Shaking her head like it was all wrong, Adilyn closed her eyes attempting to recollect her thoughts and get back to the work she so desperately wanted to finish. The studio was wrapped in an eerie quietness that she hated on days like today. She needed to keep her mind off her personal life. She had the potential to produce the best material of her career, but she couldn't do it like this. She couldn't put these thoughts out there for everyone to know.

Trey watched as Adi tried with everything she had to hide the pain on her face, but he could see it. There wasn’t much she could hide from him, even as much as she tried. The longing look in her eyes as she stared at the paper in front of her. The pen continued to make squiggles in the shape of the number eight was the sure sign that she wasn’t really here.

In her daze, she always seemed to come back to one scene in particular. She couldn't erase it from her memory. She thought about it more than she should, and on days like today, days when she needed her mom, the memory was vivid and alive. She longed for the comfort from someone that should show her no judgment. But, her mother was not that person.

“I'm pregnant,” sad tears rolled down her face from her eyes. It was only the second time she had verbalized the bitter words, and it was a hard pill to swallow. Adilyn knew this was the beginning of the end for her. Everything about her life, no matter what she chose to do, had changed forever. Nothing would be the same again.

She waited nervously for her mother to say something motherly. She waited for her to say anything. But nothing came.

Well, nothing came until the fury in her mother's face reached a boiling point. And only then did her mother's words start to escape her lungs. “YOU'RE NOT MARRIED!” she screamed at her, slamming her hands down on the table.

One night.

One too many shots.

One choice.

One too many attractions.

One result.

“Who is the father?” She bellowed, “Some random guy you met in a bar, somewhere across the country?” She watched the face of her daughter stay stone cold.

Adi wasn't sure what to say in response, the answer was obvious.

“You are not going to have a child by someone you don’t even know…” her mother’s words pierced a gaping hole into her heart, but they didn’t stop. “You are going to have a child out of wedlock, to a one night stand?”

That was enough for Adilyn. This situation had been stressful enough for her. She didn't need the one person that should just accept this choice to degrade her more than she'd degraded herself.

            “You’re divorced. To a man that cheated on you for how long?” Adilyn fired back, questioning her mother’s own choices. “So, I should be married, to someone I don’t know love because it’s the right thing to do? I should make the same mistakes you did?” She knew the words she was saying was going to make her mother’s dislike of the situation worse, but she knew that she couldn’t have an abortion, that wasn’t an option for her. And marrying someone that she didn’t love was even farther from her radar. “This wasn’t an easy decision for me… I have fought through my own demons for weeks to make this decision.” Tears streamed down her face. Her own mother was her worst critic. “I’m having this baby. You either need to get on board and be my mother or you need to simply leave me alone.”

            “If you have this child…” Her mother started to speak.

            “Then what?” She fired back at her, “You won’t talk to me? You won’t see me?”

            “I didn’t raise you that way Adilyn… I can’t be associate--…”

            “Sit back and be the mother you have always been to me… that person I understand.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. She began to whisper in the only tone she could escape. “That is the mother I’m used to.” Her tears streamed down her face, burning like acid as they skimmed across her skin. “I thought maybe just once, you would be the support system I needed…”

The front door of her childhood home opened, and her father entered. He flew in from Texas just for this meeting. He knew something major had happened for Adilyn to call him and say she had some news. He hoped for the greatest of options, but he wasn’t getting what he wanted.

            “There’s your father… ask him how he feels about it.”

With a worried look her father listened to what Adilyn had to say. The worry diminished from his face and he soon had the same look of fury on his eyes that her mother had.

“Adi.” Trey asked quietly. “ADI.” He raised his voice.

When the waters come, so does the horizon.

Justin’s words rang through her thoughts. With the darkness, comes the light. “I need your help.” She blurted.

            “Anything Adi, you know I would do anything for you.” He reached his hand, placing it over hers, “Are you okay? You seem like…”

She cut him off, “I need you to find Jason...”

            “Adi… I thought.” His face dropped in shock.

She stopped him, “I know this is something I said I was okay with just letting go… but I think Jaxon deserves to know his father. Even if I don’t.”

            “Why do you want to reopen this wound?”

Adilyn sat back in her chair, crossed her legs, and fiddled with the hem of her shirt. “Watching Justin with Jaxon… it breaks my heart. I want Jaxon to know his father, and I want him to have that kind of relationship with his father.”

            “This is your decision… maybe you should think about it some more. I don’t want to see you be hurt when we come up empty handed again.”

Her chest tightened remembering the feelings she felt when the last time, right before Jaxon was born, when they thought they had found him, only it came up short of nothing.

            “How can I not know who his father is? How can I be that person?” She shook her head, disgusted in herself for having a one night stand with a man she didn’t know. This guy either gave her a complete story with a false name, or this man never wanted to be on her radar again. Or maybe both.

            “We all make choices when we drink a little too much.”

            “That’s not an excuse.”

Trey reached over and took her hand again, “Jaxon is fine just the way he is. He has me. He has Justin. He will never be short of that male figure in his life.”

            “Who’s to say five years from now he won’t have either of you?”

            “You know I will always be there… did something happen with Justin to make you think about all of this? Is that not going to work out?”

            “Everything is fine.” She turned away from him. “Justin doesn’t even know that I don’t know who Jaxon’s father is. What will he think of me then?”

            “That man loves you. It’s not going to matter.”

            “He doesn’t love me. He doesn’t even know me.”

Trey sighed heavily. “If you would open your eyes, you would see how much love that man has for you just on the surface… And if you really look deep, you will see that he is madly in love with you.”

Adilyn rolled her eyes.

            “No.” Trey pointed at her. “You always do this. But this time it’s different. He is just as much in love with your son as he is with you. He would move heaven and earth for you or Jaxon… let him”

Several days and gallons of coffee later…

Trey sat in his home office, the glow of his laptop computer was the only sign of that someone was still up in the wee hours of the morning. Page after page, he scrolled quickly through the pages. He has been working on this mission for days on and off. He didn’t want anyone aware of what he was researching so he was attempting the searches at odd times in the day, mostly when he was alone in the studio.

            “Trey honey.” Ella walks into the office, sipping a glass of water. “What are you still doing still awake. Come to bed.”

            “I can’t… I need to find Jaxon’s father.” He typed another option into his Google search engine.

            “Jaxon’s father?”

            “Adi wants to try and find him again. I don’t think she can forgive herself for her actions.” He looked up at Ella and back down at the screen, “And I can’t forgive myself for leaving her there. If I would’ve just stayed there, maybe this…”

            “Trey, she is a grown women, you weren’t going to stop her.” She sat on the edge of the cherry wood desk. “Plus we wouldn’t have the amazing Jaxon if there were to have never happened.”

            “I do love that little guy as if he were my own.” 

She stepped behind him, watching him type in the name over and over again with different cities attached to it. “Jason Sharp?” Ella asked confused.

            “That’s Jaxon’s father.”

            “I never knew his name. This is news to me.”She crinkled her forehead trying to think of where she had heard that name before. She tilted her head to the side when she figured out where she had heard it before. She cracked a joke about some movie role where she had heard the name before.

            “Yea, Jason Sharp.” Trey answered annoyed that she was cracking jokes, when he was deep into a research that was hopefully going to give him some answers to share with Adilyn.

Ella took the strong hint that he was annoyed and she left the room.

Jason Sharp.

Slowly he typed a new name into the search engine, scrolled down the page, landing upon exactly what he feared he was going to see. He stared at the screen in shock. “Am I seeing this clearly?” He mumbled. “I… I… how could I have not…” he was at a loss of words. The mystery had been solved.