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Considering that Ragnar’s tail is wagging a thousand times per second, I’m certain that she’s the one who had just pulled up to the house.
“You’re still up?” she asks, crossing the room to pet Ragnar before turning a worried smile on me. “The bathrooms were a mess, so I took a crack at them so the cleaners wouldn’t quit on me when they saw ‘em in the morning.”
“A little indigestion and a John Wick marathon,” I say with a shrug.
Beckoning her with my finger, I try to buy a little time before telling her what’s been robbing me of a decent night’s sleep for a solid week now.
She lets her faithful sidekick outside before coming over to sit on my lap. “Now are you going to tell me what’s been bothering you?”
“What gave me away?” I ask her with a chuckle as she nuzzles her cheek against my rough beard.
“You think I don’t know my grumpy old man by now?” she answers, looking up at me with a nervous smile marring her face. “Are you having second thoughts about adopting Joe?”
“You know me better than I know myself most days, and I am proud to offer Joe my name,” I tell her. “It’s about Molly.”
She tilts her head as she waits for me to spit out the words I was rehearsing all night.
“You know that picture that Mack had swiped from her shop? He took it because he recognized her mom.”
Until now, there’s never been a moment I had a hard time meeting her gaze. When she clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth, I realize that I’ve left her hanging.
“Did you know her?” she quietly asks me.
“I think I did. I mean, yes. But I’ve told you what I was like, after my dad was killed and my ex left.” I don’t want to rehash an old confession. Bree has heard about it before and shrugged it off as mydark period. And it truly was. “She went by Max. One of the guys brought her back from somewhere along the way, and she stayed for a while.”
My mouth feels unnaturally dry, so I look over to my glass of water. Unfortunately, there’s barely a few drops left.
“Are you telling me…? Oh God.” Bree can’t get the words out either. Instead, she takes my hand and holds it over her heart, which is beating at a million miles an hour.
“I don’t know. Mack and Roy are—um, possible candidates also. I mean, possible fathers. They, um, we were all with Max. And I, for one, wasn’t always coherent enough to becareful.”
With all the shit I’ve told Bree about my life, that was the single hardest sentence I’ve ever uttered.
“Flint?” she softly says my name before reaching up to wipe at the corner of my eye. When she pulls her hand back, I see the moisture that she collected, shining on her fingertip and a wave of self-loathing hits me.
My past is coming back to bite me in the ass.
“I love you, doll. I love you so much, and this is the last thing…”
“We’ve always known we couldn’t rewrite our pasts, Flint. We just move forward,” she tells me, before leaning in to snuggle against my chest.
I open my mouth, but quickly shut it. As well as she knows me, I know that Bree needs a moment to process this. Out in the yard, Ragnar catches my eye as he tracks the scent of some animal that I’m sure is long gone, and I let out a deep breath before tightening an arm aroundhis momma,while keeping my other hand over her heart.
For me, that’s the hardest part about this situation. Knowing the heartbreak Bree felt when she couldn’t have children—granted that was before I knew her—to how excited she’s been about the prospect of adopting Joe.
The last thing I would ever want to do is hurt Bree, but if it turns out that Molly is a child I accidently fathered, I pray that Bree can open her heart a little more.
I find comfort in just holding her, and feeling her heartbeat start to normalize, relaxes my own.
“Flint?” Her voice is muffled against my chest as she rubs her face against my shirt.
“Yeah, doll?”
“You haven’t told your children yet, have you?”
“No, they don’t need to know unless it turns out I’m the father,” I relay my thoughts on that subject.
“I agree. And the test, do you think Tabby would be able to handle it?”
