I brought his hand to my lips, then my cheek, and held it for a second against my heart. “I love you. Don’t die.” I turned to walk out.
A few days later, Simon woke up and I breathed my first sigh of relief in a while. Later, as I lie in bed thanking God for the miracle he’d given me, the pounding on the kitchen door started. I checked the window. Keaton.
“What are you doing here?”
“I blew it with Joss.” His eyes were rimmed in red and his hair stood on its ends as though he’d shoved his hands through it a few hundred times.
“What happened?” I led him to the table and curled my body into itself as I sat next to him.
“She asked me if Kieran is mine and…” He dropped his head to rest on his forearms.
“He’s not, Keats.” Oh, Lord. What had I done?
He jerked his gaze up. “What?”
“He’s not yours.” There. I’d said it and I’d said it with enough conviction his head sat straighter on his shoulders. “I’m not proud of it, okay, but I had a couple one nighters before I left and a fling right after I got to Arizona.” His frown deepened and the explanation tumbled out. “We had a fight, and you kept saying her name. I had to get out of there so I didn’t have to listen to you anymore. I went out and got drunk and met a guy. Jesus, Keaton, I’m so sorry.” I’d decided earlier in the day to tell him, and since he’d shown up already upset, I unloaded most of the whole story.
“You lied to me?” Keaton blinked rapidly as if trying to digest the information.
I didn’t flinch at his anger. How could I? I’d kept a secret that cost him her, again.
“I didn’t lie, Keats. I just didn’t correct you, but we never had sex, not since that one time in high school, anyway.” And we never spoke of that since neither of us really enjoyed much about it. “I mean, I wished we did. I wanted to, but you were so in love with Joss that even if you could have, I don’t know if I could.”
He rolled his eyes and plopped down in the chair across from me.
“Okay. I probably could, but it would have been wrong, and we would have both regretted it. I don’t need any more of those on my permanent record.” I sighed and continued before he could say any of the words I knew would be coming. “To be honest, I didn’t think we would ever come back here. I thought you would be a great dad, and we could build the life you wanted, and it would all be okay. I couldn’t be her or take her place in your heart, but for a while, after Kieran was born, I didn’t think it mattered so much. I thought you would get over her, and I would forget about him, and we would have a nice life. I pictured white picket fences, carpools…you being the soccer dad.”
He stood up, raking his fingers through his hair. “All this time, you let me think Kieran is mine when you knew damned well he couldn’t be?” He shook his head and glared at me. “I told my family about him. My mom spent this week out buying kid toys….”
I didn’t know what to say to make it right. Guilt inched its way along my nerve endings, heating my skin with shame. “I’m sorry, Keats. I wanted to tell you a thousand times, but I couldn’t.”
“Jocelyn hates me because of all this.” He turned his back to me, clenching and unclenching his fists.
At the mention of her name, my vision clouded, putting a red tint on everything in my sight line. Instead of getting loud, I leaned back and crossed my arms, adding a hint of sarcasm to my tone. “Oh, that’s right. The freaking world revolves around Jocelyn, doesn’t it? And what Jocelyn feels, and how my having a baby with or without you affects Jocelyn. I can’t believe I forgot such a well-known fact.”
“You know what I mean. I lost her again because she thinks we made a kid.” The hurt behind his words spoke louder than anything he said.
“I’m so sorry.”
He glanced up, doubt turning his eyes dark.
“Really I am. I’ll talk to her. I’ll tell her what happened, or didn’t happen.”
He turned slowly, a ghost of a smile tilting his lips. “Take my advice. Stay away from Joss for a while.”
I sighed. “All right. I could write her a letter. Send her a text or an e-mail if you want.”
“I better handle this one.” His shoulders slumped, and he leaned against the counter.
“What are you going to do?”
“Give her some time to cool off, I guess. I don’t know.” He yanked out the chair again and dropped his head onto his hand. “She’s all I want, Dani. I can’t live without her.”
Oh, how well I knew. “Then don’t, Keats. Fight for her.”
“She doesn’t take to that very well.”
“Don’t be a quitter now. I didn’t come all the way home to watch you give up on the one thing you need, no matter how ridiculous I think she is.”
“You have a way with words, Dani.” He blew out a long breath and jammed his fingers through his hair. “God, I could really use a drink right now.”
“Yeah. Getting drunk’ll solve it.” I went to the sink for a glass of water. “Here. Try this.” The glass shook as I set it on the table. How many mistakes would I make before I finally got life right?
“Why didn’t you tell me? I would’ve stayed, anyway. You didn’t have to pretend with me.”
I sighed. “I was ashamed. I wanted to be better than the person Jocelyn tells everyone I am, but instead, I keep proving her right.” I hung my head, guilt and shame billowing through me. “I know I shouldn’t have let you believe he’s yours.”
He shrugged, waiting for me to continue.
“The only way I can think to fix this is to get a DNA test.”
“It won’t prove I didn’t sleep with you.” He smiled softly. “For the record, I would be proud to have Kieran for a son.”
I smiled softly. “You are going to be a great dad. Someday.”
“I keep hurting her.”
“Then stop.”
His eyes widened.
“Okay, this one is on me, but I can’t fix it with her. You have to do it.”
“I know.”
“And it has to be something big. Something extraordinary. Skywrite her name or take out a full page ad in the paper to say you’re sorry or whisk her away to somewhere you can be alone to work it out.” Simon had done all these things at one point or another. He might have acted tough and too cool for romance, but he’d been…perfect.
“She doesn’t respond to the grand romantic gesture.”
Boy did he have a lot to learn. “You’re so dumb. Do you know where I got those ideas from?” I didn’t wait for him to look up. “Your best friend did all of those things for me, and do you know who she loves more than anyone in the world…except herself?”
He frowned. “It sure as hell isn’t me.”
“Not today, but you can’t give up. I did not come back here to watch you lose her for the second time.” To be turned down by Simon, yet again.
He closed his eyes, leaned back in the chair. “She won’t talk to me.”
“She will. Just give her some time.” I covered his hand with mine. “Keaton, she would be a fool to let you go again. Trust me.”
Chapter 9
Amid Jocelyn’s hatred and a new bout of my mother’s intense scolding, I made the choice to get the hell out of Storybook Lake again. Leaving Simon hurt the worst, but I had no choice. I couldn’t keep destroying the relationship Keaton desperately needed to be whole. By mere presence alone, I came between him and Joss without ever saying a word. Of course, I said several words, but even without my in-her-face sass, simply being there hurt her and, in typical Jocelyn fashion, she turned it around on him.
My leaving wasn’t altogether altruistic. I couldn’t bear for Kieran to ask every day where Daddy went. How could I explain my mistakes to a kid like Kieran? Absent a good answer, I stole a page from Mom and Dad’s book and decided on a vacation that I intended as a more permanent move than a short-term holiday. I wanted to make up for the things I couldn’t give him
--a happy family life--with things I could. So, I loaded him into the car, hyped it as an adventure, then threw myself into his enthusiasm.
Traveling slowly across five states, we visited the Botanical Gardens in St. Louis, the Titanic museum in Branson and an Elvis Tribute Contest, the Spencer Museum of Art, the Topeka Air and Combat Museum, and the Garden of the Gods in Colorado. Even with a vocabulary rivaling some adults, he lost interest quickly. We traveled with only the GPS as our guide. When I wasn’t concentrating on driving or when the long stretches of road went on forever, I was willing Simon to call. I spent a lot of time disappointed.
Traveling with an over-intelligent toddler and a broken heart tested my resolve, but we made it work. However, when we arrived at the Grand Canyon, Kieran took fate by the short hairs.
It started with a simple question inspired by a book Keaton purchased when we were out buying baby things before Kieran was born. We’d read it to him cover to cover every night after.
“Do you know about dinosaurs?” If he never asked me another question, I would always have remembered this as the one that started it all.
“Of course!” I played along with the hundred and twelve dinosaur questions he asked in a day. Any time he could find a way to sneak one in, he did. He asked me if I knew about fossils and the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. If I answered wrong, he shared with me all he knew. I’d read him those books since birth. He knew a lot. I answered wrong on purpose.
“Did you know Brachiosaurus eats leaves off trees and he weighs as much as six hundred cows?”
“Wow. I bet he could eat a little boy like you in one bite.” I couldn’t help but smile at how smart my boy had become.
“Mom.” A serious frown darkened his features. “I’m not a leaf on a tree. I’m a Kieran.”
“Well, there’s a museum about four hours from here where we can go see some dinosaur bones.” Mesa had a museum exhibit he would love.
“How long is four hours?”
I smiled. “Two hundred and forty minutes.”
“How long is a minute?”
This line of questioning I could roll with. “Sixty seconds.”
“How long is a second?”
“Faster than you can say ‘I have the best mommy in the whole entire wide world.’”
He giggled as I reached down to tickle his ribs. He looked up at me with the sunset reflected in his light brown eyes. “Do they have a Quetzalcoatlus?”
I tilted my head trying to picture which of the dinosaurs I should be imagining. Wings? No Wings? It didn’t matter if I knew. He only cared if the museum had one. “Probably.” I gave his hand a little squeeze. “But let’s enjoy this while we’re here. Look how big that hole in the Earth is.”
“Do they have a T-Rex?”
His lack of attention to the natural wonder before us was my own fault. I’d mentioned the D word and he grabbed on with both mental fists and wouldn’t let go. I sighed. “Maybe.”
“And a Stygimoloch?” Thankfully, the books we had bought had been written with phonetic pronunciations and as I read them to him, we both learned to pronounce the names. His first word had been “dino.”
I nodded and he smiled.
“I love fossils.” And when he got stuck on an idea, nothing I did would shake him back to where I wanted or needed him to be.
As far as I knew, he’d never seen one, but his enthusiasm brought a smile to my lips.
“Did I hear someone say Stygimoloch?” A deep male voice, from off to our left had me gathering Kieran close to me. The words stranger danger flashed through my mind in bright red neon. Kieran looked up at me, and I turned to the owner of said voice.
Ignoring the don’t-talk-to-strangers rule (probably because a dinosaur hadn’t said it), he wiggled free from my grasp and stepped forward. “Me, Kieran.”
A very tall man stepped closer from out of the sun’s blinding glare. I blinked twice. No. No way. My skin grew warm. Of all the people in the world to be here, why him? Why now?
I said, “Sean?” at the same time he said, “Danielle?”
“How have you been?” He pulled me in for a hug. My arms stayed at my sides.
Kieran stepped between us, and I stumbled out of the embrace. “That’s my mommy.” He folded his arms over his chest. “You’re a stranger. Don’t touch her.”
“Your mommy?” Immediately, Sean’s face darkened. “And how old would you be?”
“Three.” Sean held up his hand, counted on his fingers mumbling random words. “Arizona,” then “limousine” then “shit.”
Kieran looked up at me with all the confusion a kid his age could possibly display--wide eyes, open mouth, crinkled forehead. “What’s he doing, Mommy?”
“Math.”
A range of emotions danced across Sean’s face before the equation morphed into an answer and his eyes popped wide open. He glared at the ground for the longest part of a minute, then turned his gaze back to my face and grabbed my arm. Before I could dig in my heels, he pulled me ten steps out of Kieran’s earshot.
“Mommy!” He screamed a monster-under-the-bed kind of wail. He might have sounded all grown up, but seeing his mother manhandled brought out the baby in him. I shook free from Sean’s grasp, rushed back, and knelt in front of my son.
“It’s okay, buddy. He’s just an old friend of Mommy’s, and he wanted to talk to me for a second.” I hugged him close.
He swiped the back of his arm across his face, pushed me away, and walked over to stand in front of Sean, hands on his hips waiting for an explanation.
Sean cocked an eyebrow at me.
“Mommy says it isn’t nice to grab people.”
Sean’s incredible height made Kieran seem even smaller. “Your mommy kept a secret from me. Does that make it okay?”
“No.”
“Should I say I’m sorry, then?”
Kieran nodded.
Sean grinned the most handsome grin I’d had aimed at me in a long while. “I’m very sorry.”
Kieran hugged my leg.
Sean glared and lowered his voice to an almost whisper. “We need to talk.”
I took a minute to contemplate the wisdom in that. I’d already leaped up to my eyeballs in this drama. What did I have to lose by going all in? “I rented a cabin for tonight. We can talk there while he takes a nap.”
After ironing out a time to meet, I took Kieran to the car. My heart beat a thousand angry thumps a minute and my mouth dehydrated. I would just tell him the truth and let him be on his way. No harm done. Why I hadn’t corrected him from the first moment he started calculating time in his mind, I couldn’t imagine, but I promised myself to take care of it first thing when he arrived. I’d learned my lesson about keeping secrets, about letting men think they fathered Kieran. I put Kieran down for his nap and went out to pace the front porch while I waited for Sean to arrive. Leaning back against a post, I closed my eyes.
The night we met, he’d hired a limousine. Now, he pulled up in a shiny black Porsche that purred through gleaming silver pipes as it idled before he shut it down. He climbed out of the car, larger and more handsome than I remembered. His hair glinted golden brown with little shots of blonde, which meant he either worshiped the sun, or paid pretty good money for natural-looking highlights. His eyes stormed gray with little sparks of blue--a combination that reminded me of cool summer nights at the lake…with Simon… Simon who hadn’t called…hadn’t had anyone call on his behalf. I cleared my head and aimed a smile at the man approaching.
He took a seat next to me on the front steps. “I don’t want my son to grow up in a single parent household.”
I opened my mouth to spill the truth. “Sean, he’s--”
“I think we should get married. Tonight.”
“M-mar-married?” My mouth dropped open and any thought not revolving around white dresses and flower bouquets flew from my mind.
He grinned. “You know. Two people joining their
lives together until death do they part.”
“I’m familiar with the concept.” I hadn’t meant to snap the words. “What if he isn’t yours?”
“Are you in the habit of screwing random strangers?”
“Are you?” I didn’t usually taunt people, but marriage? Really? Our relationship consisted of two five minute conversations, three tequila shooters, and a quickie in a car. Marriage seemed a little over-the-top.
“Is he mine?” He glanced over, leaned forward, and clasped his hands in front of him.
I kicked at a rock trying to formulate an answer to explain my behavior away.
His voice lowered to a desperate whisper. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. I think destiny gives us certain chances in life, and you being here, in this place, on the two weekends I have ever been in Arizona in my life is destiny trying to tell me something. I would be a fool to let a family slip away from me when it’s all I have ever wanted.” He shook his head and took my hands in his, turning his body to face me. “I have a nice life, but without a family, none of it means anything. I’m lonely and fate is giving me this chance with you, with him.” He jerked his thumb toward the door of the cabin. “I don’t want to waste an opportunity I might never get again.”
I should have asked him why he thought he would never get another chance at a family, or about his career, or even what kind of nut-job asks a girl he screwed in the back of a car and never saw again to marry him. But I didn’t ask and he didn’t tell. The next day, off to Vegas we went. Within a few hours of our arrival, we became Mr. and Mrs. Sean Turner.
Chapter 10
I thought of Simon every day and no matter how wonderful my life appeared, a part of me was back in Storybook Lake--the part that truly lived and loved. My mother kept me informed of his condition and the remarkable speed with which he continued to recover. For me, that had to be enough.
Breaking Hearts Page 6