Free Love's Rhythm by Lexxie Couper

after that.”
    “So not just a casual fling then?”
    Nick’s chest squeezed tight. “No, not just a casual fling.” He thought of all the days and nights spent with Lauren. Laughing, loving, just enjoying being with each other even if it was doing something as menial as washing the dishes after dinner. God, he missed doing the dishes. How surreal was that? He missed talking to Lauren about her day as he wiped the suds off their freshly washed plates.
    An image came to him, Lauren nursing a tiny baby, her face softened with a sleepy smile, her gaze moving from the babe to Nick and back to her child. His chest squeezed again, a gripping vice that was borderline painful. “I always knew she’d make a good mother.”
    “She is. Very good. Not always easy with a teenage boy, mind you. Especially one as full of life as Josh.”
    The image of the baby in Lauren’s arms became a boy—one with dark hair and blue eyes. Nick slid his gaze to Jennifer again. “How old is he?”
    “Fifteen.”
    His breath caught in his throat at the answer Lauren wouldn’t give him. Fifteen. Jesus, her son was fifteen.
    Fifteen.
    Jennifer was saying something. Something about Josh just having his birthday only three months ago. Something about Lauren buying him a…a…
    Three months. That means the baby was born seven months after you left her. Which means she was two months pregnant and you didn’t even…
    “Know it,” Nick murmured, a numb weight pressing down on him. All over him.
    “Sorry?” Jennifer stopped, giving him a confused look. “What did you say?”
    Nick shook his head, his mind whirling. “Nothing.”
    Her eyes narrowed. “When you say your…thing…with Lauren lasted a few years more, how many more are we talking about exactly?”
    Nick ran his hand over his mouth, that pressure bearing down on him some more. Suffocating him. “It ended fifteen years ago,” he said, the words like dust in his mouth. “Fifteen years and seven months to be precise.”
    Jennifer stared at him. “Oh, fuck.”
    Nick’s gut clenched. His blood roared in his ears. His heart slammed into his throat. Hard. Fast.
    Jesus, he had a son. He had a son to the only woman he’d ever loved and she hadn’t told him.
    The world swam. Sickening waves of cold pressure crashed over him. He thought of the shit of the last two years of his life. Of discovering he was adopted when his parents were killed in a car accident. Of tracking down his biological mother to a gravestone in Germany. Of learning he had a kid brother who never knew he existed either. A brother who’d been abused by his biological mother’s boyfriend. A brother who’d committed suicide only months after Nick found him.
    He thought of all the secrets in his life he’d never known and now this. Now he’d discovered he had a son.
    A son. And he’d never known that either. Fifteen years he could have spent getting to know him. Hell, at the very least lived with the knowledge the woman he loved had borne him a child. But, as with the rest of his existence that had nothing to do with music, it was a fake reality. His family, his life, a farce. Nothing but words to a fucked-up song written by some other composer.
    His whole fucking life was a lie. And Lauren, the one person he trusted, the only person he loved, had kept the most important thing a man could ever know from him.
    Someone reached into his chest and ripped out his heart. Someone else slammed a fist into his gut. He stood motionless, his brain incapable of comprehending any of it. Christ, he’d come to ask her to a wedding, to say sorry for treating her like he had and now he had a son?
    His knees gave out. Just like that he was stumbling sideways.
    “Hey!” Jennifer’s hands grabbed at his arm and hauled him back upright. “I think you need to—”
    He shrugged her off, shaking his head as he did so. “I’m fine.”
    “Err, yeah, that’s why you almost collapsed.”
    He shook his head again. “I’m