Fake Daddy (The Single Brothers 2)

Shoot, was it our anniversary or something?

Even worse, her birthday?

Shit, I started to go through my calendar, because Martin had warned me about stuff like this. ‘Make sure you remember anniversaries and birthdays.’

He gave me a little guide book on relationships, seeing as he was the King of them these days. Noah and Kylie have another barbecue, and I wanted to take Ivy with me. But, I knew that I couldn’t take her without her knowing the truth. This fucking charade has gone on for far too long. Like three months too long.

“Yep,” I said as soon as I picked up the phone. I was lost in my thoughts and wondering if I’d missed something else and this is why Ivy hadn’t responded to my text. I sent it twice, and my phone said that not only did she receive it, but she read it, too.

“Chad, it’s Olivia.”

I shook my head, “Sorry sis. I didn’t know who it was.”

“Did you speak to Ivy?”

I cleared my throat because I was a bit surprised about sis mentioning her name.

“No. But you don’t know her.”

She choked, “Well, I do now. I thought that you told her all his time. I mean it’s been ages. Why didn’t you tell her Chad? Mom knows now, and she’s pissed. It was so fucking selfish. I mean you put this on me. Joshua. You showed me pictures of her. But I didn’t expect this. I mean God Chad.”

She was talking too fast and in riddles, which I fucking hate, so I didn’t know what she was talking about and she loves to do this. Mom does, too, and I feel as if I’m about to lose my fucking mind every time they do it. One will start a sentence, and the other would finish it. But neither of them make any sense.

“Mom. Ivy. You. What? Spill it out but slower this time.”

She took a deep breath, and I knew that whatever she had to say would involve me having to sit down. I moved to the living room and closed my eyes as I listened to what she had to say word for word.

“I was going to Starbucks with mom. You know I just needed to get out of the house. Losing my job has just driven me insane…”

“What? Did you lose your job? When? You just told me that you were on vacation.”

She murmured, “I couldn’t deal with telling you about it. I’m still trying to process the whole thing in my mind. One minute they’re giving me deadlines that I can’t reach without staying in the office 24/7 and the next I’m being told that my work’s not up to par.”

“Fucking bastards! We’ll sue. Don’t worry about that. They are not going to get away with it. You’ve been there five years. Even after you had Joshua, you took less of your maternity time and went back to work. That’s dedication and hard work all rolled up into one. They had no right…”

She gasped, “Chad, they had every right because they were right. I have a hard time focusing. I haven’t been honest with you either which is why I had to talk to mom.”

“Oh?”

She sighed, “Yes, Brent wants us to give it another go. He wants me to move to NY with him and give it a go there.”

I laughed, “Over my dead body. I mean the guy dumped you when you were pregnant and he just comes back and expects you to take him back.”

“That’s not exactly true. Brent dumped me before that. We were having problems and I tried to get pregnant on purpose just so that he wouldn’t leave…”

I had to interrupt her; I didn’t want to have this type of conversation on the phone. It was best to do it face-to-face. I’d learned that from the problems we had with Dan. He’s a new man now. Things started going in the right direction once we got his family involved. Then again, I saw Olivia every day, and she never said anything to me, but she wanted to do it all on the phone. I wonder what made her change her mind now?

“I’m coming over.”

She blurted out, “No. Brent’s here. Anyway, I called you for another reason. We can talk about this tomorrow when he leaves. I saw Ivy, she recognized Joshua, or maybe it was me. She knows, Chad. She knows.”

I dropped the phone and I could hear Olivia calling my name, but I felt as if all the air in the room had been sucked out because I couldn’t breathe. I knew that eventually Olivia would hang up and I could tell her that I was okay. I didn’t know if I was okay. I’d been a one-night guy until I met Ivy and I lied to her. Not a little white lie, but a big fucking one that was so far deep in the ocean I’d been drowning in for so long.

Now I knew why she didn’t reply to my text. She wasn’t coming to dinner tonight. I would be lucky if I ever saw her again. She hated me, and as I cupped my face, I couldn’t fucking blame her. I’d turned a two week lie into a three month one, just because I liked her. But the way that I was feeling right now. I knew that I was kidding myself. I didn’t just like Ivy. I felt a lot deeper than that. I fucking loved her.

Chapter Twelve

Ivy

I’d been in the car for the last twenty minutes. Luckily Hazel was sleeping, and I didn’t know if I should make a move and go to the preschool. This was the mother of all preschools, and they only did tours based on special invitations. Chad and I had managed to get past the screening stage, and I’d been thinking about leaving my job and maybe caring for Hazel full-time. The reality of doing that was beyond me.

I’d spent the last two weeks crying, not only did Chad lie, but he hasn’t even tried to call me. Not once. I haven’t heard from the man. I just got the letter about the preschool and thought about us when we were filling in the application. We were laughing. Joking about our kids being geniuses if they get into this preschool. Now, I didn’t know what to think about all of it.

I picked up my phone and decided that I would call Willow. She was my voice of reason, and she would tell me to get the fuck out of here. All this lying just wasn’t worth it.

“Hey Willow,” I smiled as she picked up the phone.

“Ivy, where you at?”

“Outside The Lords PreSchool.”

I hated to tell her that I’d considered going to do the tour when I said that I wouldn’t even think about it when she came over on the weekend. I saw the letter, but I never opened it until then. I thought that it was the typical rejection letter that nearly every parent received about the elite preschool.

She screeched, “Really? I didn’t think that you would go for it. You told me that you wouldn’t, and there was no way that Hazel would get in, so it was all a waste of time. Besides, aren’t you leaving work?”

She wasn’t just the voice of reason, but she was reminding me of the decisions I said I was making and I was swiftly changing my mind about them.

“Yeah, I know they won’t let me work part-time only Friday’s at home. Which isn’t good enough. The sitter’s great and I don’t have a problem with that. It’s just that I wanted to leave town because of him. Why should I leave because of him?”

“Hallelujah, at last, you finally admit it. Just don’t understand why you don’t call him.”

“Me?” I screeched so loudly that Hazel opened her eyes with fright as I did it. I gave her a reassuring smile and she closed her eyes once again. Back to her fantasy land, the one that had her smiling while she was sleeping peacefully.

I opened the car door to stop myself from making any more loud noises.

“He’s the jerk that lied, and he hasn’t even bothered to apologize.”

She hummed, “Hmm, he sent you a dozen red roses every single day for the first four weeks. He called you endlessly and you refused to pick up your phone. He turned up at work and your home and you refused to see him. What more do you want the guy to do?”

She had a point, Chad had tried to talk to me, and all I had done was slam the door in his face.

“There was no excuse for what he did. None. He lied to me, not for weeks but months.”

She interrupted my train of th

ought, “But did he lie to you? I mean you assumed that Joshua was his and he just went along with it. Okay, he went a bit OTT with making it seem like he was a single dad and he was dumped by the mom. But apart from that, I think the guy’s really into you, and the crazy part about it is that you’re into him, too. So, I don’t know why you wouldn’t give him another chance.”

I didn’t have an answer to her question. I could hear what he had to say about it. But Chad could have somewhere along the line told me that Joshua wasn’t his kid. He could have told me that he was his uncle and then we could have taken it from there. I knew that Willow was right. If he had told me, would I have given him the time of day?

Probably not.

Maybe the attraction was down to him being a single parent, too. I thought that we had a connection based on us both trying to bring up our kids without a partner. When I found out that it was a lie, then there wasn’t anything holding us together anymore.

“Willow, I need to go. It’s time for me to go in and luckily he has the sense not to show up.”

She sighed, “Maybe he doesn’t know about the meeting. After all, they sent the letter to your house, not to his.”

“Yes, I had the sense not to put his address down. We were supposed to be a couple. Two people trying to put our kids into preschool.”

She laughed, “The things you parents do to get your kids into the right preschool.”

“He did it for his nephew. I did it for my daughter.” I corrected her; Chad wasn’t a single parent. He didn’t even have a kid, yet he spent nearly every day with Joshua, and I remember when Joshua was starting to crawl how Chad acted as if it was the best day of his life. I wondered if that was a lie along with everything else.

“Just call me later, okay?”

I asked, “How come?”