by Leanne Davis
Francine stared down. She didn’t look at the baby but placed the sleeping child against her chest. “What now? I mean, you know. Where do we go from here?”
He rubbed his aching temples. His entire life was flipped over, smashed and changed irrevocably. And Francine, the one doing all the smashing and flipping and changing, asked where do we go from here? She expected Hunter to answer that?
Kyomi got to her feet, drawing his gaze. “I need to go. I’ll let you guys sort it out. Call me later?” She looked at Hunter and he nodded with grim determination. He was fisting his hands to stop himself from grabbing her and begging her not to give up on him because of this. He wanted Kyomi to tell him what to do. To help him. He needed her direct, level-headed advice now more than any other time in his life.
“Definitely.” They exchanged long, heart-felt looks that were so much more genuine than all the sickening sweet, flattery-laced conversations he had with Francine. They were not real. Kyomi was honest and raw. She saw him and experienced him and he liked to believe he did the same with her. She was freaking out, and she clearly saw he was too. But being calm and logical and coping was what Kyomi did best, and exactly what Hunter needed to learn.
Francine watched her go. “So the romantics, aren’t you?”
“Stay out of my relationships. The only one that concerns you is with him.” He waved to indicate their son.
His mom chimed in. “I’ll leave you two alone so you can figure this out. You need some privacy.” Hunter almost tackled her and begged her not to leave him alone with needy, whiny Francine and the not-his-fault-he-was-so-small-and-scary baby.
“Okay, Mom. Thank you for everything you did earlier.”
She kissed his cheek. “Call me if you have any more emergencies.”
He gripped her hand on his cheek and didn’t want to let it go. Fear pricked his consciousness. Wasn’t his entire life going to be an emergency now? What did he know of babies? Childcare? Nothing.
Left alone. Just the two—no, the three of them, Hunter stared in silence at the disjointed sight of his ex. A vapid, shallow woman holding his son. The words made him shudder as much as the reality did.
“What now?”
Fuck. That was exactly it. What the fuck did he, did they, do now?
Chapter 17
KYOMI LIFTED HER HEAD when she heard the vehicle and realized who it was. Setting the pitchfork down, she started towards Hunter. Hunter got out of the driver’s seat and walked around the car to wait for her to get to him. His gaze was hot, steady, and intense on her as she walked. She stopped and put her hands on her hips several feet back.
“Where is your baby?” Kyomi asked, wincing when she thought how odd, how grownup, and how reality-based that sounded.
“With his mother.”
She tilted her head and pursed her lips to illustrate her annoyance with his glib answer. He shook his head. “That sounds so wrong. All of it. And now I’m kind of worried about him.”
“Yeah. Me too. About all of it.”
He set his hands in his pockets and stared down, looking totally forlorn. Walking closer, she leaned against his car right beside him. The power of his surprised glance burned through her. Hips touching, side-by-side, she copied his stance and put her hands in her pockets. Staring out, they remained touching without speaking.
“Are we figuring this out, or am I?” His words finally broke the long silence. She could feel the tension filling his body as he spoke and waited for her answer. He seemed to be holding his breath in anticipation.
She almost countered with did he want it to be we? She knew by his stressed-out stance and the heightened energy around him there was no room for kidding or hedging. Hunter received life-changing news today. So did she. Honesty was what they needed to get through it.
“We are.”
His entire body tilted and sagged. He let out a long, shuddering breath. “Really? You’re sure?” His tone was clearly optimistic.
“I’m sure,” she answered in a quietly pensive voice.
She lifted her chin and found him staring right at her. He was nodding and his eyes studied her face with a caressing, kind look. Her answer was important to him, and she didn’t doubt the magnitude of it for a second. “Thank you.” He spoke softly and sweetly. Then he turned and set his hands on her waist, drawing her forward to simply hold her. For a long time. Longer than the words that were spoken. Long enough to convey his gratitude that she was still willing, still there and more importantly, how much he cared that she was.
Finally, after many long minutes, he allowed a sliver of space between them so he could look down into her eyes. His left hand slid along her cheek and tugged into her hair. “I feel dizzy. I don’t even know where to start. There is so much to say and deal with, yet my mind feels swamped. Overwhelmed.”
She smiled. “Yeah, I understand that. I guess… you have a son.”
His chest rose and fell with a sigh. Disappointment. Sadness. Shock. They seemed to accompany it. “Yeah. I do.”
“You also have terrible taste in women. My God, how could you be attracted to that vapid, shallow, overbearing, tiresome, bag of wind, lacking even an ounce of ambition or desire to accomplish anything at all on her own, is—”
His smile lifted on one side of his mouth halfway through her speech as he chuckled and smirked. She knew he understood her rant was intended to ease the moment, the seriousness of it and the implications—for both of them. Interrupting her, he corrected, “Was. I was, past tense, attracted to her.”
“There is nothing, no amount of hotness can possibly be worth that. No boobs big enough or perfect enough to justify making her your life’s decision. I’m ashamed for you. I didn’t come home marveling that you suddenly had a baby. One day you didn’t, and the next you did. I didn’t stress over how that would affect me or us. I didn’t worry where you might choose to live. Or that Francine is the baby’s mother, your co-parent, and therefore, an integral part of your life for the next eighteen years at least, and if I stay hitched to you, a part of mine. Nope. Didn’t stress over that.”
His amused smile didn’t hide the tender gleam in his eyes as he tucked several strands of hair behind her ear. “Not all that, huh? Easy peasy. Then what did you stress over?”
“How I could want a guy who liked a girl like that.”
“How indeed?”
“I mean, what self-respecting man who was raised on a ranch chooses a girl who cries to get her way? Who bats her eyelashes? Flips her hair over her shoulder theatrically? Not smart enough to see through that phony façade back in the day?”
“Nope. No self-respect. Young, dumb and horny.”
“Maybe you were a little shallow too. At the age of twenty-five, you were not all that young either.”
“Completely stupid and shallow.”
She smiled. “If I felt intimidated by her sheer beauty, it lasted no more than five seconds. As soon as she spoke, I realized, shit, she’s got nothing on me. I’m the queen here.”
His hand cupped her chin and his mouth descended to hers. He kissed her lips, long and soft, pulling away with a languid appreciation. “She’s got nothing on you. And you are way beyond the queen. You rule everything.”
“You’re an idiot,” she replied in case he missed it. Her eyelids were still half closed and her mouth was puckered up.
“Completely.”
She smiled and he smiled back. Then her grin faded. “For real, what now?”
He sighed. “Yeah, time to have a talk. Do you want to go inside? Go to dinner? Yell at me. Hit me? I deserve it all.”
“No. You didn’t do this. She did.”
“We weren’t planning to have children. She said she was on birth control. She took care of it from the time we got married. She said she didn’t want kids, or at least, that’s what she often proclaimed to me. I never cheated and I assumed she didn’t, so we were practicing exclusive, safe sex. I believed that. I did get tested after realizing she wasn’t exclusi
ve, because we weren’t using condoms. But I truly never once had a moment in the middle of the night where I woke up and thought she might be pregnant.”
“I believe you. After meeting her, I think what’s best for her in the moment is all she cares about with little thought or concern for how it affects anyone else. Plus, she’s just super annoying. Mad props to you for being able to tolerate her company for five minutes, let alone, five years.” She put up a fisted hand and he stared at it, then his eyes looked at her face.
“Are you fist-bumping me for living with my wife for five years?” He blinked several times.
She grinned and nodded. “I am. Anyone who could stand that woman’s constant, mindless chatter—about herself, no less—well, that makes you crazy tough.”
He burst out laughing, shaking his head as he fist-bumped her back. Then he pulled her closer to him and hugged her hard. “I don’t know how you could possibly accomplish the task of making me feel better. I’m almost laughing even, right now. Today. You should be hurling shit at me, or crying in the corner for what I’ve done to you. What this could mean for us. The stress and… and… fuck, the baby. My baby.”
She held him tight, tucking her head against his shoulder and nestling there. “I am pretty wonderful like that. And yeah, what about the baby?”
“Where do you want to get into this?”
“Nowhere.” She sighed and kept her face tucked against him. “Nowhere today. I’m too tired. I’ll say things I don’t mean. Tomorrow is better. We’ll deal with it tomorrow.”
His arms tightened around her. Sighing into her ear, his shoulders sagged under the weight of her hands. “You are… there is no one so amazing as you. This is where I’m going to start disappointing you by demanding things from you and our young relationship that you are not in any position to deal with. But here we are.”
The truth hit Kyomi between the eyes and she almost groaned “Duh!” at herself. Instead, she bit her tongue, squeezed her eyes shut and said softly, “She’s still at Reed Ranch and you have to go home to your ex-wife and baby.”
“She is. Yes. All of that.”
“Okay. Let’s just sit over there.” She released him and they headed towards an old picnic table. She flopped down and he slipped in beside her.
“Life-changing news on an old picnic table. That is so you. We’ll be lucky if our asses and legs don’t wind up with giant splinters.”
“We will. Now you see my conundrum. If you like me with all my awesomeness, directness, clearly focused ambitions and ability to take care of my own shit, how could you ever fall for someone like her? As a love match, I mean. I can see you liking her, or whatever, and hooking up with her, because yeah, the whole six-foot model thing has to be pretty tempting. But for a loving commitment? I’ll never see what could have possibly possessed you.”
He let out a small chuckle. “The strange part is: I don’t see it at all now. I don’t see anything now but an annoying, frustrating, grit-my-teeth-into-powder, burden.”
“But you once saw her very differently.”
“I did.”
“How could she end up conceiving, carrying and delivering your baby? So what is next?”
“I called Stanton Stores and finally spoke to Larry.”
Her heart tilted inside her chest. There he goes. Back. Back to the life that imploded on him. The one he built, dreamed of, and longed for. Back to the city where he belonged. She lifted her gaze and stared at the setting sun above the horizon. That was the only pretty thing about this place, this area, this dust-bowl of a site. It had spectacular sunsets. Painting the sky in a rainbow of pastel colors, silhouetting the old farm implements, cows, and sagebrush made it look almost beautiful when bathed in orange, gold, yellow, pink and purple sunsets.
“Because you need a job. You now have a child to support. And let’s just be frank, Francine to support too. Girl probably can’t tie her own shoe.”
“Probably not. Her shoes don’t have laces.”
Nodding absently, Kyomi waited. How could one day change everything? But that wasn’t a new life lesson for her. Her family took one day to go from five members to three. The brothers she thought she had vanished in one moment that suddenly changed everything forever.
“They want me back.”
She snorted. “Big shock. Didn’t you do the work Larry’s son never even tried to do?”
“Yes.”
“And you have to go back.”
“At least in the short-term. I don’t see any other avenue right now. Or choice. I could go live on my family ranch, but let’s face it, this work was for now, in the short-term, and for you. It was all for you. I hope you understand what I mean by that. I wanted to be right here, working with you and for you. You and all this healed me. My anger would have eventually eaten away at me. Maybe even ruined me. Or I might just have done some really stupid things.”
Her hand crept over to take his. He gripped it desperately as if he were crashing in an airplane and it was his only support. “Remember, I know all about anger.”
He squeezed her hand. “You legitimately should have plenty of it now. At me. At this entire situation. At our relationship.”
She shrugged a shoulder. “Once I worked out the anger at my brother over what he did, I got a pretty concentrated life lesson on what is worth getting angry about. I go there sometimes, but only with a clear and concise view of why. I can’t be mad at you for having sex with your wife under circumstances you believed to be true. I can’t get mad you didn’t know about what she did by hiding the pregnancy from you. I can’t get mad that you now have a son you can’t turn your back on. The twisted part is, if you did ignore your baby, I would have to turn around and do that to you. I mean, what kind of man would you be then? So you see my predicament. If my respect means anything to you at all, you have to step up as the father.”
“But I have a baby. Now. First and foremost, on my plate.” Staring down, his head shook, making the shock still obvious.
“Yeah. That’s huge. Game changing. Believe me I’m still reeling from it and can barely wrap my head around it. I have to ask this: can you trust her alone with your baby? Now that you know about him?”
He snorted. “You are so perceptive. I don’t honestly know. She can’t do the basic things for herself, like grocery shopping. Even ordering a delivery. She’s…”
“Useless?”
“Totally useless,” he agreed. “I have to go back.”
“Yes, you do.” Kyomi knew that at the same second she realized he was Hunter’s child.
“What does that mean for us?”
She gave him a little shove. “Well, I can’t come and live with you. It’s far too soon. So I guess we’ll try it long distance.”
He groaned and she sighed. “Hunter, we had to get to this point anyway. You were never staying here to work on the ranch with me, not here.” She spread her arms to encompass the entire old ranch.
“Not yet. And we would have come around to deciding that.”
“Agreed. But this isn’t your lifestyle. Or your life. You purposely chose to leave this place, the land, the small town and the rural aspects of it. You never intended to come back and just be here.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.” Confidence filled her voice. “I do know that. Which is why I didn’t fully want to do this with you.”
“Okay, I agree this came out of nowhere. But that’s life with Francine.”
“And now Francine is fully in it.”
He gave her a long look. “She will never be in it like she was before. There won’t be a fleeting moment when I find her desirable as a woman ever again.” He shuddered with repulsion.
She had to laugh as she kissed the side of his face. “I honestly believe that. And I think we have to take this one day at a time. Make sure we commit to each other. Be honest. Try our hardest. I have no more advice for you than that.”
“That sounds like pretty good advice after what wa
s sprung on you today.”
“I’m awesome that way. But you know, you dealt better with this than you would have a few months ago. You’d have let the anger smolder and color your words. Instead, you did what was best for the baby and the overall situation. I’m proud of you.”
He groaned.
“What? That was a good thing.”
“You’re being gracious and kind. It makes me feel even worse, and more guilty for doing this to you and us, especially after how it happened.”
“It happened to you. Not because of you or your stupidity.”
“But none of that alleviates what you have to deal with.”
She shrugged. “I either deal with it or we break up. No other choice. I’m not going to start dancing around reality now. I’m not breaking up with you, so here we are. Where do you start? I mean, what is going to happen tonight? Tomorrow?”
“Well, Francine is at the house now in the spare room. Tomorrow, I guess I’ll follow her back to her house.”
“The house with that silly, little payment thing called a mortgage? Lord, how could she fail to understand what a mortgage is? How could she think a down payment could qualify two unworking people to afford a house mortgage?”
“Most likely, she believed her mom or her stepdad or even I would swoop in and solve it. That’s how it’s always been for her.”
Kyomi snorted. “And surprise, surprise, it still is.” She shook her head. “I’m going to be snarky and sarcastic and sound mad sometimes at all this. Just ignore it and understand it’s not aimed at you or to blame you or make you feel guilty. It’s just venting and how I’m adjusting to the situation. It’s mostly aimed at Francine, and the strangeness of Stanley and her family’s wealth. She’s the antithesis of me. But no sneers at you or the baby. Going forward, please keep that clear.”