“Or was it before, because if it was, I gotta say then, I regret stopping Ky from kicking your ass further.”
“No, it wasn’t like that.”
“Good.”
“I just wanted to protect her back then. She came here and, fuck, I don’t know. She was so scared.” I thought that I should shut up because it sounded like I had felt something back then.
“It’s okay to feel that way. I get it. I wanted to hug the hell out of that poor girl back then too. So then tell me what happened.”
“She wrote me. I didn’t write her back for like a year. Hell, I didn’t even open her letters for months, at first. I don’t know why. I don’t think I ever will. I wasn’t going to write her back but they kept coming and I started to feel really shitty for not sending her anything.”
I paused, my eyes going to the floor for a moment. I swallowed thickly as I remembered the night it really hit me.
“Then she came back… and she wasn’t a girl anymore. And I kind of just woke up or something the moment I saw her.”
“Ky didn’t know any of this?” he asked but I had a feeling he already knew the answer. And I knew he was disappointed.
“No. I get that I should have gone to him right away, but I was trying to ignore it. She’s his sister. I got that it wasn’t right.”
His lips pressed into a thin line and his head did a slow nod.
“She got to you?”
“She did,” I said not even trying to deny it. “She stole my fucking heart.”
“So why is she comin’ around like she doesn’t have a clue what the hell is goin’ on?”
“I don’t have a good answer for that. Not really. I’m freakin’ out here. I have a kid and I didn’t even know that Amber was pregnant.” I took a breath because the anger was threatening to come back. “She was going to give her up for adoption and never tell me. Fuck. And here I am, thrown into this thing and scared as hell that Sparrow isn’t going to be alright.”
“Sparrow,” he repeated my girl’s name with a smile. “I like it.”
“And how am I supposed to tell the woman that I’m head-over-heels for that I now have a child with another woman? A woman that is dead now. A woman that I spent a year with but didn’t even feel half of what I feel for Ingram. It’s all so messed up. Ingram has enough going on with trying to raise Chry, she doesn’t need all of this too. I couldn’t ever ask her to raise a kid that wasn’t hers. This… it’s going to destroy her.”
“Let me ask you something,” he said and made sure he had my attention before he went on. “Before this, did you see yourself spendin’ your life with Ingram?”
“Yeah, actually.”
“And in that vision, what did it look like?”
“Amazing,” I breathed out thinking of what a future with Ingram and Chry would look like. “A perfect woman by my side and a little boy to look up to me. What’s not to love about that life?”
“And that little boy, you see him as yours? You want to take care of him as if you’re his dad?”
“Yeah,” I said dumbfounded. How else would I take care of him? I kind of already thought of him that way if I wanted to dig deep and admit it.
“So you can see past the fact that Chry doesn’t share your blood?”
“I don’t even think of it really.” That was the truth.
Where was he going with all of this?
“Let me get this straight,” he said and rubbed his finger over his beard right below his bottom lip. “You can see some other man’s kid as your own because you love him and his mom, but Ingram isn’t strong enough to do the same? Her heart isn’t as big as yours?”
His words hit me like a sledgehammer to the chest.
“Damn,” I breathed out. I was looking at it all wrong. Ingram was incredible and I had no doubt that if she loved me like I loved her, then she would automatically love Sparrow too. I was a fucking idiot.
The doctor chose that moment to come in and talk to me. Iron hung around and listened to everything that was going on. Which was good because I had a feeling I was going to need all the help that I could get.
