What are you doing to yourself?
I sat and contemplated. I couldn’t be trusted. Sure, when we were high and things were good, we soared. Our love rocketed into orbit. But when we were down—and I knew we would hit rock bottom again, maybe even crash harder—I was a runner. Too much time had passed. I couldn’t mess with his head more than I already had. I had to accept it. He had too much going on. I couldn’t keep my toe dipped halfway in the pool, ready to turn on a dime and run. If I really loved him, I had to stay away from him. I just had to.
CHAPTER 28
Landon Lane
WE MADE IT BACK TO town and the news vans were everywhere—ESPN, Fox Sports, CNN—even the networks like ABC, CBS—all of them. People stared when we drove by. Reporters would spot us and take off toward the car.
Some people in the world craved that type of attention. Basked in it. I just wanted to be left alone with the people I loved. Joe hadn’t said much since the night in the shed. He just went on with business as usual, even at the fight.
It had to have taken him a lot to open up to me that way. It wasn’t something we did on the island. Nobody discussed things like that. It was unheard of.
A reporter ran toward the window when we halted at a red light in the middle of Desire. The only stoplight in town.
“Mr. Lane! Mr. Lane!”
The light turned green.
Joe rolled down his window like we might actually speak to the man. “Yippee ki yay, motherfucker!” He peeled out and left him in the dust.
I shook my head. “Die Hard?”
“Great movie. One of my favorites. McLane is a badass and the villain is just as good.”
“Maybe after I beat Sid’s ass I’ll take you to a movie theater.”
Joe shrugged. “Why?”
I shook my head and smiled. I shoved his shoulder in a friendly way.
He stared down at my hand then back to the road.
“It’s fun. There’s a bigger screen, better sound.”
“I can hear and see fine on the TV at your house.”
I shook my head. “For God’s sake, man. It’s just what you do. It’s like the difference between firing a Colt 1911 and a Barrett M98B. One is your everyday pistol, but one can pick a guy off on special occasions at half a mile out.”
His eyes lit up and he nodded. “Ohh, I see. Great analogy to incorporate something I could relate to an unknown topic. I think I get it now. Well selected.”
“Thank you.” I smiled. “You’d like it. It’d be fun.”
“I think I like fun.” He looked over at me. Held his hand out. “After the mission. You take me there.”
I took his hand. He squeezed it like we were shaking on more than going to a movie.
I nodded. “Deal.”
I glanced down at the clock on the dashboard. It read a quarter past three.
“Go by the school.”
“What?”
“Just do it. I want to surprise Logan. He’ll be happy to see you too.”
“You want to see her.”
“I want to see Logan. I miss him.”
“He’s a good kid. I like him.” He glanced over at me. “He showed me Batman.”
“You told me already.”
“It was worth saying twice. He told me DC was better than Marvel because of Batman and Superman. I concurred with his assessment after reviewing the data for myself.”
I couldn’t help but snicker. If the sports announcers thought I was an enigma, they had another thing coming if they ever talked to Joe.
WE PULLED UP AT THE school and Janet was in her car, parked next to the curb reading a book. I got out and tapped on her windshield. Joe walked around and popped the trunk on my car.
She rolled down her window. “You’re back early.”
“Yeah, you mind if I pick up Logan?”
“No, he’ll be happy to see you. You should have seen him last night. He wouldn’t shut up about you. It was nauseating.” She cracked a smile.
“I bet it was torture.”
“Mmhmm.”
“Thanks for watching him.”
“I put it on your tab.”
“I bet that’s a big number.”
“It’s huge.”
“I get paid for these fights soon. I had a lawyer set something up. We need to talk about details later. But it’s a trust and I want it for you and Logan if something happens to me.”
She shook her head. “Nothing is going to happen to you.”
“We need to be realistic.”
“You need to get your shit together. And don’t harass her out here in front of everyone.” Her eyes narrowed. “Understand me? Just get Logan and go.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“I mean it.” She pointed a finger out the window at me, then put the car in gear and drove off.
As soon as she pulled away, Logan appeared at the door. My heart thumped against my chest. There weren’t many things better in the world than surprising my son, and knowing that he was excited to see me.
“Dad!” He took off in a dead sprint.
I met him halfway and caught him right when he jumped. I pretended to stumble a few feet backward. “You got bigger!”
He stared at me with a skeptical eye. “You were only gone for one day.”
I laughed and then noticed a crowd forming. Everyone stared at us. I looked past Logan. Cora stood there holding two little girls’ hands. Her head was on a swivel, peering around, nodding and smiling. Then she saw me. Her face turned white. Her head whipped right then left, searching for an escape route. She had nowhere to go. Nowhere to run.
I took a step in her direction, but a horde of people swarmed between us.
“We gotta go.” Joe slammed the trunk down.
Cora frowned. I was stuck there, couldn’t move.
I caught Hastings glaring at me out the corner of my eye, and I turned to face him. His head jerked away. He knew the deal. Principal Williams stood behind him, eyeing me much more cautiously.
Hastings was with his wife and a group of parents. The women all whispered to each other while they glanced back and forth between Cora and me.
Please don’t notice.
She noticed. Cora turned and pushed through the doors and it looked like she covered her face on the way in.
“Landon! Landon!” The voices called out all around me.
The real world hammered me in the chest again. Even the sun felt cold and heavy.
“Dad, c’mon.” Logan tugged at the hem of my shirt.
I shook my head quickly. Tried to snap out of my daze. “Yeah, let’s get home.”
We got to the car and Joe was already in the driver’s seat. “Hurry up, asshole.”
Logan grinned and climbed into the back.
I slammed the door harder than intended. “Yeah, let’s go.”
Joe eased out of the school parking lot and through the crowd of parents, reporters, and children.
I covered Logan’s face with my hand and then threw my hood on as camera flashes went off. I was sure it didn’t do much good, but it made me feel protected in a weird way.
We finally made it out onto the main road and Joe just shook his head. “Crazy.”
“Yeah, Dad. Everyone asks me about you at school.”
I turned back to him. “Did you learn anything new? You guys writing? Reading?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“You having any problems?”
He shook his head. “No.”
Joe opened up the console and dug around for something. “Hey, Logan. Check this out.” He pulled out a Batman toy. Probably what he’d taken out of the trunk.
I looked down at it. It took me a minute to process what was going on.
“Whoa!”
I looked back, and Logan’s eyes were big.
“Here, it’s for you.” He tossed it back in Logan’s lap.
I stared at him for a brief second. I couldn’t figure out what to make of it.
“What, asshole? I got
it at a store in the hotel.” He turned his head to the road. “They had a whole wall of those things.” He grinned back at Logan in the mirror. “That one was the best though.”
“It’s awesome! Can we play with it when we get home?”
I grinned at Joe. “You’re becoming human, you know?”
He ignored me. “Of course we can play. It’s not like your dad ever trains anyway.”
“Cool!”
“Logan?” I turned back to him.
“Yes, Sir?”
“What do you tell Uncle Joe?”
His mouth dropped open. “I’m sorry. I forgot.”
“It’s okay.”
Logan leaned up from his booster seat, as far as he could, and put a hand on Joe’s shoulder. I could tell he wanted to hug him, but the straps dug into his chest.
Joe moved his gaze back and forth between Logan’s hand and the road.
“Thank you, Uncle Joe.”
Joe looked over at me, puzzled, like what do I do?
I mouthed “you’re welcome” at Joe.
He nodded. “Right. Right. You’re welcome, Nephew.”
I turned around and Logan held the figure in his arms and then hugged it to his chest. I could tell it meant more to him than just a toy. It was a toy his Uncle Joe got for him. He stared out the window at the cattle fields and the mountains in the distance. “Best day ever,” he mumbled to himself.
Despite what happened with Cora, I couldn’t stop smiling.
WE GOT BACK TO THE house and Joe and Logan were in the backyard, tearing up something. Joe had a shovel and they had the Batman toy. I didn’t ask. If Logan was alone with anyone, I wanted it to be Joe. No offense to Janet, but Joe could protect him as well as I could.
Cora was on my mind. I couldn’t shake her from my thoughts. Seeing her at the school only amplified my feelings. I needed to do something. Being idle was the hardest thing in the world. Actions get results, complacency gets you nothing.
I tried to talk to Janet, but she was reading a book. Every time I said something she glared like she’d put me in the morgue. Must’ve been a good book.
I went back to my closet and dug around. I couldn’t stop thinking about Joe getting Logan that toy. I found what I was looking for and snuck out to the shed. There wasn’t an electrical outlet, so I had to splice into the electricity that was wired for the light.
The whole time I set it up, I stared at the red circles around all the areas of weakness in my life. Cora more than anything. There was a giant red circle around her with all kinds of meticulous notes. In a matter of weeks, instead of sleeping, Joe had probably spent a hundred hours or more searching for any way I could possibly win the fight. I stared at the red circle around her again.
Cora.
I thought about the first time I saw her at the school. When I was rude to her in the grocery store. Having sex with her for the first time. How Joe had planned the perfect diversion and Logan and I were going to whisk her off for a clandestine date at the park, just the three of us. Her parents showing up. Her telling us to leave.
Cora.
My leg was restless. It bounced on the ground. I tried to will it to stop with my mind. Walked inside and sat down on the couch. My knee kept jumping up and down on its own, wouldn’t stop trembling. If her head was on my thigh and I was stroking her hair while Logan played outside, my knee wouldn’t have bounced like that.
I glanced around at my house. The place I raised Logan. He laughed outside, and I heard Joe laugh too. My leg stopped for a second, and then it started up again. Something was missing from my life and I knew exactly what it was.
The sun eased its way down to the jagged mountaintops in the west, and my leg didn’t stop, my thoughts didn’t stop.
Cora.
“I need your car.” The words came out before I could stop them.
Janet’s eyes peeked up over her reading device. “Not a good idea. No way.”
“I can’t sit here.”
“It’s almost time for dinner. I’m about to start. You can help me. It’ll take your mind off things.”
I shook my head. “No.”
She exhaled a huge sigh. “Landon—”
“I’ll run to her if you don’t give me the keys.”
“Landon—”
I dropped to my knees and Janet’s eyes went wide. I stared up at her, begging. “Break my legs. I’ll crawl. I’ll walk on my hands to her if I have to.”
She stared at me. Stared for a long time. Looked down at my knees on the carpet, and then back up to my eyes. A tear rolled down her cheek.
“Why are you crying?”
She burst into tears, but she was smiling. Her voice cracked. “Because what’s happening in this living room is better than what’s in this damn book.” She sobbed and pointed at the entryway. “They’re in my purse.”
My feet moved before my brain could tell them not to. I kissed Janet on the cheek. “Thank you.”
“Y-you’re welcome.” Her hand wiped the tears from her eyes and she went back to her book.
The tiny wrinkles at the corner of her mouth indicated a smile. “The tab is running high.”
I waved her off with a hand and fumbled through her purse. The keys were right there, I could hear them, but when you’re excited about something everything gets in the way. I picked the damn thing up and dumped it upside down. Shook the hell out of it. An entire pharmacy spilled out onto the table in the entryway.
“What the hell?” Janet hollered, but her words were just a sound in the distance.
I rummaged through, swiping things left and right until I heard some metal clang together. I snatched up the keys.
“Fill it up with gas!” She paused. “After you bring her back to us first!”
“I promise.”
I took off toward the door. Nearly smashed through it getting out of the house. I didn’t bother looking back to see if it was broken. Didn’t give a shit.
Cora.
CHAPTER 29
Cora Chapman
I SAT ON MY COUCH, curled up. I tried to imagine being back in New York. I’d moved back home for something new, something easier. And because I’d missed the place. My life was a thousand times more complicated now. Maybe I could move to the city and start over again.
What had I expected? Why was I so surprised?
It’s not like I could ask Landon to stop picking up Logan from school or to avoid me at all costs in public. That would be irrational and stupid. The worst part was the mothers staring at me from the parking lot. Why were people such assholes?
It wasn’t like I was whoring around. I wasn’t selling myself or hitting on their husbands.
Principal Williams had given me several stern looks afterward, but what the hell was I supposed to do?
I took a sip of some hot tea I’d made. It was bland and bitter. Everything was dull—my carpet, the walls, the town, the whole damn world. I’d picked up the phone three different times to call Landon, and then remembered he didn’t have a phone. Maybe it was a good thing in this instance. It made me think about things, and I’d talked myself out of driving over there more than once.
Jimmy Fallon was on the TV and I didn’t even laugh or smile at him. How could someone not smile at Jimmy Fallon? I DVR’d all his shows and binged on them when I was in a rut. He was always my fallback plan. If Jimmy couldn’t cheer you up, you were fucked.
I heard a car, but assumed it had pulled up at a neighbor’s house. It sounded like it was a few lots over. I needed Landon. I needed his arms and his presence. Not in some codependent, reliant on him to take care of me kind of way. It wasn’t like that.
I just missed him. I missed the people around him. The whole Lane clan. I’d been a part of it. I’d never experienced family like that. Hell, I even wanted to see Joe. I wanted to hear him call Landon asshole. Any of those things would’ve turned the colors around me back to brilliant—shocked my heart back to a normal rhythm.
The door of the car shut. I
t came from in front of the neighbor’s house.
I’d had my hopes up for a brief second that someone was coming to see me, but I was lying to myself. Landon had to focus on saving his family, his life. His life! If circumstances were just normal, maybe I could afford to be more wishy washy with him, but it couldn’t happen now.
I’d told him to go. He didn’t want to, but he did it for me. My troubles paled in comparison to his. Part of me got a little angry that he’d gone when I told him to go. I didn’t like that about myself. It was stupid. If I wanted him to stay, I should’ve told him to stay. It wasn’t fair to put him in that situation and then be upset with him about it.
I hated my irrational thoughts. Hated them!
I couldn’t help how I felt though. I’d heard Logan ask to go home. It broke my heart. Destroyed me and I just couldn’t speak after that. Couldn’t face anyone. Landon did what he had to do. What he needed to do. I would never ask him to choose between me and his son. Never. Logan was the number one priority, and he should be. It had all just happened so quickly, and my mother had said the same thing to me the day I told her I was going to be a teacher and move to New York. That I was an embarrassment. I’d tried to tell myself she didn’t matter. Her opinion wasn’t important. But at the end of the day, she was my mother. I craved her approval and wanted her to love me and be proud of me. And then I saw Logan’s tears and I just shut down.
Footsteps pounded up my walkway.
What the hell?
My heart kicked at my ribcage like a mule.
I glanced over to the door. It wasn’t locked. Why wasn’t it locked? I was such an idiot. It could be a reporter. A marauder. I wanted to slap myself for thinking the word marauder.
I hopped up and ran over to lock the door. The sound of footsteps disappeared.
I stood in front of the door and it yanked open right before I could bolt it shut.
My heart froze for a brief moment in time that couldn’t be measured in seconds, only in some foreign unit that existed when you transported to a dimension separate from reality.
“Why isn’t your door locked?” Landon glared at me.
“Why did your footsteps suddenly stop making sounds?” I folded my arms over my chest.
Bad Dad Page 21