‘Why can’t we, if we both want to?’ he asked, his voice so assured, so reasonable, I suddenly wanted to slap him.
I shoved my fists into the pockets of my shorts to control the urge, but the switch from shock and need to anger finally helped to get my racing heartbeat past the finishing line.
‘Because this...’ I jerked my hand out of my pocket and flapped my palm between him and me. ‘This thing between us isn’t just about us any more.’ I ground the words out, the righteous indignation for my son helping to keep the destructive desire at bay at last. ‘There’s a child involved. And things are confusing enough for him already. You came here this morning without consulting with me.’ I’d tried to be forgiving about that, to understand. But his surprise appearance this morning was starting to look more and more like another of his power plays.
‘I told you he needed more time. I haven’t even had a chance to tell him who you are yet, to prepare him, and...’
‘Stop it.’ He grabbed my wrist and held it down, forcing my gaze to his. ‘Stop pretending this is about the boy when you know it’s not. You’ve had more than enough time to speak to him about me—four years, to be precise—but you have chosen not to. I’m not waiting any longer to get your permission to speak to my son.’
The sharp judgement in his voice, and the incontrovertible truth behind it, struck me like a blow, and the burning anger in my belly imploded, drowned by the black hole of guilt.
He let go of my wrist.
‘Do you think I don’t know how complicated this is?’ he demanded, his voice rough now—not with judgement but with something a great deal rawer than that. ‘Do you think I don’t know how confusing it is—for him as well as me?’
He dragged in several breaths and I could almost feel the pain in his lungs as he did so, because mine felt the same. ‘Do you think telling him I want to be his friend was easy for me, when what I want to do is tell him I’m his father?’ He whispered the words, and I realised he was keeping his voice down so Cai wouldn’t hear him. ‘Do you think I don’t know I have to earn the right to call myself that? And how hard that is going to be for me when I have no idea how to even talk to a four-year-old, let alone how to be a parent to one?’
A tear slipped over my lid—the tears I’d struggled to contain earlier when I’d watched him kneel in front of his son so he could look him in the eye, instinctively knowing how not to intimidate him. Even in that brief encounter Alexi had engaged with Cai so effortlessly—using their shared love of racing cars to start bonding with him. But I realised now, as I should have realised ten minutes ago, that none of that encounter had been effortless, at least not for Alexi.
I scrubbed the tear away, looking down at my bare feet. So ashamed.
I’d apologised to Alexi for the years of silence, for failing to tell him about his son, and I’d meant it—but how could I ever be forgiven? How could I even forgive myself until I put his needs and Cai’s needs ahead of my own?
‘Actually you did very well,’ I said, hitching in a breath and willing myself to hold the emotion at bay. Had a part of me even been a little jealous that Alexi had bonded with Cai so easily? I had denied my son his father for so long perhaps it was time I acknowledged one of my reasons for doing so had been my own insecurities as a mother. I’d had Cai when I had been nineteen years old. I’d been a confused, terrified child myself in many ways. I’d worked long and hard to build up my confidence. I was proud of what I’d achieved, but had a part of me been scared to test that, scared to share Cai with his father, because it might illuminate my inadequacies as a mother?
This wasn’t a competition, but I had made it one.
‘I suspect it helps that I own a Super League team,’ he said wryly, and my heart broke more—because, beneath the irony, I could hear the insecurity.
‘It doesn’t hurt,’ I said, forcing a smile to my lips. ‘But it was more than that. The way you spoke to him was very...’ I gulped, trying to shrink the boulder in my throat at his inquisitive expression. ‘It was really...’ I wanted to say sweet, but sweet wasn’t a word you could use to describe Alexi Galanti. Even as a father. It was too ordinary, too shallow, too trite. ‘It was really touching,’ I managed. ‘It was as if you already understood him. I think you might be a natural.’
He frowned then huffed out a bitter laugh. ‘I find that unlikely, given my own upbringing.’
The remark sounded flippant, but I knew it was not—he was talking about his fractured relationship with his own father. I realised what he had said to me last night, about his fear of fatherhood, wasn’t just wound up in his misplaced guilt over Remy’s death but also in all the cruel things his father had said and done to him during so much of his childhood and adolescence.
All those nasty jibes, the shouted threats and criticisms, the back-handed slaps and drunken punches that Remy and I had overheard... Alexi had always dismissed them, had always seemed immune, his confidence unbowed by his father’s abuse, but that treatment had taken its toll in ways of which I had been unaware until now.
‘You were never like him, Alexi,’ I said.
His frown deepened. The momentary flash of torment at the mention of his father was quickly masked but I knew the remark had hit home. Or at least I hoped it had, and I was glad. Because I could see now I hadn’t just robbed my son of a father over the last four years, I had stopped this man from discovering how much better he was than his own fa
ther.
‘I’m glad this first meeting went well,’ he said. ‘But I will need your help to ensure I don’t make mistakes.’
I nodded. ‘You have it.’
He nodded back. ‘I would like to be able to tell Cai who I really am as soon as possible,’ he continued. ‘But I am prepared to take your lead on that, as you know him best.’
It was a huge concession. I understood that, just as I now understood the significance of him not announcing the truth as soon as he had arrived this morning. He had trusted me, and now I needed to prove to him I wasn’t going to abuse that trust.
‘Thank you, let’s see how it goes. But Cai’s actually very adaptable,’ I admitted. ‘He’s already loving it here. And he...he’s always craved male attention,’ I added, thinking of how quickly he’d attached himself to Renzo and Pierre.
Why had I never noticed that before for what it was? Especially as I had yearned for a father myself through so much of my childhood.
‘He’s already thrilled to bits that I’m working for you...because apparently Galanti make “the bestest racing cars ever”,’ I added with a smile, quoting our son.
‘He’s a smart boy.’ Alexi’s eyes sparkled with amusement. ‘And handsome and exceptionally self-assured. He reminds me so much of Remy at that age, it is almost uncanny.’ He sobered, the frown reappearing between his brows. ‘You have my word, Belle, that I will do everything in my power not to hurt him.’