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“Not judging. Merely mentioning. You drove here, right?”
“I’ll be able to drive back.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” he said.
“So, I was looking over your contract—”
“We can talk about that later. Right now you need to spill what’s going on in your head,” he said.
I drew in a deep breath as my shoulders slumped.
“I ran into Ana today,” I said.
“Did it not go well?”
“She had her son with her.”
Brandon set his beer down as he choked on his first sip.
“Could you not have waited until I had swallowed?” he asked hoarsely.
“Sorry.”
“So, she had who in tow?” he asked.
“Her son.”
“Ana has a son?”
“You’re acting like you didn’t know she had a son.”
“I didn’t know she had a son.”
“You’re telling me that you’ve lived here all your life—that your family runs in the same circle as her family does—and you didn’t know she had a son?” I asked.
“At least you know what she’s hiding now,” he said.
“How did you not know she had a son?”
“Because she wasn’t my friend in high school, Tyler. You dated her, but that didn’t mean I got on with her. I only did because you were dating her, and I did even more so I could bang her best friend, but we didn’t keep in touch after the two of you broke up. How shitty of a friend would that have made me?”
“So you weren’t hiding this from me.”
“Hell no. If I’d known she had a son, I would’ve been the first to tell you.”
I sighed and leaned my elbow on the table as I sipped my whiskey.
“She has a son. An eight-year-old son.”
“Wait, what? Did you say eight?” Brandon asked.
My eyes settled on his, and I nodded my head.
“You don’t think—?”
“I have no fucking clue what to think,” I said.
“She could’ve had a rebound fling.”
“Ana doesn’t strike me as that kind of woman.”
“She also didn’t strike you as a fucking mother, and look where we’re sitting.”
He had a point—a point I couldn’t deny.
“What did the boy look like?” Brandon asked.
“Uh, brown hair. Blue eyes I think. Or maybe green. Maybe they were hazel?”
“You mean to tell me you ran into your ex and her eight-year-old son this afternoon and you can’t recall what the hell the kid looks like?”
“Sorry if I was a little blindsided by the fact that the woman I love is a mother!”
The bar fell silent and the bartender shot me a look.
“Sorry,” I said.
“What did she say? Do you know who the father is?” Brandon asked.
“She didn’t say anything, just stared at me with this shocked expression before she introduced me to her son, Brody. I directed most of my conversation at him after that.”
“Why?”
“Because he kept asking me questions.”
“Like…?”
“If I wanted to come over and play,” I said flatly.
“Oh shit.”
“Yeah. After the thoroughly awkward moment was over, I bent down and shook his hand. And, Brandon, the way it felt, the way he looked at me…there was something there. I don’t even know how to explain it.”
“You think he’s your son.”
“I don’t know what to think, Brandon. I really don’t.”
“No wonder you’ve been so fucking distracted today,” he said.
“I need to know who his father is. I need to know if he’s my son.”
“Then ask Ana. At this point, she kind of owes you some answers.”
“Just ask her? Show up at her house and knock on her door until she answers?”
“Well, she can’t really keep you from coming in. You know what she’s been hiding now.”
“What if she’s hiding a husband or a baby daddy behind those doors as well?” I asked.
“Then she’s not the girl you fell in love with and you’ve dodged a bullet.”
I threw the rest of my second drink back and considered Brandon’s words. The issue was, I didn’t agree with him. Having any child with Ana would’ve been incredible. But having a son with her? That was every man’s primal dream: to drag his curvy queen back to his lair and fuck her until she bore him a son. Was that what I had done?
Did Ana and I have a son together?
“Why would she hide something like this from me?” I asked.
“Relax. You don’t know if it’s your kid,” Brandon said.
“Then play along with me. If Brody is my son, why the hell would she hide this from me?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she was upset from your argument?”
“But that doesn’t negate trust. Did she not trust me with this? Did she not think I would stay behind and help her as much as I could? I could’ve gone to school here in L.A. and stayed with her and Brody, no questions asked.”
“Maybe that was the issue.”
“What?” I asked.
“Look, I get that your vision is sort of clouded right now, but think of this in terms of Ana. Now, I don’t know what kind of woman she is today, but I sort of know the kind of girl she was in high school, and that girl bent over backward to make you happy. Remember the time she snuck into that R-rated horror movie with you and it wasn’t until after that you found out she wasn’t going to sleep for weeks?”
