AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“First of all, I don’t need a test. Secondly, that woman you saw me with had to be Tina. She’s my buddy Cal’s sister. You met him once a long time ago.”
He was right. I remembered him coming to visit Cash one summer for a few days.
“She and her husband have a fourteen-year-old daughter, and she’s the only person I know who used to have pink hair. Tina is like family to me. As you know, Cal and I have been friends since the second grade. He lives in Utah now. She was visiting him, and he took her to a game. So did I look at her with love in my eyes? Probably. And regardless, you should have come up to me and told me I had a son. I don’t care who I was standing next to.”
“I’m sorry, but between what your dad told me and seeing you with her ... Tina ... I couldn’t. It was a very emotional time in my life. Thank God I had Mia, Rob, and my parents. They gave me strength. The day he was born, I tried one last time, and your phone didn’t even ring. It went straight to voice mail. All I could think of was you blocked me. That was the final straw.”
Proving my point, I grabbed my phone, tapped out a text, and waited. When nothing happened, I quirked my right brow and flipped my phone around. “Is that still your number at the top?”
“Yes, but I never blocked you.” He worked his phone for a bit and let out a breath. “I don’t understand how it happened. It had to be a mistake that I can’t go back and rectify and probably will never get to the bottom of. That was fifteen years and many phones ago. Hell, I think I had a flip phone back then. You’re now in my active contacts again. Right now, I want to know all about our son. He’s amazing, Hannah. When he was pitching today, I saw a lot of me in him. Now I know why. He needs to know I’m his father.”
“He will. I need to figure out how to tell him. I’m not going to rush this.”
Cash began pacing, the wooden planks creaking as he moved across the floor and back again. “Where does he think I am? Who does he think I am? The kid’s smart. He had to have asked.”
“I told him that his father is a good man. That we were in love, but our timing wasn’t right. Life got in the way, and it was just him and me. Jimmy is my life, Cash. You know nothing about us. Nothing about me. Do you know how hard it is when a boy idolizes a man he doesn’t know is his father? After all my attempts, I don’t understand how you could not have known. I hate you for that. For leaving us. Ignoring him. I don’t care about you forgetting about me. As you said, we were best friends and then nothing. Not a word. Did it never dawn on you to call me? To say hi or see how I was doing? You stopped caring.”
Unwanted emotion welled in my eyes. The last thing I wanted was to cry, but it wasn’t for me—it was for my son. Anger started to bubble up inside me.
“I didn’t ignore him. Because I didn’t know he existed. And I never stopped caring. I did ask about you. I was told you had moved on with some guy you went to college with. Maybe I should have called, but I didn’t. Chalk it up to stupid pride. After my parents moved, I never came back until now. The only person I hung out with was you. Not even my teammates. Just you. And, by the way, who’s Rob?”
Scoffing at that, I shook my head. “Rob and I went to college together. He happened to be in the clinic when I found out I was pregnant. To say I was a bit stunned and scared would be an understatement. He and I became close friends. Rob came home with me because his family was in Colorado, and thanks to a freak storm, he couldn’t go there for the holiday. As far as everything else, I’m sorry, but I call bullshit.”
“You’re wrong. It’s not bullshit. I don’t know what happened, Hannah. In the beginning, I was busy. It was the middle of the season, and training was intense. I’d get up early, work out, train, sleep. By the time I could breathe, as I said, I heard you’d moved on with someone else ... I guess Rob. Why would I call? And again, I didn’t get any indication you were trying to get ahold of me. Hell, I didn’t have my phone most of the time. I ate, drank, and slept baseball.”
His refusal to acknowledge that I tried was exasperating. “I can’t do this. I need to go. I’ll tell Jimmy soon. Don’t you breathe a word of this, do you hear me?” I threatened. “And as far as you scouting my son, the answer is no.”
“He’sourson, and we can talk about that later. When you tell him about me, I think I should be there.”
“No.”
“Please, Hannah. I know you’re upset. I’m not very happy either. But I want to be able to explain. To tell him I didn’t abandon him or you. This is me, Hannah.” He placed his hand on the center of his chest. “Please believe me. Do you honestly think I’d ignore you? Do you know how many times I thought of you? How many times I wondered, if I came back, if you’d leave the new man in your life? But what type of friend or man would that make me? All I wanted was for you to be happy.”
Deep down, I wanted to believe him, but the more I stood there, the more I needed space. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what to believe. Fair or not, I can only go on what I did and what you didn’t do.”
Cash’s jaw ticced. He raked his hand through his hair and loudly exhaled. “I’m not calling you a liar, but my dad wouldn’t keep me from my child. And there would be no way my mom wouldn’t be elated no matter what the circumstance was.”
Crossing my arms over my chest, I stared at him. Quite certain my heart rate would break the dial on a blood pressure cuff, I crossed my arms over my chest. “If you’re so sure about that, call him. Go ahead. Ask your father if I came to your house to tell you that I was pregnant with your child. Ask him if I offered to have a paternity test since he accused me of lying for money. Ask him if I begged him to have you call me. Ask him if he told me to leave you alone. I know you love your father, but he has a funny way of reciprocating that emotion. As far as your mom, I never spoke to her. I only imagined that she felt the same. I had very little to go on. Once they moved, I never bothered to contact them again.”
Cash stared at me. When I didn’t blink, I couldn’t help but wonder what was running through his mind. After what felt like forever, he snagged his phone out of his pocket and tapped the screen a couple of times before I could hear ringing.
“Hey, son.”
“Hi, Dad. I have a question for you.”
Chapter8
Cash
“Sure, what’s up?”
Before I asked, I fixed my gaze on Hannah’s steely stare, no doubt surprised that I left the call on speakerphone. “Do you remember Hannah Hall?”
A couple of beats passed before he begrudgingly answered, “Yes, the girl you were infatuated with. What about her?”
It was a hell of a lot more than infatuation, but that debate wasn’t the reason for the call, so I cut to the chase. “Did she call you and then come to the house to tell you she was pregnant with my child?”
“Pfft. That’s the oldest trick in the book, son. Dollar signs, that was all that girl saw.”
