“How old is she?”
“Three,” I answered. I walked past him through the sliding glass doors. He followed me back out to the patio, and we returned to our chairs.
“Three, huh?” Jake eyed me skeptically and took a sip of his beer. His elbows rested on his knees. “And you’re bringing her up without her father?”
I didn’t even hesitate. “She doesn’t have one.” It was the truth. As much as I hated saying it, there would never be a father in my little girl’s life.
“I may not have done well in school,” Jake said, “but I remember sex-ed quite well, and I do recall that both a man and a woman are required to make one of those.” He gestured to the house with his beer.
“Making a child doesn’t make someone a father,” I told him. I wished my beer was scotch. This wasn’t a conversation beer could handle.
He shifted to reach into his pocket to retrieve his lighter, lit a cigarette and nodded. “Ain’t that the fucking truth?” He blew out the smoke and scratched the bridge of his nose. “You know, I didn’t even know you had a kid until I saw her run up to you during your eulogy today.” He shook his head. “It was the shock of my fucking life.” He ran a hand over his goatee again. The gesture was so familiar. It brought me a little comfort being in his presence after all these years. It reminded me of the Jake I’d fallen in love with. “I wish I would have known, Bee. I mean, she looks a little like my mom when she was her age. Aside from the red hair. That part is all you. Fucking amazing really.”
Jake kept talking, but I’d stopped listening. Between what Georgia had said about Daddy being home and my comments about fathers being more than a person who makes children, Jake somehow thought that Georgia was his.
“Oh wow. No, Jake.” I tried not to be shitty about it.
“No, Jake what?”
“No, Jake, she’s not yours.”
He sat still for a moment, letting it sink in a little. Then he stood, like he was preparing for war. Everything about his squared-off shoulders said he was ready for a fight. He roared a stream of profanity into the air and launched his beer into the river. Then, he turned around, and with one swipe of his arm flipped over the little metal table between us, sending it rolling onto the grass.
“Explain to me how she’s not mine, Abby.”
“She’s just not, okay?” I stood up and started to walk away, but in a few large strides he had closed the distance between us. The house stopped me from going any further. I turned and found him towering over me. He raised his arms and pressed his hands against the wall on each side of my head, his massive form caging me in. He pressed his chest into mine. I was surprised when he leaned into me and buried his face in my hair as he inhaled deeply.
He stood, breathing me in, until he remembered his anger. “Fuck, Bee!” His gaze met mine. His intoxicating smell filled my nostrils. I was turned on by it. There was no denying that. I’d never been attracted to anyone but Jake. Years, decades, even centuries could pass, and he would still be it for me. I would take him angry or sad, and there was definitely something madly hot in angry Jake at the moment. “Explain to me how your kid, who looks just like my mama, who is three fucking years old, isn’t my mine.”
“Why do you even care?” I snapped at him. I tried to move out from the cage of him, but he pressed his hips into me to keep me captive. I kept my expression hard, but the contact sent heat racing down my spine.
My face flushed.
“Just answer the fucking question,” he growled into my ear. His mouth was only a breath away. Part of me wanted to run my hands through his hair and part of me wanted to knee him in the crotch just to show him who I was now, how strong I’d become while he’d been gone.
I spoke slowly, and kept my voice from shaking. “You have blue eyes right?” He nodded. “And I have blue eyes right?” Confusion started to replace the lingering anger written on the lines in his forehead. “Did you see Georgia, Jake? Did you see the color of her eyes?”
“Green,” he whispered. His shoulders fell from their commanding stance and he backed away from me. He sank back into a chair and his face dropped into his hands. “And we used protection, so why would she fucking be mine.” He sounded defeated.
I realized how painful this was for him now. “I looked it up. Two people with blue eyes only make blue-eyed children,” I said softly. I remembered how, even a few months after her birth, I’d still held out hope that Georgia could have been Jake’s. When I looked online and found a genetics eye color chart that said otherwise, that hope died.