She only nodded in response, not meeting my gaze. I squeezed her hands to let her know she didn’t need to be embarrassed.

“We have a lot to talk about, you and me,” I told her softly.

She squeezed her eyes shut, her head shaking in a small, quick movement.

I rubbed my thumbs over the insides of her wrists, a sense of rightness and necessity stirring my blood.

Christ, I needed to stop touching her, because if I thought she was beautiful before, the fact that this woman was the mother of my child gave her a fucking halo. I swear, she glowed. She was radiant. As magnetic as before,

but also something more.

I let her hands go, because otherwise I was going to pull her across the table and devour her.

Clearing my throat, I forced my eyes to my food. “First though, we’d better eat before the waiter drives himself into a state wondering if there’s something wrong with our dinners.”

This solicited a small, breathy chuckle from her, and it felt good to make her laugh. We each took a few bites and a thoughtful silence fell over us, redirecting my thoughts away from her and back to the situation.

I still wasn’t quite sure why I felt so good about all this. If anyone else had come to me with the same revelation, I’d probably have told them to pull the other one. But there was just something about Eilish, something about her earnest, open personality that made me believe her.

I wanted to do right by her.

And having a child wasn’t a bad thing. It was a great thing. A gift. I was old and wise enough to see that now. If she’d come to me all those years ago, when I was still drinking and out of control, I shudder to think of how I might’ve reacted.

So maybe her keeping everything a secret for so long was a blessing. Maybe this was how it was always supposed to be.

I glanced at her as she nibbled on a chicken wing. Her long, thick lashes shadowed her cheeks, casting her pretty features in a devastatingly beautiful light. Just looking at her sucked all the air from my lungs.

Yeah, maybe there was a tiny, minuscule part of me that liked the idea of having a child specifically with Eilish. It meant I got to spend more time around her. Ever since I laid eyes on her at Will’s party I’d been captivated, almost like my subconscious sensed our connection. And it killed me that we’d met before, spent an entire night together, and I couldn’t remember a single second of it. I’d had my greedy, ungrateful hands on her—been inside her—but I was too wrapped up in myself at the time to appreciate how lucky I was. Her look of hurt. Had I hurt her? Physically? Or . . . oh shite. What would it feel like to be on the receiving end of being forgotten?

She didn’t deserve to be forgotten.

She deserved to be treasured.

And I was going to do everything in my power to make up for what I’d done. But really, as delighted as I was to have this connection to Eilish, I was also incredibly eager to know everything about her son. Our son.

“Do you have a picture of him?” I asked, unable to hold back my curiosity.

She nodded and dabbed her lips before going to dig through her handbag. “Of course. Yes. Sorry.”

She pulled out her phone and navigated to her photos. Her hand shook as she passed it to me across the table. I took it with barely concealed fascination. The picture showed Eilish with a little boy on her lap. He had light brown hair, bright green eyes, and a dimple in either cheek. That wasn’t what held me captive though. It was like looking at a time capsule of myself. My heart pounded as several emotions overtook me. I hadn’t been kidding that I enjoyed playing with some of the lads’s kids, but this . . .

Was it possible to love him already when we hadn’t even met?

I couldn’t take my eyes off the photo and had to inhale a few deep breaths just to keep from embarrassing myself in front of the entire restaurant. Nobody expected a six-foot-four behemoth of a rugby player to start welling up in public.

Eilish must’ve noticed the shine in my eyes because she asked gently, “Bryan, are you all right?”

“Yeah,” I sniffed. “It’s just . . .”

“The resemblance?” she guessed. “It’s uncanny, isn’t it?”

I nodded and swiped my thumb over her screen, then glanced up. My voice was scratchy when I spoke. “Can you send this to my phone?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Thank you.”

I held her gaze for a moment, unspoken feelings passing between us.

Fear.

Uncertainty.

Anticipation.

Excitement.

I knew that for me the latter two outweighed the former. I just hoped it was the same for Eilish. My eyes traced the elegant slant of her nose, the curve of her rosebud mouth. She was so bloody gorgeous. This was going to be very fucking complicated, that was for sure.

“Did you name him after me?” I asked.

“Yes, I did.”

“Why?” I prodded gently.

“I’m not sure why I did it. Maybe it was my guilt? Or maybe I felt like he should at least have some part of you.”

I chuckled softly. “Have you seen him? He’s got all of me. If I didn’t know better, I’d say someone cloned my younger self.”

A small smile graced her lips. “Yeah, it’s pretty hard to deny he’s yours.”

Suddenly, Sarah’s words came hurtling back, urging me to take things slow, be clever, get a DNA test. I didn’t want to do any of those things, because there was something about this that felt pure. I didn’t want to dirty it up. Eilish must’ve read my thoughts because she started digging in her bag again, pulling out a small white box.