Page 58 of The Omega's Secret Baby
I sighed, choosing to believe him for now. Mainly because the dog was still resting on me, and I didn’t want to get up.
Jake returned to the room after another minute, proudly holding up his pens. “When I grow up, I’m going to be an artist, like uncle Griff!” he proclaimed.
“Yeah?” I gave him a smile. “That would be nice.” Better than what he’d told me the week before. Then, he’d wanted to be a race car driver and I couldn’t help but picture my kid in a burning car. Still, I liked that Jake had so many ideas what he wanted to be, and that he was free to choose. I liked that he didn’t have a set path to follow. I hadn’t managed to go after my dreams, but the same wouldn’t happen to my son.
Jake sat on the carpet by the couch table and began sketching out his designs while I continued crocheting. It was nice, really. The only thing missing from the picture was Matt. He still called me every night, but it wasn’t the same as him being here. How could it be?
I wanted Matt to be with us.
But before that could happen…
“Jake?”
“Yeah?” He didn’t look up from his paper.
“You know, Matt’s going to come see the fashion show too.” I tried to say it casually and not let any of the tension I was feeling seep into my words, but I didn’t quite succeed.
Jake still didn’t look up. “Uh-huh,” he said and continued drawing. I thought he pressed his pen to the paper a little bit harder, though.
“Could you try to be nice to him when he’s there?”
“I don’t like him,” Jake said simply. Still without looking at me.
I put my hook down and carefully moved the dog’s head off my lap so I could stand up from the couch and sit on the carpet with Jake. While doing so, I glanced at his paper. He wasn’t really drawing anything anymore. Just making circles in various colors. I hadn’t broached the topic of his other father with him since Matt had left nearly two weeks ago, wanting to give him time, but it seemed he was still mad.
That didn’t surprise me, not really, but I still needed to do something about it.
“Why don’t you like him?” I asked.
“I just don’t.”
Of course. He wasn’t going to make this easy, was he? “Is it because you don’t want to have another father?”
He paused. Then he said, “No,” and started drawing again. Blue circles now.
I took a deep breath, wondering what to say. This was such a difficult topic. “You two seemed to have fun before,” I tried.
He gave me a shrug. “Only because I didn’t know then.”
“That he was your dad?”
He paused again and put the pen aside. “I didn’t know what he did.”
“What he did?”
Jake finally turned to look at me. “He made you sad. I hate that.”
Right. He’d said something along those lines the day he’d found out. “You think he made me sad?”
“You were always sad when you talked about my other dad.”
Oh.I hadn’t even noticed. I’d always tried to be neutral, if not encouraging, about this topic. I’d never wanted Jake to think his other parent was a bad person—that would have been unfair, both to him and to Matt—but I guess I hadn’t managed to keep my emotions completely locked away.
And now I knew why Jake had stopped asking questions too.
“I thought you were sad because he left to be a hero,” Jake said. “But Matt isn’t a hero. He could have stayed.”
And here my lies came back to bite me in the ass. It was time, I supposed, that Jake learned the full truth of what had happened. Since he’d stopped drawing anyway, I put an arm around his shoulders and drew him against me. “It’s kind of my fault that he left.”
