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I’d do it all again if I had to. For her.
I’m not going to shout. I’m not going to scream. I’m going to handle this with care because this is a very delicate situation. It’s make or break for our relationship. But…
The enormity of the way my fifteen-year-old has just spoken to me hits me full force in my chest and the air freezes on the way in... what the ever-living fuck?
“Stephanie Jane Anderson!” I bellow, following her into the sitting area of our two-bedroom suite. It mirrors the one Ashleigh shares with Ryder, but it’s smaller and less extravagant. “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?”
“You don't love me.” Stephi leaps up from the sofa and tosses the cushion she’d been hugging at the floor. As she marches past me, there are damp rivers on her cheeks. “You let us move in with Harvey.”
Where is she going? Does she think I’m letting her walk out in the middle of this? Not on this side of the next millennium!
I turn to follow her toward the room she’s sleeping in.
“You don't even care that Jacob calls Harvey his dad,” she accuses.
Wait-what?
The door slams shut in my face. She knows. She’s done the math. She knows Anna was pregnant before we broke up. Before they moved in with Harvey. Damn it that kid is too smart for her own good!
As far as she’s concerned, Ashleigh is to blame for our divorce. I left for a job in LA almost immediately after. It would never cross her mind there was another reason why our marriage broke down. She thinks I abandoned both of my kids for a woman.
“Stephi!” I call through the door. “Harvey is Jacob's dad.”
Silence.
“Stephi, please. I know there’s a lot of history with Ashleigh, but I’m not the one who had an affair. Your mom is. We were having problems. Admittedly, they were caused because of Ashleigh. But I didn’t—”
The door clicks and creaks open. She curls her head around the door, but she doesn’t say anything.
“Maybe I did. I don’t know.” I shove my hand through my hair. “Like I said, your mom and I were having problems. Your aunt and uncle had just died, your mom was helping your gran with gramps, and your cousins. Ashleigh was helping me care for you. And it just sort of happened. We kissed. Nothing else happened. I swear!”
She looks at me like I’ve just turned her whole world upside-down. I draw in a deep breath as I step back and lean against the wall. It’s either that, or I hit it.
“Your mom is the one who had an affair. Jacob is Harvey’s son, not mine. I have DNA tests to prove it.” I take a deep breath. “Princess, you’re right. Your mom and I shouldn't have got married. She knew it. I knew it. But we did it anyway.” The sparkle in her eyes dimmed. “It doesn't mean we regret it. Please don't hate me for ending a very unhappy marriage, Stephi. Harvey makes your mom very happy. I can’t.”
“Because of Ashleigh.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand why Ashleigh moved to LA to be an actress. She was a lawyer in New York, and she didn’t even come back for her stuff or quit her job or say goodbye or anything and no one will explain it to me.”
“She was an actress before she was a lawyer,” I explain. “I thought she was happy in New York, too. I don’t understand why Ashleigh stayed in LA either.” I did, but that was a story for another day. Stephi didn’t need to know the hell Ashleigh had lived through.
“She broke you,” Stephi says. And I guess from her point of view that must have been what it was like. I was heartbroken and she knew that. “You weren’t the same after she left.”
“She didn’t break me,” I admit. Her startled eyes meet mine. I’m not sure she’s old enough to hear what I’m about to say, or even mature enough to comprehend it, but if we don't have this talk, I’ll lose her. “I did. I’m not the honorable man, good husband, and dedicated father I thought I was. I never thought I could put you and your mom through the kind of hell that I did.”
“If you didn’t have an affair, why did you just let us go? Why did you leave for LA?”
“Wouldn’t it be hypocritical of me to judge your mom and Harvey when they did exactly what I was going to do and probably would have if things were different?” Stephi gasps. “I was angry, and I was hurt. But I finally understood exactly what I was doing to your mom. The feelings I had for Ashleigh were much deeper and stronger than I could control, and for a lot longer than I care to admit. Your mom, she only looked elsewhere because of the way I treated her. I wasn’t prepared to put her through it time and time again.” I sigh, “I wasn’t prepared to put you through it.”
At the same time my marriage with Anna broke down, a case I was reporting on fell through. My source at the local police department was arrested by internal affairs and somehow, I was caught up in it and charged with evidence and witness tampering. The newspaper fired me. In the space of a month, I had no family, no home, no job, and was back living with my parents.
If I’d have known Anna would start playing dirty, threatening to sell her story to the tabloids, claiming Krystal Valentina stole her husband and daughter, I wouldn’t have left Stephi with her. But my life was a mess and it just about killed me to admit that Stephi would be better off with Anna and not me.
It wasn’t meant to be a permanent arrangement. Stephi didn’t want to live with her mom, and it broke me every time I took her home because she didn’t want me to leave her there. She wanted to be with me. I had nothing to offer her, and knew I’d lose any custody claim I made. It was easier to settle for shared custody at the time. To revisit the arrangement when I was back on my feet.
“Princess, you had a chance to be happy and in a proper family, to get from Harvey what you should have had from me. To get from him something I couldn’t give you. Why wouldn’t I want you to have that?”
