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She was seriously going to try and put this shit on me. I had noticed a couple of things, but never did I think for a single second that Jeremy could have been mine. Even when we were discussing Adam, she never once opened her mouth and told me that he wasn’t the father. Even if she wasn’t ready to tell me the truth, she didn’t have to keep going with this lie that Adam was his father. What type of person lies about something like this?
“I’m so disgusted with you. I can’t even look at you,” I said before I turned and headed straight out of the kitchen and out my front door.
I went over and got into my car and quickly turned it on before speeding out of the driveway. I had to get away. I had to get away from her and all of this anger within me. I felt like I could explode, and that was the one thing I couldn’t do at the house. Not with the boys there. It was bad enough I thought I had to deal with an unstable baby mama, and now it was looking like I was going to have to deal with another one.
Jasmine
Ithadbeentwohours since my horrific fight with Liam. I couldn’t get the tears to stop no matter how hard I tried. It felt like my heart had been shattered into a million pieces. I knew the fight was going to be bad. I thought I had prepared myself for it, but it was worse than I had anticipated. It wasn’t necessarily his words that cut me so deep. It was the emotions behind it. The raw pain that flooded his voice and his eyes. It tore me apart, and I wasn’t prepared for that.
I had no idea what was going to happen now. Where we went from here. Was I supposed to pack up and leave? Was he going to try and fight me and Adam for custody? Were we going to do it together? Or maybe he was going to kick us out and stop paying for my legal bills and make me figure it out on my own. Anything at this point could happen, and I had no idea how I was going to handle any of this.
It’s my fault though. I had done this to myself. I never should have lied about the paternity test. I should have told him right away the very second I saw him on that dirt road. So much of this could have been avoided if I hadn’t acted out of fear, and now Jeremy was potentially going to pay for my mistakes, and he didn’t deserve that.
It wasn’t even just about the legal aspect of my life. We had started to develop something real between us. There was a trust, and now that trust was worthless. It was hard to gain someone’s trust, but it takes a millisecond to lose it. And I had thrown a fucking grenade at ours. Things were never going to be the same between us. No amount of sorry or time was going to change that I had hurt him on a deeper level. The deepest level possible, and we might never recover from it.
When I agreed to come here to work for him, I never expected for any of this to be happening. I never expected to come to care for him or for Christian. If I had known this was going to be the result, I never would have agreed to any of this.
There was a knock at the door, and I didn’t need to open it to know that it would be Liam on the other side. At least I was hoping it would be and not the police coming to tell me to leave. I wiped at my cheeks and stood from the couch. I had never walked so slowly towards a door before in my life. I reached out and took a shaky breath in before I turned the knob and opened the door. There standing on the other side was indeed Liam.
He didn’t look any better than when he had left, but I guess that was to be expected. I knew he had gone for a drive, but that was almost two hours ago. I was hoping the drive might have calmed him down, but I wouldn’t know until he started to speak.
“Can I come in?” he asked. His voice was tight, but he was calm at least, so I was taking that as an improvement.
I gave a nod and stepped back, allowing him to enter. Whether I wanted to talk about this or not didn’t change the fact that we needed to. He made his way over to the couch, and he sat down stiffly. I went and took a seat in the chair. I didn’t really want to be that close to him right now.
“First, I am sorry for getting so angry and for anything I might have said that hurt your feelings,” he began.
“You had a right to be angry.”
“Regardless, we need to talk about this. I need to know why you didn’t tell me.”
He obviously had every right to an explanation. I wished it was a better one than I had, but all I could do was give him the truth and hope he understood my point of view in all of this. If nothing else, hopefully, he will come to forgive me one day.
“When I first discovered I was pregnant, the dates lined up with Adam. I’ve always used protection, always. So when it came back that I was pregnant, it made more logical sense to me that an accident had to have come from Adam. The dates the doctor gave me even lined up to match Adam. Admittedly, there wasn’t much time between the both of you. Adam and I had this on-again, off-again friends with benefits type of deal. We were free to see whoever we wanted and when we felt like it, we would hook up. It was simple.”
“All of that changed when you discovered you were pregnant,” he simply stated.
I gave a nod and continued, “He was excited at first and came to doctor visits and whatnot. Even after Jeremy was born, he looked a lot like me. There was never any reason to doubt that Adam was his father. As he started to grow older though, I noticed little things. He didn’t have any of Adam’s genetic markers. Like his dimple chin, the same chin every male on his side of the family had. It was Jeremy’s eyes that got me finally. One day he looked at me, and all I could see was you.”
“I should have noticed. Him and Christian have the same eyes. I just blew it off as a coincidence amongst children. I’m assuming you did a test.”
“I did when he was a year, just over it. I didn’t tell Adam. I stole a glass that he drank from and sent it off with mine and Jeremy’s samples. It came back negative, zero percent chance, and I knew he was yours. I hadn’t been with anyone but you two and anyone else was months prior. You were the only option.”
“But you didn’t tell him, and you didn’t tell me. Why?”
And that right there was the million-dollar question that I didn’t know if he would understand. All I could do was try though. “I was scared, and maybe that sounds ridiculous to you, but I was terrified. You have to remember, I was twenty-one, and I panicked. My mind kept thinking about all the ways this could go wrong. Adam wasn’t the best father, but he was the only one Jeremy knew. I didn’t want Jeremy to lose that father figure in his life. I didn’t want to hurt Adam. And I had no idea what you would be like. You could have tried to take him from me. You could have done anything. It wasn’t like I had a family that would help me and support me through something like that.”
“Your father,” he started, but I cut him off.
“All my dad has ever cared about since he became partners with Henry was getting me and Adam married to solidify the company’s future. He might be your best friend, but he was a pretty shitty father growing up, and he still is. If I had told him the truth he would have told me to bury it. To put a smile on my face and do as I was told. He would have used it to blackmail me any time I stepped out of whatever ridiculous line he felt I had crossed. I didn't have anyone to tell.”
At twenty-one, I shouldn’t have been afraid of my parents, but I had been. Part of me still was, but I was doing this because of Jeremy. He needed me to fight to protect him, and that was exactly what I was going to be doing. My father was going to lose his shit when the truth came out, because it had to. I needed it to in order to fight Adam. Hopefully, he would back off, and all of this could be over and done with.
“You’re not wrong. Francis isn’t exactly the man that the world views. He most likely would have used this knowledge to his advantage. I am sorry that you felt like you couldn’t tell me when you first discovered the truth. Why not when you arrived here though? You’ve been here for three weeks. Did you truly think that little of me?” he asked, hurt that his character had been under attack.
“I didn’t think of it like that at all. I hadn’t planned on running out of that church. I was going to say I do up at that altar. It wasn’t until I saw you in the crowd that I couldn’t do it. Afterwards, I was overwhelmed and scared by everything. I didn’t know what you would be like, and then we were arguing and fighting over everything and that made me nervous. I didn’t think, foolishly, that Adam would file for full custody. Like I said, he was never really involved with Jeremy. I figured he would have licked his wounds and then pretended like everything was okay. That doesn’t change that I should have told you, and I’m sorry that I didn’t.”
I meant it too. I should have manned up and told him. I should have faced my fears and told them to fuck off and had just been honest with him and Adam. If I had, I would be in a completely different situation than I was in now. Better? Who knows. It didn’t change that I couldn’t reverse time and have a second shot at it. All I could do was face the consequences of my actions and hope that it didn’t destroy me.
