Unforgettable (Cloverleigh Farms #5)(74)

“I’d given him a key to my place so he could come over while I was at work. I knew I’d be late, and I didn’t want him to have to wait up if he was tired. I’d taken the letter with me to work, but apparently the photograph fell out, and he saw it on the kitchen floor when he got here. On the back is Chip’s full name—he figured it out.”

“Wow,” Meg said again. “That had to be a shock.”

“What did he do?” Chloe asked.

“Exactly what I feared. Freaked out. Went back to his hotel and packed his bags. Booked a flight back to California.”

“He left without even saying goodbye?” Meg looked shocked.

“No, he was here when I got home. He said goodbye.” The memory of it had my tears spilling over, and I blew my nose. “He said a lot of things.”

Chloe reached across the table and rubbed my arm. “Like what?”

“He’s scared. He thinks if he doesn’t leave, people will put it together—if I don’t hide the fact that I’m Chip’s birth mother, he says people will do the math and figure out he’s the father. We’re all over the news together.”

“In all honesty, he’s probably right,” Meg said gently, picking up the photograph again. “The resemblance is really strong. It’s a small town. And everyone knows you guys were close back then.”

“I guess you’re right,” I said, reaching for another tissue. “And he just isn’t ready for that. He doesn’t want Chip to know. He says he’ll just mess up Chip’s life. He thinks he ruins everything he touches.”

“And what do you think?” Chloe asked.

“I think he’s using that fear as an excuse.”

“How so?” Meg tilted her head.

I blew my nose again before going on. “Deep down, he’s so scarred from the way his career ended, he thinks he’s a failure as a man. As a human being. He thinks he can never live up to anyone’s expectations of him, so he’s refusing to even try. He thinks I don’t see the real him. But I do, you guys,” I wept. “I do see the real him. And he saw the real me. I thought he felt the way I did. I thought we had something worth fighting for. How could I have been so wrong?” I folded my arms on the table, dropped my head onto them, and cried.

Chloe rubbed my arm. “I’m sorry, honey. Relationships are so hard.”

“You know, Noah and I went through this,” Meg said softly. “When I first mentioned moving back from D.C., he freaked out. He tried to pretend it was because he didn’t want to be in a serious relationship, but really, it was just fear.”

“That’s right,” said Chloe. “Wasn’t he worried about his brother?”

“Yes. He’d always felt guilty because Asher had cerebral palsy, and he didn’t. They were twins, and he knew Asher’s CP was likely caused by a lack of oxygen to the brain during birth. So anything that Asher struggled with that came easy to Noah—from walking to talking to girls—he felt guilty about. From a young age, he had it in his head that he didn’t deserve things like becoming a husband and father. As if denying himself the things he wanted deep down was the right punishment for being born without CP.”

“God, that’s so sad,” I said, picking up my head and grabbing another tissue.

“It was sad,” Meg agreed. “He needed to work through it, and I had to give him the time and space to do it. Maybe Tyler just needs time to work through this.”

“I don’t know,” I said miserably. “He seemed pretty determined when he left here last night. I got the feeling it was goodbye for good.”

Sylvia showed up a little while later, and I went through it all again, complete with more tears and soggy tissues.

After two pots of coffee, my sisters said they had to get going, but each of them hugged me tightly before they left. “Don’t give up,” Sylvia whispered fiercely in my ear. “If you love him, don’t give up.”

Frannie called and said she was so sorry she’d been unable to get away, but she was dying to talk to me. “Can you meet up later?”

“Maybe,” I said. “I do have tonight off.”

“Then come over,” she pleaded. “You shouldn’t be alone.”

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”





I spent the rest of the day doing laundry, cleaning my condo, and trying not to think about Tyler. But it was impossible—everything reminded me of him, from the scent of his cologne clinging to my sheets to the bottle of whiskey he’d left on my kitchen counter. The toothpaste tube. The Netflix remote. The stairs. The couch. The bathtub.

I racked my brain, wondering what, if anything, I could have done differently yesterday to prevent Tyler from leaving.

But no matter which way I pulled at the threads, the end result was always a knot I couldn’t untangle. People would talk—it was a fact. And Tyler was still a hot news commodity. If people did figure it out, my life would be affected—and possibly Chip’s too . . . I could see the headline now. Baseball’s Hottest Head Case Has Secret Son.

We’d face social media blow-ups and news media scrutiny and judgment from people around town about the “scandal.” People would stare. They would gossip. They might say ugly, hurtful things that made me feel bad about myself.