2. Chapter 2

Chapter two

Kelsey

Miss Juliette's palm was so sweaty I had to hide my cringe as we sat in this huge office. Everything was white and shiny, not a file cabinet in sight. Everything looked expensive. How had my mother afforded this lawyer? Then again, how did she afford anything? My mood soured instantly.

I knew.

I knew exactly how, and it made me just another orphan to the game.

This was stupid, anyway. All we needed was for this guy to show up and sign some papers giving Miss Juliette custody of me. Then I could go back to raising myself. I wouldn't be a burden to her very long. Just the rest of high school.

I winced at the thought. The rest of high school was two-and-a-half more years. She didn't sign up for this—raising someone else's kid. I promised myself I'd be the perfect live-in student after this meeting.

I really didn't know why we had to meet him at all. It's not like he was going to suddenly want to be my dad after fifteen years. I called bullshit on the whole " I didn't know you existed, " schtick.

The letter mom had written me sat at the top of the stack of paperwork, her curly handwriting sealing my fate.

Love you, baby girl. Caleb will take care of you. He's a good man. Trust me.

I could vomit just imagining how self-righteous she felt signing me away to this… this life. I couldn't even trust her to show up for my recitals, and she thought asking me to trust a strange man—basically a sperm donor—was the way to go?

The door creaked open, and everyone turned to see the man of the hour.

He stepped in, snow melted into his hair, and checked his watch. "I'm not late, am I? No. It's quarter of. Should I come back? Am I interrupting?"

Nice. This mess in plaid flannel and faded denim was supposed to take care of me?

"No, we were just going over some of the documents. Sit, please." The lawyer gestured to the seat next to me.

Caleb's attention focused on my face, and his expression changed twice before he reached his hand out and smiled. "Hi, I'm Caleb. You must be Kelsey." I shook his hand and looked to Miss Juliette, who shook his hand firmly, unsmiling, voice flat. If we were in pas de deux class we'd all be withering under that look. That's the one she gives the boys when they drop us. Or the girls when we complain that our feet hurt.

Miss Juliette took my hand again and I welcomed it. An anchor to keep me from floating away into this fever dream. A nightmare that I should have seen coming. I just wished Mom would have waited until I was eighteen. That way it would have been a clean break for me, the way it was for her.

But no, she had to leave this dumpster fire in her wake. As always.

I just never imagined she'd do it to me.

I hardly heard anything the lawyer said over the whirring thoughts.

I knew this was coming. But I guess the small child in me that still loved and needed her mother couldn't believe she'd do it before I was an adult. I always thought we would naturally become estranged and see each other for holidays. I thought I would have been the one with the courage to disappear.

She must have gotten herself into some really deep shit…

I swallowed and focused on watching Caleb as he nodded and repeated over and over, "Whatever is best. Whatever she needs." He asked no questions, smiled awkwardly, and cleared his throat enough you'd think he had strep throat.

This was my father? No fucking way. I looked nothing like him.

Juliette

I saw the resemblance immediately. He had her smile, and the same cocky length in his stride as Kelsey. His hair was the same glossy brown, and she inherited his angular jaw. We all sat tensely, backs straight and hands wringing, while we focused as the lawyer laid out Kelsey's future with an obvious lack of consideration for the possibility that Caleb might refuse to take her in.

At the end of the whole spiel, Caleb stuttered for a second and cleared his throat. "I want a paternity test. To make sure."

"Of course you do," Kelsey scoffed. She folded her arms across her chest defensively and crossed her legs to match.

"I think that's fair," I interjected. "According to him, she forged his signature on your birth certificate."

"What does it matter?" She rolled her eyes. "What are you going to do if it's true? Move to New York and pretend to be my dad for two-and-a-half years? I'm not going to California."

I was surprised by her forwardness. She'd been silent all weekend, impenetrable.

The lawyer intercepted that line of thought and brought us all back to reality. "Even if the results are negative, Erin left a legal document naming Caleb as your guardian."

I cut him off with the only question we really wanted an answer to. "Why can't I just take her in? Adopt her? I'm willing and capable."

"That would be Mister Ramirez's decision. You are not kin. You're not mentioned at all in the documents. Legally, you're no one, just like any other person looking to adopt. I'm sorry."

"But he's a stranger! I've known Kelsey her whole life." I didn't hide my desperation, it seemed foolish to pretend otherwise .

"If I could just—I'd like to say that," Caleb started, facing his whole body to Kelsey for the first time, and continued, "Even if I am not your biological father, I want to provide a stable home for you. It's what Erin wanted."

"I'm not some charity project. She's not dead. Just a piece of shit," Kelsey said, head turned to the minimalist artwork on the walls.

I winced. Kelsey was one of my more reserved students. Exceptionally talented and hard-working, but quiet. Not shy, just quiet. I noticed a faint flutter in the dip between her collar bones, tips of her ears staining red as her heart was pounding.

Caleb's lips turned downward, his brows gathered with the effort to think faster than a fifteen year old girl.

Good luck, buddy ; she's whip-smart and apparently a smart-ass on top of it .

Then his features softened, and he leaned ever so slightly towards her. "No. You're not a charity project. But you might just be my daughter and I think… I think I should be the one to care for you."

Kelsey's head snapped to look at me, expression pleading with me to speak up, but I was just as helpless.

The three of us looked at one another, and then at the lawyer who took to stacking the papers neatly and slipped them back into the file labeled Erin Delgato . How could iron clad directions on what would happen look so innocuous? It was merely ink on paper. Caleb was left with everything. The house, the money, the child. She signed everything away to this stranger. According to Caleb (I was inclined to believe him) they hadn't spoken in fifteen years. A lot can change in fifteen years. Even if they were lovers and he was perfect and trustworthy then… that meant nothing now.

We sat quietly, the ruffling of paperwork the only sound to cut through the silence.

The past two days had been filled with so. much. silence. Every shade of silence except the sleeping kind.

The lawyer stood and we all followed his lead even though it felt like nothing was settled at all. "There's a rapid DNA lab at this address. If you both head there now, ask for Jenny and tell her I sent you. You can have the results as early as tomorrow."

My hope that Caleb would sign her over during the meeting lay dead at the bottom of my heart. I blinked away the tears that blurred my vision as we left. I glanced at Kelsey, and she had the same panicked calm in her expression as I had.

In the parking lot, Caleb stopped me outside of my car. We watched Kelsey drop into the front seat of my little red sedan.

"Do you think we should have dinner together?" he asked. "To break the ice?"

Tempering my desire to lash out, I replied, "I don't think that's a good idea. Kelsey's been through a lot. There's no point making any connections until you know exactly what you want."

He winced. "I know what I want. I only want to know if she's truly mine so that we don't go around pretending we're blood when I'm just her legal guardian. So that if anyone else comes to claim her, I have proof that she's rightfully mine. That's all."

Rightfully mine.

Rightfully?

What right does this man have? Does Kelsey? An anger rose up within me, colored with a resentment so vicious I had to put another step's distance between us. The feeling terrified me.

What right did I have?

"I'm not going to let you form a bond with her tonight just so that you can reject her when we find out she's not rightfully yours ."

"Regardless of the results, she's my responsibility now."

I scoffed. "After fifteen years? Excuse my French, but what the fuck do you know about being a father? Or fathering Kelsey for that matter? Oh right, besides knocking up her mom fifteen years ago."

It was cruel, and I was wrong for saying it, but it felt so good to let that simmering anger win. This primal instinct to draw blood at any threat to Kelsey. I felt like I'd destroy everything in my path to keep Kelsey safe. Any crime I committed in that pursuit was justified. Caleb, for all I knew, might not be safe .

I didn't recognize myself. My outstretched hand was trembling, the other white-knuckled from how tightly I gripped my purse. I never lost control. Never.

I fought to compose myself. To stop seething with rage. At Erin. At the lawyer. At myself. Tamp down the guilt I carried for not noticing that Kelsey was alone for weeks.

What kind of a person doesn't see that? What kind of a person am I?

Caleb stepped towards me. "Is that what you think?" he hissed through clenched teeth, looking over his shoulder at a passerby. "We were together for a long time! She cheated on me and disappeared with him. Just poof! Gone." Caleb talked with his hands, his facial expressions animated and ever changing. "She broke me—"

I put up both hands, cutting him off. "I could not care any less about your history with Erin." I rubbed my temples. It wasn't my place to decide Kelsey's fate, but I felt I should have more of a say than the man standing inappropriately close to me. "Back up," I snapped.

He did, with a hand to his chest and the other outstretched to create distance. "Sorry. I didn't want Kelsey to hear us. I was trying to keep it down."

"Are you telling me to calm down?"

"No, that would have the exact opposite effect." He paused and took a depth breath. "Can we agree this is all out of our control?" He continued giving me space, but then it was I prowling after him, backing him against a van.

"What if she's not your blood? What would that even matter if you really wanted to be her dad?" I pointed a finger in his face and kept going. "If you had been anywhere within the vicinity of Kelsey's life she wouldn't be getting handed to a complete stranger." The last two words slipped through gritted teeth, raising my voice enough that someone a few rows of cars down pretended to get something out of their trunk just to listen in.

"Are you listening to me? I swear to God, I didn't know Kelsey existed!" he raised his voice back at me, matching my volume. He pressed his fingers to his temple and took a deep, shaky breath. Caleb's voice turned dangerously low. "I swear to you." The flecks of gold in his eyes bore into me as we played a game of chicken with our eye contact. He didn't look away for a second as he continued. "I just don't want to be her dad and then the real dad show up one day. Because then what? She's back at square one not knowing who her father is? I want to make sure I'm her biological father for her, and for me. She and I deserve that after being lied to for fifteen years. As soon as the results come back, whatever they are, they'll be added into her file and I'm signing. Maybe you didn't think of that, but I did."

I took a deep breath and backed away, dropping my finger and my accusatory tone. I had to admit he had a point. However, I did not have to subject Kelsey to a grueling hour with this stranger before she even knew who he was to her.

He was saying all this now, but I knew, from experience, that men were fickle creatures. I had no logical reason to trust that he wouldn't. He could see a negative result and decide to sign her over to me.

It was the last, tiniest, flame of hope that lingered.

"Dinner is a bad idea. Let's just to go the lab and wait for the results."