by Parker, Ali
“I’m glad it’s working,” I told her. She nodded and ran her hand through her hair.
“Ah, it’s going to come in so useful,” she sighed. “Seriously, what can’t that guy do?”
“I know, I know.” I shook my head and smiled. I’d been thinking that myself. He seemed so utterly perfect, filling in all these gaps in my life without me even having to ask him. Because he wanted to show me how much I meant to him. That’s what he’d said. It felt so good to have someone, a real boyfriend, who seemed to want to remind me every chance he got that he felt like the luckiest dude on earth for dating me. I had never felt so valued in a relationship, so important to the person on the other side of it.
“You should marry him and lock it down now,” she told me, heading back to her classroom. “He’s amazing. If you let go of him, I’m going to be pissed.”
“I’ve got no intention of breaking up with him, trust me,” I assured her, and she paused in the doorway and cocked an eyebrow at me.
“Things going well?” she asked, and I nodded effusively.
“So well,” I gushed. “I think… I really think I’m falling for him.”
She planted a hand on her heart as though touched by the sentiment.
“I’m so happy for you.” She smiled, and even though she was usually all sarcastic quips and snarky comments, I knew she meant this.
“Me too,” I replied, and she laughed. As she left, I bit my lip, excited to have a chance to talk about Holden, about us, about how brilliantly things seemed to be going between us. And with Hunter too. Hunter seemed to be warming up to me, and he was connecting with his peers in a way I had never seen him pull off before. Things were looking up for all of us.
I smiled as I watched Hunter and Amelie confer over something and then turn back to their individual screens. I’d be damned if I had a clue what was going on in front of them, but it looked PG, and they seemed to be having a good time, so I wasn’t going to get in the middle of it.
I glanced at the door and spotted Holden striding toward the room. We still had a few more minutes before the club was officially done, so I could steal a little time with him for a split second. I stepped out, shutting the door behind me so nobody else could get in, and grinned at Holden.
But as soon as I was face-to-face with him, that smile slipped off my face at once. Something was wrong. Seriously wrong. I scanned him up and down for any obvious signs as to what the problem was, but I came up with a straight blank.
“Holden?” I reached out to him, touching my fingers to his arm, and he pulled away at once, turning his back to me.
“What’s wrong?” I demanded, striding toward him, my heart pulsing hard in my chest. This had all been going too well. I should have been more suspicious. I shouldn’t have let myself get comfortable, fall for him, I should never—
“I’m sorry, it’s nothing to do with you.” He shook his head and grimaced. “I just… something happened. When I was back at the house today.”
“Is everything all right?” I widened my eyes, and Holden pressed his lips together and looked as though he was going to slam his fist into the wall next to us.
“Karla was there,” he told me, looking up into my eyes as though this should send a shiver of horror down my spine. I furrowed my brow.
“Karla?” I prompted him.
“Hunter’s mother,” he explained—and my stomach dropped to my shoes.
“I thought you said she wasn’t a part of your lives anymore,” I reminded him, and he rubbed his hands over his face as though trying to make some sense out of this situation.
“Yeah, well, she wasn’t.” He held his hands up. “She hasn’t been for almost ten years. She left after Hunter was born. I wasn’t lying about that.”
“Then what is she doing back here?” I furrowed my brow. “I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I,” he replied. “She was there at the house when I got back there, and she told me she wanted to be part of Hunter’s life again. And—”
He cut himself off as though he didn’t want me to hear that next part. His face was overwritten with tension, anger—maybe even something close to fear. I wanted to reach out and hold him, but his hard edges wouldn’t soften for me. I knew how hard this had to be on him, and I had no idea how I should deal with it.
“She wants to be a part of Hunter’s life?” I focused in on the positive. “That’s a good thing, right?”
“She signed over all her rights to him the day he was born,” he snapped back. I knew his irritation wasn’t aimed at me, but it still made me jolt, to hear him talk to me that way. He had never been anything other than kind and soft with me this whole time, but the fury in his system was taking control.
“She doesn’t have any right to come back into his life and act like she’s been anything other than utterly absent all this time.” He shook his head.
“But surely, it’s something positive for both of them if she wants to see him again, right?” I pressed him. At the front of my mind was the conversation Hunter had with me at the museum when he’d made it clear he’d noticed his lack of a second parent. He might have never expressed those kinds of feelings to Holden—he’d said his father shut down all conversation about Karla—but there was no way Holden hadn’t picked up on it at some point, right?
“I don’t know.” Holden shook his head. “I don’t think her intentions are exactly pure here.”
“What do you mean?” I wondered aloud. I couldn’t imagine anything but good coming from a mother wanting to reconnect with her son, no matter how long it had been since she left.
“I mean…” He took a deep breath as though he couldn’t quite believe that he was truly going to come out and say this. “I mean, when I was speaking to her, I let her into the house. I didn’t think I had a choice, but I’m pretty sure she wasn’t in it just for Hunter.”
My heart dropped.
“You as well?” I whispered. How could I compete with the woman who was the mother of his child? They would have a connection that ran deeper than mine could ever hope to. If she made it clear she wanted him…
“My money,” he replied, and I felt my heart rate smooth out once more, return to something more normal.
“How would she get that?” I furrowed my brow.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I don’t know her. I know the kind of person she is, the kind of person she’s always been. I wouldn’t have put it past her to have found out about the money I’ve made since she left and for her to try to finagle her way into a big chunk of it.”
“I think you should give her a chance,” I told him. “I mean, she can’t take anything you don’t give, you know?”
“You don’t know her like I do,” he growled. “You don’t know how she is when you give her the chance—I can’t talk about this right now.” He shook his head and headed to the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
And with that, he went to pick up Hunter. Hunter was disappointed at being dragged away from his game, but the club was over, and other parents were starting to arrive as well. I chewed on my lip as Hunter waved goodbye to me, and Holden nodded his farewell without saying a word. I knew this was big, bigger than anything we’d had to deal with before. Even if I hadn’t known the history between them, it was easy to see how something like this could fuck Holden up. He’d raised his son for so long with it being only the two of them, and it had been hard enough for him to open that up to even me. For another woman—a woman who had some true biological claim over his kid if not a legal one—to come into his life and demand that he find her a place in it? He must have been freaking out. I knew I certainly was.
I sent all the rest of the kids home with their parents and hung back to tidy up after the club was out. My mind was racing. I wished I could talk to someone about this, but I could tell Holden didn’t want anyone else knowing the truth of what he was dealing with. I wanted to go to him, to comfort him, to tell him it was all going to be all right, but it wa
sn’t the truth. He wouldn’t believe it, even coming from me.
I stood there, staring at the blank screen on one of the computers, and ran through everything he’d told me. And doubt began to rise in my chest. What if he was keeping this woman at arm’s length for my sake? What if he was worried that taking her back into his life would get in the way of the two of us? If I stayed in the middle of this, would I be getting in the way of a true family?
The questions barreled through my mind so fast I could hardly keep on top of them, and I did my best to push them down. What I wanted wasn’t important. What mattered was Holden, Hunter, and that woman. I was an outsider to this family, a newcomer, someone who would never truly share the bond I wanted with them. And I had never felt that more intently than this very moment.
46
Holden
“So what the hell are you going to do?”
The question hung in the air between Raymond and me for a long time, and I let out a sigh and tossed my hands in the air. I had no fucking clue what I was going to do, and he knew it.
“I don’t think I can turn her away.” I shook my head and picked up where I’d left off pacing up and down his living room. “Because if Hunter gets older, and she comes back, and he wants to see her, and he finds out about this, it’s going to come across like I was trying to keep his own mother from him. The last thing I want is him believing something like that, you know?”
“Well, that is what you’re doing,” he pointed out bluntly. I grimaced. I knew he was right, but I didn’t want to hear it.
“I know, I know.” I shook my head. “But I have my doubts about why she’s coming back. After all this time? What could her motivation be for that?”
“Maybe she feels like she’s grown up enough to accept having a child now and wants to be part of his life?” Raymond suggested hopefully, but I could tell from the look on his face that he sure as fuck didn’t believe what he was saying. He had been there through all of it, through all the shit that had gone down with Karla when she’d first left me, and he knew how badly it had hurt me and how hard it would be to forgive her for everything she’d done—and everything she hadn’t.
“I think it’s got to do with money,” I replied. “She turned up in a car that looked pretty beaten-up, and she couldn’t stop pointing out how nice the house was when she was inside it. She already knew about the company when she arrived, so she’s clearly been doing some research on me—”
“Or maybe she was curious and wanted to see how the two of you were doing,” Raymond pointed out. I knew he could be right, that perhaps I was being too harsh on Karla, but I couldn’t shake the feeling there was something wrong about the way she was approaching me. About the timing
“I’m mostly worried about what this is going to do for me and Autumn,” I confessed. “I know that shouldn’t be at the front of my mind, but the last thing I need is to fuck things up with her when it’s all going so well.”
“How do you think it would fuck things up with her?” Raymond asked, furrowing his brow. I shook my head.
“I can’t help wondering if Karla’s going to try to push Autumn out of our lives,” I replied. “You know how she was—possessive. She’s not going to be happy when she finds out there’s someone else in all of this, you know?”
“Does Autumn know she’s back?”
I nodded.
“I told her about it the day it happened,” I replied. “I think I was a little harsh with her. I was still so shocked.”
“And what did she think?” Raymond asked.
“Same as you, that I should give her a chance,” I sighed. “But I don’t know if she understands the impact that could have on us. Not really.”
“You should credit her with a little more foresight.” Raymond raised his eyebrows at me. “She’s not stupid. And I’m sure she was prepared for something like this, even if you weren’t. She knows she’s not Hunter’s mother, and—”
“And she’d be a better mother to him than Karla could ever dream of,” I finished up for him, the words catching me off guard. I hadn’t realized the conviction with which I believed them until that moment. I mean, I wouldn’t have been with Autumn if I didn’t think she would have made a good mother to Hunter, but at the same time, hearing those words come out of my mouth with such conviction made this situation even harder. Just when I’d found someone who could give Hunter what he needed, what we both needed so badly, and Karla came drifting back into our lives like she’d always belonged there.
“I think you have your answer then,” Raymond pointed out gently. “When are you seeing Autumn next?”
“I’m seeing her when I pick up Hunter from school today.” I glanced at my watch. “Shit, I should get going.”
“Don’t let this get to you,” Raymond told me, getting to his feet to walk me to the door. “I know this is a lot for you to take in, but it’s workable. You know what you want, and that’s the most important thing.”
“I sure as fuck hope so,” I replied, managing to smile in thanks for his kind words. “I’ll let you know how it all goes, all right?”
“All right.” He nodded. “And if you need any help with Karla, you let me know.”
“Thanks, man,” I closed my eyes for a moment. “I’ll see you again soon.”
I headed out to the car, my mind still racing, trying to make sense of everything swirling around in my brain. I wanted to be with Autumn. I’d known that for so long that it felt like second nature, like a fact that had always been true in the back of my mind. But at the same time, I knew keeping Hunter from his mother would only come back to bite me in the ass years down the line. I didn’t want him to think I’d been trying to keep them apart, divide them. I was wary of Karla, more than I realized I was, and I didn’t want her anywhere near my son, nor the life I had so carefully built for him. I didn’t want her sticking her nose in and messing everything up, which is exactly what she would do if I gave her the chance.
And she said she wanted me. I had been firm in shutting that down, but what if she wouldn’t let it go? What if she saw us as a package deal? That was going to be hard to shut down, especially if I did decide to let her have some contact with Hunter. I wasn’t sure what to do. I felt as though every avenue open to me was the wrong choice, the choice that would leave someone close to me hurt in ways I never wanted to inflict on them.
I arrived at the school and waited outside in my car for a few minutes. I wanted it to go back to being like it had been before Karla had shown up again. Things had been going so well for a change. After so long feeling like I was fighting to keep going, life had been happy, easy, fun. And that was all threatening to be pulled out from under me.
I forced myself out of the car. I had to pick up Hunter, and I didn’t want to be late and tip him off that there was something serious going on. He was a smart kid, a sensitive one, and the last thing I wanted was for him to catch on to what was going on with Karla. I winced as her name crossed my mind once more. I hated this. I hated that she had come back to make everything harder, to make me second-guess every decision I’d made over the course of the last ten years. I had done well enough without her, but all these questions were rising, unanswered, and hanging out at the back of my mind. It was an uncomfortable feeling, to doubt myself after so long, and I didn’t want to have to get used to it.
I headed inside the school, and Hunter was already there, waiting for me. He ran up to me and gave me a hug, and I held him close, savoring these moments with him. I wasn’t sure how long they would stick around before everything changed again.
“I need to talk to Jason,” he told me firmly, as though he was informing me about an important business meeting. “Can I have five minutes?”
“Of course.” I smiled at him and watched him run off to be with his friends. At least that was something that had changed unarguably for the better, Hunter having people around who cared about him beyond me. I glanced up and saw Autumn leaning in the doorway of her classroom
, an expression on her face that I couldn’t quite read.
“Hey,” she greeted me, making her way to me. “I think we need to talk.”
“I think we do too.” I sighed. I knew I’d come down too hard when I’d seen her before, and I needed to let her know there was no problem with her, just with Karla.
“I’ve been thinking about what you told me.” She took a deep breath, her brow furrowing. “And… and I think we should take a break.”
“What?”
My heart dropped. This couldn’t be happening. This was what I‘d been afraid of, the direct opposite of what I wanted from this conversation.
“I don’t want to get in the way of whatever’s happening between you and Karla.” She glanced over to where Hunter had scurried off, and I saw the flash of pain pass over her face. I realized this was real. She was truly walking away from this, from us.
“Autumn, that’s not what I want,” I told her desperately. “I know things are going to be complicated, but the last thing I need right now—”
“The last thing you need right now is having to consider my feelings on top of everything else that’s going on,” she told me gently. “I know it sounds crazy, but Holden, I don’t want to get in the way of your family.”
“Karla’s not my family.” I shook my head. “She left us when he was born. She signed away all her rights—”
“She might not be your family, but she’s Hunter’s,” she replied softly. She was smiling, but it seemed to be a ploy to keep the tears from coming. Panic was rushing through my system. Why had I told her about it? Why I had come in all hot-headed and forced her to deal with this? I should have held back, waited till I had things figured out.
“And I don’t want to get in the middle of this,” she told me. “I don’t want to complicate matters any more than they already have been.”
“You’re not complicating anything,” I replied desperately. “You make everything easier. Autumn, please—”