Lucien was listening without comment, and Dylan was grateful. Now he’d started talking, he didn’t want to stop till the end. He wanted it all out, now.
“So when I got off the plane here and someone asked me my name, I lied.” He shook his head. “Dylan fucking Day. You have no idea how much easier it was to sleep at night.” The baby wriggled again, and laid his small, soft palm flat against Dylan’s chest, his fingers so tiny they were almost translucent. “And however crazy and fucked up it sounds, in here,” Dylan touched his fingers against his heart, “In here, I feel like Dylan Day. I didn’t lie to hide the truth. I lied because I couldn’t stand to be Matthew McKenzie any longer. The world I grew up in wasn’t like this, Lucien.”
Lucien knew more than Dylan could possibly realise about inventing a different life for yourself because the one you have sucks.
“I don’t expect you to understand, and I’m not asking for your sympathy.” Dylan went on. “If I could wind the clock back and change things I would, but life doesn’t work like that, does it?” He levered himself up to sit straighter as the baby opened his eyes. Both men looked down at the child as he roused. “And then there’s him. A boy with a fraud for a father and a mother who doesn’t want him.”
Lucien frowned. “She’s left him with you for good?”
Dylan nodded. “ And I don’t have the first fucking clue what to do with a baby.” He moved the child awkwardly in his arms and the towel fell open. On cue, an arc of pee spouted all over Dylan’s knee, and both men looked on, aghast.
“Jesus, man. He needs a nappy.”
“I tried, they kept falling off,” Dylan said, exasperated. He mopped his leg with the corner of the towel as the baby fastened his gums around the bent thumb of his other hand. “Jesus. No one told me babies bite,” he said, trying to extricate his hand gently.
“I think he’s trying to tell you that he’s hungry,” Lucien said, and sighed with resignation. “Where are the nappies?”
Half an hour and a master class in the art of nappy changing later, Lucien picked up the baby boy and sat him on his knee, cradling his head in the way only a practised father can. He contemplated the tiny child for a moment and then looked up at Dylan.
“He has ridiculous hair.”
Dylan smiled for the first time since the moment he’d laid eyes on Justin last night. A half smile, a tired smile, but a smile, of sorts. “I kinda like it.”
Lucien nodded, digesting the implications of the comment. “I take it you’re planning to keep him?”
Dylan nodded. There was no question in his mind. From the moment that the baby had opened his eyes and looked at him last night, he’d known what he had to do.
“He’s my son. My responsibility.”
“And you’re going to live where? Here? On this boat with a baby?”
“Lucien, I don’t have a fucking clue what happens next. I didn’t know he existed this time yesterday. I’m not even sure how to keep him alive, but one way or another, yes. He stays with me.”
Lucien had to respect the conviction with which Dylan had accepted the parental responsibilities so unpromisingly foisted on him.
He scrubbed his hand over his chin, at war with himself, because the truth was that sitting there listening to Dylan, he almost understood.
He couldn’t condone the fact that he’d lied, but he could understand how one lie had led to the next, and that none of those lies had been borne of maliciousness or an underhand attempt to deceive.
But then he thought of Kara, hollow-eyed and heartbroken, and he wanted to grab Dylan around the throat out of pure frustration.
“And what about Kara?” he said.
“Kara.” Dylan said her name with the quiet reverence of a priest, then closed his eyes and sighed raggedly. Lucien looked away, settling the baby in the crook of his arm to give Dylan a few seconds to get himself back together.
“I’ve never met anyone like Kara before,” Dylan said. “She is good, and clean, and pure, and all of the things I’m not. She was falling for Dylan Day, and she made me want to be him forever. I still do. I can’t go back to life as Matthew McKenzie.” He looked down at the baby. “Especially not now.”
Lucien didn’t envy Dylan his new life as a single father. It seemed unfathomable that they were even having this discussion, when just yesterday they’d all laughed and toasted their idyllic Ibizan summer.
“Tell her I’m sorry?”
“You know I can’t do that.”
Dylan nodded. “These past few months have been the best of my life.”
Lucien looked down at Dylan’s son. “That’s good. Because these next few will be amongst the hardest.”
Chapter Forty-One
Lucien found Sophie sitting alone at the dining table when he returned to the villa a little while later. She looked up immediately as he came in the door, her face a study of concern as he dropped into the seat opposite her.
“Did you see him?”
He glanced over his shoulder. “Where’s Kara?”
Sophie shook her head miserably. “She’s gone.”
“Gone? Gone where?”
“Home. Back to England. She threw her things into a bag just after you left. I couldn’t persuade her to stay. I couldn’t even get her to let me take her to the airport."
Lucien pushed his hands through his hair. He’d been gone a few hours. Numerous flights left the airport every day bound for the UK: there was every chance that Kara was already airborne.
“What an absolute fucking mess.”
“She couldn’t stand the idea of running into Dylan again. She was desperate.” Tears filled Sophie’s eyes. “I’m so worried about her Lucien. She went through so much with Richard, I really thought Dylan was…” her words tailed off as a tear dripped from her cheek into the mug of cold coffee cradled in her hands.
“I know, Princess,” Lucien said. “I know.”
“So did you see him?” she asked again, and this time Lucien nodded.
“Yes. I saw him.”
Sophie’s head snapped up, her eyes blazing.
“What did he have to say for himself?”
“It’s complicated, Soph,” Lucien said softly after a couple of seconds, making her frown.
“Please don’t tell me you’re about to defend him,” she said quietly.
Lucien sighed. “I’m not defending him. It’s just not as cut and dried as you think.”