Chapter 1
Chapter One
Three Months
The girl was still naked beneath the sheets when I decided I wanted to leave.
Not because I had somewhere important to be. I didn’t. I simply had no interest in lying around listening to someone breathe down my neck and pretend the last forty minutes had meant something.
“You’re leaving already?” she asked.
I reached for my jeans on the floor. “Looks like it.”
“Wow.” She laughed, though there wasn’t much humour in it. “You really are an asshole.”
“That’s what I’ve been told.”
I pulled my jeans on, then reached for my phone on the nightstand. Three missed calls from Mom.
My eyebrows lifted.
Three?
That was either a family emergency or she had finally lost her mind.
I swiped the notifications away without calling back.
Behind me, the girl sat up against the headboard, the sheet slipping down as she moved. For a moment, my eyes caught on the bare curve of her breasts before I looked away, more out of habit than embarrassment.
“You could at least kiss me goodbye.”
I glanced over my shoulder.
She was pretty. Blonde, blue-eyed, the sort of girl whose Instagram pictures probably made other girls hate themselves. She was looking at me expectantly, lips slightly pursed.
I leaned down as if to kiss her.
At the last second, I reached past her and grabbed my watch from the bedside table.
She stared at me.
I smirked. “You should see your face.”
“Fuck you, Ricardo.”
“Already did.”
She threw a pillow at me.
I caught it, tossed it back onto the bed, and bent to retrieve my black T-shirt from the floor. The fabric slid over the tattoos covering my forearms as I pulled it on.
“Call me sometime.” she said.
“Sure.”
“You’re such a liar.”
“Now you know.”
I headed for the door.
“Love you!” she called after me.
I lifted two fingers in a lazy wave without turning around.
“Yeah. You too.”
I was halfway down the stairs when my phone started ringing again.
MOM.
I answered this time.
“What?”
“Ricardo.”
I could hear the warning in her voice. The particular tone that meant she had already decided I was going to be difficult and was preparing herself for it.
“What did I do?”
“Why do you always assume you’ve done something?”
“Because you don’t call me four times to ask about the weather.”
A pause.
“Come home. We need to talk.”
I stopped beside my car.
“About what?”
“Just come home, please.”
The please made me frown.
My mother wasn’t big on pleading. She preferred giving orders and acting surprised when I ignored them.
“Is everything okay?”
“Yes. Just come home.”
“Mom—”
“Ricardo.”
I sighed. “Fine. I’m coming.”
She hung up.
I stared at my phone for a moment before tossing it onto the passenger seat.
Something was wrong.
I just had no idea what.
And judging by the way my mother had sounded, whatever it was, I wasn’t going to like it.
⸻
By the time I pulled into the driveway, I had invented at least seven possible reasons for the emergency.
None of them involved my mother deciding to ruin my life.
That particular possibility didn’t occur to me until I walked into the living room and found her sitting on the sofa beside Daniel.
Of course.
Daniel. The current boyfriend. Number three, if I was counting correctly. Number four if my mother had finally admitted that the last guy she’d been seeing was actually her boyfriend and not, as she’d insisted for months, “just a friend.”
Daniel looked up from his phone.
“Hey, man.”
I didn’t bother answering.
My mother patted the empty space beside her.
“Sit down.”
“I’m good.”
“Ricardo, please.”
I dropped onto the armchair opposite them, spreading my legs and leaning back. My tattoos disappeared beneath the sleeves of my shirt as I folded my arms across my chest.
“Okay. What’s going on?”
My mother exchanged a glance with Daniel.
My eyes narrowed.
“Oh, this is a joint announcement? Great. Should I be expecting a PowerPoint?”
“Can you be serious for five minutes?” my mother asked.
“I am serious. I’m sitting here, aren’t I?”
She took a breath.
“Your father called me.”
Everything inside me went still.
Not visibly. I wasn’t about to give either of them the satisfaction.
But something cold and unpleasant settled beneath my ribs.
“My father.” I repeated.
“Yes.”
“The same father who hasn’t bothered to call me on my birthday in years?”
“Ricardo—”
“The same man who apparently discovered he had a son and then decided fatherhood was an optional subscription?”
Daniel shifted beside her.
“Look, I think you should hear—”
“Did I ask you?”
Daniel’s expression hardened. “Don’t talk to me like that.”
I turned to him slowly.
“Don’t tell me how to talk to you.”
“Ricardo!” my mother snapped.
I looked at her.
“Don’t speak to Daniel that way.”
For a moment, I simply stared at her.
Then I laughed.
It wasn’t a particularly pleasant sound.
“Right. Sorry. I forgot he’s the one who raised me.”
Daniel stood.
“I’m trying to have a respectful conversation with you.”
“Then have one. Nobody’s stopping you.”
“Enough!” my mother shouted.
Silence fell.
I looked away first, my jaw tight.
I hated this. The boyfriends, the husbands, the endless parade of men who entered my mother’s life and somehow expected me to welcome them with open arms. My father had been the first man to make a mess of our family. My mother’s second husband hadn’t exactly improved the situation. And now Daniel was sitting here acting like he had any authority over me.
I had stopped keeping track of the men a long time ago.
My mother rubbed her forehead.
“Daniel, please. Give us a minute.”
Daniel looked as though he wanted to argue, but he eventually walked out of the room.
I watched him go.
“Charming guy.”
“Can you stop?”
“Can you tell me why I’m here?”
My mother’s expression changed.
The irritation was still there, but beneath it sat something else. Something uncertain.
She reached for my hand.
I let her take it, mostly because pulling away would make the conversation longer.
“Your father wants you to come and live with him.”
I blinked.
Once.
Then again.
I looked at her hand around mine, then back at her face.
“I’m sorry. What?”
“He wants you to live with him for a while. You’ll be going to university soon, and he thinks it would be a good opportunity for you to get to know him and his family since they are in the same city.”
For several seconds, I didn’t say anything.
Then I pulled my hand away.
“You’re joking.”
“I’m not.”
“Okay. That’s funny. Seriously, Mom. Good one.”
“Ricardo.”
“You cannot be serious.”
“I am.”
I stood so abruptly that the chair scraped against the floor.
“You want me to go and live with that man?”
“He’s your father.”
“Oh, is he? That’s interesting. I must have missed the part where he actually acted like one.”
My mother flinched.
I noticed.
I hated that I noticed.
“Baby, I know you’re angry—”
“Angry?” I let out a disbelieving laugh. “You think I’m angry? You tell me I’m going to live with a stranger, and you expect me to be what? Excited?”
“He isn’t a stranger.”
“To you, maybe.”
“He’s still your father, Ricardo. Nothing changes that.”
“Funny. He seemed pretty comfortable with the arrangement when I was growing up.”
She rose from the sofa.
“He made mistakes.”
“Mistakes?” I repeated. “For how many years? Because that’s a hell of a long mistake.”
“I am not asking you to forgive him.”
“Then what exactly are you asking me to do?”
“Give him a chance.”
I stared at her.
She looked back at me, refusing to look away.
“I want you to know your father,” she continued. “And your stepmother. Your brother and sister. You have a whole family over there that you’ve never had the opportunity to know properly.”
“I have a family.”
“I know you do.”
“Then why are we having this conversation?”
“Because you can have more than one family!”
Her voice cracked on the last word.
I fell silent.
My mother closed her eyes briefly, collecting herself.
“I am not sending you away because I don’t want you here. You need to understand that. I love you. You are my son, and nothing is going to change that.”
“Then why are you doing this?”
“Because I don’t want you to grow up wondering who your father is when you have the opportunity to find out.”
I looked away.
There it was. The argument she knew I couldn’t easily dismiss.
My mother had always been annoyingly good at that.
“He has a wife,” she continued gently. “He has two children. They seem like good people. His wife is a lawyer, and from everything I’ve heard, she’s wonderful. You might actually like them.”
“Wow. Sounds like a family advertisement.”
“Ricardo.”
“What? Am I supposed to show up with a suitcase and a smile? Hi, everyone, surprise! I’m the abandoned son.”
She didn’t smile.
“Three months.”
I looked at her.
“What?”
“Give it three months. Live with them while you settle into university. Get to know them. If, after three months, you genuinely don’t want to stay, you can move in with Cole and his brother.”
Cole.
My cousin. The one person who could make almost any terrible situation entertaining.
I rubbed my jaw, considering it.
Three months.
That was nothing.
I could tolerate three months of awkward family dinners, forced conversations and a billionaire father who probably couldn’t remember my favourite colour.
Then I could leave and move in with Cole.
Problem solved.
“Fine.”
My mother stared at me. “Fine?”
“Yeah. Three months. I’ll go.”
She looked almost suspicious. “You’re not going to argue?”
“Would it change anything?”
“Probably not.”
“Then there you go.”
I picked up my keys from the coffee table.
“Ricardo, wait.”
I paused.
My mother stepped closer, reaching up to touch my cheek the way she had when I was younger.
“I really think this could be good for you.”
I said nothing.
“You might even discover that you love your father.”
I looked at her for a long moment.
Then I smiled, slow and humourless.
Yeah. Let’s see how lovable the bastard is.
Three months.
I could do three months.
And if my father gave me even half a reason to leave, I’d be out of that house before the man had time to remember my name.
