Chapter 1
I walked into that hospital room smiling like a fool.
For months, I had imagined that moment.
I had pictured Nia tired but happy.
I had pictured our baby wrapped in a blue blanket.
I had pictured myself holding my son for the first time and promising him I would be better than every man who had failed me.
I had flowers in one hand.
A tiny stuffed bear in the other.
My heart was wide open.
Then I saw the name on the baby’s cap.
JACOB.
For one second, I thought I had read it wrong.
I stepped closer.
The white cap sat crooked on my son’s tiny head.
Blue thread.
Five letters.
Jacob.
My smile disappeared before I could stop it.
“Nia,” I said quietly. “Why does his hat say Jacob?”
She looked down at the baby.
Her arms tightened around him.
“That’s his name.”
The room went cold.
The monitors kept beeping.
The hallway kept moving.
But inside me, everything stopped.
“His name?”
She nodded without looking at me.
I stared at her.
Jacob was not just a name.
Jacob was the name of the man she swore was gone.
The man she told me meant nothing now.
The man whose number kept lighting up her phone during the pregnancy.
The man she always stepped into the bathroom to call back.
I felt my fingers tighten around the flowers.
“You named my son after your ex?”
Nia’s face hardened, but her eyes looked scared.
“It’s just a name, Marcus.”
“No,” I said. “It’s his name.”
She looked away.
That hurt more than the name.
Because if there was nothing to hide, she would have looked me straight in the eye.
I remembered everything at once.
The late-night calls.
The sudden mood swings.
The way she cried in the laundry room and said it was hormones.
The way she snapped when I asked if Jacob still contacted her.
The way her mother stopped talking whenever I walked in.
I set the flowers on the chair.
They looked stupid there.
Bright.
Hopeful.
Wrong.
I reached into my pocket and grabbed my keys.
“Then maybe Jacob should take you home.”
Nia’s eyes widened.
“Marcus, wait.”
I turned toward the door.
“It isn’t what you think.”
I almost laughed.
Because that was what people said when it was exactly what you thought.
But something in her voice made me stop.
Not guilt.
Fear.
Real fear.
I looked back at the baby sleeping against her chest.
He was so small.
His mouth moved like he was dreaming.
My anger cracked open, and something worse came through.
Doubt.
“Is he mine?” I asked.
Nia went completely still.
Not offended.
Not shocked.
Still.
Like I had asked the one question she had been begging God I would never ask.
My chest tightened.
“Nia.”
Before she answered, someone knocked.
A nurse stepped in halfway.
Her face was uncomfortable.
Too careful.
“Sorry,” she said. “There’s a man outside asking to see the baby.”
My hand closed around my keys until the metal bit into my palm.
“What man?”
The nurse looked at Nia.
Then at me.
“He says his name is Jacob.”
Nia’s face drained of color.
I turned toward the door.
May you like
It opened wider.
And the man standing there had the same deep brown eyes as the newborn in my wife’s arms.
