Lucie
What am I doing? I think to myself as a craziness overcomes me. Is this a good idea?
I guess if I want to have a second chance myself, if and when the truth comes out, then I owe him one too. Maybe that reaction was shock and now he wants to discuss Logan properly. Right now, I feel like if he doesn’t ask me if he’s Logan’s father then I won’t disclose the information at first. I’ll wait to see how he’s going to take it. I might feel like I know him, but five years is a long ass time, I’ve changed so he could have too. It could be for the better, but it could be for the worst. He might be horrible these days.
“Okay, well we shall see you at home,” Mom says in a determined tone of voice. There’s an underlying meaning to her words. I know what she means, she’s warning me to say whatever needs to be said. “You two talk and whatever and I shall see you later on. I’ll wait up for you, okay, Lucie? Goodnight.”
“I’ll wait up for you too!” Logan says, probably meaning it more than he should. “Love you, Mommy.”
They leave, and then there’s only me and Kade left. Discomfort circles through me, I don’t feel good at all. There’s a big part of me that desperately wants to run like the wind so I don’t have to deal with this, but I do. I have to do it for myself, for Kade, and of course for Logan as well. He deserves the chance to know.
“Did you want to come to my room?” Kade asks me awkwardly. “Just to see the pictures.”
I guess there isn’t any reason not to now, and it isn’t like we can have our very private discussion out here so I nod. Kade takes my hand and he leads me to his room, with my heart racing the entire time. Nerves coil around my body, my stomach flip flops, I think I might even be shaking, I’m so damn scared.
Once in his room, a laughter bubbles up in my throat. “Oh, my goodness, this looks exactly the same! You haven’t changed it at all.” The familiarity fills me up and it helps me to relax. “Oh, look, there’s us.”
I run my fingers along the picture of me and him sitting on horses. Of course, this reminds me of that night, I can barely see anything horse related without thinking about the night I lost my virginity, but I don’t want to bring it up. For now, it’s safer to see us as the innocent kids that we once were trying to ride.
“I know, we were crazy little bastards, weren’t we?” Kade chuckles. “Don’t you wish that we could go back to that sometimes, life was so much easier way back then, wasn’t it? Nothing to worry about…”
“You’re happy now though, aren’t you? You seem to have all your dreams come true?”
I pause and cock my head curiously as I watch the expression change on his face. He looks confused, almost as if he doesn’t know what’s going on in his life any longer. I thought he finally had everything, but maybe not. I want to hug him, to hold him and find out what’s going on with him, but we aren’t there quite yet.
“Yeah, it’s good. It’s just strange isn’t it? Growing up, I mean. Not that I’m as grown up as you.”
I wait for him to make some comment about how Logan could be his. The look of his child, plus the dates that he was quite clearly conceived… he isn’t an idiot… but he doesn’t say anything. He looks expectantly at me, but I don’t confess either. We remain in this weird stand off for a few moments long until I need to break the silence. “So, are you getting out these photographs, or not? I want to see London.”
He reaches up on the top of his shelf and grabs his laptop down. As it boots up, I stare at his face without the fear of him looking back. It’s a nice feeling because even though he looks so different, he’s still him. He’s still the guy that I had a crush on back in school, he’s still the person who I loved in college…
“Okay, here we are.” He pats on the bed for me to sit beside him. “Let me show you them all.”
As he clicks through the photographs and Kade describes his journey, I feel a heat burning in my chest. It’s lust once more, that feeling that I could be falling in love. It’s dangerous, I know it, but there’s always been something very irresistible about Kade. To me, he’s always been everything. This time, I just have to be sensible and not act upon these feelings no matter what. Especially not until I’ve told the truth. For now, I’ll simply enjoy the sensation of the sizzling between us because it’s been five long, lonely years.
“So, did you meet any girls on your travels?” I cringe as those words accidently fly out of my mouth. I didn’t mean to say that, especially when now I sound like a crazy, jealous freak. “I didn’t mean… sorry.”
“Oh, no it’s fine. You can ask that…” He pauses and bites down on his bottom lip. A sense of dread fills me, all of a sudden, I don’t want to get this answer at all. “I didn’t meet any. Mostly because I was far too busy to do anything like that, I didn’t even have any time for a one night stand, my dad had so many plans for me, but I also didn’t because I needed to change. I needed to get over what had happened in my past.”
My heart thunders. That means, as far as I know, that the last person each of us had sex with was each other. I suppose I could be wrong about it, he did have a little bit of time at college before he left, but that’s certainly been the case for me. I always just planned to leave that side of my life away until Logan is older. I wonder what Kade’s excuse is. It can’t be because of what happened between us, can it?
“Erm…” A heat fills my cheeks, I don’t know what to say. “So, do you think that you did that?”
“I did,” he muses thoughtfully. “Or at least I thought I did, once. But now I’m not so sure.”
That’s so loaded, I can almost hear the meaning rolling off his tongue. He’s definitely talking about me, there’s no denying that now, but I cannot get sucked in. I got burned so badly before, more than once, I don’t think I should be able to put myself in that position again. I have to be strong. My life isn’t about me.
“You aren’t sure?” My heart races. This is nuts. What am I even doing here?
“Lucie, I’ll be honest with you.” He places his laptop on the bed and holds my hands in his. “I haven’t ever got over you. Now that I’m older and I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, I can see that it seems like I treated you really badly. Well, I did treat you badly. As soon as we slept together, I got the call that I was about to be kicked out of college. My dad found out and went ballistic. As I’m sure you can imagine.”
I nod numbly. My brain is spinning. “Erm, yeah, I can imagine that wasn’t fun.”
“No, so I snapped at you because I couldn’t handle what I was going through at the time. I was trying to study hard to make the best of my one shot I had left at college. I needed to get through an exam… which of course I didn’t, as you know because I ended up getting kicked out. Urgh, what a nightmare.”
I try to digest this. As I was going through the pregnancy, and coming to terms with the choice that I’d made to be a mom, he wasn’t having the easiest time either. I guess it was just bad timing. I wonder if that’s a sign that we’re never meant to end up together? I mean, it’s possible, right?
“But as soon as I got abroad, I starting thinking thing over properly and I wanted to apologize to you so badly. But, I was away, you had your life to get on with, and I thought it was best to keep away. Maybe that was dumb of me, maybe I should have handled it better but I was a dumb idiot. You know that.”