Chapter 2
I did not move.
I could not.
Jacob stood in the doorway wearing a gray hoodie, dark jeans, and a look on his face like he had walked into a room he had already owned in his mind.
His eyes went straight to the baby.
Not to Nia.
Not to me.
The baby.
My stomach twisted.
“Get out,” I said.
Jacob finally looked at me.
“I need to talk to Nia.”
“You need to leave.”
The nurse stepped between us.
“Sir, only approved visitors can enter.”
Jacob lifted both hands.
“I’m not here to cause trouble.”
I laughed once.
It sounded nothing like me.
“You came to the hospital room of my newborn son after my wife named him after you.”
Nia whispered, “Marcus, please.”
I turned on her.
“No. You don’t get to please me now. You had nine months.”
Her eyes filled.
Jacob stepped forward.
“I didn’t know she named him that.”
I pointed at him.
“Another step and security can drag you out.”
The nurse reached for the wall phone.
Nia panicked.
“Wait. Don’t call security.”
The words hit me hard.
Even now, she protected him.
I looked at her.
“Why?”
She held the baby closer.
“Because this is already bad enough.”
“No,” I said. “Bad enough was the name. Bad enough was the calls. This is something else.”
Jacob’s jaw tightened.
“I have a right to know if he’s okay.”
I felt the floor shift beneath me.
“A right?”
Nia closed her eyes.
I stared at her.
“Tell me he’s wrong.”
She said nothing.
My throat burned.
“Tell me he has no reason to think he has rights to my son.”
Nia’s lips trembled.
“Marcus…”
The nurse quietly backed out and said she would give us a minute.
I wished she had stayed.
I wished anyone had stayed.
Because suddenly it was just the three of us and the sleeping baby who had done nothing wrong.
Jacob took a breath.
“I’m not here to take him.”
I turned slowly.
“That sentence means you believe there is something to take.”
He looked at Nia.
She looked away.
I wanted to hate him.
It would have been easier.
But the fear on his face was not fake.
That scared me even more.
I walked to the window.
Outside, families crossed the parking lot with balloons and car seats.
Men became fathers down there.
Women became mothers.
Lives began.
Mine was falling apart under fluorescent lights.
I looked back at Nia.
“How long?”
She shook her head.
“Marcus, I didn’t cheat on you.”
“Do not play word games with me.”
“I didn’t.”
Jacob said, “She didn’t.”
I snapped, “You don’t speak for my wife.”
He flinched.
Good.
Nia’s voice broke.
“Before you and I got back together, there was one night.”
My heart stopped.
“When?”
She swallowed.
“After we had that fight in April. When you left for your brother’s place.”
I remembered.
I had left because she said she wasn’t sure she wanted to marry me.
I came back two days later with roses and an apology.
She cried in my arms.
Three weeks later, she told me she was pregnant.
I did the math in my head.
Then I did it again.
The room blurred.
“You knew.”
“No.”
“You knew there was a chance.”
“I suspected,” she whispered.
Suspected.
One word.
Nine months of my life split open.
Jacob stepped closer to her bed.
“I told her to tell you.”
I rounded on him.
“You knew too?”
He looked ashamed.
“She said she would.”
I laughed again, but this time it broke halfway through.
“You both knew.”
Nia was crying now.
“I was scared.”
“Of what? Me?”
“Yes.”
That silenced me.
She wiped her cheeks.
“Not because you’re violent. Because you loved him already. The second I told you I was pregnant, you started talking to my stomach. You built the crib. You read baby books. You became a father before I became brave.”
I looked at the baby.
My baby.
Not my baby.
I didn’t know.
My chest hurt so badly I pressed my fist against it.
Jacob whispered, “We should do a test.”
I looked at him.
For once, he was right.
Nia sobbed.
“No.”
“Yes,” I said.
She shook her head hard.
“No, Marcus, please. Not today.”
I stepped toward the bed.
I looked at the child I had waited all night to hold.
“Today is the day you put another man’s name on his head.”
May you like
Her sob caught.
“So yes,” I said. “Today.”
