From Heiress To Mum. Therese Beharrie

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       CHAPTER TWO

      IT WAS AS if Hunter had been given X-ray vision and could suddenly see through flesh and bone. As Autumn sat staring at him, Hunter saw her hurt, the desire she had to scream at him. He saw how badly she wanted to run. From his news, from him. He wouldn’t have blamed her.

      He probably looked like a nightmare. He’d pitched up at her house at eleven at night, having got into his car almost as soon as Grace had left his place. He should have tried to get some sleep first, after he’d heard the news. He shouldn’t have arrived at Autumn’s house in a panic. But he doubted his ability to sleep. He probably wouldn’t be able to for the foreseeable future, considering what it might hold.

      What it would hold, he thought, Grace’s words echoing in his ears.

      He’d felt better when Autumn had opened the door, concern in her eyes. Something had clicked back in place when she’d put her arms around him. Now, that seemed like an appropriate punishment for coming to her with this.

      Seeing how hurt she was, seeing her wanting to run, sent an unbearable ache through his body. Another appropriate punishment.

      He’d thought he’d grown accustomed to her disappointment. Every day towards the end of their romantic relationship had been stained with its stickiness. She had never said it in so many words, but he’d sensed it. Every time he hadn’t responded to her gentle probes about their future. Or when he hadn’t added anything when she’d spoken about her dreams about having a family.

      In truth, he’d been figuring out his answers. First for himself; then what he would give her. She wouldn’t like them, despite the different ways he’d tried to phrase them in his mind. He’d spent too long trying to figure out what to tell her in the end, desperate for her not to have a low opinion of him.

      But it had happened anyway, rightfully so. Just as it was happening now.

      He could see it. In the tightness around her eyes. In the crease between her brows. More than that, he felt her disappointment, sharp and acute. Felt sharp and acute pangs in his chest as well. So he supposed he hadn’t got used to it after all.

      But no matter how much he wanted to, he couldn’t say what she needed to hear: that he wanted to have a family with her. He couldn’t. The desires she’d expressed when they’d been together had reminded him of how families broke. How siblings got sick. How losing them felt like losing everything in the world.

      Each person involved in a family would get hurt. Would be irrevocably changed—or worse. He’d seen it with his own parents. With his own sister. He had no desire to put himself in a situation to feel that way again. Let alone with a woman he genuinely cared for.

      And yet the first thing he’d done after their break-up was forget his responsible nature and get a woman pregnant. Then he’d come to her, to the woman he cared about, to tell her that their break-up had resulted in the very thing she’d wanted and he hadn’t: a child.

      The thing he now had and she didn’t. What painful irony.

      ‘Autumn,’ he said when the silence extended long enough that even he, who was at home in silence, felt uncomfortable. ‘Say something.’

      Her lips parted, and for a split second Hunter remembered that they did that just before he would kiss her. But that memory was unwelcome, untimely. How could he think about kissing her when he’d just told her he was a father? When he’d just discovered he was a father?

      He was a father.

      Bile rose in his stomach. It was the same thing that happened whenever he thought about his own father. The man who’d put his feelings above his dying daughter’s.

      ‘Autumn,’ Hunter said again, more insistently.

      Autumn’s eyes met his, and his breath did something strange at the gold that flickered in their brown depths.

      ‘Are you okay?’

      Her eyelashes fluttered. ‘I—Yes.’ She straightened. ‘I’m okay.’

      Her voice sounded strange too, as if someone had taken a hold of her voice box and were squeezing tightly.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, because he needed to.

      She closed her eyes, and he wanted to reach out. To brush a finger over the line where her dark lashes lay against the brown of her skin. To smooth the lines at her forehead.

      Her eyes opened right then and before he could avert his own, their gazes locked. His heart stumbled in his chest, resulting in an uncomfortable beat against his chest bone. The thump-thump of his heart sounded in his ears, except he heard it as laughter, a mocking ha-ha at what he’d given up to ensure that what he’d told her tonight would never happen.

      He forced his eyes away, onto the night lights of Cape Town. It used to comfort him once upon a time. Now it mocked him.

      ‘You found out tonight?’ she asked after some time had passed.

      He nodded. Still, he couldn’t look at her.

      A voice in his head called him a coward.

      ‘Grace, the woman I—’ He stopped before he said something stupid. ‘The mother of the child. She showed up at my place.’

      ‘You didn’t know before that?’

      He shook his head.

      ‘How old is the... How old?’

      ‘Three months.’

      She pursed her lips, though he’d caught the trembling long before she’d done it.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, eyes resting on her face now. She nodded.

      ‘You’re here because you’re surprised.’

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