I had a feeling I knew where this was going and didn’t want to go there. “I don’t care what happened or what your reasons were, Jonah. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” I had before, and I wanted him to know that. But I didn’t now. Not anymore.

That was a lie, and my heart knew it and my brain did too. A tiny part of me wanted to hear what he had to say. But nothing he said or did changed a thing.

He told me he would call me.

He got hurt.

He disappeared.

For. Seventeen. Months.

He had reappeared into the world a year after I’d last seen him, and over the next few months, he didn’t make a single effort to contact me.

Motherfucker.

I mean it didn’t matter. It didn’t need to be brought up anymore. It really didn’t, and I had to focus on that. We were here, and we were going to be in this together, some way, somehow, and that was the important part. And if we needed to do this for a long time, then I needed to not get pissed off and become irrational.

I wasn’t spending the rest of my life being bitter toward him. I could passively hate him. That worked.

“All that needs to matter at this point is our relationship with Mo. I don’t want to talk about… then.” I squeezed my hands into fists. It was the truth. It was. “If you’re going to be part of the rest of her life, that is.”

The look he sent me though….

I wasn’t sure what to think of the way his eyebrows knit together or the clench in his cheek. I wasn’t sure what to think of the words that came out of his mouth next either. “I’d like to explain, Lenny,” he said carefully, dousing me with that accent of his that made everything out of his mouth instantly sound prettier than everything out of mine, even though I still wanted to trip him near a flight of stairs. “Need to, really. I’m not going anywhere.”

“It’s easy to say things. It’s not as easy to do them.”

I didn’t mean for my words to come out so bitchy, but it wasn’t like I could take them back after they were out. Maybe he didn’t remember how he had stood in front of me the day before his game—match, whatever—held my face in between those big hands, and said, We should go to the catacombs when I get back from Toulouse, yeh?

We never made it to the catacombs.

I had never made it to the catacombs.

“I deserved that,” he replied, and not for the first time, it hit me that he didn’t fight back, or that he didn’t get mad or try and deflect. Jonah looked down at the ground, that wide jaw working.

His fucking throat started to go pink, and I almost felt guilty. Almost.

But Jonah kept going, his throat bobbing as he owned my borderline bitchy comment. “If that’s what you want, I won’t say anything, but know I want to.” One bright brown eye focused on me. “We can talk about our girl, then?”

We passed by one of my favorite historic houses in the Heights. A massive white and purple home that reminded me of my best friend’s much smaller house, but I had my mind on other things. Our girl. He’d gone with that, huh? Fine.

“Sure,” I told him, training my eyes on the house as we walked by.

“I’m going to contact my lawyer—”

I stopped moving at the same time as a car honked from behind where we were walking. Clenching my fist and holding my breath, I glanced over my shoulder just as a familiar voice hollered, “Hey, Lenny! Hi, Mo!”

What were the fucking chances? I wondered as I faced the minivan that pulled up beside me. “Hi, Mrs. Polanski,” I said to the graying blonde woman in the driver’s seat who was waving.

“I’m heading to church, but drop by the house this week so I can get my hands on that baby,” the woman who was about the closest thing to a mother figure I’d ever had called out with another wave. “Love you!”

“I will. Love you too!” I yelled back at her with another wave that was only partially half-assed while I processed what the fuck had just come out of this asshole’s mouth before Mrs. Polanski of all people had rolled up.

Contact his lawyer?

Jonah had stopped too at the honk, and he instantly held up a hand the second I turned back to him. “Not like that. Listen to me. I’d like to be put on Mo’s birth certificate. She would have dual citizenship, I think, as well. And I owe you—”

Was he trying to give me a heart attack? Fuck me. “You don’t owe me anything.”

The Asswipe frowned. “I owe you. Children are expensive. I don’t know much about them, but I know that,” he kept going. “You don’t have to look at me in that way. I don’t want to fight you for rights, but I think she should know where I come from. I want her to know me.”

I could feel my lip curling up like it wanted to snarl, and I tamped it down, keeping my face even.

“I suppose we’ll have to do a paternity test, but I’ll find out, see what needs to be done.” He blinked, as if something finally hit him. But just as quickly as he stopped to do that, he refocused, like he was on top of the situation all over again. “Once I talk to my agent and lawyer.”

He didn’t look away from me, and all those features got even more determined, and I didn’t know what to think about it. “I meant what I said about wanting to be around. I want to do right by her.” I didn’t want to see the earnestness that moved over his face. “I need to do right by her.”

I swallowed and watched him gesture toward the stroller he was pushing around.

“If I would have known….” He lifted up a brawny shoulder. “I want to do the right thing. I want to do what I should have from the beginning. If I could go back in time and do things differently, I would, but I can’t, Len. You don’t owe me anything, and I know that. I appreciate you being willing to let me see her and be a part of her life.”

His hands flexed around the handle, and he continued. “I know you don’t care for me much now, and it must not be easy, but I appreciate what you’re doing. You’re right about how saying something is different than actually doing it, but I’m not going to leave like that again. I’m going to be a part of her life… of your life.”

Did he have to look at me like that as he said those words? What game was he on? And did his eyes have to be so shiny and direct?

“I want to earn your trust again. Want to raise her with you.”

I wished right then I had my stress ball in my pocket.

“You’ll have to help me, I’m sure, but I can promise I’ll try my best to not mess it up heaps,” he said in that calm, collected voice that shouldn’t have ever gotten under my skin, but it did every single time. Maybe it was because I’d been raised around so many loudmouths, but that was one of the things I had liked the most about Jonah as I’d gotten to know him. He was just himself.

I had thought for a long time that his quiet confidence had been his most attractive trait. More than his body. More than his smile. More than his face and how cheery he’d been.

But I’d learned the hard way that he hadn’t been as confident as I had expected. Otherwise he wouldn’t have just… fallen off the face of the earth after his injury. I’d been injured countless times and didn’t wallow in my own bullshit for long.