But it had happened anyway, rightfully so. Just as it was happening now.
He could see it. In the tightness around her eyes. In the crease between her brows. More than that, he felt her disappointment, sharp and acute. Felt sharp and acute pangs in his chest as well. So he supposed he hadn’t got used to it after all.
But no matter how much he wanted to, he couldn’t say what she needed to hear: that he wanted to have a family with her. He couldn’t. The desires she’d expressed when they’d been together had reminded him of how families broke. How siblings got sick. How losing them felt like losing everything in the world.
Each person involved in a family would get hurt. Would be irrevocably changed—or worse. He’d seen it with his own parents. With his own sister. He had no desire to put himself in a situation to feel that way again. Let alone with a woman he genuinely cared for.
And yet the first thing he’d done after their break-up was forget his responsible nature and get a woman pregnant. Then he’d come to her, to the woman he cared about, to tell her that their break-up had resulted in the very thing she’d wanted and he hadn’t: a child.
The thing he now had and she didn’t. What painful irony.
‘Autumn,’ he said when the silence extended long enough that even he, who was at home in silence, felt uncomfortable. ‘Say something.’
Her lips parted, and for a split second Hunter remembered that they did that just before he would kiss her. But that memory was unwelcome, untimely. How could he think about kissing her when he’d just told her he was a father? When he’d just discovered he was a father?
He was a father.
Bile rose in his stomach. It was the same thing that happened whenever he thought about his own father. The man who’d put his feelings above his dying daughter’s.
‘Autumn,’ Hunter said again, more insistently.
Autumn’s eyes met his, and his breath did something strange at the gold that flickered in their brown depths.
‘Are you okay?’
Her eyelashes fluttered. ‘I—Yes.’ She straightened. ‘I’m okay.’
Her voice sounded strange too, as if someone had taken a hold of her voice box and were squeezing tightly.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, because he needed to.
She closed her eyes, and he wanted to reach out. To brush a finger over the line where her dark lashes lay against the brown of her skin. To smooth the lines at her forehead.
Her eyes opened right then and before he could avert his own, their gazes locked. His heart stumbled in his chest, resulting in an uncomfortable beat against his chest bone. The thump-thump of his heart sounded in his ears, except he heard it as laughter, a mocking ha-ha at what he’d given up to ensure that what he’d told her tonight would never happen.
He forced his eyes away, onto the night lights of Cape Town. It used to comfort him once upon a time. Now it mocked him.
‘You found out tonight?’ she asked after some time had passed.
He nodded. Still, he couldn’t look at her.
A voice in his head called him a coward.
‘Grace, the woman I—’ He stopped before he said something stupid. ‘The mother of the child. She showed up at my place.’
‘You didn’t know before that?’
He shook his head.
‘How old is the... How old?’
‘Three months.’
She pursed her lips, though he’d caught the trembling long before she’d done it.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, eyes resting on her face now. She nodded.
‘You’re here because you’re surprised.’
It wasn’t a question.
‘I’m here because—’ he hesitated ‘—it’s the first place I wanted to go. I needed to see you.’
Her tongue darted out, wet her lips.
‘Why?’
He took a breath. ‘You’re my friend.’
‘Not your only one.’ She pushed back at some of the curls exploding over the silk band she wore. ‘Certainly not the best one to deal with this.’
‘No,’ he agreed, but didn’t say anything else. Couldn’t. Because she was right.
She wasn’t his only friend; not that he had many more. In fact, he had one more: his second-in-command, Ted. Most of his peak making-friends time—school, university—had been focused on other things.
Most of his school life he’d spent helping his parents take care of Janie, his baby sister, who’d had cystic fibrosis. Ha! a voice in his brain immediately said. He hadn’t helped his parents take care of Janie; he’d helped his mother take care of Janie. His father had tapped out of her care early on, pronouncing himself too clumsy to help.
Hunter supposed he could understand that when it came to helping clear Janie’s lungs of the mucus. The airway clearance therapy could have posed a problem for someone who was clumsy. But he didn’t know how that prevented his father from helping to get Janie to her doctor’s appointments. Or helping to keep her active. Getting her diet right. Doing anything, really, that would make Janie’s life easier. Or make her feel as if she weren’t a burden for the man who should have loved her unconditionally.
She was a bright kid who’d picked up on things without much encouragement. She’d noticed their father’s lack of interest. Hunter had done everything he could to make up for it.
When she’d passed away, he hadn’t wanted friends to know how much his life had changed. How his heart ached, all the time. How alone he felt. How...broken. He hadn’t been able to tell his parents about it when they’d been fighting, all the time. So he’d stuck his head into books, reading about technology and then, after his parents’ divorce, renewable energy. It had distracted him enough to survive. To thrive, even, if he thought about the tech business he’d started ten years ago during university.
But that had meant he’d spent his entire university career studying or working. And when his business had taken off, he’d spent his time making sure it stayed in the air. He’d hired Ted to help with that. He hadn’t even thought about Ted when it came to this, though.
When he’d first seen Grace. When she’d told him about the baby. When she’d showed him pictures, and he’d seen a face that looked so much like Janie’s his heart had flipped over in his chest. When she’d asked Hunter to help take care of the child.
No, for that, he’d immediately thought about Autumn.
‘You’re the only person who knows why this is...’ He trailed off. He hoped she’d interrupt him. That she’d finished his sentence for him. She didn’t. ‘You’re the only person who knows about my family.’
He didn’t let her speak when she opened her mouth. Too late, he thought. Because if he didn’t continue, he’d lose his courage.
‘You have to help me take care of him.’
‘What?’
‘You... You have to help me. She wants me—needs me—to take care of him while she’s finishing her articles at a law firm in Gauteng for the next three months.’ His voice dropped to a whisper. A rasp. A sacrifice. ‘I... I don’t know how. Please, Autumn. Please, help me.’
* * *
Hunter’s gaze felt like lasers pointed