5. Mallory

I”m dreaming when Dylan”s cries wake me up. It”s more of a nightmare actually. I”m unable to get air in my lungs. My chest feels like it”s caved in. My head is pounding and my shoulder is aching. Diana is making an awful gurgling sound beside me, but I can”t turn my head to see her. She keeps pushing out the same words. ”Dylan. Help. Dylan. Help. Mal. Help. Dylan. Promise.”

That dream is not new and it”s not, sadly, made up. But the part of the dream where, instead of a set of policemen rushing toward the car, there is one man. Tate. And he looks right at me through the cracked windshield and says, ”Stay.”

And then Dylan’s cry gets shrill and I bolt up from the tangled mess of sheets, sweaty and confused. “Coming Dyllie Bear.”

I shove the sheets off me and get him out of his sleeping pod. He is warm and still groggy and wraps his pudgy arms around my neck and nuzzles his face against mine. My heart hurts, and it’s hard to breathe but not from my lingering injuries or the terrors of my sleep. Because I’m going to have to leave this kid, and I love him so much.

I was there when he was born, holding Diana’s hand and motivating her to push. I cut his cord for her. I’ve been his one and only nanny, although Diana refused to call me that in front of him. She called me Auntie Mallory. My eyes get damp. I miss her so damn much. Dylan tugs on my hair. Snuggle time is over. He wants breakfast.

“Okay. I’ll get you some food,” I promise and lift him to sniff his diaper. “But first things first.”

As I lie him out on a towel and change his diaper, I hear a noise in the hall. Tate must be up. The heavy awkward feeling that filled me last night comes back full force. God, this is not at all how I”d hoped to see him again. I mean, to be honest, there were times when I hoped to never see him again, but I knew that would be impossible. Like it or not, I would end up back in Silver Bay eventually. My family isn”t the most functional, or likable at times, but they”re mine and I love them and the little town I grew up in. Unlike Diana, I didn”t have any intention of living in England forever.

I figured one day Tate and I would run into each other once I moved back home in a few years. I was hoping I would be over everything that transpired on that night in that Four Seasons hotel room by the time our paths crossed. My cheeks flame as I think back on it. In this fantasy reunion, I’m engaged to some perfect, dashing man, and happy, and I don’t turn pink at the thought of Tate, and what almost happened. And what did happen. When I’m tipsy, or feeling particularly desperate, the fantasy is that I’m not engaged. I’m single and he is thrilled by that and tells me he wants me, still —in all the ways I want to be wanted, not just the physical way.

I pick up Dylan now and smile at him. “Okay, let’s hope there are eggs in this place. I know it’s your favorite.”

I throw my cardigan over my pajamas for a little bit more modesty, even though it’s not remotely cold here, and head downstairs. Tate is sitting at the dining room table staring into a cup of coffee that looks untouched. He doesn’t move a muscle as I walk from the stairs to the dining room.

“Morning.”

”Hey. Everything go okay last night?” He still sounds shell-shocked, but that isn”t surprising.

“Yeah. He sleeps really well, in general,” I explain. “Has since he was two months old.”

“Must get that from me,” Tate murmurs. “Mom says she used to have to wake me up to feed me. I slept more than a geriatric cat. I still love my sleep.”

“Who doesn’t?” I smile a little but he doesn’t look up from his coffee to see it. And he doesn’t look at his son. “Do you happen to have eggs? Any veggies in the house?”

“He eats eggs?”

I nod even though he still isn”t looking up. ”Yeah. Eggs, veggies, pasta without sauce, drinks a little juice, water, and milk too but we need to keep giving him a bit of formula to help ween him off the breast. I don”t want to end that abruptly. The formula is a good substitute.”

”Okay.” He reaches for his phone, which is on the table, and I frown, not sure what he”s doing. ”Every veg or only certain ones? Does he like cauliflower because I hate it.”

“He doesn’t like cauliflower actually,” I reply. “Or asparagus. But he loves broccoli and carrots and is kind of indifferent about peas and peppers. He hates oranges. Adores pears.”

“Cool,” Tate says, but it doesn’t actually sound like he thinks it’s cool. “I have eggs and some veggies. Help yourself to anything.”

He goes back to typing on his phone and I fight the urge to ask him what he’s doing and head into the kitchen.

With Dylan on my hip, I get busy poking around Tate’s immaculate space trying to find all the ingredients I need. Then, before I start cooking, I walk out of the kitchen and settle Dylan on the ground in the living room. I place him on his back and put his hanging toy apparatus above him. He giggles and reaches for the plush crane toy swinging above him.

Tate is watching us and typing on his phone intermittently. I stand up and stare at his glass and brass coffee table with all the sharp corners. “Can we move this somewhere else? Dylan needs the space and he’s started pulling himself up and he might hurt himself on this.”

“Sure. No problem.” Tate types on his phone.

“Can you pay attention please!” I bark and his head snaps up, aquamarine eyes on me with guilt swimming in them. “I’m sorry if that’s your girlfriend or whatever.”

He twists his face in confusion and shakes his head with a huff of laughter. “You don’t know me at all do you?”

“Still the chronic bachelor?”

”Of course,” Tate says like I”m insane for thinking that might have changed. ”And for the record, I”m not texting anyone. I”m taking notes.”

He holds his phone screen out to me and I blink to make sure my eyes aren’t playing tricks on me. The note is titled Baby How To. And he”s got stuff like Cauliflower = no. Carrots = yes. Can pull himself up. Hide sharp-angled crap.

I almost smile at how ridiculous it is, but he did it in earnest so it would be cruel to laugh. He’s trying. And now he’s tossed his phone on the couch and is bending to grab the bulky, heavy coffee table all by himself. “Wait, I can…”

I stop speaking and just watch him as he squats and lifts it all by himself. Every muscle in his arms flexes. His veins pop. His ass flexes hard against the fabric of his sweatpants. And damn, it”s hot. I can do nothing but stare as he somehow manages to carry it all by himself up the three stairs to the landing. He places it on the ground there. ”I”ll bring it out to the storage locker I have at the back of the building, next to my parking spot.”

“I can help with that after I feed him.”

He shakes his head. ”You just work your magic on his food. And please, can you write down the recipe for me for whatever you make? In my notes app?”

“Yeah.”

“Password is 2-0-2-4-1-5.”

And then he shoves his big feet into some shoes, opens the front door, and disappears with the coffee table again. I take his phone off the couch, make sure Dylan is still occupied, and head back to the kitchen. I can’t believe he just gave me the password for his phone. Who does that?

Tate Garrison. That’s who. I shouldn’t be surprised. Tate has always been the most authentic, honest person I know. He has never pretended to be someone or something he isn’t. That’s why I’m the fool here. I was the faker. I pretended I wasn’t attracted to him. I pretended it didn’t bother me when my best friend started sleeping with him. I acted like I was down with non-committed orgasms with an audience. It nearly cost me my friendship with Diana and it definitely damaged my friendship with Tate.

I shake my head, trying to clear the bad memories as I finish mixing up some formula in his bottle and walk over, pick up Dylan, and place him in his travel highchair. I hand him the bottle and he immediately starts sucking. I head back to the kitchen to dice some chives and spinach I found in Tate’s fridge for the omelet. I keep tabs on Dylan through the breakfast bar opening that looks directly into the dining area.

I reluctantly open Tate”s phone. Thankfully the notes app is still open so I don”t see anything else on his device. Not a call history, names, or text messages, nothing. I don”t want to know what is going on in Tate”s life. I just want to settle Dylan and get the hell out. I jot down step-by-step instructions like he”s never made food himself before, which I know he has.

By the time the omelet is made and broken up in a Tupperware I place in front of Dylan, I”m deep into two new notes for Tate. I make a list of things he needs to buy for this place for Dylan and a list of things he needs to baby-proof. This townhouse is quite possibly the worst place I could imagine for an infant about to start walking. So many stairs and virtually no outdoor space. If I were Tate, I would move. But I’m not and that’s too big a suggestion to make. If he asks my opinion I’ll tell him though.

Where the hell is Tate anyway? It shouldn’t take that long to store a coffee table. As Dylan finishes his omelet I wet some paper towels and clean up his face and hands. Tate’s phone rings and I see a WhatsApp video chat request come up with his dad’s name. A jolt of panic hits me and I take Dylan and back away from the phone like it’s dangerous. It is. I don’t want to hit the wrong button by mistake and end up face-to-face with Mr. Garrison. That is not how his dad can find out.

I decide to go outside and hunt down Tate. With Dylan on my hip, I walk out the front door. Southern California hits me full force. I have only ever been here once before, but the feel of the Los Angeles heat is unforgettable.

It”s barely nine in the morning and it”s hot. Not sweat-inducing but close. The traffic is zipping by at a relentless rate on Abbott Kinney just past the metal fence and palm trees. The air swirls with scents of tar from the heated pavement and salt from the ocean a few blocks away. And yeah, it”s hot but the sky is full-on slate gray. Tate told me, that first morning Diana and I visited, that the locals call it June Gloom, but that it”s actually year-round in the coastal areas like Santa Monica, Malibu, and Venice. I liked it. I still like it.

I see him wedged in between the bumper of his fancy car and the closed door to the storage locker. His shoulders are hunched and… moving. “Hey.”

He startles. His hands move up to his face but he doesn’t turn to face me. “What?”

Did he just snap at me?

“I was just wondering if you needed help,” I lie, my tone a little sharp but nothing like his. “You’ve been gone a while. Where is the table?”

“Already in the unit,” he barks. Barks. Yeah, I am not deserving of this attitude.

“Well, your dad tried to video chat you,” I add.

Now he spins to face me. He looks… weird. His skin is… red. From the exertion of dealing with the table by himself? But something twists in my gut.

“Tell me you didn’t answer it.”

“No,” I spit out, confused by the fact that he is still coming at me like an angry animal. All bite and bark. “I am not going to be the one to tell your parents about any of this.”

”Neither am I,” he replies, and before his words even register he brushes past me.

“What?” I heard what he said, I just can’t believe it. I start to follow him back to his townhouse. A car pulls into the parking and slowly drives past. It’s a cherry red Porsche. I swear everyone in Los Angeles spends more on their cars than the average American makes in a year. “What do you mean you aren’t going to tell them? Today? Or… ever?”

Tate keeps stomping toward his house. I follow, ignoring the rustling palms, the hot air blowing them, and the sun finally trying to push through the gray haze above us. Tate’s hair has a rusty tint to it when the sun hits it a certain way. He gets that from his mom who has auburn hair. “I can’t lock him away in a dungeon and pretend he doesn’t exist, Mal. So obviously they’ll find out eventually. Everyone will.”

“So when?” I demand as we round the corner on the flagstone path and reach the steps to his front patio.

Tate stops and turns to face me. He”s much taller than me. It wasn”t always the case. Back in fifth grade, I was taller than him by half an inch. I miss those days when my biggest worry was my crush was shorter than me. Instead of whether this gorgeous, talented, rich man was going to reject this child I love so much. And how I was going to get over losing my best friend. And what the hell I was going to do next with my life. And if my ribs would ever stop hurting or my head would ever stop pounding. I”ve had a low-grade headache since the accident.

”I… I will… tell them. Everyone. I just need…” Tate”s stuttering pulls me from my reverie. ”I just need to figure some stuff out. And a lot is going on right now with the team and my career.”

”Sorry, his mother couldn”t die at a more convenient time.”

Yeah. I said that. And as soon as it comes out of my mouth I regret it. His face goes ghost white and his light eyes somehow darken and his whole body goes rigid. And I open my mouth to say something else, but I have no idea what to say so it just hangs open, wordless. He turns and storms into his house, not bothering to wait for us. I throw open the metal storm door and step inside, pausing to lock it because that”s who I am. He is standing in the middle of the living room just staring straight ahead at nothing. He”s breathing so heavily I can see the rise and fall of his chest across the room.

“You can keep judging me, Mallory,” Tate says, his voice so hard and venomous it’s unrecognizable. “I can learn very easily not to give a fuck about you or your opinions of me, so do your worst. But the fact is, this is a catastrophic level of shock and I am doing my best to figure out how to cope with it. You don’t like it, then perhaps you should have picked up the fucking phone and told me I was a father before showing up here. Before Diana died. Before he was even fucking born. I had a right to know before this.”

The guilt I feel over my comment grows as heavy and thick as concrete in my gut. ”I begged her almost every day to tell you until she told me if I kept asking she would never speak to me again.”

“You could have told me.”

“It wasn’t my place.” I swallow and feel tears sting the corners of my eyes. “Her body. Her baby. Her choice. I know you know that.”

”I wouldn”t have asked her to get rid of him,” Tate snaps, and now his eyes look glossy like he”s fighting his own tears. ”What the fuck, Mal. Do you think I would have done that? I just… I would have been there.”

“She had found someone else.” My ribs are starting to ache from holding Dylan who has been extremely patient throughout this. I move to put him back on the floor, by his toys, but the motion makes me wince as sharp, stabbing needles of pain attack my side.

“What is wrong with you?” Tate asks. “You wince a lot.”

I turn to face him. “It’s nothing.”

“Clearly it’s something.”

And then his phone rings. He breaks our little stand-off to walk into the dining room where I left it on the table. His eyes flare as he glances at the screen. “I have to take this.”

“Is it your dad?”

“Yeah,” he replies and without another word leaves us and charges upstairs.

I hear his bedroom door close more forcefully than necessary. I bet he’s locked it too. Because he thinks I’m some kind of raging lunatic that will, what? Barge in there and reveal his secret like some trashy ex on an episode of Jerry Springer? A show my mom still watches when repeats are on late at night after she’s had a huge fight with my dad and spends her night on the couch in front of the TV. That happened every couple of weeks of my childhood.

I sigh and lower myself to the floor to play with Dylan. That’s when I realize he’s got his face all scrunched up and his cheeks are pinking. His tells that he is dropping a post-breakfast poop in that pristine diaper. I let him finish the task and then lift him up immediately and start toward the stairs. “Whew! That’s quite the stinker, Dyllie Bear.”

I feel my eyes watering and pray I have enough wipes left to clean this up. I remind myself to make a list of everything I need and ask Tate to pick it up, or at least take me to a drugstore or Target so I can get the stuff myself.

I place Dylan on a towel on the bed, next to a new diaper and my remaining wet wipes. Oh boy, it’s his worst poop yet and I quickly go through all the wet wipes, but I get the job done. As I’m wrapping the new diaper on him he squeals in delight. I smile and fight the urge to shush him. I am not going to teach him to hide because his dad is too scared to admit he exists.

I pick up Dylan, ignoring the pain in my side, and put him on my other hip and carry him, and the toxic waste that is his diaper, into the bathroom. I toss it in the ridiculously small garbage and make a note to add a proper disposal for diapers to my list for Tate.

When I enter the bedroom Tate is there, looking pissed off. “You had to come up here? You couldn’t keep him quiet downstairs? My dad heard him!”

“He needed a diaper change and the supplies were up here,” I explain, anger simmering like boiling water under my skin. “He gets excited when he gets a new diaper. He hates being dirty. Loves being clean. And fuck you for shaming me for tending to your son.”

“I didn’t mean it that way it’s just?—”

“You’re hiding him. I’m not,” I snap. “And I won’t make him ashamed for existing because you are ashamed?—”

“I’m not ashamed!” Tate yells so loud it bounces off every corner of the room and I swear the walls shake.

He turns and storms out of the room as Dylan bursts into tears. Tate scared the shit out of him, and me if I”m honest. Tate has never been anything but the fun, easy-going, golden boy that he was born to be. Even in games, and I”ve watched a lot of his games both when he was a junior and as a pro. I have the NHL Network app just so I can watch him, even in England. My parents and Diana thought I had it for my brother Emmett, but I never missed a Quake game. And even on the ice, when pests try to mess with his game, try to force him to get angry and throw a punch, or try to take a swing at him, he just smiles. Literally grins, like he”s just been told the best joke ever. He doesn”t engage, ever. Nothing gets under Tate”s skin. Except me, apparently.

I bounce Dylan in my arms give him soothing words and head into the hall to find Tate and fix this, somehow. I assume he went downstairs but I didn”t hear his footsteps on the stairs. His bedroom door is open and the light from the bathroom is spilling out and glancing off the hardwood floor.

Dylan’s face is buried in my neck, making it damp with his tears, as I rub his back. But he’s stopped wailing and now I can hear a different sound. Something deeper, more anguished. Ashamed. I follow the sound into Tate’s bedroom.

It smells so much like him in here it”s like a punch to my heart. His woodsy aftershave. His crisp deodorant. It floods my brain with memories of the night I buried my face in his neck, threaded my fingers through his thick hair, felt his skilled fingers between my legs.

My skin heats. And then I turn to look in his bathroom and everything gets cold. Tate is standing there facing the marble vanity. His shoulders slumped and shaking, his face tilted down, his hands in balled fists on the countertop. Tears leaking out of his shut eyes. He”s crying. No sobbing.

I rush to him and touch his shaking back with the flat of my hand not holding Dylan. “I’m sorry.”

“No. Don’t,” he chokes out and tries to move away from me. I grab onto the fabric of his shirt, trying to hold him in place. It works even though I know he could yank free if he wanted to.

“I’m sorry, Tate. It’s going to be okay,” I promise blindly.

“I can’t do this alone,” he confesses hoarsely. “Please don’t leave. Please. I promise I won’t… I’ll do my best for him but I just… please help me.”

He turns his head toward me finally, fixing his watery bloodshot eyes on me. Dylan is still whining and fussing in my arms and he reaches out and cups the back of his son’s head, gently threading his fingers through his downy hair. “I’m gonna do right by you, Dylan. I promise.”

All the fury confusion and pain in me just melts into a puddle of nothing. Because none of it matters. All that matters is helping this amazing man be an amazing father. I step closer to him and he steps into me, wrapping his arms around both me and Dylan.

With Tate’s head on one shoulder and Dylan’s on the other, my neck now saturated by both their tears, I fight my own and vow, “I’ve got you both. I promise.”