She stared at him, desperately trying to squelch the temptation to tell him to go to hell. “I don’t have time for a social life. I’m sorry. It’s why I broke things off with AJ. Clair requires my full attention.”
“Fair enough,” he said, taking another sip of his drink, then smiled. “But being that I am her father, it seems it would only be fair that I help alleviate some of that burden you’ve been carrying all this time on your own. You shouldn’t have to sacrifice your life, Addi.”
Addison glared at him, trying desperately to refrain from throwing her tea in his face. How dare he call himself a father! And how dare he refer to Clair as a burden! He knew nothing about sacrifice. He was only after one thing and they both knew it. Even then, a part of her questioned whether or not it was his inflated ego behind his newfound desire to be a part of their lives.
Before she could calm herself enough to say something less abrasive than what she was thinking, he put his drink down and laid his arm down on the table palm up.
“Look,” he said, with a smug smile.
Addison glanced down at the heart tattoo on the inside of his lower arm. Her eyes widened when she saw the name inside the heart with angel wings: Clair.
“It’s my tribute to my little girl.”
Not only was his calling Clair his little girl as ridiculous as his calling himself a father, it felt contrived. The tattoo looked new. The skin around it was still bright pink. The placement of it was so that it’d be very visible not just now but when he’d be on the field.
“Why would you do that?” she asked, unable to pull her eyes away from it, her heart thudding in her chest.
“Why not?” he said, looking back down at it. “Despite what you may think, these past few days have been very distressing for me. Just when I’d decided I wanted to be a part of her life, she was close to dying. I felt like I needed to do something.”
“You haven’t even asked me how she’s doing today.”
“I was going to,” he said, glancing up at her, obviously surprised at the change in her now-hardened tone. “We just got into other stuff, but I was getting there. How is she?”
“You don’t care,” she said, shaking her head, feeling like an idiot for even being there now.
“Yes, I—”
“You’ve never cared. This is just about you and your fucking ego. You don’t care about me either. You just can’t stand the thought of me being with someone else and that AJ got all the sympathy and credit for being Clair’s dad. He’s been more of a dad to her in the past couple of months than you have her entire life. And now you go and do that”—she pointed at the offensive tattoo—“because you’re just hoping someone notices it. Someone’ll put two and two together just because you can’t stand feeling left out.”
Addison grabbed her purse and began to slide out of the booth. She couldn’t sit there another minute and listen to even one more word out of this idiot’s mouth.
“Addi,” he said, sliding out of his side.
“You disgust me,” she said, flinging her purse on her shoulder as he pulled out a twenty, threw it on the table, and rushed after her. “I’ve just gone through the worst experience of my life,” she said as she rushed through the thankfully near empty restaurant, “and all you could think of was why AJ was getting all the attention.”
“No, I wasn’t—”
She turned to him and actually laughed just outside the restaurant. This was so ridiculous she couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen it coming. “It was the first thing you asked about when I finally returned your calls!” She glared at him but took a step closer to him and lowered her voice, despite the agitation she was feeling “Not how’s Clair? Not how are you holding up? All you wanted to know was why all the reports were calling him her stepdad and to make it clear that you’d spoken to your lawyers and knew he couldn’t adopt her without you signing off. So what? You think a stupid tattoo marks her as your territory?”
“No, I was just—”
“You listen to me and you listen good, Fred.” She took an even closer step to him, paranoid about anyone overhearing. “I have lawyers too. You’ve never wanted anything to do with her and I have proof of that. You don’t deserve to be a part of her life ever. And I will stop at nothing to make sure you never do. This is the last time I will meet with you. I won’t be intimidated by your threats. You wanna be a part of her life? I’ll see you in court.”
Addison spun around, the knot in her throat quickly building. “It doesn’t have to be this way, Addi,” he called out but didn’t come after her as she hurried away. “I don’t want this to get ugly, but we both know I have rights too.”
She knew what a risk it was to say all that to such a pompous asshole so full of himself. She could be facing an uphill legal battle. The chance of her losing the case and Fred getting, at the very least, visitation rights, just to spite her, was too real. He was probably dying now for the chance to tell the world that amazing little girl was his, just so he could counter AJ’s public comments, because it was all his pretentious ass cared about.
The thought nauseated her. This was what she’d feared all along: that she’d publicly have to insist that Fred never wanted anything to do with Clair. Obviously, it was the truth, and as smart as Clair was, Addison was sure she’d figured that out already, but she didn’t need to hear it over and over and have to answer questions from her schoolmates and friends about her famous dad that wanted her aborted. Fred was right about one thing. If this did get out, things would get very ugly for more than one reason, and her daughter’s name would be in the center of it all—the one thing Addison had always sworn she’d make sure would never happen.
Chapter 26
AJ
This was so much harder than AJ had expected. Addison was answering his calls less often than she had before his last visit with her at the hospital. She was still responding to his texts, but they were noticeably shorter, and she didn’t respond to him by saying she loved him or even missed him like he did to her.
He was desperately trying to be understanding. He’d been there the moment they both thought Clair was gone—seen and felt her unimaginable grief—knew firsthand how terrifying the thought was of ever having to go through something like that again. He was just as terrified now too. But she had to understand what she was now doing to him. His only consolation was that he still got to be around Clair often.
It was his last night in San Diego before having to take off again, and he couldn’t believe he wasn’t going to at least see Addison. Clair had mentioned something about work keeping her mom real busy. He could tell she was trying to make him feel better about Addison not having made any of the four home games.
As usual, whenever he was due to be gone on the road, his family got together for a barbeque at his place to spend time with him before he left. Another consolation was that, since they were in the playoffs now, he wouldn’t be gone as long. He’d only be in St. Louis this time for about three days until they came back and played the next games of the five-game series at home. If it was still necessary, he’d go back for the last game in St. Louis again; otherwise his season was either over and he’d be home for a while. He planned on using the extended time home to attempt to see Addison.
Even if they won the Division Championship and his season wasn’t over, it’d still be at least a couple of weeks before the World Series started. He’d have practice and training to attend, but at least he’d be home. He’d leave her be for now since he did promise to step back and give her the time she needed to heal from this horrific event he knew was still so raw. But it was torture not being able to be with her.