Chapter 444 444: I didn't tell him
The drive back didn't feel like movement.
Luna's hands stayed steady on the wheel, her eyes tracking the road with the same automatic precision she used for everything else, but inside, the conversation was still playing. Not in pieces—she could handle pieces. It was playing whole, complete, every word and silence preserved exactly as it had happened.
The way he looked at the bag.
She hadn't expected him to notice it. She had placed it carefully, deliberately casual, half-zipped so nothing would seem hidden. And he had seen it anyway. Of course he had. Dayo noticed everything. That was who he was.
"She's… how old?"
The question came back to her now, landing differently than it had in the moment. At the time, she had been too busy controlling her breathing, keeping her face neutral, making sure her voice didn't crack. She had answered—"Few months"—and watched him process it. Watched him reach the wrong conclusion and say nothing to correct it.
Luna exhaled slowly, turning onto her street. The familiarity of the neighborhood didn't comfort her the way it usually did. The houses looked the same, the streetlights cast the same yellow glow, but something had shifted. She had carried a secret into that room with Dayo, and she had carried it back out again. The weight hadn't changed. If anything, it felt heavier now.
She pulled into her driveway and sat there for a moment, hands still on the wheel, engine running. The quiet pressed in. She could go inside now, face Amanda, pretend everything was fine. Or she could sit here until her thoughts settled into something manageable.
They didn't settle.
She killed the engine and stepped out.
The front door opened before she could reach for her keys. Amanda stood there, phone in hand, posture already set to ask questions. She wasn't wearing her professional face—the one she used for industry calls and contract negotiations. This was her friend face. The one that saw too much.
"You're back." Amanda stepped aside to let her in, but her eyes didn't leave Luna's face. "How was it?"
Luna walked past her, dropping her bag on the chair by the door. She didn't answer immediately. She needed a second to find the right words, or at least words that wouldn't reveal everything.
"It was… fine."
"Fine." Amanda repeated the word like she was testing its weight. She closed the door and followed Luna into the living room. "You went to see Dayo after more than two years of avoiding any space he might be in, and it was 'fine.'"
Luna sat down on the couch, suddenly aware of how tired she was. Not physically. The kind of tired that came from holding yourself together for too long.
"We talked."
"About?"
"Nothing important."
Amanda leaned against the arm of the couch, arms crossed. She wasn't going to let this go. Luna had known she wouldn't, but some part of her had hoped anyway.
"You can't fool me, you know." Amanda's voice softened, but the edge remained. "I knew where you went the second you walked out that door. You have that look."
"What look?"
"The one you get when you're about to do something you know you shouldn't but can't stop yourself from doing." Amanda tilted her head slightly. "So. How was it really?"
Luna looked down at her hands. They were steady. They were always steady. It was one of the things people commented on—how calm she seemed, how controlled, how impossible to read. What they didn't see was the effort behind it.
"I didn't tell him."
The words came out flat. No buildup, no dramatic delivery. Just the truth, finally spoken aloud.
Amanda blinked. "You didn't tell him what?"
"About Jennifer." Luna looked up, meeting her friend's eyes. "I didn't tell him she's his."
Silence stretched between them. Not empty—full of everything Amanda wasn't saying yet.
"You sat in a room with him," Amanda said slowly, "and you didn't tell him he has a daughter."
"I couldn't."
"Couldn't or wouldn't?"
Luna's jaw tightened. "There's a difference?"
"Yes." Amanda pushed off the arm of the couch and started pacing. It was what she did when she was thinking, processing, preparing to argue. "Couldn't means something stopped you. Wouldn't means you chose not to. Which was it?"
Luna opened her mouth to answer, then closed it. The distinction felt important suddenly, in a way she hadn't considered before.
"He asked about her," Luna said quietly. "He saw the bag. He asked how old she was."
Amanda stopped pacing. "And?"
"And I told him. Few months." Luna's fingers pressed into the couch cushion. "He asked about the father. I said it wasn't something I talked about."
"Jesus, Luna."
"He assumed." The words came faster now, the explanation she'd been rehearsing in her head finally finding voice. "I could see it in his face. He assumed I moved on. That she's with someone else. And I didn't—I didn't correct him."
Amanda stared at her. "Why?"
"Because he didn't ask!"
The response came out sharper than Luna intended. She took a breath, forcing her voice back to its normal level.
"He didn't ask if she was his. He looked at me and he saw what he wanted to see, and I just… let him."
"Of course he didn't ask." Amanda's voice rose slightly, frustration breaking through. "Why would he ask that? You think he's just going to look at you and say, 'Is that my child?' He's not going to assume you got pregnant and kept it from him for months. That's not—" She stopped, dragging a hand through her hair. "That's not how people think, Luna. Especially not him. He respects you too much to even consider that you would hide something like this."
The logic of it landed like a physical weight. Luna had known, somewhere beneath the surface, that Dayo wouldn't ask. He wouldn't assume. He would give her the benefit of the doubt, the space to share what she wanted to share, and she had used that against him. She had let him walk away believing a lie because it was easier than facing the truth.
"I wanted him to want it," Luna heard herself say. The words surprised her, emerging from a place she hadn't fully acknowledged. "I wanted him to see her and know. To feel it. To ask me because he needed to know, not because I was telling him."
Amanda sat down on the coffee table, directly in front of her. Close enough that Luna couldn't avoid her eyes.
"That's not fair," Amanda said, but her voice had gentled. "To him or to you. You're expecting him to read your mind, to feel something he doesn't even know exists. He can't want to be a father to a child he doesn't know is his."
"I know."
"Do you?" Amanda leaned forward. "Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like you're protecting yourself. You're scared he won't want this, so you're not giving him the chance to reject it. You're keeping the secret because as long as he doesn't know, you don't have to find out how he really feels."
Luna looked away. The truth of it stung, sharp and precise.
"What if he doesn't want her?" The question came out small, vulnerable in a way Luna hated. "What if he's too busy with his competitions, his music, his career? What if he sees Jennifer as a complication, as something that will slow him down?"
"And what if he does want her?" Amanda countered. "What if you're denying him the chance to even know? What if Jennifer grows up asking about her father and you have to tell her you never even gave him the choice?"
The guilt hit then, heavy and suffocating. Luna thought of Jennifer's face, the way her eyes crinkled when she smiled, the exact shade of brown that matched Dayo's. She thought of all the moments she had already stolen from him—the first smile, the first time she rolled over, the way she reached up with tiny fingers when she wanted to be held.
"I don't know how to tell him now," Luna admitted. "It's been too long. If I tell him now, he'll know I kept her from him for months. He'll never forgive that."
"Maybe not immediately." Amanda's hand covered hers, warm and steady. "But he'll forgive you eventually. Or he won't. But at least he'll know. At least Jennifer will have the chance to know him. Isn't that worth more than protecting yourself from his reaction?"
A sound came from the other room. Soft at first, then more insistent. Jennifer's cry, the one that meant she was awake and hungry and needed her mother.
Luna was on her feet before she could think, moving down the hallway with practiced speed. The nursery was dim, the nightlight casting soft shadows across the walls. Jennifer lay in her crib, small fists waving, face scrunched in that particular expression of baby frustration.
"Hey," Luna whispered, reaching in to lift her. "Hey, baby. I'm here."
The weight of her daughter settled against her chest, warm and real and immediate. Jennifer's crying stopped immediately, her head turning instinctively toward Luna's heartbeat. Luna swayed slightly, back and forth, the motion automatic after months of practice.
She looked down at Jennifer's face, really looked, and saw him there. The shape of the eyes. The set of the jaw. The way she went still when she was processing something new, as if the world required careful observation before engagement.
"Your father doesn't know about you yet," Luna whispered. The words were barely audible, meant for the space between them more than for anyone else. "But he will. I promise you, he will."
She wasn't sure if she was making a promise to Jennifer or to herself. Maybe both.
Amanda appeared in the doorway, silhouetted against the hallway light. She didn't speak, just watched, and Luna knew she was seeing it—the way Luna's whole body softened when she held her daughter, the way her hand cradled Jennifer's head with a tenderness she showed no one else.
"He deserves to know her," Amanda said quietly. "And she deserves to know him. Whatever happens between you and Dayo, that doesn't change."
Luna pressed her lips to Jennifer's forehead, breathing in the clean baby scent of her. She thought of Dayo sitting across from her, asking about the child, reaching the wrong conclusion. She thought of all the ways she could have corrected him, all the openings she had let pass.
"I'll tell him," Luna said. The decision settled in her chest, heavy but right. "I don't know how yet. I don't know when. But I'll tell him."
Amanda nodded, stepping back to give them space. "When you're ready. Not before. But don't wait too long, Luna. Secrets have a way of getting out on their own. And when they do, they're always worse than if you'd just told the truth."
Luna held Jennifer closer, feeling the steady rise and fall of her breathing. The baby had fallen back asleep, her small body relaxed and trusting, completely unaware of the complications surrounding her existence.
She thought of Dayo again, of the way he had looked at her in that room. Like he was trying to read something she wasn't saying. Like he knew there was more beneath the surface but couldn't quite reach it.
He had always been able to see through her, even when she didn't want him to. Maybe that was why she had been so careful, so controlled. Because if she let herself slip, even for a moment, he would know. He would see the truth in her face before she could find the words to speak it.
But she had slipped anyway. She had let him leave with the wrong idea, with a lie that protected no one, and now she had to find a way to undo it.
Luna walked to the window, Jennifer still sleeping against her shoulder. Outside, the city moved on, indifferent to her secrets and fears. Somewhere across town, or maybe across the country by now, Dayo was doing the same thing he always did—moving forward, controlled and deliberate, carrying his own weight of unspoken things.
She would tell him. Soon. Before the silence became its own kind of betrayal, before Jennifer grew old enough to understand that her father had been kept from her by her mother's fear.
The decision didn't make the path clear. It didn't show her how to start the conversation, how to bridge the gap between what he believed and what was true. But it gave her direction. For the first time since walking out of that room, she knew what came next.
Not yet. But soon.
Luna turned away from the window and walked back toward the nursery, toward Amanda waiting in the hallway, toward the life she had built around a secret that couldn't stay hidden forever.
The weight was still there. It would be there until she spoke the truth aloud, until she watched Dayo's face as he learned what she had kept from him. But now, at least, she was carrying it toward something. Toward resolution. Toward whatever came next.
Jennifer stirred in her arms, making a small sound, and Luna held her closer.
"It's okay," she whispered, not sure if she was comforting her daughter or herself. "Everything's going to be okay."
She didn't know if that was true. But for the first time in months, she was ready to find out.