I sat for a moment and the guilt, as it often did, began to swamp me. I was betraying Tanner as well as Carter and both were suffering for it.
Regina turned at the sink, leaning back against it and looking at me. “Far be it for me to tell you how to live your life and raise your child, but I really think the choices you're making are going to hurt not just you, but that little boy too."
I bristled even though I knew she was right. I looked down as I put my own utensils on the plate and began to clear it.
"I think you're playing with fire, Jess, and you're going to get burned. Whatever it is you're trying to avoid will be much worse if you don't deal with what is going on here."
"When did you get a degree in psychology?" I snapped, hating myself for it, but not able to take the chastising from her.
She shrugged and turned around to do her dishes. “It doesn't take a shrink to see what is going on."
"So, what should I do? Just quit my job and stay home with him all the time? How am I going to pay rent if I do that?"
"Oh, I don't know, maybe tell his daddy about him and for the record, I don't think a mother has to stay home all the time, but she can't promise her son something and then not deliver. Right now, he only thinks you reneged on your deal to spend the day with him, but I know that you're denying him so much more and he deserves better than that."
Tears welled in my eyes because of course she was right. I'd known she was right for so long and still hadn't been able to do the right thing.
I put my dishes in the dishwasher and went to find my purse.
"Where are you going now?” Reggie asked.
"I'm going over to Carter's to tell him about Tanner. If it's all right that I leave him here with you for an hour or so."
"Of course, it’s alright. My problem isn’t in watching him, Jess. It's in how you’re not living up to your role as a mother."
I gave a curt nod and then I hurried out the door to my car.
On the drive over I practiced all the different ways that I could tell him he's a father.
Remember that trip we took to Mexico? Well, I came home with a little souvenir from you.
No that wouldn’t work.
The reason I can't live in, Carter, is because I have a son. And you're his father.
No that would work either. The closer I got to his house and the more variations of revealing that he was a father, the more I began to realize that there was almost nothing I could say that probably would go over easy. The fact that I had been back in his life for so long and hadn't said anything was going to be a problem. Reggie was right, the more I was trying to avoid problems, the worse I was actually making them.
I arrived at Carter's house on the part of the driveway that curved in front of the house. Taking a deep breath, I exited the car and walked up the stairs of the porch to the door.
Movement inside the house caught my eye through one of the windows alongside the door. I tilted my head in so I could get a better look. Carter was trotting down the stairs. No limp. No grimace on his face from a meniscus tear in his knee.
He wasn't injured at all. It was all just some big scam. And clearly, I'd fallen into it. He manipulated me and I had gone to bed with him.
My initial instinct was to turn and leave and never come back. But I couldn't do that without giving him a piece of my mind.
I reached out opening the front door and pushing it open. He was in the foyer, screeching to a halt when he saw me. His eyes went wide with shock.
"You're a liar. Carter Strong."
He shook his head, holding his hands up in surrender. “I'm sorry, Jess. Let me explain."
"What is there to explain? I understand perfectly. You’re home for a while to visit your dad and you need a woman to keep you satisfied in the homeport. And what easier woman is there than the one that you had on the cruise ship?"
He jerked back slightly and then scoffed. "Easy? Nothing has been easy with you. And you're not just —"
"So, you decided to trick me? And pay me $100,000?" All of a sudden, I felt sick to my stomach as I realized he was paying me $100,000 essentially to try and get me to have an affair with him. "You know you almost had me fooled."
It was probably my silly dream that Carter and Tanner and I could be a family that had allowed me to so easily be duped. But now I realized my initial assessment of Carter was true. What he had said to Noah had been the truth. He didn't want to get married and have a family, he just wanted somebody to spend time with while he was at home.
For a minute, I began to question everything he had told me on our trip to Mexico. Was that all just to get into my pants too? I was glad that I had set the boundaries of our relationship for that trip, because I was sure once that trip was over, if we had tried to have a relationship, eventually, when he was traveling or bored with me, he would've broken my heart.
Now feeling on solid ground and having complete clarity about who Carter was, I turned to leave.
21
Carter
As it turned out best laid plans did go awry in the most disastrous way. Just when I thought I was making headway with Jess, it all came crashing down. I needed a chance to explain to her, but she didn't seem to want to hear it. And now she was walking out my front door.
I hurried after her. "Jess, you have to let me explain. I didn't want to hurt you. I just didn't know what else to do."
She stopped on the front porch and glared up at me. "You didn't want to hurt me but hurting me was the only option you had?"
Dammit, why was she able to twist everything? "It was the act of a desperate man.”
"Desperate?" She looked down, shaking her head. “I can't believe that I had sex with you again. All of this is a lie."
"Only the knee injury is a lie, Jess. Having sex, everything I said about wanting to explore our connection, all that is the truth."
"You know I should've known when I looked at your knee that you weren’t really hurt. The knee wasn't swollen, and you didn't seem to have the level of discomfort someone would have with that injury."
Her expression all of a sudden appeared as if a light bulb had gone off in her head. "You actually found someone to fake medical reports and just so you could scam me?"
"You're looking at this all wrong, Jess. I did all that because I wanted to spend more time with you."
She pursed her lips and looked at me like I was nuts. "You couldn't just ask me to go out with you?"
Was she kidding me? I put my hands on my hips and it was my turn to glare at her. "I did ask you to go out with me and you said that you couldn't because you worked for my father. All you've done since we’ve been reunited is come up with excuses why I can't spend time with you."
With her hands on her hips glaring back at me, she said, "Maybe you should take that as a hint, Carter."
Her words hit me in the chest like a sledgehammer. But there was still one thing that she was forgetting. "I might have if you hadn’t fucked me in my car or in my bed today.”
She flinched as if I slapped her, and I realized my words were vulgar. She turned and started down the steps towards her car.
Desperation grew in me again. I followed her down the steps. "Jess, I'm sorry. I know I messed up, but I just wanted to be able to spend time with you. And I'm happy to tell you why. I want to take you out on date and to explore what we have. You are the one who keeps erecting walls between us and won't tell me why. I'm not a man who gives up easily, and so this was just one way I thought maybe I could spend time with you. It was an idiotic thing to do. I know that. But my intentions were good. All I want to do is spend time with you.” Why couldn't she hear that?
"And what if I had agreed to that? Eventually, I would've found out the truth, don’t you think? Then I’d know that all this started on a lie. What we had in Mexico was perfection, but this now, is far from it." She opened her car door. "You know, maybe it's a good thing that somebody is telling you no. You seem to think your money and charm can get you
whatever you want, and it worked in Mexico, but now we're in the real world and it doesn’t work here. At least, not with me.”
Once again, she had been taking my good intentions and twisting them into something that offended her. It was clear to me now that I had no chance. In fact, I probably never did. She’d been not just resistant to me from the beginning, but adamant about staying away. I'd been a fool to try to win her back, and I'd be even a bigger fool to continue my efforts.
"That's the first time anyone has suggested that my generosity makes me an asshole. I am a good and decent man, Jess, who only wanted to be able to spend time with you. Was I misguided by feigning an injury? Yes, but my intentions have been good and pure except for the knee injury. I have been completely open and honest with you, and I am damn sure that that is not the case with you. But you know what? You win. Clearly you are not the same woman that I met in Mexico, or maybe there's just some about me that you don't like even though this morning, you seem to like me just fine. Or maybe you were using me.”
She jerked back at my comment.
“But whatever the fuck that's going on with you, I'm done. I'm sure that's going to come as a big relief to you."
She got into her car and I had nothing else to say, and I certainly didn't want to hear anything further from her, so I shut her door and then walked around the back of her car and up in my house closing the door behind me.
I leaned against the door closing my eyes and taking a deep breath because my heart was beating a mile a minute. I didn't know it was possible to feel so angry and heartbroken at the same time. In that moment, I hated Cupid for shooting his damn arrow in my ass to put me on Jess in the first place. But what was done was done.
I pushed off from the door and headed to the kitchen grabbing a beer and then going out onto the back porch. I felt like such a fucking fool to have begun to think about having Jess living in this house with me. Filling it with kids, all of them redheaded like her.
I was pretty much an open book with my family, but I was going to keep this latest instalment of my soap opera life to myself. It was bad enough that they knew that I cared for Jess and was willing to go to these crazy likes to win her over. They'd all been right. My grandmother had known it would all go south. Even Noah knew it would go wrong although he seemed more concerned with Jess's feelings than mine.
When I finished my beer, I pulled out my phone and opened my travel app. I would hang around another week or so to make sure my father was fully recovered, but then it was time to move on. Maybe I’d go to Europe. Hunter would be back soon, so it would make sense for me to follow him. There was no better distraction than to take a trip somewhere.
Maybe instead of traveling for work, I would go somewhere remote and difficult to get to because those trips required the most planning and physical exertion. I was going to need that to distract me and get over Jess.
22
Jess
There's a saying about being careful what you ask for, you just might get it. I wanted to protect myself and Tanner from Carter by pushing Carter out of our lives. I had succeeded in that. I got what I asked for. But instead of relief, I felt like the worst person in the world. The weight of the guilt was crushing me. His words played back to me on an endless loop: I am a good and decent man, Jess, who only wanted to be able to spend time with you.
He’d been wrong to lie to me about his injury and I was still upset by it, but the irony of the situation wasn't lost on me. My lie was so much bigger than his.
When I realized he wasn’t really hurt, my anger had taken over and I’d just let it rip, pushing him out of my life. If I behaved like that in response to a lie as little as feigning an injury, what sort of reaction would Carter have when he learned about Tanner? Whatever, it would've been, it would now be worse because it would be so egregious compared to his.
The only good thing that had come out of my successful break up with Carter was I now had more time to spend with Tanner. I did all the things that an at-home mom would do, including taking him to the park and then later baking cookies.
Now several days later, I was still enjoying being home with Tanner because it really gave me a chance to immerse myself in his world, but the guilt over keeping Tanner and Carter apart was just growing worse.
"Why are you sad mommy?" Tanner asked as he got up from the other side of the game board and came over giving me a hug and climbing in my lap. It was amazing to me how intuitive he was. I wrapped my arms around him and held him close.
"I lost a friend the other day and I'm feeling bad about it," I told him.
"Was he mean to you?" Tanner looked up at me with his gray eyes so much like Carter's.
I shook my head. "No, not really. He lied to me, but I was mean back to him."
Tanner's little face scrunched up in confusion. "You were mean to?"
"Yes. I was angry. Remember when you were mad at me, how sometimes you acted mean?"
His face turned away from mine and he rested his head against my chest.
"But I forgive you baby. I understand why you were so upset." I held him even closer, cradling him even though he wasn't the small baby he once had been before.
His face tilted back up at me. "You guys can say you're sorry and then be friends again."
I was pretty sure I'd ended any chance of that, if not now, then definitely when I told Carter the truth about Tanner, which I knew I had to do. Of course, I knew I had to do it all along and hadn't done it. Even now, I still hadn’t reached out to him.
I was more terrified now about telling him. All I could think about was that once I let Carter know about Tanner, I would lose my baby because Carter would have every right to call me a hypocrite and accuse me of never intending to tell him. If he believed that, he could sue for custody and then where would I be?
The door opened and Reggie came in. She’d been gone that afternoon to do some work in a local coffee café. She was sorting through the mail as she kicked the door shut behind her.
She stopped short as she saw us. "Who's winning?"
"I am," Tanner said, getting out of my lap and going to sit on the floor across from me again.
"I think he rigs the cards," Reggie said with a wink.
"What is rig?" Tanner asked.
Since I didn't want to explain cheating to him, I said, "It’s your turn, honey. "
He reached down and turned over the top card that held a yellow square.
"I'm moving far ahead of you, mommy," he said as he took his plastic player piece and moved it to the next yellow square on the board.
"I don't think I'll be able to catch up."
"You've got mail," Reggie said, handing me an envelope. My heart stopped when I saw the embossed return address of Strong Corporation. I looked up at Reggie who was watching me intently. Inside could be anything. If Carter had found out about Tanner already, it could be some sort of letter to appear in court.
I shook my head of my doomsday thinking, and carefully opened the envelope. I pulled out a piece of paper, flipping it open where Carter had written:
Payment per our contract. No further services needed. Contract terminated.
My heart cracked open even more at the words he chose to use. I knew that he wasn't talking just about the contract, but that any hope of he and I being together had been terminated too.
Be careful what you ask for.
I opened up the bottom fold of the paper and a check fell out. I picked it up, wondering why he was bothering to send me a check after one day of work.
My mouth dropped open at all the zeros.
"My God, he paid you the total amount," Reggie said as she stood behind me looking over my shoulder.
"I only worked for him one day."
"Maybe it's guilt pay for having duped you,” she suggested.
If that was true, then I needed to return it all because in the end I was duping him too. I folded the check back into the paper and shoved it back in the envelope.
"It's you
r turn mommy," Tanner said.
Absently, I reached forward, turning over a card with two blue squares on it. “I don’t understand why he’d do this.”
"Well, if it's not guilt, maybe he's not finished with his attempt to woo you as he said he was," Regina said.
"You have to move your man two blue ones mommy." Impatiently, Tanner took my plastic game piece and moved it ahead two blue spaces. Then he drew his own card.
"I should just send this back,” I said, looking at the envelope again.
"Maybe you should think about it. That's a lot of money and you said yourself, it could set up Tanner's future."
She was right, but it felt very disingenuous to take Carter's money to use for his son, when he didn't even know he had a son.
"Maybe you can take it back to him yourself and tell him the truth." Regina walked over to her desk, putting her computer bag on it. "And maybe, because it seems like he's a good guy, you can have that family you've always wanted."
I felt pretty sure that ship had sailed. Maybe he’d reconsider now, but once he knew the truth, I couldn’t imagine him forgiving me. How had things changed so quickly and I was now the bad guy. Then again, all the time I spent not telling him about Tanner made me the bad guy.
"Mommy, it's your turn again."
I turned over my card revealing a single green square. Tanner went ahead and moved my piece for me.
"Maybe it's time for you to move on,” Reggie said. “You still need to tell him about Tanner, but maybe it's time to stop dreaming about him and being a family. I have a really good friend, Kevin, that I think you’ll hit it off with him. Let me set you up with him."
"It will be unfair to him,” I said.
"Well, he’s sort of on the rebound himself, so it can be one of those things where you two soothe each other's battered souls. But you can't sit around here all the time pining for the man that you are adamant that you don't want." Reggie went into the kitchen.
Wrong to Love You: Strong Brothers Book 3 Page 11