Last Summer(69)

She did forget Nathan and everything associated with him. Meeting him. Interviewing him. Sleeping with him. Her pregnancy.

Simon is mine.

Tears well in her eyes. She squeezes them shut. She forgot her pregnancy because she forgot everything associated with Nathan. Why hadn’t she thought that through? How stupid could she have been, and for Damien to go along with her?

Wiping her eyes, she clears her throat and turns around. “Nathan said some things to me. He claims Simon was his.”

Damien’s face falls.

“Damien?” Her voice comes out as a thin whisper. “Is it true?”

“I’m not Simon’s biological father.”

Ella has the sudden urge to run to the bathroom and vomit.

“Did I know?”

He slowly shakes his head, his eyes dropping to the floor. “I don’t think so. If you knew, you didn’t tell me.”

“You don’t think so? Then how did you know Simon wasn’t yours?”

Damien sighs. He stares at the floor.

“Damien?”

His gaze meets hers. “I’m sterile.”

Ella’s mouth falls open. She blinks. “You’re sterile?”

He nods. “I found out in my early twenties. Anna had trouble conceiving so we both got checked out. She was fine. I wasn’t.”

Ella’s heart goes out to Damien. Her big, strong, larger-than-life Damien. So ashamed and embarrassed that he’d kept the truth from her. He hadn’t been honest with her.

She guessed it was easier for him to say he doesn’t ever want kids than to admit he could never have them.

Which pisses her off even more. How dare he assume she would have walked away from him. Did he think so little of her? Unlike Anna, she never would have left him.

“Did I know that you were sterile?”

“Yes. I told you the day of the accident. Right before you got in the car.”

We need to talk.

The words she remembered in the hospital but couldn’t quite grasp.

Ella stumbles back. Of course. He must have told her out of guilt, unable to live with his secret any longer. He’d known all along he wasn’t the father.

Ella can picture it clearly. Damien would have accused her of cheating on him. And he would have been right. But still.

“You let me believe you were the father. How could you?” Ella accuses, voice rising.

“You wanted a baby,” Damien fires back. “You have no idea what it feels like to not be able to give you that. I will never, ever be able to create life with you.”

“You were going to raise Simon as your own?”

“Yes.”

“And let me believe he was yours?”

“Yes!”

“For the rest of our lives?”

“Yes, dammit!” He kicks the ottoman. It flips over. “And I could have done it,” he bellows, stabbing his chest with a finger. “Donovan and I are the same. Same coloring. Same height. We even look the same. No one would question that Simon wasn’t mine.”

“You’re crazy.”

“No! Not crazy. In love. With you. I’m so fucking in love with you, El. I didn’t want to lose you over something I couldn’t give you.”

Ella sinks onto the edge of the bed, facing Damien. Her rage burns hot yet her heart breaks for him. The fact he kept his secret from her for so long tells how ashamed he is. He bit his tongue.

Damien lifts his head. “I wanted to adopt. Anna did not. She married a coworker six months after our divorce finalized. Her first daughter was born five months later.”

She wants to ask more about his marriage. She’s realizing there’s much about him she’s let slide by. Important aspects of his past they haven’t discussed. People and events that have shaped him into the individual he is now. Those are conversations they need to have, but they’ll have to wait.

Right now, she needs to get to the heart of where they’d gone wrong.





CHAPTER 29

“I’m going to make coffee. Do you want one?” She needs time to let everything sink in. Damien could use the break, too. She can tell it wasn’t an easy admission for him.

The same man who’s appeared on the covers of Entrepreneur and Business Insider, quoted in countless other articles and publications as an IT security and business strategist expert, sees himself as inadequate. He probably believes she’d love him less, even leave him like his first wife, had he told her. Damien follows Ella to the kitchen. She boils water and pours it over the coffee grounds. Damien adds a splash of whiskey to their mugs. They stand beside each other, hips leaning against the marble-capped center island. She takes her first sip, feels the sharp prickly warmth of the whiskey as it coats her tongue and washes down her throat.

“Do you remember the first time we saw this kitchen?” Damien asks as he glides his hand on the countertop.

She watches his fingers touch the cool stone and feels a blush spread across her chest and up her neck. She remembers the feel of the marble against the bare skin of her thighs, the pressure of his fingers digging into her hips.

“Yes,” she says. She wants to take his hand in hers but senses he doesn’t want her touch. She cheated on him, twice. Guilt leaves a bitter taste in her mouth the coffee can’t wash down.