Page 20 of Doctor Daddies

I look between them. For the first time, the father of my child is standing in front of me—I just don’t know exactly who he is. The only thing I know for sure is how pissed he is at me, and how I have nothing to defend myself against whatever accusations they might have to throw at me.

“Lewis,” I whisper. “That’s his name, Lewis.”

“How old is he now?” James asks. “Five?”

“He just started school last year,” I reply, nodding. “He’s…”

I don’t know how to describe him. I don’t want to downplay everything he’s been through, but at the same time, I feel like it will come off like I’m fishing for sympathy if I try to tell the entire truth.

“Why didn’t you tell us when you got pregnant?” Cole demands. “You know you could have gotten in touch with us any time you wanted.”

“I didn’t want to bother you guys with it,” I admit. “I knew you had this clinic, you were just getting it off the ground when I found out, and I thought…”

“You thought we didn’t even deserve a chance to know?” James adds. “I just don’t get it, Millie. Were you ever going to tell us?”

“I was going to talk to him about it eventually,” I reply, defensive. “But I—it’s not easy to explain that kind of thing to a child, you know?”

“Does Matt know?” Ross asks.

“That it’s one of you? Of course not.” I shake my head. “He would have kicked your ass six ways to Sunday if he had found out about it.”

“But he knows about Lewis?”

I nod. “Yeah,” I murmur, looking down briefly. “The two of them are really close, actually.”

“Fucking hell,” James mutters. “He’s been part of Matt’s life all this time…”

“Matt never mentioned him to you?”

“I guess I never put the pieces together,” James admits. “I heard him saying he was going to spend time with you and Lewis, but I never thought…”

My heart skips a beat at the notion, of them knowing about their son without even really knowing about him. I know it’s wrong for me to be so excited by the idea, but after all this distance between them and their boy for so long, there’s nothing I want more than to close it.

“What did you think you were going to get out of this?” Ross asks, turning the conversation back around to me. “You were going to tell us, what, when your son came to see you at the hospital?”

“I was going to tell you when the pregnancy took,” I reply, shaking my head. “I thought…I had this idea of telling you when you had just seen the babies for the first time. Just really understood that you were going to be fathers. And then I was going to—going to bring out the one I had ready-made, you know?”

The way I put it now sounds stupid, even to me, and I can tell by the way they’re looking at me that they don’t exactly disagree. I wish I could take it all back, but I know it’s far too late for that. Better to let it out now and be honest about everything that has happened, and we can move forward without any more secrets between us.

“We can’t do this,” James announces. “That’s it. We can’t go through with this. We have a son we need to figure out the father of first, and?—”

“The embryos are already implanted,” Cole tells him.

James turns to him, eyebrows raising so far they look as though they might shoot off his face. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“They’re already implanted,” Cole repeats. “There’s nothing we can do about it now. They’re in.”

“Jesus.” Ross sighs, rubbing a hand over his face.

I can’t tell where he’s at. Angry? They all seem angry. I hate feeling like people are pissed at me, but if ever there has been a time when I well and truly deserved it, it was this.

“So…there’s nothing we can do about it?” I ask, chewing my lip slightly. I hardly even dare to admit it out loud, because it makes it seem as though I’ve trapped them in this, and that’s the very last thing that I want. But I guess, to them, that’s what it must seem like—as though I’ve done my very best to make sure that I’ve backed them into a corner, so they can’t walk away from me now that they know I have their son.

“Did you plan it like this?” Cole asks me quietly. “You thought we wouldn’t stick around for your boy if we didn’t have another good reason for it?”

The blood drains from my face. I hate that they’ve even thought about it like that, but God, I can’t blame them. After all, I’ve hidden this from them for years, only to reveal it when I know there’s another reason to keep them around? A reason tied to a whole heap of money? Do they think I was treating my son as insurance, to make certain that they made good on their end on the deal…?

“No, it wasn’t like that.” I breathe, trying to gather myself enough so that I can protest. “When I first saw the three of you waiting for me there, I was going to walk out. I wasn’t going to tell you. But then…then I saw how much you wanted it. Andyou said that thing, about how I’m the only woman you could all agree on, and I just…I didn’t want to let you down.”