Chapter 2 Just a One-Night Stand

Erika’s POV

I cut Theo’s food into pieces, nodded at the story about the florist, lifted my glass at the right moments, and the whole time my mind ran in circles around the man across the table.

He didn’t look at me much.

When he did, it was the polite, passing glance a man gives his brother’s fiancée, there and gone, but once, when I reached to wipe Theo’s mouth, I felt him watching.

When I glanced up he didn’t look away fast enough. My heart skipped a beat.

He doesn’t recognize me. Why would he? He had one night with a woman whose last name he never asked for. I’m the only one at this table who has to live with it.

That was the thought I kept circling, sitting there in the green dress Isabelle had made me wear.

He got to forget. I never had the chance. I’d left that hotel room and spent every day since living with what we’d done there, in the shape of a little boy who was, at this moment, trying to feed a crouton to a sculpture of butter.

Theo yawned against my arm. “Can we go home now? This restaurant is boring.”

“Theo.” I almost smiled despite everything. “What do we say?”

“Thank you for dinner.” He looked at Victoria. “Your necklace is shiny.”

Victoria melted. Even Damien’s mouth curled before he caught it.

Julian crouched to help Theo into his coat, working the small arms through the sleeves. “Say goodnight, buddy.”

In the hallway outside the private room, I put my hand on Julian’s arm and told him I’d take Theo home—it was late, he’d had a long day. Julian nodded and kissed my forehead. I held still for it while eight feet away his brother pretended to study his phone.

“Get some rest,” Julian said. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

I watched him go back in to his mother. Then I crossed the hall to Damien.

I stopped closer to him than I meant to. Up close he was even more the man from that room—the same dark eyes, the same set to his mouth—and my heart was going so hard I was sure he could see it jumping in my throat.

“Do you remember the Aster Hotel?” I said under my breath. “Five years ago?”

“Yes.” He looked at me without any hurry at all. “I recognized you at the table.”

“You recognized me.” My chin came up before I could stop it. “After five years.”

I had never thought I was a woman a man like him would keep in his head for a week, let alone half a decade.

“You’re not easy to forget.” He said, inclining his head.

I almost smiled. Almost. Maybe he just had a good memory for faces.

“I have to tell you something,” I said, biting the inside of my lip. “Though I suppose, with how clever you’re supposed to be, you’ve probably already worked it out.”

“Say it anyway.”

“You’re Theo’s father.” I let out a breath I’d been holding since the door opened. “I didn’t know who you were until tonight. I swear to God I didn’t know you two were brothers.”

“I believe you.”

No shock. No demand for proof. Just that.

I didn’t have anything left in me to wonder why he took it so easily.

“He’s sick, Damien,” I croaked. “It’s why I have to find his biological father. The doctors need him. Can you come to Memorial East tomorrow? Around nine?”

“I can come pick you two up. If that’s easier.”

I stopped. 

Whatever I’d braced for, it wasn’t an offer to drive us to the hospital.

“You don’t have to do that,” I said. “I have a car. It works. Most of the time.”

His mouth twitched. “Most of the time.”

“The check engine light is decorative at this point.”

“Then—”

“No, it’s fine,” I said quickly. “I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

***

He was already there when I came down at ten to nine, standing near the window in a dark coat with his hands in his pockets, early for a meeting I’d half expected him to skip.

I’d braced all night for him not to show. He’d beaten me down by half an hour.

I came over holding my coffee in both hands so he wouldn’t see them shake. No green dress today, no earrings. Just jeans and a cardigan, with my hair scraped back.

I looked like exactly what I was: a tired mother who hadn’t slept.

“Thank you for coming,” I said.

“You didn’t think I would.”

“I didn’t know.” I made myself meet his eyes. “I still don’t even know your last name.”

“You do. It’s the same as Julian’s.”

I looked away.

A nurse rolled up his sleeve and drew four vials of blood, and I stood in the doorway with my arms crossed and told myself to watch the needle.

I didn’t. I watched his forearm.

The scar was white against the vein, and I still remembered the taste of it when I'd put my mouth on in the dark.

When I finally dragged my eyes up, his were already on me.

I looked away first.

Neither of us said anything about it.

I led him down the corridor to the room with the dinosaur stickers on the door, and everything else went out of my head the second I pushed it open.

Theo lay in a bed built for kids twice his size, a monitor clipped to one finger. I’d seen it every day for weeks, and it still stopped my breath.

It stopped Damien’s too. He got as far as the doorway and no farther.

This big, calm man who’d strolled into dinner forty minutes late and ordered his scotch without looking up stood at the threshold of the room and couldn’t make his feet carry him in.

For a moment I forgot to be afraid of him.

“He’s been in and out since spring,” I said. I pulled the blanket to his chin and tucked the rabbit under his arm; my hand shook doing it. “The treatments held for a while. Last week everything started sliding, and yesterday Dr. Kirk sat me down and told me he needs a transplant. She said I had to find his father. That everything starts there.”

I smoothed his hair back.

“And then you sat down at my table.”

He crossed the room and came to stand at the rail beside me, close enough that his sleeve nearly brushed my shoulder. I was too busy looking at my son to think anything of it.

“He’s a good kid,” I said. “He hides behind my legs and peeks out and laughs at his own joke before he’s done telling it. He calls every animal ‘doggy.’ Cats included.” My throat was thick. “You’d like him.”

“I already do.”

I looked up at that. He was near enough that I could count the paler flecks in his eyes, near enough that if either of us leaned in—

He stepped back and put his hands in his pockets.

“I’m covering his treatment,” he said. “All of it. Whatever this hospital can’t do, I’ll find a place that can.”

“Damien, that’s—”

“He’s my son.”

I pressed my lips together and looked back down at Theo so he wouldn’t see my eyes fill. 

“Thank you,” I managed. “For being so responsible about all of this.”

He stared at me. “Responsible.”

“Yes. You found out you have a son and you’ve already decided to cover his treatment. That’s very responsible.”

He rubbed a hand over his face. “You’re welcome.”

For a while Theo’s breathing was the only sound between us.

“Why did you leave?” he said suddenly. “That morning. No note, no number.”

I hadn’t expected the question.

“Does it matter now?”

He didn’t answer. He only looked at me, and whatever was behind his eyes, I couldn’t read it and didn’t have the strength to try.

“It was a one-night stand, Damien.” I shrugged. “That’s what those are. You leave in the morning. It didn’t mean anything.”

He went very still.

“Most people at least leave a note,” he said.

“What would I have written? ‘Thank you for the evening, sorry about the lamp’?”

His head turned. “You remember the lamp.”

“It was a nice lamp. I felt bad.”

Something behind his eyes shifted. Something I didn’t have the strength to name.

I turned back to Theo and didn’t let myself look at his eyes again, so I never saw whatever was in them.