter up in question. When I nod yes, she leans forward, refilling my own tumbler while leaving her intoxicating scent tauntingly under my nose.
She props her hip against the sideboard, facing me as she sips from her refilled tumbler.
“I questioned contacting yousomany times over the years until eventually, around the time Jesse turned six, I came to the stark realisation that I’d gone toofar beyond the point of no return. It wasn’t until around his tenth birthday that I ever even contemplated it again…”
She trails off, her eyes dropping to her glass, and before I can ask what she means, the door of my office slams open.
“Ford, for fuck’s sake. Ever heard of knocking—”
My head of security’s face is pulled up in a frown, indicating incoming shit that I don’t think I have the ability to deal with right now. I hold up a stalling hand, about to tell him as much, but he ploughs on inside regardless.
“Cade, I’ve just listened to the audio recorded from the phone in your ex-wife’s hotel room only fifteen minutes ago.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose, my temple throbbing painfully as I inhale deeply. “What trouble is that waste of fucking space creatingnow?”
“It wasn’t her on the phone, Cade. It was Noah…”
He trails off, uncertainty heavy in his usually confident voice. I glance up to find his brow knitted. “What, man? Spit it out! I don’t have the time nor the inclination for theatrics today.”
Stop being an asshole, North.
