“Heterochromia runs in my family. My sister has it. She wears blue contacts.” He huffed a laugh and shook his head. “But even aside from that, Sophia looks a lot like my sister as a baby.”
They fell silent. The surf filled the quiet. A soft breeze caressed his skin.
“You’re killing me, Zach,” she finally said. “What’s going on?”
He dropped the whiskey bottle to the sand and brought his hands to his face, rubbing at the fatigue. “I’m trying to get my mind around this.” He stared out at the ocean. “In the last couple of days”—he lifted one hand and ticked off fingers with the other—“I’ve discovered I got someone pregnant, that she tried to reach out to me, that my fucker of an agent paid her off, and that he didn’t tell me about it because he thought she was lying. I’ve discovered she suffered through cancer, that she died, and that I’ve missed out on the first three years of my daughter’s life.” He dropped his hands and met her gaze. “And just half an hour ago, I looked into her eyes for the first time. You’re not the only one dying here.”
Pain and fear etched her pretty face. Her gaze dropped to the sand. “I’m
sorry.”
“And that’s another thing,” he told her, frustrated. “You.”
Her head came up. “What about me?”
“I know you love her, and I know you want her. Hell, you’ve earned her. She calls you Mommy, for God’s sake. You’ve been with her, with them, through this whole ordeal, while they never crossed my mind, because I didn’t know. But I know now, and I can’t just unlearn that I have a daughter. That changes my whole world.” He rubbed his face again, using a lighter tone when he said, “And stop saying you’re sorry. None of this is your fault.”
“It’s starting to sound like none of it was your fault either.”
The pain in her voice cut at Zach, but he couldn’t address it. Couldn’t talk about it. He was already overwhelmed. He kept hearing Josh’s “One problem at a time” in his head. And “Do what you have to do to keep your kid, dude. If you don’t, you’ll spend your whole life regretting it.”
Only, everywhere he looked, he saw problems. Especially when he looked at Tessa. Before all this, he’d wanted more sex, sure. Now, he still wanted sex—and maybe even more. Because everything she’d done for Sophia and Sophia’s mother proved without a doubt she had the kind of character he admired, and the kind of heart he could love. Even now, while they were at odds, it felt good to have her there. Her presence settled him. Gave him something to hang on to, like a buoy in a hurricane.
He’d never had that before. Never realized how important it was. He kept thinking about Josh and how he’d described Grace as a grounding force. He replayed the moment when Sophia had appeared in the doorway. To the jolt of his heart and the rip of terror when he’d first seen her. Then she’d spoken, and his heart clenched. And when she sidled up next to Tessa with complete and utter love and trust, everything inside Zach tumbled and tangled.
He dropped to his back on the sand, still holding the day’s heat, and looked up at the stars.
Tessa sat back and rolled her knees to the side. “What happened with your agent?”
“I fired the fucker,” he bit out before he caught his anger and toned it down. “Can’t believe he did that. I just can’t. And I filed a fraud complaint with the attorney general’s office in California. I also hired someone to audit every single contract he’s ever written for me and compare it to the documents from the companies I worked for. Judging by how he handled Corinne, I can just about guarantee they’ll find all kinds of backdoor deals I didn’t know about. He’s going to prison if I have anything to say about it.”
He would also have beat the shit out of the guy last night if Josh hadn’t been there to intervene.
Tessa didn’t speak. She doodled patterns in the sand with one finger.
“What’s she like?” he asked, just one of the million questions swimming in his head and heart but was afraid to ask.
“Sophia?” Tessa’s mouth tipped in a soft smile. “Smart. She’s really smart. Too smart, sometimes. And loving. She’s like this unfathomable bottomless pit of love. She’s also got a solid stubborn streak. She can be a real handful sometimes.”
Zach smiled.
Tessa went quiet again, her expression troubled.
Guilt pulled in Zach’s gut. “How did you meet Corinne?”
“We grew up together in the Pittsburgh area. We were best friends as kids. Both raised by our grandmothers. She didn’t have as much emotional support as I did, so when it came time for college, I got student loans, and she turned blue collar, but we kept in touch, like sisters would. I took the conservative road—I know, I’m sure you’re shocked, right?”
He grinned.
“She was always the wild one. The extrovert, a real people person. I ended up in DC for law school, and she was already living there. She got me a job waiting tables where she worked because I was paying my own way through school. We moved in together. While she was out partying, I was working crazy-long days. So when she came home after that trip to LA and told me about the hot surfer she’d spent a night with, it didn’t surprise me. To be honest, I was envious of her freedom and her confidence. There were so many times when I wished I had her…fearlessness…toward life.”
That reminded Zach of something Tessa had said earlier. “What did you mean when you said Corinne gave up her life for Sophia?”
Tessa drew her knees into her chest, wrapped her arms around them, and rested her chin on her knee. The breeze played with loose strands of her dark hair.
“She found out she was pregnant with Sophia early, at about five or six weeks. She thought her morning sickness was the flu. After two weeks, I made her go to the doctor, which is when she found out she was pregnant. But when they did the ultrasound to check on the pregnancy, they also found ovarian cancer.”
Even though he knew the news was coming, it still sucker punched him.