Hooked

by C. C. Piper

  I didn’t like driving with her in hazardous conditions, and seriously considered rescheduling the meeting again. But in the end, the day I’d been dreading would come and the more of a fuss I made about it, the more it might upset Callie.

  Ultimately, I decided to put my big girl panties on and honor my commitment. I refused to cause my daughter additional pain no matter what the result of this meeting did to me.

  Callie got a kick out of riding in the elevator, something I realized she’d never done before. I did my best to let her exuberance wash over me and raise my shitty mood.

  As I led my little girl into the room, my stomach tied itself into fist-sized knots. The instant she saw Jax, she sprinted toward him like a gold-medal Olympian. From behind his back, he produced a fluffy brown teddy bear dressed in a yellow nightcap and nightshirt covered in pockets, grinning from ear to ear.

  She thanked her daddy as he lifted her into his arms, then shrieked ecstatically when he spun her so that her feet flew around him like a fan blade. Yet again, father and daughter wore matching buoyant expressions that demonstrated just how much they adored their reunion.

  It gave me a pang that I couldn’t take part in that.

  But then I chastised myself. You had your chance, Rox, and you blew it. Might as well suck it up and deal.

  This adulting thing sure could gut a girl sometimes.

  I took a deep breath and curved my lips upward. If Callie looked back in my direction, I wanted her to see her sane, devoted mother, not some blubbering shadow bawling in the corner. For her sake, I had to learn how to be strong. Allowing her to see me cry was no longer acceptable.

  Jax’s attorney Peter sat at the table grinning indulgently, as if watching a grandchild get spoiled rotten. Blake, on the other hand, watched the scene play out warily, as if expecting a sneak attack. I wasn’t certain what our tastes in lawyers said about us, but in my case, I feared it might not bode well. Going with an attorney chosen by the Wish Maker, a woman who’d originally suggested I work as a straight-up prostitute didn’t exactly instill me with confidence.

  As soon as Jax altered his hold on our daughter so that he could carry her with one well-defined arm, he took her over to look out the floor-to-ceiling window. Even from the doorway I could see a sliver of what they could. Down Canal Street to the French Quarter, over the Warehouse District, and further out in the distance, the muddy brown waters of the Mississippi.

  “Look, glamour girl, you can see our house. It’s right over there,” he pointed to the best neighborhood in the city where his three-story French Provincial sat in all its affluent glory.

  At least I could take comfort in the fact that she’d never do without like I had.

  “Are we ready to begin?” Blake asked, a bite in his tone.

  Jax’s attorney took his cue from his client, and only when Jax nodded, situating himself in his chair with Callie, did Peter speak.

  “Just to summarize our last get together, the items decided were one, the changing of Calliope’s surname upon completion of her adoption. Two, the amounts and terms of the child support Mr. Liddell will provide. And three, we brought up the scheduling of his visitations including this upcoming Christmas holiday. Are there any questions anyone wants to ask before we re-enter this negotiation?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t see any point to holding off the inevitable.

  “Very well. Counsel, if you’ll follow me out, my client wishes to speak to your client alone,” his attorney stated.

  “I don’t think so. Especially since it was Mr. Liddell who initiated these proceedings against Ms. Miller in the first place,” Blake objected.

  “What’s happening, Daddy? That man sounds mad,” Callie spoke at full volume, but even as Jax told her everything would be okay, I couldn’t help wondering myself. Why would he ask me to meet with him without our attorneys present?

  “Well...” Jax’s lawyer glanced from me to Jax and back again. “There have been some fresh developments in this case.”

  “Fresh developments,” Blake repeated, sounding like a parrot. “Why weren’t we informed?”

  “Because my client wants to discuss this with the mother of his child before anything else takes place. He wishes to drop his legal claim to joint custody.”

  “What?” This question burst out of both me and my lawyer at the same time. What did this mean?

  “What does he want instead?” I inquired as the bleachy taste of hysteria flooded my tongue, not waiting for Blake to speak on my behalf. Did Jax want full custody now? Was that it? Was he going to try to take Callie away from me altogether?

  “You,” Jax said, leveling his gaze directly at me. “I want both of you.”

  I felt confused, then disoriented. The room spun and I wondered whether I’d faint again. Was Jax speaking English? He couldn’t want me after all this. It didn’t make any sense.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry for serving you with papers and making you cry. I’m sorry that I didn’t let you explain that night I heard you on the phone. I’m sorry that I misunderstood and jumped to an inaccurate conclusion. I’m sorry for all of it.”

  “Leave, Blake.”

  “But Roxy…”

  “I mean it,” I said again. I didn’t know what was going on, but I was damn sure willing to find out. “Go. I want to talk to Jax.”

  Throwing up his arms in a gesture of pure frustration, Blake did as I bid with Jax’s attorney following right on his heels. As soon as the door closed, Jax set our daughter down. “Why don’t you go show your new teddy bear where our house is?”

  Looking back and forth between us, Callie hesitated.

  “It’s okay, glamour girl. I promise. Go show him the house,” Jax told her, and she shuffled off toward the window.

  “I don’t understand,” I admitted, taken aback at this turn of events.

  “Raina set me straight,” he said, approaching me slowly as if afraid I might flee. Right then, though, I wouldn’t have fled for anything. “She told me how wrong I had it. How thinking you were after my money was a mistake. When I heard your conversation on the phone, I thought you were telling someone about a plan to set me up. That you were going to renew our relationship, get me to give you a bunch of money, and then leave me.”

  “That sounds like something your mom might accuse me of.”

  He cringed at this. Literally cringed. “You’re right. I’m such an ass… I mean, idiot.” Jax came closer and spoke quietly so Callie couldn’t hear. “Actually, I’m both.”

  “I would never go after your money, Jax. That’s the reason I’ve been working so many different jobs and going to school. I want my nursing degree. I want to build something solid so Callie feels safe and supported.”

  “I know. I shouldn’t have ever doubted that. You’re amazing, both as a mother and just in general.”

  Jax stopped about five feet away and put his arms out, giving me the choice of acceptance or rejection. I hurried over to him so swiftly that it was more of a tackle, making him take a step back. There was no way in hell I’d ever reject him again.

  “I love you,” I told him, hugging him tightly. “I should’ve said it before, but I was being a chickenshit.”

  He released a noise that sounded like a cross between a chuckle and a sob, and when I gazed up into his face, his gorgeous blue eyes – eyes identical to our daughter’s – seemed suspiciously shiny. After a moment of collecting himself, he spoke to our daughter.

  “Hey, glamour girl, why don’t you show Mommy your bear.” Like the angel she was, Callie brought it over.

  “He’s very cute,” I commented.

  “Check under his nightcap,” Jax told her. She did, and I heard the rustle of paper as Callie retrieved a fuchsia-colored sticky note. “Give that to your Mommy.” Then, he turned to me. “Sorry. The only thing close to notebook paper Peter had were rainbow Post-Its.”

  “No problem,” I said, opening the flap where he’d folded it over. Inside it said:


  R,

  I love you forever.

  Bear hugs and tongue kisses,

  J

  Grabbing his bristly chin, I gave him a kiss. It wasn’t super steamy, but it wasn’t a quick peck, either. “Back atcha,” I replied, and he offered me an incredible smile.

  “Okay, now check the pocket at the back,” he told Callie. This time an aqua blue Post-It appeared. She handed it to me.

  R,

  You and Callie mean everything to me, and I’d like to turn my home into yours.

  Bear hugs and tongue kisses,

  J

  “I know you want to make your own way and have your own career, Rox, and I respect that. I’ll give you whatever support you’d like me to. I’d just like us to be a family at the same time, a real one. And it doesn’t have to be all at once, if you don’t want it to. We can do this gradually, you know. Maybe start out with spending the weekends together at my place. Then, if you ever feel ready to move in on a more permanent basis...”

  Jax looked so nervous. Like a boy asking a girl to the prom. And, once upon a time, that boy and girl had been us. But I no longer had any doubts about this man. He knew I didn’t want to go after him for the sake of money, and I knew this offer didn’t mean he was trying to buy my affection or Callie’s. He wanted to make all our lives easier and happier. It was just as simple as that.

  “Going back and forth would be a pain,” I said, and he nodded solemnly. “So we might as well just do it all at once.”

  “Yeah?” he asked me, his voice cautious.

  “Yeah. One household definitely sounds better than two.”

  He beamed at me then, leaning down to kiss me. And if it hadn’t been for our daughter being right there in the conference room, that kiss might easily have gotten out of hand.

  “One more, glamour girl. Look in the pocket on his chest.”

  This time it was a neon green sticky note that came out, its limey hue a bright contrast to her little hand. This note, unlike the others, had been folded into thirds.

  R,

  I love you, forever. You and Callie mean everything to me, and I’d like to turn my home into yours.

  “Plagiarizing your former work, eh?” I teased him.

  “Had to cover my bases just in case the other notes were lost. Lift up the other flap.”

  You’re already the love of my life along with Callie, and nothing would thrill me more than for you to say yes.

  Bear hugs and tongue kisses,

  J

  “Yes to living together? I already agreed to that,” I pointed out, yanking my line of sight from the note to the man himself. But Jax was on the move. As I watched, he dropped to one knee, a black velvet box laying open in his palm. Inside was a diamond ring, and I gasped, both at the proposal and at the jewelry itself. This ring was the one we’d looked at five years ago. “Oh my God. How did you find this?”

  The ring had been designed with a filigree setting surrounding the diamond like the petals of a rose. Around the band were a string of miniature metal beads as if someone had twisted a tiny necklace of pearls all the way around it. The solitaire itself had a setting that showcased the gem as an oval, giving it soft curved edges, and the gold band had a pink sheen to it which glowed against my skin.

  “I bought it back then, Rox. The day before graduation since we’d already talked about getting married. I’d planned to do this really official proposal, though, at that restaurant on Bourbon Street. But the day after…” he trailed off. That was the morning his dad had forced him aboard that stupid plane.

  “I kept it in a safe,” he went on. “I thought about selling it more than once but never went through with it. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but deep down, maybe I was hoping I’d get another chance to give it to you.” Jax trailed a finger along the side of my face, touching my temple and going ever-so-gently past my cheekbone to my neck. Goosebumps rose on my flesh and I shivered.

  “I’m so glad I did.”

  “Me too.”

  “The eighteen-year-old version of you seemed ready to marry me, but that was then. What I need to know is, how do you feel about it now?” he asked, and I slipped it onto the third finger of my left hand.

  Placing my forehead against his, I asked, “Does this come with a lifetime supply of bear hugs and tongue kisses?”

  “Absolutely.”

  I bent over and picked up our daughter, so all three of our foreheads were touching. She giggled and so did we. “Then, how could I ever say no?”

  Epilogue

  A Year and a Half Later

  Jaxson

  “Happy birthday to you… Happy birthday to you… Happy birthday, dear Callie… Happy birthday to you,” we all sang to my glamour girl, then Trevor chimed in loudly:

  “And many more.”

  Amen to that.

  “I can’t believe my baby girl is six years old today,” my wife said from beside me, ruffling our daughter’s dark hair.

  Roxy sniffled audibly, her hand automatically going to her baby bump. At five months pregnant, her olive skin glowed like a beacon, especially since her morning sickness had passed. I felt so privileged and blessed to be a witness to it this time. And I handed her a tissue and my ice water without even thinking about it. “You spoil me,” she told me.

  “Still making up for lost time,” I said, kissing the top of her head. And I knew I always would be.

  One thing about the more unpleasant aspects of our past separation was that we’d both understood exactly how painful it was to be without each other. We’d both suffered for years, lonely and missing one another, but stuck feeling alone. Due to this, we rarely if ever fought with any real heat and had learned to communicate openly now. When you’ve been forced to live without the one you love, you never take them granted again.

  Besides, we’d had enough relationship drama to last a lifetime.

  After I proposed, we flew to Hawaii to get married. It was a relaxed wedding, Roxy had worn white lace and bare feet, and all our pictures had the Pacific Ocean as a background. Callie had worn a similar dress to her Mommy’s, and instead of making her a flower girl, we’d asked her to be the maid of honor. Couldn’t get much better than that.

  We’d enjoyed a traditional Hawaiian luau – sans seafood. After we’d gotten back together for good, Roxy had finally explained what had happened on our first “date” after I’d returned.

  “I didn’t eat any of the seafood because even smelling it made me sick when I was pregnant with Callie.”

  Only then had a lightbulb gone off in my head. “That’s what you started to tell me that night. That you couldn’t eat it because of morning sickness.”

  I felt like such an imbecile. Way to avoid using any IQ points, Liddell.

  “You didn’t know,” Roxy said, touching my cheek in a soothing gesture.

  “I should have, though.”

  I should’ve put two and two together on that. And on so many other things. I’d promised myself that I would do everything I could to be more patient and communicative with her from then on.

  “So what do you think, man, this next one going to be a boy or a girl?” Trevor asked me for what must’ve been the gazillionth time. He’d served as my best man.

  Leona and my mother had been in attendance as well, though we’d seriously considered not inviting them. Hell, we’d seriously considered never speaking to them again. But then two things happened between the time of Roxy and Callie moving into my house and our wedding. The first was Leona finding out that I paid off her mortgage for her.

  I’d done it for Roxy more than her mother, I didn’t want my wife worrying about Leona having a roof over her head. Her mother had been amazingly gracious toward me after that, her attitude doing a complete one-eighty. And then my mother had done something just as out of left field.

  She’d apologized. Tearfully.

  She’d told me she had been utterly unaware of Roxy being pregnant with Callie, that she’d missed me whi
le I was away, and that she’d do anything she could to make up for it. I personally thought my father’s death had something to do with this, that and the fact that the second she met Callie, our little girl had wrapped her around her pinky, just like she had me.

  But, honestly, I didn’t care why my mom had turned over a new leaf. I’d give being a closer family a try as long as she would.

  “We’re saving the big reveal for the delivery, you know that,” I told Trevor. Since I hadn’t been there for Callie’s birth, we wanted to make this experience as memorable as possible. The joy of finding out the baby’s gender would only make those moments more special.

  “I just…want to know, you know?” he said, grinning sheepishly. My friend had always been the curious type. Well, nosy would probably be a more accurate description. Also, he had even less patience than me. Instant gratification had been a staple of his life.

  I smiled under my hand. I hated to say it, but I enjoyed tormenting him with this. He’d certainly annoyed me plenty of times, and payback was a bitch.

  “I don’t see any reason why anybody would need to know even then. I mean, an infant’s an infant, right? Diapers and bottles. Maybe we’ll continue to keep it a secret. Bring the baby home in a gray onesie or something.”

  Trevor gawked at me with his mouth open. He looked horrified. “That’d be atrocious.”

  “What would be atrocious?” Roxy asked as she returned from the restroom. Again. These days it felt like she needed a pee break every fifteen minutes.

  “Concealing the sex of the baby even once we’re home from the hospital.” I grinned at her, feeling mischievous. The sparkle in her eye told me she’d immediately caught on.

  “Well, it would make a nice statement for gender equality. Why lock our child into a role it might be uncomfortable with? We’ll adore him or her no matter what.”

  “Butbut…” Trevor sputtered, and both my wife and I burst out laughing. An expression of understanding crossed his face at last. “You know what…” Then he mouthed with his back to Callie, “Fuck you. Fuck you both.”