Since his Achilles shit? I pressed my lips together and raised my eyebrows. “That’s convenient. But you can ask them if you want. I’m not lying about any of it. Maybe your brothers and sisters remember my passive-aggressive private messages on Picturegram.”

“Yeah, nah,” he replied quietly, his palm already centering over the middle of his forehead. “I believe you.”

That’s why he’d asked again? Okay.

“How old is she?” he asked after a minute.

“Eight months old.” She’d been conceived toward the end of when we’d known each other.

He must have had his questions ready in his head because he shot one out right after the other with only a bob of his throat. “What day was she born?”

“May 2nd.”

If he was trying to figure out the dates in his head, I wasn’t going to overthink it. I mean, I would ask too if our roles were reversed. I already thought he was a dickhead.

“Her full name?”

“Madeline Hema DeMaio.”

That he reacted to. I could see it by the way his fingers flexed and by the way those round, wide eyes flicked to me in surprise. “Hema?”

If he hadn’t come here, and the day came that she asked whom her dad was, I would have told her. I wouldn’t have hidden his name from her, or the fact she shared it. It was just everyone else that I was keeping that secret from. “She’s yours,” I explained, only barely managed not to add “dipshit” to my answer.

The hand he’d had on his forehead fell away. “Not Collins?”

“You weren’t around. If you decide you want to be part of her life, I’m not opposed to changing it. She’s a DeMaio regardless of what’s on her birth certificate,” I told him, hearing the gruffness in my voice, the question: but are you staying or are you going?

Jonah eyed me seriously… cautiously, and I kind of liked it. “You’d consider it?”

“Yeah. You are her dad,” I answered. “All I wanted was for her to know she’s loved. That she belongs. I didn’t want her to feel any different just in case we were all she ever knew. And if you wouldn’t have shown up, I never would have told anyone you were her dad, at least until she asked.” I swallowed around the lump in my throat and the ball of anger that was there too. “Like I said, nobody knew about you, not even my grandpa or Peter. Not Luna. Well, no one but my roommate back in Paris, but she wouldn’t say anything to anyone. We’ve barely even talked since then.”

He watched me. The problem was, I wasn’t sure what his silence meant. What I did realize though was that it didn’t matter what it meant; what mattered was what was going to happen from here on out.

“I don’t know why you’re here,” I told him. “You said you didn’t know about Mo, and I don’t know why else you would have come, but I need you to make a decision at some point, sooner or later. If you’re right and you did up and disappear because of whatever reasons”—you’re still an asshole, I thought but didn’t say—“then I’m sure this is a shock to you. You can’t make a decision about whether you want to be a dad or not in just a couple hours, and I don’t expect you to.“

Even though he should since this was involving a child’s life. His child’s life. Anyone who wasn’t a deadbeat would already know what they were going to do, but maybe I was being unfair. Hadn’t I had to do some serious thinking in the weeks after I’d taken those tests? Yeah, I had, and I wasn’t enough of a hypocrite to claim otherwise.

I kept going. “But she needs you to make a choice. If you want to be a part of her life, then do it. I know we don’t live down the street from each other, and this is going to be complicated, but I’m not worried about that. I just need to know if you even want to make the effort in the first place.” Or if you’re a piece of shit and don’t.

I made sure to pin him down with a look, but it was totally unnecessary. He was 1000 percent focused on me. Everything about him was. Jonah was thinking big time.

So I didn’t stop.

“If you don’t think you can make her a priority in your life, every day until you die, then we’re going to need you to go. She’s little now, but she isn’t going to stay little, so you have to decide because it’s going to be a lifetime commitment. I don’t want her to ever feel like she’s not important. She’s going to have enough people who try to make her feel that way when she’s older. But I’m not going to let a father figure do that too.”

I held my breath and met his eyes, giving him what my old coach had called my Michael Myers face. Because that’s what I would turn into if he fucked with my chunky monkey. She wasn’t ours yet. He didn’t have the protection of being family to me or Grandpa until he made a choice, and we would both do some sketchy shit without question if we had to. “If you break her heart, I will make you regret ever thinking about playing rugby. So I want you to understand that before you make a decision because there aren’t any takebacks or refunds.

“I will never, ever ask you for a cent if you don’t want to be a part of her life. I won’t ask anything of you. I don’t need anything from you. You’re free to go if you want to go, but you have to make that choice, and it’s a final one unless she decides she wants you around when she’s older,” I finished telling him, fisting my hands at my sides because I could feel them start to get tingly. “You have to go in ready for this, living in another hemisphere and all.” I raised my eyebrows at him. “When you want something to work, you make it work. You’re in or you’re out, Jonah. I just need to know sooner than later. Once you’ve had a chance to think about it.”

You’re in or you’re out. Bam.

We stared at each other. Eye to eye. My dark gray ones trying to burn into his honey-colored browns. Like we were having a competition. A competition that I sure as hell wasn’t going to lose at. Not when Mo was at stake.

Grandpa Gus had been a great white shark for me. Peter a fucking hippo that killed more people on the down-low than a lion. And they had raised me to believe in myself. To defend myself. I’d been called Lenny the Lion for half my life for a reason. I’d turn into Freddy Kruger if I had to. I had no problem being someone’s worst nightmare.

So when his gaze didn’t stray for even a second… I had to narrow my eyes.

And shit got even more real when he kept on looking at me as he let out a deep exhale and spoke in a voice I had never heard from him before. A voice that didn’t belong to the smiling, soft-spoken man I had met who hadn’t known any French and had basically blushed when I had translated for him.

Jonah Collins said, gaze unflinching, “There’s no choice, sweetheart.”

It was my turn to swallow, and it had nothing to do with that dumbass term of endearment he’d used.

“If you say she’s my daughter, she’s my daughter.”

Something hard thumped inside my chest. Something I didn’t want to look at too closely.

“I’m sorry, Lenny,” Jonah said. “I’m sorry I didn’t know.”

My ears started to buzz like they were debating whether or not to believe what he was saying.

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