rumbling. ‘Sure. Of course. Here?’
‘No. Somewhere warm.’ She looked down at his stick and her eyes widened. ‘Are you okay to walk? What happened?’
‘I’m fine.’ He felt exposed and caught off guard as he flicked the stick into thirds and shoved it in his bag. Now she’d see him as something less too. ‘There’s a bar across the way. Or the café in the hospital?’
‘Whatever’s nearer. I can’t be long; I had to get a friend to watch over Lachie while I came here.’
He walked back up the ramp and inside the hospital, his heart now thundering almost out of his chest. ‘Coffee?’ Banal but necessary. Anything to fill the void in the conversation.
She almost flinched at his question. ‘No. Thanks. Just water.’
After a few minutes they were facing each other in an otherwise empty café. Outside, the street lights cast an eerie glow. Inside, the strip lights were too bright, too clinical. He wrapped his hands around his mug of steaming coffee, bracing himself for what he’d already worked out. At least he thought he had. It was hardly rocket science. Just a bit of sex and some maths.
Only it hadn’t been just sex; it had been mind-blowing. Intimate. The most intense, the most sensual he’d ever had, and he would have called her if he’d ever stopped feeling sorry for himself. ‘Okay, Sophie, I’m guessing this is more than just a telling-off for not calling you?’
She nodded. ‘I wish it were that simple. Believe me, I can most definitely deal with rejection and I would have chalked you up to experience and forgotten all about it.’
He guessed that was supposed to hurt him. Surprisingly, it did, a little. ‘But...?’
‘That night... I thought... I thought you were okay, you know? I thought we might, well, at least see each other again. You certainly seemed keen. But you just went cold. Was I just a one-night stand to you? Was that it? Because that’s not what you said at the time. That’s not how it felt. But then, I was pretty cut up about my grandmother’s death, so I was easy prey to someone like you.’
Ouch. Someone like you. He didn’t know exactly what she meant by that but he could see how it would have looked to her: single guy picks up grieving beautiful woman. Takes advantage. Doesn’t call. ‘It wasn’t like that. I liked you. It was...’ Special. Different.
‘What was it, Finn? To you?’ She twisted her hands together and took a deep breath. Her nostrils flared and her jaw tightened and the deep breathing didn’t seem to be helping. She looked up at him and glared. ‘Whatever. Forget it. It doesn’t matter now; what you felt doesn’t matter. Except... Actually, you know what? I’m so angry at you because everything could have been a damned sight easier if you’d just picked up the phone.’
‘I lost it. Down a mountain.’ Along with his self-esteem, his stupid decision-making and, for a long time, his positivity. Thankfully that was clawing its way back.
He wasn’t going to tell her that he’d left his phone down there on purpose, that he’d made sure all his contacts were erased. That the ones in the Cloud were too. That he’d drawn a line between before the accident and after and given his brother instructions to hide as much information about Finn as he could from everyone.
Her eyebrows rose as if to say lame excuse. ‘You know, I’ve thought about what I was going to say to you, so many times. I’ve rehearsed it over and over and now I’m here I don’t actually know what to say.’
She was hurting and he didn’t think it was from rejection; it was from those hard years of being pregnant and a single mother. He took a breath and jumped. ‘Lachie’s my son. Right?’
He prayed she was going to say Wrong. But why the heck else was she here? She wouldn’t come this far just to berate him for not following up on a date almost two and a half years ago.
She gasped. ‘I tried to find you. So hard you wouldn’t believe. I always wanted you to know. It’s your right, and his. But now...’ Her eyes darkened. ‘I don’t know what it’s going to mean to you—what he’s going to mean to you—so I don’t want you to know because you might go cold again and he doesn’t deserve that. He deserves a father who wants to know him, who’s interested and in it for the long haul and I’m not sure you’re that guy.’
Wow.
She continued, ‘But you have to know, everyone says so, and I feel like I have to tell you, otherwise it’s on my conscience. So, yes, my gorgeous little Lachlan Spencer Harding, that beautiful, funny, clever handful, is your son.’
Finn closed his eyes and tried to control the emotions, ones he wasn’t prepared for, tumbling through him. He didn’t want to be a father. He didn’t want to have the responsibility of it all. He wasn’t ready. Would he ever be ready? He had one leg, damn it. He could barely walk. He couldn’t turn round quickly and catch a falling child. He couldn’t teach him how to kick a ball or run around in the park like he’d dreamed his own dad would do, but never did. He couldn’t protect himself from hurt, never mind an eighteen-month-old.
He wished they’d never had that night. He wished he’d kept in touch with her. He wished he hadn’t fallen hundreds of feet down a mountain in a blizzard and made himself an invalid when now...now he needed two legs more than ever in his whole life.
He nodded, feeling the same kind of sensation he’d had that wintry night when he’d stepped into thin air...as if he was falling into a nightmare. And yet, cushioning the landing, was a bright shining kernel of something good. He had a son.
Whoa.
A giggling, wriggling superhero with two club feet who most definitely deserved the very best of fathers.
He’d had a son for one and a half years. He’d missed so much already.
And he knew all about being that kid with no dad. About the dreams of him turning up one day and being like some sort of king. About watching the other kids get to play, work, laugh with their fathers and wonder what you’d done that was so bad yours didn’t want to know you. He knew how that felt and he wasn’t going to let his son go through that.
He opened his eyes and looked at Sophie, who was watching him with a hand pressed to her mouth and a frown on her forehead. God knew what she’d been through. He imagined the names she’d called him. Imagined the sleepless nights, the endless worry. Then the righteous anger at his silence. It was time to man up. ‘I’m so sorry.’
* * *
‘Sorry?’ Sophie was lost for words. She’d expected him to deny his child, demand a paternity test or be angry that she’d come here and told him. She hadn’t expected this. Was it a trick?
‘Yeah. I blew it. I messed up. I should have called but...’ He ran a hand across his dark hair and shrugged. ‘Circumstances meant I wasn’t in a position to call for a while. Then I just thought... Well, to be honest, I didn’t think at all.’
‘Clearly. You lost your phone down a mountain, but you can retrieve information from backup online; everyone knows that.’ She had nowhere to focus the anger she’d stored up for so long and he was stripping it away from her with one word. Sorry. It seemed as if he really was, but it wasn’t enough. ‘There are lots of ways to find information if you want it badly enough.’ Although wanting hadn’t helped her.
‘I couldn’t. I just couldn’t, okay? I didn’t know you needed me. And, if I remember rightly, the name you’d tapped into the phone was Sexy Sophie so I couldn’t have looked for you anyway. We didn’t do the surname thing.’
‘Yes, well, I presumed we’d get to that on the second date.’
He’d said she was beautiful, called her sexy as hell, and she’d laughed and told him he was clearly drunk. But he hadn’t been and neither had she. He’d been funny and caring and enigmatic. He’d stroked her back when she’d cried about her grandmother.