“Come on in and have a seat.” I push open the front door to my condo and hold it open for her. “Make yourself at home,” I say, taking her coat and hanging both hers and mine on the hook just by the door.
“It’s nice.”
“You’ve been here before,” I tell her.
“I have?” Her brow furrows as if she’s trying to recall the memory.
“Yeah, we used to spend a lot of time here together.”
“I’m sorry. I wish I could remember.”
Damn, that cuts to the bone. “Let’s start at the beginning. Tell me everything.”
“I don’t know you.”
I nod. “I know you don’t remember me, but we were close. Really close, and, Delaney, I’m pretty sure that your daughter is our daughter. I think Kendrix is mine. I’ve run the dates in my head a thousand times today. The timeline fits.”
“We were sleeping together?” she asks.
“Yeah, we had been for a couple of years.”
She scoots closer to her end of the couch, away from me. “Why should I believe you?”
I rack my brain for some kind of proof, of some sort of evidence I can show her, and that’s when it hits me. Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I scroll to the one photo I allowed myself to keep all these years. “This,” I say, handing her my phone. “This photo was taken the day before you left for college after your break. I was supposed to meet you later that night. We got a room at a bed and breakfast. We didn’t need to because we had my place, but you said it would be romantic. I agreed. We took this picture then. That was the last time I saw you.”
“My accident, it was in California.” I can hear the confusion in her voice as she tries to piece all of this, piece me into her life.
“Yeah.” I swallow hard. “I was late. Really late, like over four hours. When I got to the bed and breakfast, you had already checked out.”
“Why were you late?”
“I fucked up. I was reeling from what you made me feel. I was upset that you were going back to school. I was going to miss you and didn’t know how to handle that.”
“How long did we… date?”
“We weren’t exclusive,” I admit. I want to tell her that we were madly in love and that we should ride off into the sunset, but I have a feeling she’s been lied to way too much these past few years. I will never be anything but honest with her. “For about two years, every time you came home for break or for the summer, we were together.”
“But we weren’t official? We weren’t dating?”
“No.”
“Did you want to?”
“Yes. However, at the time I didn’t admit that to you or myself.”
“What did we do? When we were together?”
“Movies, dinner. We spent a lot of time out at the lake just sitting in the back of my truck. Sleeping under the stars, skinny dipping a time or two.” I smile, trying to lighten the mood, and the load I’m sure that’s sitting on her shoulders, just as it is mine. This is a lot to process.
“We were sleeping together?”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“From the night we first met.” She nods, accepting my answer. This has to be hard for her. I wait patiently, giving her time to catalogue what I’ve said.
“How did we meet?”
“I was with the guys at Bottom’s Up. That’s a local bar here in town. You were home on summer break. Something I learned you did every year. It was the summer before your third year of college. I don’t know how I missed seeing you before then. The moment I laid eyes on you, I knew you were someone I wanted to spend time with.”
“So, you wanted to sleep with me?” The corner of her mouth tilts into a grin.
“Yes.”
“You’re being very… honest and open about all of this. I don’t sense you trying to sway me in any one direction.”
“I will always be honest and open with you. I have nothing to hide. I’ve regretted that last night, the one I was late for, since the moment I found out you had checked out of the B&B. I wasn’t honest with you or myself until it was too late. I vowed to never be that guy again.”
“So… we slept together that first night? Sorry, I know that’s what you said, but that’s not me. Not the me I am now. I just… I’m trying to wrap my head around all of this.”
“Yes. However, I’d also like to note that we were both drinking, but neither one of us were too drunk that we couldn’t make an informed decision about what we were doing. Our chemistry was palpable.”
“And after that?”
“You were home for a week. We spent any time I wasn’t at work together until you went back to school. We texted here and there, and then when you came home for spring break, you called me. We met up, and the cycle began.”