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“And then, boom, suddenly I find out I’m a dad. To a three-year-old who’d lost his mom.”
“Right,” I said. He held out a hand, like he’d made his point, but I still wasn’t following. I shook my head. “So, what does that have to do with you thinking it would befor the bestto leave without telling me about him?”
He shifted his body so he faced me directly. “Layla, what would you have done if I’d told you about Grayson? Would you have been willing to marry me and become an instant stepmom to a kid you’d never met before?”
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “It’s a lot to consider. But I would have wanted the option to think about it instead of getting shut out of the whole thing.”
With a shake of his head, he angled back toward the bar again and took a sip of his beer. “And then after you’d thought about it?”
I closed my eyes, letting my mind wander back to that time in our lives. A time that I’d done a good job not thinking about until recently. With a nod, I looked at him again. “I would have done it. Because I loved you.”
“Exactly.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“It is. Because it wasn’t what you wanted. Man, it wasn’t whatIwanted. But I’m his dad. I didn’t have a choice. You did.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, trying my best to get a handle on the grief and anger swirling within me. I hadn’t had a choice. He’d taken it away from me when he left without telling me.
Before I could speak, he held out a hand. “I’m not saying being Grayson’s dad is like some kind of prison sentence I’m being forced to live out. I love him. I love him so much it actually kind of freaks me out. And he had me wrapped around his finger the day I met him. But when I first found out? Man, when I got that call, I lost my mind. I was told I’d knocked up a one-night stand, and not only that but she’d died, and now I needed to take our kid because her parents couldn’t do it.”
I winced at his harsh words, looking down at the bar.
“I was wrecked,” he went on, his tone laced with anguish. “I felt like a terrible person. Candice hadn’t known how to get ahold of me—even if she’d wanted to involve me in Grayson’s life, she couldn’t have—and that didn’t sit well at all.”
Trying to put myself in his shoes for a minute, I took a sip of my beer and imagined what that must have felt like. To learn that a choice I’d made years prior had such profound consequences. I got it. I still didn’t like it, but I got it, at least.
“I’m sure that was really hard for you.”
“It was.”
“But it still didn’t give you the right to do what you did,” I said quietly, holding my ground.
Zac let out a frustrated noise, like something between a sigh and a groan. “You really don’t get it? It took everything I had to get rid of all that baggage and focus on Grayson. I needed to step up for him and be a good man. I went from not wanting kids to suddenly having a three-year-old, and I needed to stick by him no matter what.”
“That makes sense. It’s a lot to come to terms with. But you didn’t have to do it alone. I would have helped you if you’d given me the chance.”
“Maybe you would have. For a while.”
