He looked me in the eye. “Reagan, I want to know Bobby, I do. He’s my son, how could I not. But I also want to get to know you again. I should have realized how hard it was for you to merge into my life. I already knew the people I was surrounded by were assholes. I had grown up with them. I guess I was delusional and thought they wouldn’t go too far. I’m sorry I didn’t protect you, and I hope you don’t hold that against me.”
“Of course not!” He pulled me into his strong arms. I couldn’t believe Aiden blamed himself for anything that happened. Maybe, at the end of the day, we were both just young. “I guess both of us could have handled the whole thing better. But I’m glad we can be together now. I want to get to know you, too.”
“So, it looks like we’re on the same page.”
His face lit up in a smile. It was a smile I hadn’t seen in close to ten years. He was always so cute when he broke it out. I used to wish he would smile all the time. Something about seeing it made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
“Yeah, we are.”
I rested my head on his chest. There was so much comfort to be found in his body. The soft rise of his breath pushing his muscular chest into mine — it gave me solace. Something that hadn’t been easy to find these past few years.
I was just about ready to take myself home, prepared to take on whatever the future held for Aiden and me. I picked my head up. Though I’d like Aiden to come over and spend the night, I didn’t want Bobby to end up confused, and I did need to get home in order to relieve the babysitter.
I was on the verge of telling him all of this when something else crossed my mind.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“How did you figure all of this out. I can kind of understand the stuff with Bobby, but everything else. How did you piece that together?”
Aiden’s cheeks colored, but for the life of me, I couldn’t guess why he would have any reason to feel embarrassed about figuring out a lot of what had happened.
“You promise not to laugh.”
“Well, if I find it amusing, I cannot promise you I will not giggle or chuckle. But I can say that I will try to be nice about it.”
What in the world could it be that Aiden felt the need to be so secretive about? It couldn’t be so scandalous that I would entirely lose my marbles over the prospect.
At least I didn’t think so.
“So, I hired a PI to do some digging. She was the one who helped me connect a lot of the dots.”
Thankfully, I didn’t start laughing, but that was because I didn’t think Aiden’s news was particularly funny. In fact, I was shocked that he would go so far just to reconnect with me.
“I love you, Aiden Harris. And I was a fool to ever let you go.”
“I feel the same exact way about you, Reagan.”
I angled my face upward and kissed Aiden with all the might I could muster. We had almost a decade of passion to catch up on. I was excited to keep this momentum going.Epilogue - ReaganSix Months Later…We were finally introducing Aiden as Bobby’s dad to Bobby. The three of us had been spending a whole lot of time together. Aiden and I agreed that having the two of them get to know one another first was for the best. Bobby was in a very precarious emotional situation when Aiden first came into our lives. We didn’t want to push him closer to the edge.
That seemed like it was a good plan because, over the past few months, Bobby’s behavior really improved. Having Aiden in his life had done wonders for him. All of his teachers were astounded. He was quickly becoming a school favorite, and I was so proud of my little cherub.
“Mommy! Is he here yet?”
Ever since I told Bobby that Aiden was his father, he had been super hyper to see him. Aiden had to take a small business trip, so I told Bobby a couple of days before Aiden returned. The two of us thought he might want some time apart, just in case Bobby didn’t take the news well. But Bobby wanted to see Aiden immediately.
I kind of wished we’d done it differently because of how excited he was to see his dad, but Bobby had been able to keep that energy up for days, and this morning, he woke me up so early. But I wasn’t able to stay mad at my son.
“He should be here soon. Your father did say he was on his way.”