Reconcile by Nicole Dykes

This is not happening.

How is this happening?

Over six years of keeping this secret, and now he knows. Without a doubt, Sawyer knows that Audrey is his biological child.

There was no one else.

There wasn’t room for anyone else. I let Sawyer Ross come into my life and take up every last bit of space in it. And now, he knows.

I saw the look of determination on his face.

He isn’t going to leave this alone.

“Mommy, who was that man?”

I look at Audrey, fear clawing at me. I don’t want to lie to her, but I don’t want her to know who Sawyer is to her either. She asked about her dad for a while after she realized that was a thing. But then she stopped after I told her she had a mommy who loved her enough for both a mommy and a daddy.

Yeah, I know it’s a shitty explanation. But is “Sorry, your daddy was fucking your aunt at the same time as me, and I’m a total idiot” a better explanation?

The balls on him.

I swear to God, I nearly ripped them from his body. How could he be angry with me? I gave him exactly what he wanted.

Nothing.

He didn’t love me. He didn’t give a damn about me.

“He’s an old friend of Mommy’s, sweetie.” The word “friend” feels decidedly gross coming out of my mouth, but she doesn’t need to be stained by Sawyer Ross.

It’s bad enough she’s his female doppelganger.

“Oh. He seemed nice.”

Again, I have to swallow the bile. Sawyer is anything but nice. “Yeah. Hopefully the pizza will be here soon. Can you go pick up your room for me before it gets here?”

She thinks about arguing for a moment. I can see it on her little face. But thankfully, she nods her head. “Okay, Mommy.”

She takes off down the narrow hall of our apartment, and I flop down on the couch, my body and soul completely numb.

I thought he loved me. It was stupid, and I was naïve as hell and maybe craving the love my parents never gave me, but I believed him. Not that he ever said the words, but I swear he said them with his touch. With all the times we’d made love and lay together after, I was sure he loved me.

But really, he was just a teenage boy, full of lies and deceit, doing and saying whatever he had to, to get laid.

And it worked.

That’s all it was.

Sex.

Sex he probably bragged to all his idiot friends about afterward. While I gushed to my own friends about how I’d found the sweetest boy. Even when they’d tell me Sawyer was a player, I’d shake my head and tell them they didn’t know him like I did.

God, I was such a fool.