Back With Baby, Ex Regrets Deeply novel · Chapter 8 of 32

Chapter 8: The Door

"Don't open the door," I said. "Whatever he says. Don't open it."

"I won't. I won't."

Behind her voice I could hear knocking, and under the knocking, Teddy crying.

Alistair had already leaned forward and spoken to the driver.

The car swung across two lanes.

The hotel was four blocks away.

I had the door open before we stopped.

I ran through the lobby in green silk with my shoes in my hand.

The elevator took a year.

On the twelfth floor the doors opened on Dorian's back.

He had one palm flat on our suite door and the other fist raised to knock again.

His bow tie was undone.

He'd brought a bottle of champagne from the ball and it was sticking out of his jacket pocket.

"Come on," he was saying to the door. "I just want to see him. Five minutes. I'm his dad. Open the door, sweetheart, nobody's going to get in trouble."

Through the wood I could hear Teddy screaming "Mama" over and over.

Something in me went cold and very clear.

"Dorian."

He turned around.

His face did something complicated.

Guilt, and then annoyance at the guilt, and then a big loose smile.

"Faye. Hey. Good. Tell her to open up."

"Step away from my son's door."

"I just want to meet him. Properly. Not at a party with everyone staring."

"Step away."

"Faye, come on, I've got rights..."

I walked straight at him.

I didn't stop.

He backed up because he had to, and I kept walking, and he kept backing, past the ice machine and the fire extinguisher and the room service tray somebody had left on the carpet.

I didn't touch him.

I didn't need to.

"You have no rights," I said. "You have a sailor suit and a lie. You came to a hotel at night, drunk, and terrified a babysitter and a two-year-old. If you ever come near this floor again, I will have you arrested in the lobby in front of whoever's checking in."

His back hit the elevator wall.

The doors opened behind him.

Alistair stepped out, with two hotel security men in gray blazers on either side of him.

He took one look at the corridor.

At Dorian against the wall, at the champagne bottle, at me with my shoes in my hand.

He didn't raise his voice.

He never does.

"Gentlemen," he said to the security men. "This man was trying to get into my son's room. I'd like him taken out through the front, please. Not the service exit. The front."

"Yes, sir."

"Wait," Dorian said. "Wait, I'm, this is a family thing, I'm his..."

One of the security men took his arm.

"Sir, let's go."

They walked him back into the elevator.

I found out later from the night manager that they walked him the full length of the lobby, slowly, past the bar and a wedding party checking in and a bellman with a luggage cart, with the champagne bottle confiscated and held up in front of him like evidence.

The babysitter opened the door when she heard my voice.

She was nineteen and shaking.

Teddy hurled himself out of her arms at my knees.

I picked him up and he buried his wet face in my neck and screamed "Mama" one more time, right into my ear, for punishment.

"I know," I said. "I know, baby. I'm here."

Alistair paid the babysitter three times what we owed her and called her a car himself and walked her down.

When he came back I was on the sofa with Teddy asleep across my chest.

Alistair stood in the doorway and looked at us.

Then he crossed the room and knelt on the carpet beside the sofa, still in his black tie, and put his hand flat on Teddy's back.

He left it there.

His hand was not quite steady.

I'd never seen that.

Not once in three years.

"He was right outside the door," Alistair said quietly.

"I know."

"If she'd opened it."

"She didn't."

He bent his head until his forehead rested on the edge of the sofa cushion beside our son.

He stayed there a long time.

I put my free hand in his hair.

I couldn't help it.

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