At No Time || Bruno Mars

65

Letting all that Trystan told him sink in was much more difficult than Peter had assumed it would be. It kept him up at night, staring blankly up at the ceiling with a palm against his stomach as he thought deeply about it all.

He had heard what she said, quieted his own emotions as he saw how hers caused her so much pain, but there was a thunderstorm inside of him that had brewed the moment she told him Raina was his daughter, and it still had not quelled even after Trystan exposed to him all he did not know.

He wanted to remain being angry with her, because he did not know elsewhere to place it. Maybe he was aggravated with himself, too, for not trying harder. He had known she had a place of her own in New York. Why had he not just gone there himself to see her? Or even physically to her mother's home?

Alas, he knew why: he thought that he would have been too intrusive to doing that, that if Trystan truly wanted to see him, she would have responded to the many advances he had already given.

But there were always those what ifs. What if he had been intrusive? What if he had gone directly to her or Yvonne's home and demanded the answers he thought he deserved? Maybe he would have known the truth much sooner, and Raina would not have had to go nearly four years without having an actual father in her life.

Peter stood from his bed and paced across his hotel room. He thought of doing some work to distract him, but he had completed it all in the hours before for the same reason. He could call Roger to see Jewel, the loyal dog who was always happy to see him though he had been away so often. But it was passed midnight in Los Angeles, and Roger had told him that Em had him on a new sleeping routine to get rid of the dark bags beneath his eyes. "Like photo editing doesn't exist," he scoffed over the phone when he had to prepare for bed at nine o'clock.

Peter would be by himself and his thoughts until later in the morning, when he would go over to his childhood home to prepare Diane and their father for what was to happen on Thanksgiving. Diane already knew, but when he called her, she told him that Joel did not. He was not the nicest human being, especially in recent years, so Peter wanted to tell him not to be rude to Trystan. She had done her dirt and as he was still upset with her, he did not want to see her get dragged through the mud.

However, even larger than the other soon-approaching hurdle, he and Trystan would have to find someway to tell Raina that he was her father. They did not want to do it on Thanksgiving, thinking it would be too overwhelming for the little girl, and that she should willingly be apart of Peter's family rather than thrust into it simply by blood, but it would have to be sometime soon after. Though she was young, Raina was keen, and Trystan told him that she might ask why all of sudden, she had a new grandfather, aunt, and cousin who Peter called his father, sister, and niece.

They did not know how they would tell her, and that made Peter anxious. Raina saw him as one of her friends, but would she accept him as her father? Would she think it strange that that was what he was but he and Trystan were not together? How would they explain that to the little girl? There were several circumstances Peter was sure Trystan had thought about before the calamity, but it did not make anything easier.

Peter remained awake until the sun peeked through the spaces between buildings, lightening the deep blue-black of night. He managed to rest for a couple of hours until his phone alarm alerted that he had to get ready to see his family.

He sighed before taking a shower, shaving, and getting dressed. He did not know what to expect from Joel, though he knew it would not be amiable. Peter accepted that his father merely tolerated him, but he held nothing against Trystan and did not really want him to, because if he did, there was a possibility he would hold something against Raina, too. She had done nothing, but Joel was unpredictable when it came to his silent wraths.