Back With Baby, Ex Regrets Deeply novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Marlborough Street

I walk into my mother's house in the middle of Laurel's party with my son on my hip, take their laughter, tell them the house is mine in three weeks, and Dorian tells the room my boy has his chin.

The front door of my mother's house was propped open with a silver balloon weight.

There was music inside, and the sound of a lot of people who'd had a lot of champagne.

A banner hung across the parlor arch in gold script.

"THE REVEAL!"

I shifted Teddy higher on my hip and walked in.

He had his red bus in one fist and my collar in the other.

"Loud," he told me.

"Very loud," I agreed.

The parlor was full of women in linen and men in loafers without socks.

The walls had been my mother's yellow.

They were gray now. Every inch.

Her old upright piano was still against the far wall, but somebody had put a tray of empty glasses on the lid.

I took the tray off and set it on the floor.

A man in a catering jacket looked at me.

"Ma'am, that's..."

"It's a piano," I said. "Not a table."

I went up the stairs.

Teddy counted them in his own way, which is "one, two, bus, boat."

The top floor had been my mother's studio.

North skylight, paint on the floorboards, a smell of turpentine that never left no matter how many winters went by.

Laurel was standing in the middle of it with a glass in her hand and a crowd around her.

The floorboards had been sanded pale.

The walls were gray.

The skylight had a white blind pulled across it.

"And this," Laurel was saying, "was the before."

She held up her phone to show them a picture.

My mother's easel. Her stained rag chair. A canvas of the Public Garden in snow.

Her friends laughed.

"It was like a hoarder lived here," one of them said.

"Oh, worse," Laurel said. "An artist."

Then she saw me in the doorway.

She didn't even have the decency to look caught.

Her whole face lit up.

"Oh my God. You came."

Every head turned.

"Everyone, this is my sister Faye," Laurel said. "Well. Stepsister. She's the one I told you about. The mail-order bride."

A woman near the window snorted into her drink.

I felt the old heat climb my neck, the City Hall heat.

Teddy put his bus against my cheek, the way he does when he thinks I need it.

"And this is the baby!" Laurel set her glass down and came at us with her hands out. "Look at those cheeks."

I stepped back.

Her hands stayed out in the air for a second too long.

"Well," she said, and laughed. "Shy. Like his mom."

"Faye."

Dorian came up the stairs behind me.

Three years had put a little weight on him and taken some of the shine off his hair.

The suit was better.

The watch was much better.

He looked at me for a long moment, at my coat and my boots and my face, and something sour crossed his mouth.

"You look good," he said, like it annoyed him.

"I know."

"So where is he?" He made a show of looking past me down the stairs. "The billionaire. Or did he send you back? Is there a return window on those?"

The people around Laurel laughed again.

Louder this time, now that he'd given them permission.

"He couldn't make it," Laurel said sweetly. "Right, Faye? Busy man. Busy, busy. I think it's so brave, honestly. Raising a baby basically alone in a foreign country."

"I'm not alone."

"Of course not, sweetie."

I set Teddy down.

He ran straight to the stained patch of floor they hadn't quite sanded out, under the skylight, and squatted to run his bus along it.

That patch was where my mother's easel used to stand.

Cadmium red, from when I was nine and knocked over her jar.

I'd forgotten it was there.

I turned to the room.

"Hi," I said. "I'm Faye. This was my mother's house. She was a painter, which is why it smelled like turpentine. She left it to me."

Laurel's smile tightened.

"It's held in trust until I turn thirty," I went on. "That's June fourteenth. Three weeks. So enjoy the champagne. It's still on my floor, but not for long."

There was a silence you could have stood a spoon in.

Somebody's ice cubes clinked.

"Faye."

My father was at the top of the stairs now, a little out of breath, in his navy blazer with the Odell Marine pin.

He'd come up fast.

He didn't hug me.

He hadn't seen me in three years and he didn't hug me.

"Not here," he said, low. "Not like this. Please."

"Where, then? You didn't call me, Dad. Laurel sent a crate."

"We'll talk. At the office. Tomorrow." He glanced at the guests. "As a family."

"Sure."

Dorian wasn't listening to either of us.

He was watching Teddy.

Teddy had found the cord to the blind and was considering it.

"No," I said, and he looked at me and let it go with a sigh, because he's mine.

"How old is he?" Dorian asked.

"Two."

"Two." He tilted his head. "He's big for two."

"He's Scottish."

That got a laugh, a small one, from a man by the window.

Dorian didn't laugh.

He was looking at Teddy's face, then at mine, and I could see him counting backward on his fingers in his head.

A slow smile came over his mouth.

I'd loved that smile once.

Now it made my skin crawl.

He turned to the crowd and lifted his glass.

"Funny," he said, loud enough for the stairs. "He's got my chin."

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend