Chapter 190

[ 1,054 words ]

Julian’s POV

I watched her walk out.

Past the assistant, into the elevator, gone. The office was quiet again. I sat at my desk and looked at the door she had closed behind her and felt the smile arrive before I decided to let it.

She had come to me.

Without Sam, without preparation, without a meeting scheduled. She had driven to my office at seven PM and walked past my assistant and sat across from my desk and asked me with the ring on her finger, the Windsor firestone on her left hand in my office, if I had ever been to Las Vegas.

She did not know she was asking her husband.

She did not know the man she was looking at was the same man she had been looking for for years. She thought she was following a feeling, chasing a resemblance, asking a question she was not sure she wanted answered.

And I had sat across from her and told her it was a coincidence.

I had watched her face do the thing it did when she was working something out — the slight tension and the eyes very steady — and I had given her nothing and asked her if she wanted me to be her husband and watched her leave.

She was going to be thinking about that question all night.

Good.

She had been circling the truth for months. I had been carrying it for six years. She could sit with one question for one night.

I smiled again. Stood up. Put my jacket on.

I was going to see my son.

Grandma was in the sitting room when I arrived.

She looked up from her correspondence and took one look at my face and set her pen down.

“What did you do?” she said.

“Nothing yet,” I said. “Is Aiden here p>

“He’s in the library,” she said. “He found a book on aerospace engineering and has been there since four o’clock.” She paused. “Julian p>

“I just want to spend some time with him,” I said. “Is that alright p>

She looked at me for a moment. The look that meant she knew more than she was saying — which, with Grandma Celeste, was almost always.

“Of course,” she said. “Don’t keep him up too late p>

Aiden was exactly where she said — cross-legged on the library floor with the aerospace book open on his lap and a notepad beside him where he had been writing things down. He looked up when I came in.

“Julian,” he said. Then, with the practicality of someone who had moved past pleasantries: “Do you know anything about thrust-to-weight ratios p>

“A reasonable amount,” I said.

He looked at me assessingly. “Sit down then p>

I sat on the floor beside him. We spent forty minutes on thrust-to-weight ratios. He had good questions — better than I expected, which was saying something because I had stopped underestimating Aiden approximately four minutes after I first met him.

At some point I suggested we move the conversation to my house. I had a proper library, a gaming setup that I suspected would interest him, and more floor space than the Windsor Estate library, which was currently covered in Aiden’s notes.

He agreed immediately. He packed his notepad.

The gaming setup was a success.

We played for an hour — Aiden was better than he had any right to be at twenty-three months old and would not accept that this was impressive, which was the most Aiden-like thing possible. He won the second race. He explained to me in detail where I had gone wrong on the third corner of the second lap.

At nine PM he put the controller down and looked at me with the direct, clear attention he gave things that mattered to him.

“Can I ask you something?” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

He looked at me for a moment. Not fidgeting, not building up to it. Just deciding whether to say it.

“We look alike,” he said. “Me and you. I’ve noticed it for a while. Mummy notices it too — she gets a look on her face sometimes.” He paused. “Is there a reason p>

I looked at this boy.

At the face I had been looking at for months — in a park, on a bench, in a birthday party garden, in a photograph on a phone screen — and feeling the truth of it without being able to say it yet.

I could say it now.

There was no reason not to say it now. Katia was not here. The lawyers were not involved. It was just me and a five-year-old who had asked a direct question and deserved a direct answer.

“Yes,” I said. “There is a reason p>

Aiden waited.

“I am your father,” I said. “From today — officially, between us — I am your father p>

The room was very quiet.

Aiden looked at me for a long time. Processing it the way he processed everything — carefully, thoroughly, without rushing to a reaction.

“I thought so,” he said finally.

“You thought so,” I repeated.

“I’ve thought so for a while,” he said. “I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to make it weird.” He paused. “Is it weird p>

“No,” I said.

He nodded slowly. Then: “Does Mummy know p>

“Not yet,” I said. “I’m going to tell her p>

He absorbed this. “Okay,” he said. Then, looking at me with the clear eyes that missed nothing, he said, “So I can call you Dad? Whenever I like p>

Something moved in my chest that I had no name for.

“Whenever you like,” I said.

He looked at me for another moment. Then he reached over and picked his controller back up.

“Okay, Dad,” he said. As if he had been saying it for years. As if it were the most ordinary thing. “Your corner line is still wrong, by the way. You need to brake earlier p>

I looked at the screen.

“Show me,” I said.

He showed me.

We played until ten thirty, and I drove him back to the estate, and he fell asleep in the car with his notepad on his lap, and I carried him inside, and Grandma met me at the door and looked at his sleeping face and then at mine.

She said nothing.

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