“Rough night?” I asked when I approached him.
He grimaced slightly at the comment. “You could say that.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
Jensen passed me the coffee, and we moved to a table inside Starbucks, which was blissfully quiet at such an early hour.
“Noah said that you’re going to be here for a while longer.”
“Looks like it.”
I reached into the bag and smiled when I saw an apple fritter and a cinnamon twist inside. My two favorite doughnuts.
“Thanks for these.”
“I thought that you might be hungry.”
I nodded. For the first time ever, there was awkwardness between us. We had one foot in the water and one foot on solid ground. Not knowing where we stood or what would come next seemed to be killing both of us.
“I know I said that we didn’t have to talk,” Jensen said, breaking the silence.
“Too much to ask for, I guess,” I mumbled.
“And we don’t have to if it’s too much, but I stayed up all night, thinking about what you said.”
“Which part?”
“Me not trusting you…or anyone,” he clarified. His eyes darted up to mine, and I could see the hours of anguish and self-deprecation that radiated from him. “I don’t think that I ever realized until last night that I absolutely do not trust anyone other than myself. Not one person. Not even my family.”
I nodded, having found out firsthand the truth of that statement.
“I wish I could say that I don’t know how that happened to me, but I do.” He sighed and glanced away, as if he didn’t want to continue, as if the next words would rip through him. “Colton isn’t my son.”
I opened my mouth, stuttered incoherently, and then closed it again. I shook my head in confusion, trying to understand how his own son couldn’t be his. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, Colt is Marc’s son,” he said so calmly that I knew it must have been killing him to admit it. “I’ve never told anyone this. Not even my family. The only people who know are me and Vanessa.”
“Not even Marc?”
“Especially not Marc,” he growled low. “I’m a better dad than he could have ever been. I’d spent two years with Colt. He was my son, and I couldn’t lose him. Not to anyone.”
My heart ached for him. How could he possibly live with the fact that his son wasn’t really his? How had he kept that secret locked up for all of these years?
“What happened?” I asked, suddenly desperate for him to tell me the story. To finally have an explanation for why he was so guarded.
“Vanessa and I had been married for almost two years when she found out that she was pregnant. I had been living in Lubbock, taking over the company for my father after his death. I’d barely been in New York. We weren’t even trying. I was still too devastated by his death to think about that. When she called and told me she was pregnant, I was ecstatic. Maybe I should have been more cautious.” He shrugged, as if he had played this over and over again in his head before.
“But you weren’t.”
“No. I never suspected once that she and Marc were together. I was too grief-stricken and dealing with the company to consider what was going on with her when I was away.”
“You were dealing with all of that, and she was banging someone else on the side,” I said, furious. “What a bitch.”
Jensen looked off in the distance, the memory hitting him fresh once more. “As I told you, I moved back to New York. As far as I know, their relationship stopped after that. I don’t know if I believe it for sure, but I think Marc was worried Colton was his kid and cleared out. His dad wasn’t doing that well, so he moved back to Austin around the same time that I got to New York.” He took a long sip of his coffee and leaned back in his chair.
“What a creep,” I grumbled. “So, how did you find out?”
“I was there when Colton was born. I took him home from the hospital. I changed diapers. I fed him when Vanessa was sleeping. I was there every single second that I wasn’t working. Colton is my son in every way that matters.”
I smiled at that statement. I loved the thought that Jensen had never treated his son any differently.
“Marc was in town on business for Colt’s second birthday. We all went out to dinner together.”
“And you had no idea?”
“None.”
“How could Vanessa go out to dinner with him?” I gasped.
“I think she thought it would be fine. I really don’t know. The next day, I found her sitting in Colt’s bedroom, crying. I asked her why she was crying, and she said she couldn’t keep lying to me. Then, she told me about her affair with Marc. It must have been weighing on her for a long time for her to actually break down and tell me.” He set his cup down and sighed heavily. “We probably could have survived that. It would have taken a long time, but we could have made it. But then she told me that Colt was Marc’s, and I lost it.”