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“He asks about me?”
“Sometimes,” I said. “He wonders why he doesn’t know who his daddy is. He wonders why he doesn’t have a family like his friends do. I feel so guilty when he asks that. I always told him that his daddy was a good man, he just wasn’t in our lives. He’s been young enough to accept that up until now, but recently… it’s gotten harder.”
“I bet,” he said, his face not showing any emotions. It was how he used to look on the mound. You couldn’t get a read on him when he didn’t want you to.
“Graham, I understand if you don’t want anything to do with us. I did just kind of spring all this on you, and we keep going years and years between when we see each other. It’s not fair to you. I’m sure you don’t still feel the same way as before, and with everything that’s going on, this is just another hiccup in your life. I don’t want to make things more complicated or harder on you.”
“I’m going to stop you right there,” he interrupted. My voice shut off in my throat.
“Okay,” I managed.
He leaned forward on the couch and ran his hand through his hair. For a split second, he winced, and I realized it was his pitching arm. It must still hurt from the botched surgery.
“I wish like hell you hadn’t made the decision you did,” he said, and I nodded, my eyes floating down to my lap. “But I can understand why you did it.”
“What?” I asked, not sure if I understood what he was saying.
“I get it,” he said, and those eyes which were stony and unreadable were now filled with a depth that I remembered. A depth that I’d gotten lost in once before. “I get why you chose to do what you did. Again, I wish you hadn’t, but I understand. And I need you to know that now that I know, I want to be a part of my son’s life.”
“You do?”
“I do,” he confirmed. “I know it might take some time. A lot of time, maybe. But I have that time to spend. I would have spent it back then too, but I have all the time in the world now.”
“Okay,” I said, not wanting to let my heart leap the way it wanted to.
“We need to get to know each other. Me and Owen. And you and me. We need to get to know each other again.”
“I agree,” I choked out. “I totally agree. You need to get to know your son. Graham, he is the most wonderful little boy. He’s so sweet and so funny. He’s so much like you. I see you in him every day. It killed me that you never knew. But he is so much like you.”
“I look forward to that,” he said, a smile beginning at the corner of his mouth. It wouldn’t spread much farther, but it was there. Slowly, he slid off the couch and sat in front of me on the floor. He was getting closer, and I didn’t know what to do other than sit there. “And as for you,”
“Me?”
He nodded. “I never stopped having feelings for you,” he said. “Seeing you again, here, only proved that.”
I was going to say something. Some kind of response that would tell him that my feelings had never gone away either. That I was as absolutely in love with him as I had been in that hotel. As I had been in the hallways of this school years before. That he was the only man that had ever turned my eye, and that if he wanted, I would start all over again just for the chance of getting to know him in that way.
But I didn’t need to.
Because Graham leaned forward, brushed a tear from my cheek with his thumb, then pulled my head to his. His big, soft lips pressed into mine, and I melted into his kiss. It was gentle and pure, but it rumbled with a memory of passion. My heart thudded in my chest, and my stomach churned, but I stayed there, my lips pressed into his, as long as he let me.
24
GRAHAM
Ihad no idea what to wear.
As an athlete, my clothing choices were usually dictated by team rules. I was supposed to wear business casual when traveling with the team, with the exceptions being full suits. In the off-season, I tended to keep to business casual unless I was at home, inside the apartment I kept. But this was different.
I was going to officially meet my son and let him know I was his father.
Suddenly, I found myself wondering what a dad should wear. My own father had been in his early sixties during my childhood, usually opting for a suit at work or torn, ancient gym shorts at home. When he passed of a heart attack my first year in the minors, he had been to a few of my games, and seeing him wear my jersey was the first time I had seen him outside in something other than those gym shorts.
I decided to go with the business casual approach, if for nothing other than familiarity, and looked at myself in the mirror before I left. After meeting me once before, I wondered how he would react. He seemed like such a sweet kid. Would he even care what I was wearing? Probably not. He was only four years old after all.
My nerves were shot, worse than any game I had ever played, worse than my tryouts for scouts, worse even than the day I threw a no-hitter. I was going to see the little boy I now knew was my son and tell him I was his father. It was going to be a momentous day.
I drove to the park where Mallory was taking him, a small playground attached to the elementary and middle school where a lot of the kids played after classes ended.
