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You need to give her a little leeway. Now the baby is here, and her raging hormones will calm down.” I hoped. “And she’ll be back to the Ransom we both know and love--”
    “You. You love her,” he corrected. “I don’t.”
    My heart cracked. This couldn’t be happening. I had to do something to stop it. “Please don’t say that.”
    “It’s the truth,” he said to the cup he held cradled between his hands.
    “You have a baby now,” I reminded him.
    “Yes, I know,” he said, quietly. His eyes lifted again, meeting mine. His expression was full of regret and pain. “Believe me, I know. I’ve spent the past nine months thinking about the baby. And I’ll spend the next eighteen years thinking about her too. But it still doesn’t change things. I don’t love Ransom. I can’t live with her.”
    “Well, you could have fooled me.”
    “I was trying to make it work, Shayne.”
    “So what does all this mean?” I challenged. “You want to be a weekend dad? Pick Johnette up on Saturdays, take her to the park, buy her a Happy Meal, and then pack her up and send her home for the other six days?”
    His whole face drooped. “No.”
    “So?” I gave him a what-does-it-mean look.
    He stared down at the napkin sitting under his coffee cup. The center was stained with a light brown ring. The corner was curled up. He fiddled with it. “I want to share custody.”
    Share custody? “How is that going to work?” I asked, folding my arms over my chest. He’d thought about this longer than I’d hoped. He had a plan. I had to crush that plan if I was going to help save this marriage.
    “I’ll get a place to live close by. And when I’m not working, I’ll have the baby, so Ransom can work.”
    “As a kid who was raised in a broken family, I know the chances of that working out are slim to none. According to my mom, that was exactly what my father suggested when he left. I can’t even tell you when I’ve seen him last. I was too young to remember. He just vanished. And it sucks. I’ll admit that. It sucks not knowing my dad.” A huge lump of emotion clogged my throat and I fought to clear it. “I wasn’t worth him sticking around for.”
    “Yes, yes you were. He probably just--”
    “No. Don’t make up excuses for him. The bottom line is he left and he never looked back. Because there wasn’t anything worth remembering. I meant nothing to him. And that baby means nothing to you.”
    Anger flared in John’s eyes. “You can’t say that.”
    “Yes, I can. If you leave, I can. Because you’ll come around for a few weeks, maybe even a few months. Eventually the visits will become more infrequent. And then they’ll stop. Maybe you’ll send a birthday card some years. Maybe you’ll send a Christmas present. But over time those will stop too, as you get wrapped up in the people who’ve taken her place in your life.”
    A tear streamed down my cheek. Angry that after all these years, I still got upset when I thought about the sperm donor who contributed half of my DNA. I dragged my hand across my face. “I never saw you being this kind of a man, the kind who walked away.”
    He slammed his hand on the table. His face turned a deep purple red. I’d never seen him like this. “I’m not!”
    Good! Maybe I was getting somewhere. I stabbed my finger at the front door. “You are if you walk out that door.”
    “Shayne, you don’t understand.” He shoved his fingers through his hair. “We don’t get along. If I stay with Ransom, I’ll eventually hate her. And she’ll probably hate me.”
    “You have to try.”
    His head dropped. “I have. I told you that.”
    “You have to try every day, John.”
    “I have.”
    “Every hour,” I said.
    “I have.”
    “Every minute, then. You have to try every minute. To make it work. To find something loveable about her. And to forget something you don’t like.”
    He shoved his fingers into his messy hair again, making it even worse and stared down at