I braced a hand on the top of my hammer and blew out a heavy breath. I felt like the entire world had shifted around me and had started spinning in the other direction.
“I have a kid?” I wasn’t sure the words came out or if I just thought them, but they felt so bizarre and foreign on my tongue.
She nodded again and this time her expression was full of sympathy and knowing.
“Look, I know this is a shock. I know you might go back in that house and do nothing because you think I’m a liar or a crazy person, but it was a chance I had to take because the last person that should be forced to suffer for his mother’s poor choices time and time again is that little boy. He makes me wish I had lived a better life, had been a better person from the start just so I could help him out.”
“My history isn’t exactly one that’s going to win me any awards or make anyone think I’m prime father material.” I was all too familiar with the sins from the past having a lasting effect on the here and now.
“Maybe. But don’t you think you should at least try? Are you going to be able to live with yourself if there is even a slim possibility that Hyde is yours and strangers are given responsibility for his care? I’ve been in the system. It isn’t pretty and most of the kids that come out of it end up in jail or way more messed up than when they went in. If you can stop that, why wouldn’t you?”
I knew she was right because Rowdy had spent his youth orphaned and then his teenage years in foster care. He wasn’t messed up per se, and had never been in jail, but whenever he mentioned his past it wasn’t full of happy memories and sunshine and rainbows.
I sighed again and lifted my hand to rub it across the back of my neck. “Okay, lady . . . I mean Echo, I won’t make any promises, but I do have a client slash acquaintance that practices family law, so I will reach out to her and see what she thinks I need to do. I imagine the first step would be proving the boy is mine legally. I don’t suppose your friend put me on the birth certificate?”
The brunette tugged on her lip again and shook her head in the negative. “It’s blank. I pulled it right after the funeral when the state came and took Hyde. I was hoping to find a name, but like I said I don’t think she really knew who the father was and she was so scared of her man at the time there was no way she was going to put another man’s name down. All I had was her mentioning you when she saw you on TV. I actually went to the tattoo shop and asked them for the name of the person that had done the renovations. The tiny blonde with all the tattoos at the front desk didn’t want to hand it over without a reason why. I told her I was looking to hire someone to renovate my condo. I don’t think she believed me. Luckily one of the guys that works there had your card and handed it over.”
I knew exactly the kind of attitude that tattooed and tiny blonde could throw, so I was grateful that one of my boys had stepped in. Even if this lady wasn’t on the up-and-up, I owed it to myself, to the kid, and, sadly, to the girl that had helped me drown my sorrows in booze and sex when I was feeling so lost and alone to find out if the little boy really was mine.
“Like I said, no promises, but I will talk to the attorney and see what she thinks needs to happen. Okay?”
The woman nodded and I could see the relief flash across her face. “I guess that’s more than I had hoped for when I initially decided to search you out. You honestly could’ve just thrown me off the property without hearing one word I had to say, so I’m considering the fact that you listened a win regardless of what happens next.” She gave me a wobbly smile. “Thank you.”
She turned and started to walk away back toward a little hybrid car that I just noticed was parked behind my truck in the driveway. I called out to her before she was halfway across the yard.
“Echo.” She stopped and turned to look at me over her shoulder with raised eyebrows. “If I give you my cell number, can you text me a picture of the kid?” I shrugged. “It might help me explain the situation to the lawyer a little better since I’m not always so great with words.”
She tilted her head to the side a little and narrowed her eyes at me. “I will on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“Call him Hyde, Mr. Fuller. He has a name.”
I swore softly under my breath. I purposely hadn’t been using the kid’s name. It made it all too real. Made him all too real.
“Can you please text me a picture of Hyde, then?”
“I’d be happy to.”
I rattled off my number and she pulled her phone out to pop it in. She said nothing else as she made her way to her car and climbed in and left. I was just walking back into the house, my mind racing a million miles an hour, when my phone dinged with several messages.
I told myself to just wait and look at them after work, that it could wait, but I found myself sitting on the dilapidated steps of the cottage and scrolling through the photos.
They were all of a little boy laughing and playing. In every image he was smiling and happy. He appeared to be carefree and light of heart, which was amazing considering the things that Echo had mentioned he had been through. He was too young and innocent to have to navigate not only the sudden death of his mother but the shock of being put into the care of strangers as well. I didn’t know for sure that he was mine even if the resemblance was uncanny, but I was about to really ruin any shot I had with Sayer Cole by asking her to help me find out.
If she thought I was an undatable ex-con before this, she was really going to steer clear of me when she found out there was a strong possibility that I had fathered a child during a forgotten night of drunken sex with a woman I couldn’t even remember.