Page 86 of Finding Fate
“Does he know you?”
“He does.”
“When did you see him last?”
“Over the summer.”
“And had I come with you?”
“I’ve never hidden him from you. I invited you every trip. I knew when you were ready, you would come.”
“Excuse me,” she says, her voice already trembling, and then she turns on her heel and runs out of the room. I haven’t told her I love her in so long. I haven’t heard it in even longer. I’m tired of living like I don’t when it kills me that we seem so far apart. Turns out, my mother’s heart is as dominant as my father’s eyes. Gabrielle has it too.
Forty-Nine
Gabby
“Gab, are you okay? You haven’t spoken since you ran out of your dad’s office and told me we were leaving. Will you talk to me? Why are we here?”
I tighten my hands on the steering wheel as I look out the windshield of the rental at nothing but a narrow winding road with no paint lines that runs between nothing but woods, before finally meeting his worried stare.
We’ve been parked on the side of the road for probably twenty minutes now. “This is where it started and ended for us. Just kinda feels like our place, you know? I gave you my virginity here and we conceived our son here. Holds a lot of important memories for me.”
“I fell in love with you here,” he adds.
I laugh out, trying my best to stop crying and failing. “And to think, I was scared you wouldn’t call. Normal girls would have probably been freaking out they’d just done the deed for the first time, while I, on the other hand, was worried I didn’t put it on you good enough to hook you.”
“That was the longest twelve hours of my life, baby. I was told to wait at least twenty-four to avoid looking desperate. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t sleep a wink that whole night.”
I lay my head back against the headrest. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, Maddox. I’m so thankful you didn’t find someone else.”
He grabs my hand, lacing both of ours together. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you long enough to try. What happened in your dad’s office?”
I wipe my eyes with the sleeve of my thin long sleeve shirt. “I was scared he was playing mind games. Instead, I got a piece of the dad I’ve been holding onto for years. The one that has a heart. He put us on the birth certificate.” My voice cracks. “Bothof us. And both of our last names. Madden Leroy Thanos Burns. Our son got your last name after all.”
As Maddox stares at me, a tear runs down his face. “How?”
My shoulders fold into myself. “My grandparents have him. They’ve had him all along. He was a visit away. I was so angry I wanted no part of my dad. I knew me visiting my grandparents was a big deal for him. He’s always made sure I knew where we came from even though I was born an American. My son was just a plane ride from me. And apparently, he knows his grandfather, but he doesn’t know his own parents. I don’t know how to feel. In ways I feel betrayed by my own family. In others, I feel thankful that it turned out this way. I’m also just sad. We missed so much of his life. I needed a breather to absorb it all.”
He pulls away from me and the door opens, his foot stepping down on the pavement for him to immediately get out. I watch him round the front of the sedan we’re in, wondering what he’s doing. When he opens the driver’s side door and squats before me, I get my answer.
My body starts to turn from him pulling on my leg so that I’ll face him, and he grabs my left hand in his right, playing with the diamond ring he slid on my finger the night of my birthday. “Baby, I know all of this is a lot to take in. I’m having a hard time adjusting to it all too, and I can’t even imagine the depth of how hard it could be had I went through the parts you did . . .”
I wrap my right hand around his neck and play with the ends of his hair. “There’s a but coming, isn’t there?”
He brings my hand toward him, kissing the finger holding my promise of forever to him. “There’s always a but. I was raised to look at the positive in every situation, despite how difficult it can sometimes be. Things can always be worse. He could be with a family we don’t know. He could be legally someone else’s, making us have to take leaps and bounds to even look at him. I’m not trying to downplay what you went through, because Gabby, no one would ever understand how this feels without going through it. I know it’s hard, and it’s going to be a huge adjustment for us, and especially for him. Not only will he be completely changing his living arrangement but the people he lives with too. Then, to top it off, he’s going to have a brother or sister, but . . .” A tear falls down his face. “We’re getting him. From here on out we’re going to raise our son. We will just have to make up for all the time we lost by giving him extra hugs, making sure he never goes to sleep without knowing we love him, and never taking for granted that at the time it mattered the most, your dad had a heart.”
I take a deep breath. “You’re always right.”
“I’m rarely right, but I am right about this.”
Something occurs to me, making my heart race. “What if he doesn’t want to come with us? I don’t know that I can leave him a second time, even if he wanted to stay.”
“I don’t know, baby. I think for a lot of it we’re just going to have to trust God. He’s steered us this far. I’ll believe ‘til the day I die that you walking in the multipurpose building that day we were practicing was because of him. Had you not met Konnor, the rest would have likely never fallen into place.”
“You’ll always be my voice of reason.”
“And you’ll always be the love of my life.”