Penelope sets down her notebook and pen, clicking it closed before rising from the couch and crossing the room to meet me in the middle, wrapping her arms around my waist and squeezing. Her soft lips kiss my neck.
“I love you, too, Jack.”
I love you, too, Jack.
The love of my life had always been the game of football. All my time and energy were spent on only that. Girls were never a part of the equation. They were not my focus, and they hardly mattered.
Until the day I met Penelope Halbrook.
Penelope was the first girl I loved.
When I’d said those three little words to her, it had been the first time I’d told a girl I loved her, and I’d meant every word of it.
I loved Penelope Halbrook!
Loved her smile and her kind heart. I loved how sweet she was. How she never had an unkind word to say about anyone. How she worried about her grades and her mother and her brother.
She wanted to take care of everyone, including me.
A ball of nervous energy, I drop to the floor of the hotel room and do twenty push-ups, then jog in place a few minutes when what I should do is go downstairs and use the gym.
I have a daughter.
I have a seven-year-old daughter that my college girlfriend gave birth to without telling me. She even named her after me but never told me the child existed. I’m not even sure how to feel right now. A million feelings run through my head, and the last thing I want to do is fly home tomorrow.
I thought maybe it would be a quick trip here and back home. Penelope would tell me I was overreacting, that Skipper was not my daughter, and then I would fly to Colorado as the same person I was before and resume my normal life—my best life, never looking back.
Never look back. The way she did.
What kind of woman in a great relationship has a baby and doesn’t say anything? What kind of woman just vanishes without a trace and leaves a man wondering?
We were good together.
She loved me the same way I loved her.
I’m angry again, frustration consuming me. I don’t know what to do with it. It’s hardly productive to get angry without having anywhere to direct it. I could go jog or run this energy off, but I don’t have tennis shoes with me.
I wore these ridiculous loafers.
I have a daughter. A little one who likes princesses and has missing teeth.
I should call my lawyer, obviously, but that feels premature. I don’t have all the facts. I mean, I have the main fact: there is a seven-year-old on this planet with my eyes, my nose, and my smile. She has my same coloring, too.
Dark hair.
Dark eyes.
A dimple in her tiny face.
Jesus Christ, she looks exactly like me.
I knew it the second I laid eyes on her in that green room at the football game. It just took me this long to make sense of it in my brain.
Logically, I know I need lawyers. Logically, I know I’m going to be taking Penelope to court. Logically, she owes me… but what? How does a person make retribution for a child they kept from you? It’s not as if I can take custody of the kid without traumatizing her. Penelope isn’t an unfit mother because she was too afraid to tell me I got her pregnant when we were in college.
I don’t think my publicist, manager, agent, or a lawyer are going to see it that way, but a part of me wants to keep this between Penelope and me. Why get any of my people involved?
Is that stupid? Does that make me an even bigger fool?
God sent me to Illinois for a reason, I’m sure of it.
I take a knee next to the window, hands folded, face toward the sky.
“Mom and Dad,” I pray. “If you’re watching me now, tell me what to do.” I pray to my parents—my guardian angels and spirit guides—the same way I do almost every night, asking them for guidance and telling them my inner thoughts. This fear is a big one and could possibly be my greatest challenge.
You loved her once.
It’s as if my mother is speaking directly to me inside this hotel room even though she’s not here. I can hear her words. They’re the same words she would’ve said to me if she were alive today.
Always supportive. Always rational.
Always sensical.
“She lied to me, Mom,” I reason. “Penelope lied.”
You love her still, son. You still love her.
I bow my head, wishing it weren’t true. It would be easier to hate Penelope for keeping secrets from me. Not just any secret.
A child.
I want to be angry. I want to be.
“What should I do?” What the actual fuck do I do?