Molly opens the door, and her brow wrinkles in confusion as she looks at me. “What are you doing here?”
“We need to talk.”
She lifts onto her tiptoes and looks over my shoulder. “Where’s Ava?”
“She’s at home. She broke up with me and won’t answer my calls, so bringing her along would’ve been tricky.” I sound pissed, like all this is Molly’s fault, when it’s not. Some of it is, sure. But if this kid is mine, I have to own up to the part I played in that. What a mess.
“Broke up with you? Does that mean you two finally got together?”
“Yeah. Briefly. Until she found out about my night with you and your son within a couple of days of each other.”
“Mommy?”
My chest clutches so hard and tight at the little boy’s voice. I brace myself on the doorframe. I’m not sure I believed he existed. Don’t think too much. Just do the next right thing.
Molly looks over her shoulder and calls into the apartment, “Noah, honey, Mommy will be back in a minute. I need to speak with someone in the hall. You can watch cartoons.”
“Even Pider-Man?” he calls back.
“Even Spider-Man,” Molly says.
I feel like the floor has disappeared from beneath my feet.
Molly steps out of her apartment, and I move out of the way so she can shut her door. She tilts her head to the side and studies my face. “You didn’t need to come. I’m sorry about you and Ava, but like I told you on the phone, this has nothing to do with you.”
I stare at the apartment door, thinking of the little voice from inside. “You didn’t give me much reason to believe you.”
When I look back at Mo
lly, her eyes are wide. “Reason? You need a reason? He’s not your kid. Be happy. You’re off the hook. You and Ava can live happily ever after.”
“Then whose is he?”
“He’s mine.” It’s gotta be pushing ninety out here in the corridor, but her words have the bite of the winter wind.
“Who is the father, Molly?”
She meets my gaze with fiery eyes. “I don’t owe you this. I don’t owe you anything.”
“Do a DNA test, then. Prove to me he’s not mine. I can’t walk away until I know.”
She throws up her arms. “You want to waste your money like that, then why not? Must be nice to have cash to throw down the drain.” She waits a beat, then says, “You seriously don’t remember?”
“Remember what?”
“Jake, the night we were together, we didn’t even have sex. We were both drunk, but you were toasted out of your mind. When we went up to your apartment, I thought we were headed for your bed, but instead . . .” Her shoulders sag as she exhales. “We messed around for a while, then you stopped us. You said Ava wouldn’t forgive you.” She holds my gaze as she says this. “Noah can’t be yours because you and I never slept together.”
There’s a special place in hell for assholes like me, because I’m swamped with nothing but relief. I don’t have a kid with Molly. Her little boy isn’t mine.
Please let this be true.
Her eyes are pleading. “Now would you please forget you know anything about this?”
“I don’t understand. If you weren’t keeping this baby a secret to protect me, then who . . .”
She laughs, but her eyes fill with tears. “You really think I’d have been hiding in New York if I’d had a Jackson’s baby?” She clutches her stomach, and I can’t decide if she’s trying to hold in a belly laugh or if she thinks she might be sick. Tears spill onto her cheeks, and she wipes them away. “Will you please leave?”
“Whose is he? I’m not walking away until you tell me.” Ava won’t believe me until I have an answer to that question.