No, he couldn’t argue with that. The waves of anger that had been pounding at the shore of his control rolled back on themselves until they were a distant rumble. His incredulity splintered and cold seeped into the cracks where fury had been boiling minutes before.
Still, he couldn’t get around the fact that eight years had gone by. His child had lived and breathed and thrived here in his hometown and he hadn’t known about it. James began to shake his head in denial. “You could’ve—”
“What?” she demanded when he trailed off. She lifted her hands when his mouth only hung open, wordless. “You were gone. You didn’t even tell your mother where you were going. Nothing.”
“Wait a second,” he said, holding up a hand. “You went to my mom?”
“Well, yes, of course,” she said. “I thought she would know where you’d gone.”
He reached up to scrub a hand over his temple. “Did she know—about the baby?”
Adrian hesitated for a moment, then she nodded. “Yes. She knew.”
“Son of a bitch,” he said. He had to resist the urge to sit down. “All this time...” His eyes zeroed in on Adrian’s face again. “Who else? Besides your parents and my mom, who else knows?”
“I didn’t tell anybody else that you were the father,” she told him. “My friends know now, but I told them in confidence. You and I were together for just a handful of weeks and we kept it quiet so my parents wouldn’t find out. You were gone before the news that I was pregnant became common knowledge.”
Adrian lowered her eyes as she went on. “Your mother pitied me, James. And she wasn’t the only one. There were a lot of people who pitied me when I began to show, and that was the worst part. Worse than the disapproval I got from others. Almost as bad as my parents’ disappointment. Once it sank in that you were gone and didn’t want to be found, I was heartbroken. But worse, I was humiliated.”
James looked at her now, the tears shining through the steel of her eyes. He saw the girl she had been. The seventeen-year-old firebrand. And he was ashamed. He cursed. “You stayed here?” he asked. “You could’ve gone anywhere, started over...”
Adrian’s frown deepened. “I thought about it...but then...” She combed her hair back from her brow and shook her head. “Things happened. I stayed. I’m not getting into it now. I landed on my feet eventually and people finally stopped pitying me, even if some of them still whispered behind my back. The most important thing to me, then and now, is that my son is healthy and happy.”
“Our son,” James corrected. When Adrian only sighed, he raised himself to full height, unable to yield. “You can tell yourself whatever you want, Adrian, but he is my son.”
She looked at him, expression saddened again. “You don’t even know his name.”
James’s brows drew together. Damn it all to hell, she was right. “Right now all that matters is that I want to know it.” When she only looked at him, expression unchanged, he fought another curse. His voice dropped to a whisper. “I want to know, Adrian,” he said. “Please...tell me his name.”
Adrian combed his features with her eyes. When he didn’t so much as blink, she seemed to deflate, the rigid line of her shoulders bowing under the strain he saw in her hands as she scrubbed them over her face. In defeat, she locked her arms over her chest once more and said, “Kyle. His name is Kyle.”
“Kyle,” James repeated, bringing the boy’s freckled cheeks and bright eyes back to mind. As they came into focus, the face did for James what he had admitted to Adrian that her face had done for him through the years. The stillness, the unexpected calm, made breathing a great deal easier. For the first time in what seemed like an eternity, James pulled in a deep, cleansing breath. It cleared his head, stilled those few waves still roiling listlessly somewhere inside him. It brought the first real blink of clarity. “Kyle Carlton.”
“Yes,” she said. The single word seemed to hang like a challenge in the air. She backed it up by lifting her chin, daring him to contradict it.
James gave a small nod. Despite everything, he was relieved to see the light that challenge brought back to her eyes, easing the strain and fatigue the confrontation and revelations had caused. “That’s fair.”
She blinked in surprise, thrown off by the easy concession.
James stepped toward her, eager to catch her while her guard was down on one point, at least. “I won’t say that leaving you was a mistake. I did it because I thought it was the right thing to do.” When she scoffed, he held up a hand. “I won’t make excuses, either, because at this point I’m not sure they would mean that much to you, anyway. I doubt, after everything, that you’d be able to take me at my word.” When she said nothing to contradict that, James crossed to her. He didn’t touch her, but he did lower his head toward hers. “But know this. I will not walk away this time.”
Adrian’s forehead creased. “But—”
“Whatever you want from me, I can’t forget,” James said evenly. “I never forgot you. I certainly won’t forget the child we made together. And however selfish you might think I am for saying and doing so, I’m not slinking away and pretending that this never happened. I’m not staying out of the way. I want to meet him, Adrian.” Alarm broke apart in her eyes and he hurried to say more. “I want to talk to him. Know him.”
“James, you can’t.”
“Why not?” he demanded.
“Listen to yourself,” she said. “All I hear is I want. What about what he needs?”
“He needs a father,” James stated. When a lightning flash of indignation crossed her face, he lifted his brows. “Are you telling me he’s never asked about me? He’s never been curious about where he came from? Did you tell him I died—fell off a building, got trampled by bulls...?”
“Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous!”
“But he has asked, hasn’t he?” James knew he had her there. “He is curious.” When she was silent, he swallowed hard because his next thought perturbed him quite a bit. “Is there someone else—another man you’ve shared him with, trusted him to? Someone he thinks of as a dad?”
Her eyes turned thoughtful and his heart banged away at his chest, knowing the answer.
“Yes.”
When he cursed again, a small smile ticked at the corners of her mouth. It was the first waver of mirth he’d seen from her. “Only...he calls him Granddaddy.”
Van. She was talking about Van. Inwardly, James breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s good,” he said after a moment. “I always liked the old man...despite everything. But it’s not enough. Tell me it’s enough for the kid and I’ll walk away right now.”
“It has to be,” Adrian told him. “For his sake, James, it has to be.”
“For his sake...or for yours?”
She gaped at him. Then she raised her hands to her head. Her fingertips kneaded at her temples as she huffed in frustration. “I know what’s best for him. I’m his mother. You left and—you’re right—I couldn’t care less what your reasons or excuses for it are. You can’t take it back, no matter what you say. There’s nothing you can do to fix it.”
“That may be true for us—you and me,” James acquiesced. And wasn’t that a crying shame? “But Kyle is another story, and you know it.”
“What I know is that you have to respect my wishes, as his mother.”
James blew out a breath, prayed for patience. “Damn it, Adrian. Kyle needs me. Some part of him needs me.”
“You don’t