My Last Shot: A Last Time Novel #4 by Parker Weston

Author:Parker, Weston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Star Key Press
Published: 2024-01-10T00:00:00+00:00

31

MAISIE

I couldn’t breathe. Air wouldn’t fill my lungs. I scraped my nails into the chair’s fabric and held on for dear life. Dalton hadn’t shocked me with that question, the one I’d been dreading to hear since he met Noah.

He’d jolted me into paralysis. I stood there speechless, like I was standing outside my body and looking in.

The truth was out. He’d connected the dots. Despite my best efforts to weasel out of baring this fact to him, he’d figured it all out. I shouldn’t have counted on him staying clueless. He was smarter than that, observant and sharp witted.

He sighed, not taking his steady stare off me once.

I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t think of anything to say. Trying to deny it would be stupid, and also unfair to us all. The ruse was up. There was no way I could find a loophole out of this confrontation. Faced with those circumstances as my heart pounded so hard I feared I’d faint, I clung to the last-resort choice.

I ran.

I hated the whimper I let out as my anguish consumed me. I’d never moved this fast, desperate and fueled to escape a situation, but I didn’t get far. Dalton stopped me halfway to the door. His reflexes had always been ridiculously fast. Without even breathing hard, he gently gripped my forearms and pulled me closer so I had no chance of evading his eyes.

“Maisie. Maisie.”

I sniffled, loathing the burn of tears too close. Hadn’t I suffered enough? Hadn’t I been vulnerable around this man enough times that I could be spared?

“Is he our son, Maisie? Please.”

The agony in his words was my undoing. Hearing him so torn and eager for the truth was the last straw. “Do you not see yourself in him?” I didn’t mean to shout it, but I’d lost the finer control of my voice. Tears won the fight, and as I started to cry hard, fraught with the shame and fear and pain of this topic, I shook my head. “He doesn’t know.”

Without a word, he released my arms. He hadn’t been holding me tightly to begin with, but once my hands were free, I furiously wiped at my face. Crying in front of Dalton was the last thing I wanted to do. I wasn’t ashamed of crying out of the principle of it, but I couldn’t stand the thought of looking so weak near him. I had to be strong. I was strong, and I’d continue to be so, but I was only human. All I could do was break down with this huge secret exploding before my eyes.

He didn’t turn his back to me. Through the blurred vision my tears allowed me, I watched him impose a few more steps between us. He lowered his head, shaking it slightly. I didn’t have the energy to insist that it was true. I suspected he was already guessing that Noah might be his child. He wasn’t trying to deny what I said. More so, he struggled to convince himself, perhaps wanting to think it was a lie.

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