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4. Tate

“Look, Tate, I don’t mean to interrupt your processing. I know this is a lot,” Mallory’s voice cuts through the silence in the car. “But he’s had an extremely long day. And a rough couple of weeks. He fell asleep and he is going to wake up hungry and disoriented and it would be best if we weren’t in a car when that happens.”

She is so calm about this. How? How can she be so calm? Nothing about this is anything less than a vortex of chaos. But one last brain cell, buried in the back of my head, which is rioting with this news, knows she is right. That kid deserves better, after all, he”s been through and is going to continue to go through, than to wake up hungry and confused in the back of a stranger”s car. And that”s exactly what I am. A stranger. Even if I know, in my heart, that DNA will say otherwise. I mean… look at him.

My mom is obsessed with family photos. She says it”s because she didn”t have a real family growing up, she just had her sisters, and no one really took pictures of them. So we went, and still go, for yearly family photos. We have a wall of them in the living room, peppered across the bookcases on either side of the river rock fireplace. And there”s a bunch of candid photos on the wall all the way up both staircases, the one to the second floor and the one to the attic rec room. I”ve stared at enough pictures of me as a baby to know this kid is a fair-haired replica of me.

My eyes were just as green at his age, the blue tint in there now came later. My cheeks just as pudgy, that”s how I got the nickname tater tot because I looked as round and plump as one. And that dimple, well it”s still in my chin, just like my dad”s. His hair is lighter than mine was, almost wheat colored, like Diana”s. His nose seems to be a miniature replica of hers too. Not only is there no reason for Mallory to lie, there”s an avalanche of evidence in his appearance that she isn’t.

Holy fuck. How did this happen and why didn’t anyone tell me before now? All these questions need to be addressed but not here in the parking lot of the arena. We are literally the last car left. I have been sitting here with my head in my hands just trying to come to terms with this and Mallory has patiently waited it out. Until now.

I lift my head and realize she must have turned off the car. The engine is no longer running. I punch the button again and it purrs to life. Without a word, I ease out of the spot and toward the exit. Even security is gone now. I pull the pass from the center console and swipe the machine at the gate and the bar glides upward. And then, I drive the twenty minutes back to my townhome on Abbott Kinney on autopilot.

Usually, as I approach the building, just the sight of the palm trees that line the front garden area brings me peace and happiness but not tonight. I love Los Angeles. I didn”t think I would as a small-town East Coaster, but I was wrong. Before I was drafted the New Englander in me thought California was an excess and stupidity dipped in ridiculousness and covered in sunshine. But it”s exactly the perfect vibe for a young, rich athlete who never loved snow or cold unless he was playing a game of hockey.

Venice is where I decided to settle because it”s got the beach, a banging nightlife, and a great daytime energy, and it”s close to the arena and practice facility. Bonus, it”s nowhere near UCLA, or West Hollywood where my sister currently lives with my cousin Liv. I love my family, but I like my independence, a lot. This two-bedroom, two-bath townhouse within walking distance to bars, restaurants, and the beach, with a bright multi-level open concept main floor and sunlit patio on the back, quaint porch on the front was worth every cent of the two-and-a-half million I paid. But is it kid-friendly? That”s a question I never thought I would have to ask.

And now, as I pull into my parking spot I’m contemplating that very thought as I stare out the window again. I hear a gentle coo in the back. Was that a coo? Do kids his age coo? What age is he anyway? Oh, I am so beyond fucked.

“I get it. This is a lot. Is there any way we can go inside?” Mallory asks. Again she is insanely calm. “I need to feed him something and let him stretch his legs.”

”Stretch his legs? Like, walk around? Run?” I pull my eyes from the Reserved sign nailed to the wall in front of my spot and look at Mallory—really look for the first time since she appeared at the arena.

Mallory Echolls looks exhausted. The skin under her eyes is puffy and holds a grayish tinge. Her eyes are bloodshot. Her hair… well she’s had better hair days. “You both must be exhausted.”

”Yes,” she says and twists in her seat so she can see the kid. Her shirt pulls a little, exposing her collarbone, which is blue. Well, actually more of a dark, angry purple.

“Fuck. What happened to your?—”

She moves like she’s been jolted with electricity, quickly facing forward and yanking at the collar of her shirt and then she winces. Loudly. But she changes the topic. “Tate. He needs to get out of this car. He needs space and food. And no, to answer your earlier question, he isn’t walking yet. He’s only slightly over nine months old but he can pull himself up to a standing position and he loves to do it and kind of bounce. Like he’s listening to music we can’t hear.”

”Oh. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I can let him bounce,” I say stupidly because I have been rendered absolutely brain-dead by this news.

Like a robot, I get out of the car. Leaving their suitcases, I walk around to the trunk and grab her shoulder bag as she gets him out of the car seat. ”I”m going to need the other suitcases the Uber was supposed to deliver.”

“Ray should have them.”

“Ray?”

I point to the small box-like building by the entrance gate. “Our night security guard for the complex.”

I leave her by the car and jog over to the booth. Ray is happy and friendly, like always, and I try not to cut off his small talk too much. He glances out his booth door as he hands me the suitcases. “You want me to bring these to your door?”

I shake my head even though, yeah, that would help since I have two other suitcases in the car. But then I have to introduce him to Mallory and the kid, and I would lie. Say this is my friend and her kid and that feels shitty and also, if he catches one look at the kid… “I’ll do it. My friend just got here from Europe and she’s… they’re exhausted.”

“Okay. Well, have a great night, Tate.”

“Thanks. You too, Ray.”

I walk back over to Mallory, wheeling her suitcases beside me. She has the kid on her hip now and she’s staring at me. Her bottom lip quivers. “Look, I don’t know where you’re at with all of this. I don’t think you even know, so let me focus on what I do know.”

The palm trees rustle in an ocean breeze as traffic zooms by on the busy, popular boulevard on the other side of the gate. She takes a breath that I can see, even from a few feet away, is shaky. ”I have nowhere else to go right now. Eventually, I will make my way to Silver Bay, once Dylan is settled, legally. I don”t have much money that is mine. Diana”s former fiancé gave me some money to get him settled, for my troubles he said, but I”m trying not to spend it so Dylan can have it, as a trust or whatever. And I have paperwork for him that I can pass on to you so you can organize custody. If you don’t want him… well, I can help you deal with that, but I can’t do that tonight. So can we please just stay with you? Just tonight?”

Wow. I thought this development had knocked me on my ass but her speech was a drop kick on top of a roundhouse. “You can both stay with me as long as you need to. Without question. Did you really think I was going to send you away?”

“I don’t know what to think about anything anymore, Tate,” Mallory confesses, her voice weary.

“Come on.”

The entrance to my townhouse faces the interior courtyard of the building. It”s a few feet from the freeform pool, which thankfully is gated. Unattended pools and babies don”t mix, even I know that. As we climb the stairs to my front porch, I pull open the storm door, unlock the main door, and instantly realize there isn”t much about my space that works for a nine-month-old.

There are stairs off the entry down into the living room and dining room. The kitchen is open to the rest of the space with top-heavy bar chairs he could tip over. Nash once got hammered and tipped over in one so I”m sure the kid could knock it over.

I”m not a slob, and I have a maid that comes once a week so the place is clean, but are there sheets on the guest bed? Have they been changed since Crew hooked up with some girl there two weeks ago, too drunk to make it home to his house at the Venice Canals? Did I tell my housekeeper about that? Because she doesn”t tend to do more than dust the guest room unless I tell her I”ve had or am having guests. I can”t be sure I”ve told her, all of a sudden. I definitely didn”t tell her Mallory was coming because I didn”t get a chance.

Mallory brushes by me, familiar with the space because it’s where she and Di stayed when they visited, and scoops a suitcase from my hand. The brush of her fingertips is cool and brief. With one hand around the kid’s waist on her hip and the other on the suitcase she walks straight into my living room and gets to work.

She plops him on the floor and hands him a toy. She opens the suitcase while he plays and starts pulling out stuff. Juice packets and baby food in jars, all bubble-wrapped. I watch, amazed and stunned, waiting for her to tell me what to do. I wish someone could tell me how to feel about all of this.

”If you keep him, we will have to baby-proof this place,” she surmises and it feels almost like she”s making an internal thought to herself public and not telling me, specifically. ”I can help you before I leave.”

“Yeah. I… I mean I have bigger things to sort out than baby-proofing, right?” I sound as panicked as I feel and she stops on the way to the dining room and turns back to me. She’s holding this seat contraption with, like, poles sticking out of it that she pulled out of the suitcase. “Like, I mean, how do I keep him. Legally? Am I even on his birth certificate?”

”No. No one is listed as the father,” Mallory says as she marches to my dining room table, slides a chair out of place, and replaces it with the contraption in her hands. Is it a… seat? It doesn”t look all that safe but I trust she knows what she”s doing.

“Mal, this is all… I can’t… I mean what the fuck?” I swallow and start to feel lightheaded, which it takes me a second to realize because I have never been lightheaded a day in my life. “Were you just going to keep this a secret forever if Di didn’t…”

“It wasn’t my secret,” she reminds me, her tone defensive.

“Was she never going to let me know?”

“I don’t know,” Mallory admits and sighs. “I was… encouraging her to tell you before Felix adopted him.”

“Who the fuck is Felix?”

“Diana’s fiancé,” Mallory replies.

“He wanted to adopt my…” I can’t say it. “Where is he now?”

”In London. Grieving, I guess,” Mallory”s tone sounds less than empathetic. She shakes her head as if dismissing a thought before she can express it. ”He loved Diana and he wanted to be Dylan’s father, but I guess not without her. But he got us here. He made sure I got Dylan to you.”

“Well, fuck him,” I mutter, not sure if it’s because he was going to steal my child or because he changed his mind and dumped him when he needed someone the most. “Whoa!”

I swear we just had an earthquake. Everything starts to move to the left, like the entire room.

The next thing I know Mallory’s grabbing my shoulders, tightly, and guiding me down onto one of the couches. “Just sit there and take some deep breaths. Do you want me to call anyone? Tenley?”

”No!” Okay, that flew out of my mouth with the force of a jumbo jet taking off. Mallory looks appropriately shocked. I lean back into the couch and close my eyes. “Sorry. I just. Yeah. I need to process.”

The kid lets out a wail. “You do that. I’ll feed him.”

I don’t respond. I just sit there, head thrown back, eyes closed, and think. This is actually happening. This kid is mine. Diana never told me. Not one fucking word. Where has she been this whole time? What was in London that was more important than telling me about my offspring? Or letting me meet him before this? If she hadn’t died, would she have told me about him, like, ever?

And how the hell do I tell my family about this? About him? And how the hell do I travel for work if I have a kid? And no wife? And who is even going to let me have him? Is it just, like, a given? Because I share his DNA? I must need paperwork or something, right? Oh God, what the fuck do I do?

I hear some gurgling and giggling and open my eyes to see Mallory sitting next to the kid at the table, facing the living room. He’s in the contraption hanging from the table. His legs are swinging and he’s grinning with green crap all over his cheeks. The green crap is from a jar that Mallory is shoveling into his open waiting mouth with a smile on her face. She looks… well still as exhausted as she looked before but also happy. Content.

“Can you tell me how this happened?” I ask.

She keeps her eyes on the baby as she wipes his face with a paper towel and shakes some rice puffs from a small container onto the table. His chubby hands grab them immediately and he brings them to his open mouth. “Well, you and Diana had sex. A lot of it, and I guess you weren’t always safe.”

”We were. As far as I know,” I reply quickly. She frowns and glares at me with the wide-set hazel eyes. ”I mean we used condoms. We had two break, but she said she was on something.”

“She was,” Mallory admits. “But that time we came to see you out here…”

The memories flick through my brain like snapshots. Most of them involved that last night where we did things that maybe we shouldn’t have.

“That was… a great weekend. Mostly. Except you getting weird at the end,” I mutter and I know the second I say it I shouldn’t have.

”Sorry I couldn”t cope with fooling around with my bestie”s boy toy while she watched,” she snaps. ”Anyway, he was conceived that weekend. Diana had just gotten over a sinus infection. Just finished a course of antibiotics and so her birth control was weakened. Some drugs do that. Of course, she didn”t figure that out until she got a positive pregnancy test the day before she moved to London.”

“Oh.” I take a deep, slow breath and look at the back of his blond head, and his chunky legs swinging in contentment as he eats his rice puffs. “And she went anyway? Without even telling me?”

“Diana had a job waiting for her in London and her sister, and she knew I was moving there too, and she wasn’t going to give that up to tell you about a baby she thought you didn’t want.”

“And now she’s… gone and I’m a dad.”

“If you choose to be, yeah.”

I glare at her now. “I don’t have a choice. It’s fact. He’s mine, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’m his dad.”

“Dads are more than sperm donors,” Mallory counters. “And you didn’t ask for this.”

I stand up and run my hands through my hair, still damp from a shower. A shower that feels like it happened a lifetime ago. I was joking with the guys, high off the win and the anticipation that I would beat my dad’s record. I scored yet another shorty tonight. Now smashing the record is a mere two goals away. One if I was just to tie with Dad, which wouldn’t be horrible.

And now… I”m sitting here with a long-lost frenemy and a child. My child. ”Diana didn”t ask for it either, but she kept him. And I would have stood by that decision and been there for him and for her if she had fucking told me. Why didn”t she tell me?”

Mallory’s face softens with compassion. So she doesn’t totally hate me, I guess. Or at least she can relate to how I feel. “She knew that you would be there for her, but that it wasn’t what you wanted. Or needed. She knew what she was and wasn’t to you, and she didn’t want to force you into making her into more than what she was just because of Dylan.”

“Dylan,” I say my child’s name for the first time. It feels weird on my tongue. I hate that it feels weird. I like that his name is Dylan though. It’s nice. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Mallory frowns. “Diana and I… we both moved to London at the same time but not together, as we originally planned. I didn’t talk to her for a while after the weekend here. I changed my flight so we were on different ones. I didn’t reach out to her. I ignored her emails. By the time I knew about Dylan, she was all settled into this new life, with a fiancé who said he wanted them both. She did promise me she would tell you this summer. Before the paperwork with Felix was signed in case you did want to claim parental rights. She promised me she would give you the option.”

“When’s his birthday?”

“July twenty-fourth.”

I nod. My son”s birthday is July twenty-fourth. What was I doing while he was entering the world last summer? I was in Silver Bay. I was probably at my uncle”s bar, joking around with my cousins, drinking some beer, or maybe playing golf with my dad and uncles. I was doing nothing of any kind of importance and something incredibly important was happening without me. I have a wave of anger toward Diana that is drowned out only by a wave of guilt. Whatever her reasons for doing this to me, she”s gone and she didn”t deserve to have her life cut so short. God, this is so fucked.

Dylan lets out a bit of a high-pitched noise and slaps his hands on the table. ”Okay Dyllie Bear, just need you to drink more for me, okay?”

She hands him a bottle she has filled with what looks like milk. I have no idea when she got that. Did she bring milk from England? Mallory must see me eyeing it, confused. ”Powder formula. He was still being breastfed but… well, she was weaning him anyway.”

Oh my God. She’s dead. Diana is dead. The revelation keeps pounding me, like a hammer. I just stare as Mallory goes about unpacking other stuff from her suitcase. She glances up at me. “He’s going to need to go straight to bed after this, to try and regulate him to this time zone.”

“I don’t—I have a guest room but, like, no crib.”

“Of course you don’t.” She smiles, but it’s not happy. It’s full of woe. “I have a portable sleeping pod for him.”

“A what?”

“It’s like a crib-tent thingy.” She doesn’t elaborate further. “It’s in the yellow suitcase still in your trunk.”

“I’ll go get it now.” She winces as she picks Dylan out of the chair thingy. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she says, focusing her attention on Dylan and wiping his face with the paper towel she’s holding. “It’s just been a long flight. And day, and well, it’s been a long everything for the last eight days.”

I nod and walk up the stairs to the entryway and grab my keys off the console table. ”I”ll be back with your bags in a second. The guest room is second door on the right. It has an ensuite. Make yourself at home.”

“I remember,” Mallory replies. “Thanks.”

Right. I nod and head out the door and she heads upstairs. I grab both suitcases and head back toward the house. I”m moving on autopilot. I bring them inside and straight upstairs. Mallory is in the bathroom, the door slightly ajar and I hear Dylan making noises and splashing sounds but I don”t go in. I leave the suitcases in the bedroom and go back downstairs where I clean up the mess he left on the table and then bring her other suitcase upstairs.

Then I head into my room and change out of my suit. I’m accomplishing tasks without thinking about what I’m actually doing. My head is still swimming with confusing, painful emotions.

“Oh. Oops!”

I turn to the door. I”m wearing nothing but sweatpants, having peeled out of everything, including my underwear, and not having managed to get a shirt on yet. I didn”t close the door to my room because I never close the door to my room. I live alone. Or at least I did until twenty-five minutes ago.

“Mallory, you’ve seen me in less,” I remind her, which once again was a mistake judging by the dark look that suddenly blankets her delicate features.

“Can you please close your door while I’m here?” she requests calmly but also coolly.

“Yeah. Of course.” I clear my throat. “Where is he?”

“Crashed out in his sleeping pod,” she informs me and motions for me to come into the hall.

I grab a T-shirt out of my dresser throw it on and join her in the hall. The door is cracked to the guest room and I glance in and see what looks like a little mini tent. ”These things are genius,” Mallory informs me. ”They have a built-in battery-operated camera with a microphone too so I can… we can keep an eye on him and hear him if he makes a noise. The app is on my phone but I can put it on yours too.”

“Okay. Maybe, like, tomorrow?”

She nods. We stare at each other in the dimly lit hallway. “Okay. Well, I am going to go to sleep, if that’s fine,” she announces.

“Yeah. Whatever you want,” I say.

She stares at me another full second and then disappears into the guest room and I panic.

“Mallory!” I whisper her name as loudly as I dare. The door opens a crack and one of her hazel eyes is staring at me. “The sheets… need to be changed in there. I had some guests and… I forgot to change them. Let me grab a new set.”

I rush to the small closet in the hall with the extra sheets and grab a gray pinstriped set. I walk back over to the door which she’s opened a little more. Just enough to take the stack from me.

“I can put them on,” I volunteer.

”I”ve got it. See you in the morning,” she says and shuts the door firmly. I hear the lock click and for some reason, it feels like an insult.

But I have bigger things to deal with. I’m a father. And, despite having hands-down the best dad in the world, I never took notes. I don’t know how to be a dad myself. And then it hits me, I’m going to have to tell my family. And that’s when I find myself kneeling in front of my toilet puking my guts out.

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