The Billionaire’s Surprise Baby by Lisa Kaatz

1

Sydney

West Sycamore High’s assembly hall hasn’t changed much in seven years. Same yellowing ceiling tiles and flickering fluorescent lights. The tile on the floor is still a hideous red and green pattern. I don’t even think they’ve painted the walls.

Still, even though everything is familiar, it looks alien from my seat. When I attended West Sycamore High, I was always in the back row. In the audience. Now I’m at the front of the room looking out from the stage.

I don’t think I can even see the back row from here. Not very well, anyway.

Pierce turns to me and whispers.

“Do you think the lock to my lucky janitor’s closet is still broken?”

He nods at a door across the way and winks. I roll my eyes.

Pierce, the youngest of my three older brothers, had a reputation for being a womanizer even in his younger years. Students probably still tell stories about him; he’s a legend here.

A legend in a good way. Unlike me.

“I don’t know,” I say. “But don’t go around testing locked doors. I’m pretty sure Jax would have a fucking heart attack. The press is here.”

“I’ll just say I was looking for a bathroom,” he shrugs.

“You know where the bathrooms are,” I point out. “You attended for four years, didn’t you?”

“Attended is a funny word,” he says, tilting his head at me and grinning. “I mean, my body was physically present in a classroom for some of the time. But does that count?”

“You graduated,” I reply. “That’s something.”

“Well not all of us can graduate early like you, little sis.”

I snort. Pierce knows that I didn’t graduate early; I didn’t graduate at all. Apparently you can only be caught smoking in the bathroom so many times before you’re permanently expelled.

Stupid rules.

I look around the room, searching for Jax and Reid, my other big brothers and the only two of us who haven’t arrived.

“Where the hell are they?” Pierce says, reading my mind. “They’re usually like an hour early to everything in their life.”

“Traffic?”

“We took the same route.”

“Yeah but you know that Reid drives like a grandma,” I say. “Especially with Thomas in the car.”

Pierce laughs.

“Thomas,” he says. “A real stickler for the rules of the road.”

I smile and look around the room. The auditorium is beginning to fill in with people, with the rows of chairs directly in front of the stage being taken first.

“How many are supposed to come?” Pierce asks.

“No idea.”

“They can only fit five hundred people in here, tops, right?”

I glance his way.

“Nervous?”

“Who me?” he asks. “Nah. We don’t even have to speak at this thing. Just stand next to Jax and Reid and look good. The usual. I just want to get out of here as soon as it’s over. You know how that parking lot gets. We’re going to have to rush the exits as soon as the speeches are over.”

“You’re totally nervous,” I snort.

“No way.”

“Yes way.”

He nudges me with his shoulder and I nudge him back, the little game we play whenever we’re sitting directly beside one another like this. I continue to watch the people filing into the auditorium and then my eyes lock with his.

The man I thought I’d never see again. No, the one I swore I’d never see again - I’d make sure of it, not leave it up to chance.

But here he is, Nate Madison himself.

I shrink in my chair, which is dumb. I’m right here on stage with a spotlight over me. There’s no escaping him unless I’m willing to get up now and leave. And as badly as I want to do that right now, I don’t want to let Jax down. This night is important to him. And I’ve disappointed him enough recently without walking out on this.

“Wow,” Pierce mutters. “Surprised he’s here. That’s…bold.”

I nod.

Even Pierce, who unlike Jax cares the least about the family business, has enough good sense to hate Nate completely.

Once upon a time, so did I. And then I got to know him, fell in love, and then got dumped. Now I’m back to hating him. I think.

Seeing him tonight is making me doubt that fact. His inky black hair has grown longer, brushing against his collar and hanging slightly in front of his eyes. Stubble lines his cheeks and jaw, darkening his face and giving him a brooding look.

At first I think by some miracle he doesn’t see me. He’s walking down the side aisle, descending the steps towards the rows near the front. Another man is with him, a colleague probably or maybe his assistant. I don’t know. He never goes anywhere without help.

The man whispers something into Nate’s ear, and then he looks up suddenly. His green eyes look directly at me and I know he’s seen me.

If this has any impact on him at all, it doesn’t show. His face is unchanged. He looks away just as quickly as he had looked up at me, responding to whatever it was that the man next to him had said.

And then they take their seats in the third row.

Close enough for me to try to read his lips as he continues to talk, but  far enough away that he hopefully can’t see the way that I’ve started to sweat profusely underneath the hot lights above the stage.

“Do you have a handkerchief?” I ask Pierce.

He frowns.

“What am I, Mr. Darcy? No, I don’t have a handkerchief. I think I have some Burger Island napkins in the glove compartment of my car, though.”

“That won’t help now,” I say.

“Your makeup looks fine,” he says, assuming my desire for a napkin is for the usual reason of cleaning up my eyeliner and reapplying mascara.

“I just…” I fan myself with my hand, unable to stand it anymore. “It’s so hot up here.

“You were fine a second ago,” Pierce said. “Is this some kind of PMS type of thing? Like you’re having hot flashes?”

“Hot flashes are menopause, Pierce,” I reply. “God.”

He shrugs.

“I don’t know how it works,” he says. “Maybe they’ve got some paper towels backstage, I can go look.”

He starts to rise and I pull him back down into the chair.

“No,” I groan. “Don’t leave me on this stage by myself.”

“Ha,” he says. “Look who’s nervous now.”

“I just feel like everybody is watching me,” I say. “It’s weird. I wish Jax and Reid would hurry up and get here. I’m going to kill them if they’re late.”

“You sound just like one of them,” Pierce says.

“This isn’t my thing,” I reply. “They’re the ones who signed up for this mess. I’m just here to show my support.”

“Well you’re in luck,” Pierce says, looking over my head and rising to his feet. “Here are the two slackers now.”

I look up and Reid and Jax are coming from the side of the stage. Thomas is in Reid’s arms and as soon as he sees me, he starts lunging towards me, arms outstretched, a wide and toothless smile on his round face.

Even in my heightened state of nerves, this melts my heart. No matter what kind of shit is going on, seeing him makes everything better.

“Sorry we’re behind schedule,” Jax says. “There was a…”

“Situation,” Reid says, handing Thomas to me. “There was a situation. We had to pull over. I’ll just leave it at that.”

“Oh no,” I laugh, bouncing Thomas on my hip. “Blowout diaper?”

“Something like that,” Jax shudders.

“Where’s Ayla?” I ask him.

“Home,” he replies. “She wanted to be here but the nausea is just too much for her.”

“Been there,” I sigh.

He nods and looks out at the nearly-full auditorium.

“Wow,” he says. “I wasn’t expecting this kind of turnout for a simple donation ceremony.”

“Really?” Pierce asks. “I mean, it’s Sycamore. This is the most interesting thing to happen to this town since…well, since you left it, Jax.”

“Well,” Jax says. “Maybe you’re right.”

“Hey,” Pierce says, lowering his voice. “You’ll never guess who showed up.”

My eyes find Nate in the crowd as he continues.

“Nate Madison. Yeah, I don’t know, just sitting right there in the third row like he belongs here. Fucking weird, man. He didn’t graduate from West Sycamore or something right? We would have known about that.”

Nate’s still talking to his colleague but suddenly, like he knows we’re talking about him, he looks up.

And locks eyes with me again.

This time I’m the one who looks away. Maybe I’m imagining it. Maybe he’s not focusing on me at all. I’m on the stage. He’s looking towards the stage. Nothing deeper than that.

“Well,” Jax continues. “It’s a free country, I guess. He’s entitled to be here. And it’s not like there’s anything he’s going to be able to steal from this presentation - we’re not divulging company secrets tonight, we’re giving money to a run down high school.”

“I can’t believe he made the commute out here,” Reid muses. “I mean, it’s not exactly a convenient drive. He has an agenda for being here. I just can’t imagine what it is.”

I can’t take any more talk of Nate. I tune them out and find my seat on the stage again, bouncing Thomas on my lap and thanking god that he wasn’t born with his father’s coloring. Instead he’s got my natural hair color, a dirty blonde, and my eye color too, pale blue.

He takes after his father in other ways, but ones too subtle to be seen from the third row of the auditorium while we’re on stage.

Nate Madison wouldn’t be able to tell from a distance, for instance, that both he and our son have the same almond shaped eyes. Or the same curved lower lip.

The school administrator approaches Jax, looking just as starry eyed and lovesick as any other woman who talks to my oldest brother.

Too bad he’s a married man now, I think with a smirk.

“It’s time,” she says. “We’re going to turn the lights down in a minute. Is it just you speaking tonight, or are your siblings going to…?”

Her eyes scan the rest of us, landing on me. For a second they dart from Thomas to me, then back to Thomas.

I know what she’s doing. Calculating in her mind how young I might be and how young I was when I got pregnant. I think I even see her gaze flicker to my hands and already know she’s looking for a wedding band on my left ring finger.

I grind my teeth. Sure, I might be a young mother by today’s standards, but it’s not like I’m sixteen. The fact that I have a young looking face isn’t my fault.

I’m twenty three years old. A grown adult.

It’s only been six months since giving birth to Thomas, but the sting of the judgmental looks still gets to me. I keep thinking I’ll get used to it. That one day it won’t bother me anymore. But it does.

I know that I’m a good mother.

And I also know that I never intended to get pregnant like this.

Nate told me he had a vasectomy. I thought we didn’t need protection. It’s not like we were being irresponsible or careless.

So why am I treated like some kind of foolish little girl for getting knocked up when the odds of it happening were something like one in a million?

They don’t know all of that though. They don’t know my story. All they see is a young woman without a wedding ring on her finger, with a baby in her lap.

Of course, Nate isn’t burdened with judgmental looks like this.

He’s not burdened in any sense of the word.

Instead of changing diapers and making bottles, he’s still living his bachelor lifestyle. Hooking up with his bimbos and enjoying it consequence-free. He still has his money. His reputation. And he gets to keep living his life exactly as he did before he knocked me up.

Not a responsibility in the world.

And I’m…here. An unwed young mother. Depending on who you ask, that’s maybe the worst thing you can be.

“It’s just me speaking tonight,” Jax answers. “My family came for support. And I’ll try to be brief. I don’t want to keep everyone here too late.”

“Take your time, sir,” the administrator says. “We’re very excited to have you.”

He nods curtly and they talk a little more. I tune it all out. I can practically feel Nate’s eyes still on me. I glance his way.

Yep. There can’t be any mistaking it this time. He’s definitely looking right at me.

A bead of sweat rolls down my spine and pools just above the band of my bra. I feel sticky and hot. And I just know that my mascara is probably smeared now.

On my lap, Thomas begins to fuss and doesn’t stop until I pick him up and hold him against my chest, patting him on the back to soothe him.

Fuck.

I pull at the hem of my blue dress and mentally picture that the floor beneath me has opened up, swallowing me whole and removing me from view. The lights overhead feel like they’re only getting hotter by the second but once glance at Pierce and Reid tells me that it’s all in my head, just a product of nerves.

Lovely.

And he’s still looking at me, a frown on his face but otherwise completely unreadable. As always.

I never could understand Nate when we were dating. If you could call what we did dating.

We were more like fuck buddies, I guess. Except, I thought maybe we had developed something beyond that by the end. I loved him. And I thought he loved me too. We never said the words aloud but I didn’t think we had to. I thought we just had an understanding.

I guess I was wrong. Because when Nate ended things he seemed completely unaware of what he was doing to me. That he was crushing me. That he was severing what I thought was going to be a lasting thing. A bond resembling something like…like soul mates, even.

We weren’t on the same page, though.

Because to Nate, it never developed beyond fuck buddies.

For Nate, I was just a convenience.

“You okay?”

It’s Reid. He tucks a lock of hair behind his ear and looks at me with concern in his eyes.

“I’m fine,” I say. “Just…it’s really warm in here.”

“I feel fine.”

“Pantyhose,” I explain, pointing down at my legs. “The nylon burns me up.”

He nods sympathetically.

And then I ask the question I can’t resist asking.

“Why is Nate Madison here?” I ask.

I always say his full name, Nate Madison, as though I’ve never been on a first name basis with the man. Much less gave birth to his child.

“No idea,” Reid says. “Honestly. I don’t know. If Jax has a clue, he’s not giving it away either. My guess is some weird intimidating tactic thing. You know how that guy is. He’s all ego. Thinks he’s going to rule the world.”

I nod. Yeah. I do know how that is.

The auditorium goes quite suddenly and I look up and see Jax standing at the podium, a microphone positioned in front of his face.

“Greetings,” he says. “Thank you all for being here tonight. As a former student and graduate of West Sycamore High, it’s an honor to be in this room again and to have your attention. But let’s give a round of applause to the administrators who made tonight possible.”

He begins to clap and the audience follows suit automatically.

I know that the real reason they’re here is because they want to see a celebrity in the flesh, though. Nobody cares about the administrators and the work they did setting tonight up. Nobody even cares about the donation and the new recreation center and technology lab that it will fund. Not really.

It’s about Jax. And Jax still denies it all, refuses to believe he’s considered a celebrity. The fact that all three Adler brothers graduated from West Sycamore is a point of pride for the town. They even have a bust of Jax displayed in the trophy case down the hall.

Nobody in this town would miss a chance to get to see him in the flesh. Him and Reid and even Pierce.

Me?

Most of the time people forget that the Adler brothers even have a sister.

Which is fine with me.

I don’t want to be remembered. I especially don’t want to be followed around by paparazzi and photographed while on my honeymoon, the way that Jax was last year when he and Ayla tied the knot and tried to escape to Saint Lucia for a couple of weeks.

I just want my privacy. To be left alone. And - before I had Thomas, anyway - I wanted to be on my own. Completely on my own.

No more living in the shadows of my big brothers.

No more living by their rules or having to see their looks of concern and disapproval at my life choices.

Enough of being the Adler brother’s trouble making little sister. I wanted to graduate college and just be…me. Whoever that is.

And then I went and got pregnant with Nate Madison’s child.

“Are you worried?”

I look away from Jax, who is well into his speech now, and glance up at Reid.

“What?” I whisper.

“Are you worried?” he repeats. “About Madison being here, I mean. You think he’s up to something?”

“No,” I reply. “Not really. I guess. Why? Do I seem worried?”

Reid shrugs.

“You just…don’t take this the wrong way Syd, but you’ve never really taken an interest in the business. Much less our business rivals. I was surprised you even recognized him, honestly.”

My cheeks redden.

“Pierce pointed him out to me before you got here,” I say. “He seemed worried.”

“Ah,” Reid nods. “Yeah. That makes sense. I’m sure he’d love for something to happen tonight. Honestly Sydney, don’t worry about anything Pierce says. He just likes a good fight. Thinks it’s fun. Sometimes he can be a real drama queen, you know?”

“I can hear you, you know,” Pierce grumbles from the other side of me. “And it’s not drama. That guy has sabotaged us at every turn.”

“Business is a cut throat world,” Reid says icily. “If you can’t handle that fact, maybe it’s not for you.”

“Watch it,” Pierce snaps.

“Shhh!” I hiss at them both. “I was just asking a question. Calm down. Both of you.”

They quiet down for a minute but Pierce can’t resist starting up again, speaking across me to Reid.

“You know,  maybe I’m not big on spreadsheets and boring boardroom presentations but I know a snake when I see one,” he says. “And that Madison guy? You and Jax are too soft on him. You let him get away with murder.”

“What are we supposed to do, Pierce? He might have aggressive business tactics but everything he’s done is above the belt. It’s all legal. You want us to what, sue him for being good at what he does?”

“He steals from us.”

“That’s what competition does, Pierce. Maybe if you showed up to one of our boring boardroom presentations sometime, you’d realize that all is fair in business. Stealing isn’t always stealing.”

“What does that even mean?”

I shush them both again, glaring daggers at each of them in turn. I thank my lucky stars that Thomas is a heavy sleeper; ever since he was two months old, he’s been able to fall into a deep sleep wherever he is, no matter how loud and distracting.

For a moment the fighting between Pierce and Reid is enough to distract me from Nate’s face in the audience. But after they settle down, I’m back to where I was before. Looking everywhere but at Nate until I can’t help it anymore.

I peek.

He’s not looking at me anymore. I hate that I almost feel disappointed by that fact.

Instead of looking at me, he’s listening intently to Jax, glancing down at a legal pad in front of him periodically to scribble down notes.

Huh. Maybe he is stealing from our business, like Pierce says. But what the hell could he possibly be stealing from a presentation like this? It’s just a charity event. Jax does a thousand of these every year. He never talks business; just does the usual inspirational speech thing.

Talks about our rough childhood.

Our dead parents.

Being so poor that we couldn’t afford new shoes and we all slept in a one bedroom apartment.

All of that sappy shit that news stations and politicians eat up.

People love to root for an underdog, I guess. But we haven’t been underdogs in over a decade. Jax and Reid built our family’s empire with their bare hands and we’ve been enjoying the fruits of their labor ever since.

If there’s been one saving grace in being a single mother, it’s that I have my brothers here for me.

I’ve never had to struggle financially. Hell, they even offered to hire a nanny if I wanted one, an offer that I turned down immediately. It’s not like I have much to do during the day anyway; I’m not working, and I temporarily stopped my college course work until I can figure out what I’m going to do next. So I have the time to raise Thomas by myself all day.

Besides. When I need a break, Ayla is always willing to babysit. Hell, I’m pretty sure that Ayla would attempt to kidnap Thomas and raise him as her own if she thought she could get away with it. It’s a good thing she finally got pregnant; she and Jax will soon have a baby of their own. The thought brings me joy. It’s lonely being a young mother; none of my friends are even thinking about starting families yet. It’s alienating. But with Ayla having a baby soon, at least I won’t be the only mom in the family.

I frown at Nate in the audience. What is he taking notes on? What could possibly be of interest in Jax’s speech tonight to him and his…assistant or whoever the hell that was beside him.

The more I think about it, the more I think that Pierce might be right. Nate is up to something. I don’t know what, but knowing Nate, it’s probably slightly sinister and definitely something to be concerned about. Maybe I don’t pay attention to the family business but I listen at the dinner table to Reid and Jax talk enough to know that Nate has stolen more than a few valuable clients from us.

It’s something that Nate and I never discussed when we were…when we were together. We didn’t talk business. That just wasn’t on our radar. We talked about basically everything except business, really.

I opened up to him about things I’ve never told anyone. My addictions. My past. My fears. The nightmares and flashbacks that keep me up at night. My insecurities, my hopes, my dreams of traveling the world and maybe even changing my last name so that nobody ever recognized me as the inferior, forgotten Adler sister ever again.

All of that is gone now.

But Nate never cared to begin with.

Maybe Nate only got close to me in the first place to spy on my brothers and their business. Maybe that was his long haul plan and he decided to end it early when he was done with me.

He put me down like a toy that he was tired of playing with.

“Thank you, and goodnight.”

The eruption of applause and the standing ovation from the crowd tell me that Jax has finished his speech. Unlike the obligatory clapping for the school administrators at the beginning of the speech, this applause feels like it lasts forever. Finally it begins to die down a little bit and people start filling out of the auditorium.

“Thank god,” Pierce says, bolting to his feet. “Let’s go. That parking lot is going to be a shit show.”

“Wait,” Reid says, yanking him back into his seat. “The press is here, remember? They’re going to want photos.”

“Yeah,” Pierce says. “Of Jax.”

“Of all of us.”

“They can Photoshop me in later,” Pierce replies, rising from his chair again.

“Sit down,” Reid growls, giving him the death glare that I know so well from growing up with him and Jax.

To my surprise, Pierce settles back into the chair.

On my chest, Thomas begins to stir, crying softly into my shoulder.

“Nice,” Reid says. “You woke him up.”

“Give him to me,” Pierce says with a grin, holding out his hands. “Uncle Pierce will make it all better.”

I hand Thomas to Pierce and reach for the diaper bag under my seat.

“He’s probably hungry,” I say. I mix up a bottle and hand it to Pierce, smiling at the way that my brother feeds Thomas so naturally. Jax and Reid being fatherly is never a surprising thing; they basically raised me. But Pierce, my wild and partying youngest brother, acting like a father figure to my six month old Thomas is probably one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.

I don’t tell him this, of course. He takes his Uncle responsibilities very seriously. He even canceled a trip to the Bahamas with his latest flame in order to be there when I went into labor.

I guess “fatherhood” changes a man.

Some men.

I shake my head. Even though, logically, I know that I can’t hold it against Nate that he hasn’t been in Thomas’s life…I still feel resentful.

Maybe it’s just envy. That Nate goes on, living his normal life, while mine has been completely turned upside down.

Or maybe it’s just heartache. That he could walk away from what I thought we had, so easily and without emotion. As though none of it meant anything to him at all.

Men like Nate don’t settle down. Isn’t that what he told me?

They don’t settle down and they sure as hell don’t get married and have babies. Which is why Nate got a vasectomy when he was twenty-seven years old, and why now at the age of thirty-four, he’s not interested in reversing that choice.

I wonder if he knows vasectomies aren’t 100% effective. Because that is a little fun fact that I wasn’t aware of at all.

The crowd has almost completely cleared now and the school administrator lady is back, talking excitedly to Jax with her hand on his shoulder. I smirk. Oh, she’s got it bad. Too bad for her, Jax is a married man now. Not that he made a lot of time for dating anyway, even before he met Ayla.

Jax beckons us over and I stand, grabbing the diaper bag under my seat and taking Thomas from Pierce.

“Thanks,” I say, also taking the empty bottle.

“Any time,” he says with a grin. “Little dude chugs bottles just like his uncle. He’s gonna be huge in college.”

“Like hell he is,” I say, pretending to glare at Pierce. He chuckles.

“They want us to take photographs in the classrooms,” Jax says, turning to us. “You know, a whole back-to-our-roots kind of thing. Sounds okay to me.”

“They need all of us for these photos?” Pierce asks. “Why not just you, Jax? You’re the star.”

“Pierce,” Reid warns him. “Just take the damn photos. The parking lot is full and there’s no way you’re getting out of there without the media swarming your car anyway. Might as well get it over with voluntarily.”

“Great. Okay, fine then.”

We walk toward the side exit doors of the auditorium and on the way, I sneak a glance out of the corner of my eye towards the seat where Nate had been sitting. He and his guest are gone. I feel a pang of disappointment and hate myself for it.

Why do I care?

Why did I ever care?

We follow the school administrator and the photographer down the hall to a wing that I remember fondly as the place where you could smoke in the stairwell without being seen by the teachers.

“I think this classroom will work best,” the photographer says, opening a door. “Good lighting, and lots of props.”

“Sure,” Jax says.

In my arms, Thomas has started to fuss now. Not just a little whimper like before, but building up to a full-on tantrum.

“He probably needs a change,” I explain, shrugging the diaper bag off of my shoulder. “It’ll just take a minute, I’m so sorry…”

“Oh that’s okay,” the photographer says brightly. “I was really only planning to get Jax and the brothers in this. You know - the Adler brothers and all.”

“Oh.”

I don’t know what else to say.

Either this photographer doesn’t realize that I’m related to Jax and “the brothers”…or they simply don’t think it’s relevant to photograph me for their article.

“Sydney is a part of our family,” Jax says quickly. “She will be a part of the photos, please.”

The photographer nods.

“That’s fine. Whatever you think is best, sir.”

Thomas begins to cry more loudly over my shoulder, making my ears ring from the volume and pitch.

“No,” I say over the noise. “I’m actually fine with that. Adler brothers in a classroom at West Sycamore - I love that. Besides, I didn’t even graduate from here, remember?”

“But you attended,” Reid frowns.

“Really, I’m fine,” I say. “I’ve got my hands full anyway, so…”

I’m just babbling now, so I let my sentence drift off as I gesture to Thomas, my evergreen excuse for getting out of awkward situations.

“We’ll meet you outside,” Jax says. “Don’t go far.”

I nod and force a smile, escaping from the classroom and closing the door behind me.

As though cured immediately of whatever it was that was upsetting him, Thomas goes quiet now, leaning against my shoulder with his tiny little fist against my chest.

Now that I’m in the hall, safely out of sight from my brothers and the photographer, the tears that I was holding back start to fall.

It’s stupid. I don’t care about tonight. I don’t care about the photoshoot or the article. I want to disappear, remember? I want to literally change my name. So what the hell do I care, whether or not I’m snapped in a few photos for a small town news article tomorrow morning?

That classroom smelled weird anyway. Like old library books and cheese.

I sink to the floor with Thomas still against my chest, leaning my head back against the crimson set of lockers behind me. Inside of the classroom I can hear muffled sounds - the photographer giving instructions and posing people, and periodic laughter. As always, Pierce’s is the loudest. He didn’t even want to be in this photoshoot and yet now he’s having the time of his life.

While I’m in the hallway. Alone.

Well, not alone. Thomas is here. He’s sound asleep on my shoulder again; it’s past his bedtime and come to think of it, it’s past mine too. All I want to do is go home and bury my sadness in a pint of chocolate chip ice cream and once again try to forget Nate Madison’s face.

“Are you alright?”

I look up.

Fuck.

It’s him.

Standing over me in all of his chiseled, handsome glory. He looks and smells expensive, wearing a crisp black suit as always. I think he has the things custom tailored specifically to drive me insane. Even beneath thick dark fabric, I can make out the contours of his muscular arms and shoulders.

My eyes travel upwards to look at his face.

Big mistake.

His eyes are molten hot, a pair of stormy hazel orbs. I feel like he’s looking through me instead of at me, staring past the surface of my skin and looking within.

My cheeks heat and wonder if he can tell that I was checking him out.

How does he do this? Manage to convey so much intensity in a single look? Or maybe it’s just my sex-deprived imagination running wild, thinking that I see a hint of the passion he used to have for me in that fiery stare.

After all, I haven’t gotten laid since…

I look at Thomas.

What is nine months plus six months? Whatever that is, that’s how long it’s been. Too long. Long enough for me to look up at the man who smashed my heart into a million pieces and still want him.

Fuck me.

“Sydney? Are you okay?”

“Fine,” I manage to get out.

“Are you sure? You’ve been crying.”

“Have not.”

He kneels down, pulling a tissue from his pocket and holding it out to me.

“I don’t need it,” I say. “I haven’t been crying.”

“Yes you have.”

“No,” I say, my voice growing louder and echoing off of the endless columns of lockers around us. “I haven’t.”

“Take the tissue, Sydney.”

“No.”

“Please.”

“Why?”

“Because you’ve obviously been crying, your makeup is all over your face. You look like you’re on your way to rehearsal with your KISS cover band.”

Fuck. I forgot about my makeup.

I snatch the tissue from his hand without thanking him, wiping at my eyes. Inky black smears stain the tissue immediately. He must be telling the truth. I do look insane.

I finish cleaning up my face and then ball the tissue up in my hand.

“I can take that,” he says.

“Fine.” I toss it at him, hating how childish I’m being. It’s bad enough he’s witnessed me crying on the floor like this, but now I’m giving him the satisfaction of acting immature. Only confirming the things he said to me when he left.

What had he said exactly? Oh yeah. That he and I live in different worlds. We’re over a decade apart in age and have completely different lives. That I’m free to…”free to run wild” but that he has responsibilities. Goals. Ambitions.

As though I don’t. As though everything I opened up about to him had been the silly rambling notions of a child. Not to be taken seriously. Unlike him, the oh-so-serious business tycoon.

Fuck him.

I straighten and take a deep breath.

“He’ll sleep through a hurricane, won’t he?” Nate says, nodding at Thomas.

“Sure will,” I say.

“Is he…is he yours?”

I just look at him. Somehow, amazingly, Nate Madison doesn’t realize that I had a baby last year.

“You must not read the tabloids at the grocery checkout line,” I say with a dry laugh. “It was headline news last year.”

“I don’t do my own grocery shopping,” Nate says with a shrug.

I snort again.

“That’s right. Too good to buy your own eggs and bread. Well, yes. This is Thomas. My son.”

Nate tilts his head and looks closely at Thomas. For a moment my heart skips a beat. Has he already noticed the resemblance?

“He looks like you,” he says finally. “Beautiful baby. Congratulations. How old?”

The question feels loaded.

“Six months,” I reply.

He just nods and I already know he’s doing the mental math.

“So…I suppose you got over me pretty quickly,” he says after a moment. His voice is quiet now and lacks the cheery tone that he had before.

“Does it matter to you?” I ask.

“No,” he replies quickly. “That’s fine. I just…I’m happy for you. Who’s the father?”

“It doesn’t matter. The father doesn’t want to be involved.”

Technically it’s the truth. The same truth that I’ve told my brothers and everyone else in my life for the last year. I know the lines like the back of my hand; the sentences roll off my tongue easily now, no longer feeling like a bitter knife to my chest.

His face darkens.

“Wow,” he says. “He sounds like a real asshole, Sydney.”

“What can I say?” I reply. “I guess I have a type.”

Zing.

He rises to his feet, pocketing the mascara-stained tissue and looking away.

“Is Jax around?” he asks. “That’s who I came to talk to.”

The implication being that he didn’t come here to chat with me.

Our conversation is over.

“He’s inside,” I say, jerking my head to the door of the classroom. “Re-enacting the glory days of high school, apparently. They should be done any second now.”

“I’ll go inside,” he says, reaching for the door. “And Sydney? I might be an asshole. But there’s a difference between an asshole and a deadbeat that walks out on a girl he knocked up. Whoever this loser is, it sounds like he doesn’t deserve you or that kid. Good riddance.”

“I don’t need your sympathy, Nate,” I say.

“It’s not sympathy,” he says. “I know we didn’t work out, but I still care about you as a friend. You deserve someone who will show up for you, Sydney. Not some shithead like that.”

I don’t know what to say to this. I half think that his words might make me break down into tears again, so I just look away, staring at the lockers across the hall from me until I hear the sound of the classroom door open and then close again.

Good riddance.