I hand him to her. “Do you not want him to call me Daddy?”
Her forehead wrinkles up. “Do you want him to?”
“What do kids usually call the man who loves their mother?” I ask.
One hand flies over her mouth, her head is shaking a little. If she wasn’t holding Finn, I think she’d collapse. “You can’t love me,” she says, the disbelief in her voice as real as the floor under her feet. “No one loves me.”
I’ve never seen her so shaken before. Not even during the tornado. “Finn loves you,” I say, trying to calm her.
“I guess, but he doesn’t say it.”
I take a step back, reality hitting me hard. “No one’s ever told you they loved you.” It’s not a question because I know the answer. Fuck me. Even my fucked-up father has said those words to me, and in his own screwed-up way, I know he does.
Taking Finn from her, I place him on the floor and hand him my keys and phone. There aren’t any toys around. I take both of Paige’s hands in mine and sit down on the sofa in my office. “Paige,” I say, but she barely looks at me. It’s as if I’ve shaken her to the core. Maybe that’s what’s happened. We each have core beliefs about the world and ourselves. Maybe one of hers is that she’s unlovable. If you’ve spent your whole life with no one caring for you, showing you love, or saying those words to you, it’s not hard to imagine that you’d start to believe something about you is inherently unlovable or undeserving of love.
Briefly, I glance at Finn, then back to Paige. “Look at me.” She can’t look in my eyes for more than a second, searching the ground like she’s trying to steady herself. “I want Finn to call me Daddy.” I hope she can hear how sure I am about this. I have no reservations about her or Finn. None.
That does it. Her eyes find mine. “I love you, Paige.” She looks so confused, like I’m speaking Chinese to her. “I love you.”
“I’m sure you’ve loved a lot of women,” she says, letting go of my hands.
I grab them back. “I’ve never said those words to a woman except my mother,” I say. “I love you. You are the only woman I’ve ever loved.”
“But I’m so . . .”
“Beautiful,” I say. “Yeah, I do love that about you.”
“Slade,” she says, cracking a smile.
“And sexy.”
This time, she swats my shoulder. “I am not.”
“Those knee socks you wear to bed drive me crazy.” She starts laughing, and I capture her in my arms. “And stubborn. God, you are so strong-willed.”
“You hate that about me,” she says, looking up at me.
“You’re wrong. It drives me fucking crazy, but I love how you aren’t afraid of anything. How you take care of Finn, of me. Hell, of my damn horses. I love how strong you are.” She looks into my eyes.
“I don’t deserve your love,” she sobs quietly. “There are things. Things you don’t know.”
“Tell me.”
“I can’t,” she says, falling apart, and I pull her into my arms.
Of course, I want to know everything about her, but I also know what I feel. “It doesn’t matter,” I say. “Because nothing will change how I feel about you.” She looks up at me, her face wet with tears. I can tell she doesn’t believe that, but I can also tell that she wants to believe. Taking a deep breath, I know I’m about to risk it all. “Do you love me, Paige?” Her mouth opens, but I stop her. “Before you answer that. I need to tell you something.”
“Okay,” she says.
My chest suddenly feels tight, the secrets I’ve held bursting at the seams to get out. “Maybe you should put Finn to sleep first,” I say. “He shouldn’t hear this.”
I know he’s only six months old and can’t comprehend what I’m about to tell Paige, but he can pick up on our emotions; therefore, it’s best done out of his presence. For once, she doesn’t argue, picking up Finn and taking him to his room.
As soon as she leaves, my mind begins creating scenarios of how to get out of this. I opened this bag of worms. I know Paige has her own secrets, and that’s why she’s never pressed me for mine. It’s an unspoken agreement between us, but I just volunteered to tell her the worst of it. The worst thing I’ve ever done.
Opening a closet door, I reach for the portrait of my mother and me that Paige saved from the house. This picture hung in my room for as long as I can remember. On the day of her funeral, my father took it down and threw it in the garbage. I snuck out in the middle of the night to rescue it. It’s been hidden in some part of every house I’ve lived in since then.
Hidden.
Holding my shame.
“You saved it?” Paige asks, stepping inside the office.
“You saved it,” I say, not turning around to look at her.
“Your mom was beautiful,” she says.
“My dad always used to say he had no idea how he got so lucky to be the man who got to walk into the room with her. Swore he married up.” I turn and look at Paige. “He loved her. I wish you would’ve known him then. God, how much they loved each other. They used to embarrass me all the time. It wasn’t even on purpose. I’d score a goal in soccer, and they’d kiss. They thought nothing of it.”
“Sounds nice.”
“It was,” I say. “And my dad and I were close. We did all kinds of things together—sporting events, concerts, trips.”
“What changed?”
“My mom died,” I say. “She was the glue. He didn’t know how to be that guy without her.”
“How’d she die?” Paige asks.
“One night, my dad picked me up to go to a concert. I had just turned fifteen. We were running late. So I just ran out of the house and hopped in his car. He didn’t even come inside. While we were gone, someone broke in. The police think it was a robbery attempt. They killed my mom.”
I’m not lying to her, but I’m not telling her everything either. The truth is funny that way. It has many versions. But this is the only way I can tell her the truth, bit by bit. If I tried to tell the whole story all at once, I’d choke on the words, the guilt.
“Slade, I’m so sorry. I had no idea,” Paige says, wrapping her arms around my waist. “Did they ever find the person?” she asks. “The one who broke in?”
“No,” I say.
I give her hands a pat before unwinding myself from them. “After that, my dad lost it. He never got over her. Instead, he started bringing these women home. It got really bad. It’s like he was trying to replace her, but no one was ever good enough. Eventually, he started keeping a woman set up in a condo for a while until he got sick of her or she disappointed him in some way, then he’d just find another. Loving my mom, then losing her, destroyed him. I never wanted to love someone so much it could destroy me like it did him. I didn’t want that responsibility.” I look into her deep blue eyes. “Now I do.” She reaches her hand out to me, and I gently take it. “When you love someone, you’re supposed to protect them.”
“But you were just a teenager. You weren’t even home, and you couldn’t have saved your mom,” she says.