"But she is, isn't she? Tell me the truth." He glared at me, and I glared back, then looked away. He slammed one of his hands on the desk. "I knew it."
"Yeah? Did you?" I asked, suddenly feeling angry. Who was he to come into our lives after all these years and demand things? He'd wanted a weekend fling. Casual sex. Even if I'd known how to reach him, I might not have. After all, how long had it taken him to recognize me?
"It didn't seem like you knew, based on the fact that you had no clue who I was at the hospital. I know I've aged, but I don't think I've changed that much," I said.
He hesitated, and I pressed my advantage.
"So, I don't see how you can know anything, considering that you're talking about a child you've met once and a woman that you couldn't remember despite a night of..." I sought the right words. I finally decided on, "...a night like that."
"You're one to talk. You're the one who said we shouldn't use names."
"Oh, right, names," I said, grasping at another tactical advantage. "Let's go back to the fact that you seem to know my daughter's, and I bet you knew mine, too. What, did you have us followed?"
He hesitated again and my heart dropped. Had he?
"You actually did! Oh my god! You really are some billionaire who thinks the world belongs to him, aren't you?" As I said it, my fear was replaced with anger.
"That's not what..."
"Please! I don't want to hear it! I don't need anyone like you anywhere near my daughter. So, I guess you can have your private detective, or your bribed police officer, or whatever track down my lawyer, because I sure as hell am not willingly giving you anything."
I stood up and swept out the door as quickly as I could, slamming it hard behind me. Worried he would follow me, I practically ran to the elevator, pushed the button, and then changed course and bolted down the stairs. After a few flights I remember how far up I was. I stopped and listened. It didn't seem like anyone was following. I sat down on the stairs, tears of anger streaming down my face.
It took me a few minutes to realize that, along with all the other bad things that had just happened, I definitely wasn't going to get this job.
FOURTEEN
CASSIUS
When Deira stormed out of the office like that, a part of me wanted to run after her, to grab her before she could escape forever. But something kept me frozen in place.
People rarely spoke to me the way Deira had just spoken to me. Michelle would yell at me when she was angry, sure. But yelling for Michelle was more like loud complaining. It was unpleasant, but there wasn't much edge to it. Deira's yelling... it had felt pointed. Like she'd found my weakest spots and plunged a knife in. I was left with the impression that she saw right through me, and that shook me to my core.
The other thing I couldn't get out of my mind was her face when I'd used Makayla's name, and then again when she'd realized that her snide remark about the private eye was true. She'd gone pale, somehow looking both terrified and terrifying at the same time. There was a fierceness to her, and a desperation, and it seemed nothing brought those out in her like potential danger to her child.
I suddenly realized that's what I was to her. The thought made me sick. I'd spent so much time over the past few weeks thinking about how I hadn't gotten to be a father, that I hadn't thought at all about how she'd had to be both parents. And apparently, her parental instincts told her I was dangerous. And damn it, maybe she was right.
After all, hadn't I practically stalked her? Hadn't I paid someone to find out personal information about her? Things that you wouldn't want a stranger to know? I'd gone to her apartment, for goodness sake! I felt a sudden relief that she hadn't been home. What would she have thought of me, showing up at her door like that? I doubt she would have seen a man who was trying to get answers. She probably would have seen an obsessive creep.
I put my head in my hands and massaged my temples. There was something else she'd said... that I was rich and thought the world belonged to me. In her mind, I was just some useless guy who got her pregnant and disappeared. All my attempts at the hospital to show how sorry I was about the car wreck; they had apparently come across as buying my way to whatever I wanted.
When I thought about it from that perspective, she wasn't wrong. I hadn't considered her side of things at all. I'd literally crashed into her life, and then decided that everything would go the way I wanted it to go, even before I'd known we had a kid together.
In fact, just now would have been the perfect opportunity to start fresh. All I had to do was begin slowly, introduce myself, and calmly suggest that I might like to be part of our daughter's life. Instead, I'd immediately jumped to confrontation, and now she wasn't just afraid of me, she hated me too.
I dropped my head onto the desk and groaned. I stayed there for a second, and then I took out my phone and called Scott.
"What's up?" he answered.
"Scott, you got any beer?" That was our shorthand for "I need to have a serious discussion, and I think there should be alcohol involved."
"Why?" Scott asked, sounding concerned.
"I screwed up," I said. "I think I really, really screwed up." There was a brief pause and then Scott said, "I'll be at your house after work. I'll bring lots of booze."
True to his word, when I got home that night Scott was already waiting in the driveway, two bags of alcohol at his feet and a pack of beers in his hand. We ordered pizza and started drinking. We had finished the six pack of beer and moved on to whisky before I finally felt ready to talk about it.
"Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. I'm confused. Why was she at the office today?"