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  I felt her whole body grow tense.

  Unable to understand what was bothering her, something in me snapped. “We should give us another chance.”

  As every bit of her went taut, I felt her push me away. Hurt and a bit angry, I reminded myself to relax. I wasn’t that man anymore. The old me would have lost it the second she went tense and didn’t tell me what was bothering her. The new me was in control of my actions.

  “It would be different this time. I’d put you first. Will you please at least consider giving me a second chance?” I said, feeling like it wasn’t too much to ask.

  After the night we’d shared, after this morning, the shower, everything, I felt like we were right for each other. I didn’t just feel like we were right for each other, I knew we were right for each other. Why didn’t she see it? Why wouldn’t she admit it? What was I missing?”

  But I saw her stressing as she stood, facing away from me, focused on something in her mind. Wrapped in my towel, I walked into the bedroom, leaving the bathroom door open wide.

  “Why does that stress you out?” I asked in a gentle voice as I grabbed clean clothes. I wanted answers, but I didn’t want to pressure or bully her into giving them.

  Aurora stood in the doorway between the bedroom and bathroom, her eyes huge and her mouth open in an expression of sheer shock. Her whole weight was supported by the doorframe, and I had a feeling without it, she’d surely fall over.

  She looked like she’d seen a ghost.

  I turned to see what had her so upset and saw a flash on the TV. True to old times, we’d left it on and muted all night. On the screen a news anchor was speaking, and behind him was the mural I’d seen and been so fascinated by.

  “One sec,” I told her. Rushing to the bedside, I turned up the volume in time to hear them say they’d be back with the whole story after these messages.

  Disappointed, I turned to her. “I saw that mural. It was incredible. I’ve never seen someone freeform paint 3D images like that.” I still had so many questions, but I hadn’t been able to find any concrete info about who the painter was. Pulling on my boxers and pants, I waited for her response. But she said nothing. Pulling on my shirt, I glanced at her again.

  She was so pale she looked like she might faint, and I could see she was trembling. Something had upset her. I couldn’t help but wonder if it had something to do with my response to our lack of birth control this morning. Maybe I’d truly scared her away for good with something so painfully innocent.

  Wouldn’t that just be my luck?

  Chapter Eighteen

  Aurora

  Panic. That’s what I felt right then. Pure, undiluted panic.

  I guessed the reason Sally was trying to get ahold of me was to warn me the segment was going to be running much earlier than planned.

  Second runner up to that panic was guilt. I should have told him already. The absolute worst way for him to learn about his daughter would be on the news.

  It felt like I was standing at ground zero as the whole world fell apart around me. Everything was crumbling, crashing down around me, and I just couldn’t open my mouth to tell him the truth. Why was it so hard to just tell him the truth?

  I could feel tears forming in my eyes and saw the worry in his. He stood and quickly closed the gap between us, holding me tightly.

  “What’s this about?” he asked in a soft voice.

  “You…” My throat closed up, halting the words, and I struggled to breathe.

  “I what, love?” he asked, pressing his lips to my forehead in the sweetest gesture that both melted my heart and sent shockwaves of pain through me. Everything had been going so perfectly. We’d been so happy. Everything was exactly what I wanted, except my inability to open up about Ashley.

  “You can tell me anything.” He murmured the words, and my heart fractured in my chest.

  Fear built up on the heels of all the panic and guilt. Fear he’d be angry. He had every right to be angry—I should have told him already! But I couldn’t bear the thought of him being mad at me. I’d shouldered the burden of being a single mother for so many years. If he were to be mad at me for it…I’d…I didn’t know. I’d lose my mind.

  “You have a daughter,” I whispered. The words felt like I was vomiting up live wasps that were stinging every inch of the way.

  “What?” He sounded stunned. His arms dropped away from me, and he took a step back. My heart shattered along the fractures, and I wound my arms around myself. It was time to face the music. Time to own up to my own screw ups. My own sins.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It was just so hard to tell you, I couldn’t-”

  “How?” He stared at me, disbelief shining in his dark eyes.

  “I didn’t know until after I left. A few days after I got home, I realized I was a little late for my period.” My voice dropped to an embarrassing squeak. It wasn’t a topic I wanted to discuss. “I’m sorry, I screwed up. Please forgive me?” The words rushed out.

  “I’m a dad?” He sank onto the edge of the bed.

  Hope sprouted in my heart. He didn’t seem mad. Merely stunned.

  “She’s eight. Her name is Ashley, and she’s every bit as artistic as you are,” I said, hearing the pride in my voice.

  “She’s…eight.” Something in his features twisted, and I felt my heart dropping to my toes. His expression turned bitter as he glared up at me. “You came to work for me and didn’t tell me.”

  Dread knotted deep in my belly. “I’m sorry. It never seemed like the right time to tell you.”

  His head lowered, and he shook it slowly back and forth as if he couldn’t believe my words. “Never seemed like the right time to tell me.” Anger rolled off him like thick fog, and I took a step back, very aware of my nudity behind the towel wound around my body.

  All warmth from the shower, all the passion, love, heat, and excitement from last night and this morning was gone. In its place were terror, pain, fear, and guilt.

  He rose off the bed, his fury showing in his features and his intimidating posture. “You slept with me, knowing I had a daughter. You let me think I was the bad guy, the asshole, all the while you were keeping a secret like that?”

  My whole chest felt like it was caving in. “I’m sorry.” There was nothing else I could say. Nothing I could do to fix it. I’d screwed up.

  He nodded, a slightly mocking expression on his face. “Thank you. Fixed it. I forgive you.” He shoved a hand through his hair, his fury showed in the trembling of his hand. “I could understand not telling me after our break up. I was a piece of shit then. I could forgive that. But when you came back to work for me? Why didn’t you tell me right away?”

  I felt my whole body shaking. “I was scared. And I didn’t know how to tell you.”

  “How to tell me?” He seemed incredulous. “Hey, Vlad, we have a daughter together.” His mocking expression sent the first flash of anger through me.

  “It wasn’t that easy, okay?” The defensive note in my voice must have sounded like a battle cry to him. His fists tightened at his sides, and his nostrils flared.

  “It was that easy. You chose not to tell me. Were you trying to get even with me?”

  Shock filled me. “No!”

  He moved toward me, and I backed up, my heart pounding uncomfortably in my throat. With a wall at my back and him before me, I felt an odd excitement—that same old excitement I used to feel when we fought—trickling though my veins.

  I knew he’d never physically hurt me. Even now, I knew he wouldn’t lay a hand on me. He planted both hands on the wall above my shoulders and leaned in, his threatening, imposing posture kicking my pulse into a breakneck speed.

  “No?” he growled. “You weren’t trying to punish me for hurting you?”

  I shook my head, mute. To my horror, twin tears rolled down my cheeks. His eyes, cold and callous, assessed me as if looking for the truth.

  “I should never have trusted you,” he growled.

  Te
ars began to stream down my cheeks as pain stabbed through my chest. Struggling to breathe around the cactus-like painful lump in my throat, I wanted to deny it. I wanted to tell him the truth. But I couldn’t speak.

  With a curse, he turned away from me and began to pace.

  The news came back on, featuring Ashley’s mural. He stopped pacing to stare at the screen, seeming entranced. When the piece ended, he turned to me.

  “You kept her from me.” His fury shone like madness in his eyes. “How dare you? She is mine too!”

  “I’m sorry.” I felt like a broken record.

  “Sorry? Fuck your sorry. That doesn’t give me back the eight years I’ve missed!” He went back to pacing, his fists tight balls at his sides.

  I lowered onto the edge of the bed, mopping at my wet face with the corner of my towel. Maybe he hadn’t changed after all. Suddenly resolute, I grabbed up my clothes and headed into the bathroom.

  I locked the door behind me and dressed, carefully ignoring my reflection. All of this was a mistake. He’d never really changed. He’d been out of control then; he was out of control now.

  When I was fully clothed again, I planted both hands on the counter and glared at myself in the mirror.

  It was time to leave.

  For good this time.

  No turning back. I could find another job. I could move to a new place. Find a new life. My parents would help.

  So why did the thought of losing him all over again hurt so much?

  Chapter Nineteen

  Vladmir

  A daughter. I had a daughter.

  The bathroom door opened, and she walked out, looking miserable. As miserable as she looked, I felt a million times worse.

  She headed for the door without even having the decency to talk to me.

  I wasn’t fucking having any of that. She wasn’t walking out again without even looking at me. Without explaining herself. I’d spent the last few weeks begging for her forgiveness. I’d admitted I was a shitty human, that I was a bad man. That I’d screwed up.

  Come to find out she had been keeping a secret uglier than my temper.

  I’d meant it when I’d said I could forgive the fact that she hadn’t told me eight years ago. But it was unforgivable that she hadn’t told me the moment she’d found out it was me hiring her that first day.

  “Where are you going?” I demanded.

  “I’m leaving,” she muttered.

  “Oh no you’re not. We’ve got things to discuss.” With a few steps, I moved between her and the exit she’d been making a beeline for.

  She stared up at me in stunned surprise.

  My anger kicked up a notch. “You think I don’t have a right to my daughter?” Through all of this, I felt cheated. I felt the possible relationship I could have had with my daughter might have been destroyed through no fault of my own.

  “What did you tell her about me?” I asked, advancing on her again.

  She lifted her chin into battle position, and excitement sparkled in her eyes. I’d had a feeling she used to love our fights, but I’d never called her on it. And fuck, did I get screwed for it. I was fucking done letting shit like that slide. Done.

  “Did you tell her that her daddy didn’t want her?” I could feel pain exploding in me like fireworks. I could remember that feeling, that sickening certainty that my parents never loved me. It had destroyed me as a child, and the thought that my daughter might feel the same way killed me.

  She shook her head violently.

  “What did you tell her?” I roared.

  “Nothing!” Her tears had all dried up, and only anger flowed from her. “I told her nothing. That maybe she’d meet you one day. That you also painted a mural.”

  It clicked. The reason she’d asked me that odd question. It had seemed out of place then, and I’d asked her why she’d asked. And she’d fucking lied to me.

  “How many times have you lied to me?” I asked.

  “I didn’t lie.” She sounded so sure my anger raged hotter than before.

  “No? I asked you why you wanted to know if I painted a mural. You said ‘just curious.’ Bullshit, you were telling my daughter about me and not telling me about her.”

  Her face went ashen. The absolutely stunned expression lasted a few heartbeats before she geared up, balling her little fists like she wanted to hit me, and glared at me. “Stop yelling at me!”

  “Stop…stop yelling at you,” I said, my voice trembling with rage. She had just yelled at me to tell me to stop yelling at her. Because I was calling her out on a lie.

  On her lies.

  She’d lied to me over and over and over again.

  “This is why I left!” She was shouting now. “Your temper is terrible. You were so cold. Maybe you’re not cold anymore, but your temper…” She gestured to the space between us like that perfectly described her issues with me.

  “And there was more,” she said, as if ready to unleash all my past transgressions. “You would leave me alone—or worse—drag me to things you thought more important than what I wanted to do. You would bully me, push me into doing your thing, and promise we’d do my thing next, but we never did.”

  She was right. I had done those things.

  I kept my voice carefully calm. “Does that make any of what you’ve done okay?” My question was velvety steel, all silent rage.

  Her face twisted. Her anger slipped into self-hatred for a second, then back to anger. “I thought I loved you. Maybe I was wrong.”

  “Maybe you were.” The words were wrong. I felt it the second they left my lips. “I wasn’t. I love you.” That was the crux of it. The truest cruelty. I loved her. I trusted her. I believed she’d never betrayed me, that she never would betray me. I was wrong.

  She gave a bitter laugh and scanned the room before coming back to glare at me. “I can tell. This was always your idea of love. Anger. Fighting.”

  Something in me snapped. I moved right in, pinning her to the wall and leaning in so close I could see the freckles in her green eyes. “And you loved every second of it. You think I can’t see the way your pulse jumps? You think I can’t smell how hot you get? How wet you are right now?”

  “Back off!” she shouted, shoving at my shoulders.

  The pushes lacked the power to truly move me, and I stayed firm. “Stop lying to me for a minute and admit it! Admit you lived to fight with me.”

  She shoved at me again. “That doesn’t make it okay.”

  “You pushed me. You used my weaknesses against me. You leveraged what you knew to goad me into fights. Because you liked it. Admit it.” I wanted to hear the truth from her lips.

  Pain lit up my face like a single pulse from a strobe light. I stepped back, aware she’d slapped me.

  The venom in her eyes was enough to poison me. “Forget about me. Forget about Ashley.”

  “No,” I said, getting between her and the exit as she tried to make a dash for it. “You’re not keeping me from my daughter.”

  “She’s my daughter,” she said, something like hatred in her features. “She doesn’t even know you.”

  The words hit my chest like a bullet, and I stumbled back a step. “Which was your choice.”

  She shook her head. “No, it was yours. You fought with me. You yelled, you refused to control your temper.”

  “You pushed me.”

  She shook her head again, as if completely refusing to accept any responsibility. “You proved how important I was to you the night you stormed out. All you’ll ever do is walk out on me when I need you.”

  Her eyes filled with tears.

  And I suddenly realized there was no winning this. There was no fixing it, no fixing us. We were broken beyond repair. I stepped aside out of the doorway so she could pass.

  “Who’s walking out now?” I asked as she stepped past me.

  With one hand on the door, she hesitated, like she had something to say. But she stayed silent, turned the knob, and left.

  “Who’s wa
lking out now?” I asked the empty room, feeling my heart crumble to dust in my chest.

  I had a daughter.

  Had. A daughter.

  Not mine.

  Chapter Twenty

  Aurora

  “I can keep her for a few days.” My mother wound her arms around me. “I haven’t seen you look so terrible since him.”

  I wanted to laugh despite my splitting headache and stuffy sinuses. I wanted to tell her there was a reason for that, that it was funny she should make that connection. But it was all too fresh to talk about.

  The look on Vlad’s face when he’d asked me “who’s walking out now” would be forever burned into my mind.

  My mother was still staring at me, and I gave her my best attempt of a smile. “I’ll be fine. I’ve missed her. Thank you again for watching her.”

  “Mom! Did you see the news?” Ashley asked as she let go of my father’s hand to rush me and jump into my arms. Catching her easily, I smiled into her bright little face.

  “I did! I’m so proud of you.”

  “Did my dad call?”

  The question hit me like a train. I could feel fresh tears welling in my eyes. My dad tried to damage control, taking her out of my arms with a comment about how that was enough.

  “No, sweetie, he didn’t,” my mother said, hugging both my father and my daughter.

  “Why is Mom sad?” Ashley asked them.

  As a family, we moved into the living room, and I let my parents handle this one for me while I tried to compose myself once more. I didn’t want to bawl in front of her, and I felt like my self-control was slipping away.

  “Well, she loved your dad. But things just weren’t right for them,” Mom said, sitting beside my father while he held Ashley in his arms.

  “Sometimes parents can love each other very much, but not work out. It’s hard to be people sometimes!” Dad kissed her nose, and I stepped back in, wiping at my leaking eyes.

  “Give me loves,” I said, opening my arms to her once more. My dad set her on her feet, and she launched into my arms. “I missed you.”