A Mother's Secrets (Parent Portal 4)

She’d been forced to move on. And was only these last months realizing that a mother never let go. Or, at least, she hadn’t.

And couldn’t. Not completely. She’d always love the baby she’d never known. Always wonder if he was okay...happy...loved. If he knew he was adopted...

“And you started a business whose emphasis is on open fertility donations, focusing not only on the parents’ rights, but on the rights of those who contribute,” Jamie said.

She shrugged. Life taught you lessons and if you wanted to be happy, you used them for good.

“But you know his name. Ryder.”

Shaking her head, she stopped when the movement affected Jamie’s hand on his baby. “That’s just what I called him. To myself.” She didn’t like how pathetic that made her sound. She wasn’t pathetic at all. She was a strong woman with a great life that she loved.

“So...” He moved his hand and she stiffened, expecting him to take away his warmth, and relaxed when he settled his palm on the left side of her stomach. Then his fingers moved slightly, adding a little pressure, as though playing with his son, and a fissure passed through her. Lighting up her body. “What happened to the father?”

She should have expected the question. Hadn’t. Nathan wasn’t part of a baby discussion. Wasn’t a detail she’d ever have shared with clients in her office.

Weighing the advisability of staying in the SUV with Jamie or going in the house, she searched for words.

“Chris?”

She turned automatically to look at him. Then realized maybe she shouldn’t have done so.

“You’re sacrificing so much for me, changing my entire world. Please let me give back.”

Sirens went off inside her. They didn’t come with particular words. Just clear warning. “You’re giving me far more than most surrogates get,” she said. This was a business deal.

She’d lost sight of the goal. That wasn’t good. No way that was good.

“I think you know I’m not talking about money. But what do I get to give for the maternal gift you’re bestowing upon my baby?”

She didn’t love his baby.

He hadn’t said love.

“I care about you, Chris. It’s ridiculous for us to keep pretending that’s not the case. I get that there are boundaries we can’t cross, but let me at least be your friend. Accept my gift of caring as I’m accepting yours.”

She had friends. A lot of them.

None that had ever called her Chris. Not more than once. She always corrected them. Always. She was Christine. All grown-up.

A grown-up could tell a little story from the past.

“His name was Nathan. I met him my senior year. He was a foster kid, also a senior, but new to Marie Cove and the high school so you wouldn’t have known him.”

Jamie and Emily had gone to USC and hadn’t even been in Marie Cove during the year and a half she’d known Nathan and then spent birthing Ryder.

“Nathan was responsible, grounded. More like me than any of the other kids. He knew life’s realities and thought of others. Life wasn’t just all about him. He wanted to join the military and loved talking to Gramps about Gramps’s time in the service. He wanted to spend time with me here, at the house, with my grandparents, and jumped right in and did things for them when he saw a need.” Had she reinvented the guy over the years? Romanticized him?

She’d certainly replayed those months over and over and over again. Far too many times.

“He told me repeatedly that it was so great to be part of a real family. When I got pregnant a few months before graduation, I was scared, of course, upset with us for not being more careful, but I was also kind of excited. I figured life was going to be different than I’d thought, but still be great for all of us. Until he balked. He didn’t want a baby. Didn’t want me to have it. Didn’t want to have anything to do with it. He’d been planning to see the world. Was just biding his time until he turned eighteen and could get out of Marie Cove and start living. His whole plan to join the military was so that he could travel to faraway places. He turned eighteen a couple of weeks before the end of the school year and left town the day after graduation without even saying goodbye.”

There. She’d given Jamie what he wanted.

His hand moved. Or the baby did. And the next thing she knew, she was sobbing. Big, gross, childish sobs all over the man who’d somehow found a way past the thirteen years’ worth of thickening walls protecting her heart.

Chapter Nineteen

Sliding his hand from Chris’s belly to her back happened naturally. Jamie didn’t consider options or consequences. The second she broke, he had her, pulling her to him, cradling her head against his shoulder. He was no psychiatrist or trained counselor, but he’d seen this one coming.