Page 84 of Trusting You

“Do you go to meetings? Talk to someone?”

“Yes.”

I blink, the only break in my composure. So much. So many things go on with him that I don’t know, and the reasoning is trying to break through the hurt feelings. “I realize I came here with a lot more baggage than your regular girl. These issues, the battles you’ve gone through—you don’t have to tell anyone until you’re ready. But I’m different, Locke.” I put a hand to my chest, then point to the little girl between us. “I’m different because I came with her. And I deserved a lot more answers than what you gave me.”

“I don’t consider you to be just any other girl.”

“But you treated me like one.”

“That’s not true.”

“Oh, no?” I gesture to the bottle of pills, placed innocently between us, but directly above Lily’s head. “These are things any mother would want to know when giving up their child to a stranger. And that’s what you were to me, Locke—some guy who slept with my friend and knocked her up. An aged college hero who had a brilliant career ahead of him until it was torn away. A dude who buried his issues in beer and women—and that was before the injury.”

Locke rubs at his jaw and looks at the wall behind my shoulder.

“When I came here, that’s all I expected,” I continue. “But you changed all that. In a matter of a week, you turned everything I thought about you into a caricature. You were nothing like the reputation you crafted for yourself. You showed kindness, sweetness, a love for this child and the determination to sacrifice everything for her—to learn. You cleaned up your act for her. You weren’t afraid to look stupid and ask questions if it meant caring for her better. And that’s all I could ever ask for. What I see in you when you look at her, you can’t fake that kind of devotion.” My voice cracks. “Because I look at her in the exact same way.”

At last, Locke pins me with his brilliant blue eyes. “I love Lily, Carter.”

I watch the brightness go out when I say, “You betrayed all of that love with this single bottle.”

He nods, but I’m not finished. “You betrayed me by keeping this to yourself. Especially after last night when you…when we…you saw all of me, Locke, because I let you in. I trusted you, but it turns out you don’t trust me.”

“Can you blame me?” Locke looks up from the table, and I’m about to flay him for that response until he adds, “I didn’t know shit about you, Carter. All I was aware of when we first met was that you hated me, you were losing a baby that’s like a daughter to you because of me, and you judged me a prick the instant you saw me.”

“That’s not fair—”

“No?”

“No! You had a half-naked chick tumbling out of the bedroom with you!”

He guffaws. “So, I have sex. That doesn’t give you the right to—”

“You didn’t even know her name.”

His expression hardens. “That’s not true.”

“Then what was it?”

His muscles grind through his cheeks. “Candace.”

“Tara,” I add, deadpan. “I asked.”

Locke bangs his fist against the table. “Damn it.”

“And you question why I assumed you were a loser player who didn’t deserve to touch Lily’s baby toe, never mind be granted sole custody of her.”

“The point,” he continues, “is that you had a version of me in your head—which you just admitted to—that I was going to have to fight like hell against to prove to you I deserved Lily.”

“Can you blame me? I had to give a child up that I love more than myself because the law wouldn’t let me keep her. A piece of paper, Locke.” I trip over my words. “That’s all it took to take Lily away from me. So, big surprise, I hated you on sight. And you had to fight against that judgment every step of the way. But it was working. You were so close to—”

“A single piece of paper was all it took to keep me away from my daughter indefinitely.”

I quiet. He’s talking about the birth certificate, and Paige refusing to name the father. Since Locke wasn’t on it, he had no immediate claim. He had to establish paternity, then be approved for parental rights, before he could even meet her.

“You continue to believe I have no idea what you’re going through,” Locke says. “When Paige fucked us both over.”

“Don’t talk about her like that,” I seethe out.