𝙽𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝙴𝚗𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑

Eleven

Grayson

I wanted to kill her. I couldn't be anywhere near her. She was a stranger to me-somebody who would lie to me that way. For seven years, she knew she had my son. I wasn't worth talking to about it. I didn't deserve to know I had a kid out there.

I pushed off the wall and backed away. Everything was a lie. The last seven years. Just when I thought she was out of my life, I found out she had a tie to me the entire time. I was too furious to speak.

She stood there, watching me. "Say something, please."

I shook my head. I couldn't. She didn't wanna hear anything I had to say, anyway.

My son. My blood. She kept him from me.

"You need to calm down. He's right next door. I don't want you to scare him. Got it?" I didn't answer, but I did walk to the other side of the room. I had to put as much space between us as I could. I leaned against the wall, pounding my hands on it every once in a while.

"I mean it, Grayson. Calm down, or get out of here. I won't have you scaring my son."

"Our son." I hissed it. Her eyes went wide, then she looked away. She was right, though. I had to keep myself under control. He might know one day that he was mine-I didn't want his first memories of me to be of me losing my shit on his mother.

"How?" I muttered. It was all I could say. My fists were clenched, my heart pounded like a runaway train. I saw a picture of them on the table by the bed, and there he was. Right in front of my face. He looked just like me, like a little clone. How could she look at somebody who looked like me for seven years and not even care? Didn't she think she should tell me? That I deserved to know?

It was all a mess in my head. I couldn't make sense out of it. "How?" I asked again.

"How what?"

"How could you?" I stared at her. She wouldn't look at me. I watched her wrap her arms around herself, rubbing her biceps like it was cold in there. I was sweating, on fire.

"I didn't know what to do."

"So you left? And you were pregnant?" Every word made the rage even more real. It rose in me until it just about choked me. I couldn't see straight.

"Yes. Okay? Yes. Obviously." Her voice got sharp, nasty.

"No. You don't get to do that." I pointed a finger in her face. "Don't get an attitude with me."

"Why the hell not? The criminal, getting in my face, asking why I did what I did. I did what I thought was right, Grayson. The only thing I could do."

"Leaving your husband? Lying about a baby? Hiding him, yourself? That's what you thought was right? Who the hell are you Jess?"

"A mother." She spat the words, then pushed her way past me and sat on the bed. She glared up at me. "When I found out I was pregnant, I had to make a choice. I had to protect my baby."

"From whom?"

"From you, Grayson. And your buddies. The club. I had to keep my baby away from that mess."

"Oh, please." I threw my arms up in the air. "Gimme a break. You sit there and act like we were monsters."

"Right then? You were. You know it. You don't have the courage to admit it to yourself."

"Yeah. It's so easy to sit here all these years later and say that. But you know one thing I never did? I never ran out on you. I never betrayed you. I was nothing but faithful to you from the day we got together. I would've done anything, anything at all for you. All you had to do was ask."