by B. J. Harvey
“I thought you had class,” Lana retorts spitefully.
Millen scoffs. “Yeah, ironic coming from the woman who tried to pin the paternity of her child on two different men.”
“What are you talking about? Drew is Travis’s father. There’s a paternity test to prove it.”
I shake my head, my jaw clenching tight at the audacity of the woman and how she’s still willing to keep up the lie. “Yeah, funny how the pediatrician confirmed that Travis was overdue, not three weeks early.”
“Nice try on timing the birth for our wedding too,” Millen adds.
“None of you know what you’re talking about.” For the first time since she arrived, I detect panic in Lana’s demeanor.
“No? So are you going to stand there and still tell me Travis is my son? He wasn’t conceived before you knew Millen loved Kenzie, and when that trap didn’t work, you pulled me into your convoluted web of lies? Because if you can’t have Millen, and can’t ruin Kenz, why not go after the best friend and destroy his life, whatever the cost?” I’m shouting now, losing the stranglehold on my emotions.
She has the audacity to stand there and smirk, crossing her arms over her chest and jutting a hip out. “You think you’ve got it all figured out.”
“For the record, any legal agreements between us are null and void. The marriage will soon be as well.”
“You can’t do that,” she breathes, revealing the first crack in her armor.
“What’s funny is you’ve been here for ten minutes, and not once have you asked where your son is,” I say.
“’Cause he’s sleeping, right?” she asks, looking around the room as if she’s actually worried.
I shake my head. “He’s not here.”
“Where the fuck is he then?” she asks, her eyes wide. It’s the first true sign of honest emotion I’ve seen from her since she walked in the house. Probably since that small glimpse she gave me in the hospital.
“Where is my son?” she shouts. I still don’t buy into it, and amazing myself, I manage to keep my cool despite everything inside of me wanting to throttle the woman until she realizes just how fucking lucky she is to have Travis.
“Do you actually care, Lana? Or is this you putting on the ‘concerned mom’ mask? Because whatever angle you’re playing right now, I don’t buy it.”
She lifts her chin and huffs, looking out toward the street. “Where is he, Drew? Where is our son?”
And once again, she’s trying to use a poor little baby to placate me. My emotions are in complete and utter turmoil, but I’m determined to not let this woman know she’s broken me. “He’s with Harris. I didn’t want him here right now.”
Her shoulders slump, and she visibly relaxes, but it’s not too long before the sneer returns. “Was there a purpose for this ambush? You messaged me to talk, Drew. Can we get that over and done with? I need to get back to the city.”
Kenzie’s mouth drops open, a gasp escaping her lips. Millen’s expression slackens in what seems like shock at seeing Lana’s true nature. I’m not surprised; this is the side of her she hasn’t bothered hiding ever since the paperwork was signed.
“You’re cut off, Lana. No more money. No more free roof over your head,” I declare, waving my arm wide. “No more free ride, and definitely no fucking alimony. The gig is up. You failed to destroy my family.” I look over at Mills, Kenz, and Mr. Ross. “And if I have my way, you won’t get the chance to ruin even one hair on Travis’s head.”
“Like you have any say in the matter,” she snarks. “You’re not even on the birth certificate.”
“Don’t worry; I’m well aware of that now,” I reply flatly.
She has the audacity to smirk. “At least you won’t have a chance with Ashley anymore.” She lands her mark, but the last thing I’m ever going to do is let her know it.
“That may be so, but that is absolutely not on you so don’t think you can count that as a victory in your misguided, convoluted, and manipulative game. News flash, Lana: we’re still here. We’re all still a family. You are a deluded, sociopathic waste of space who needs to walk out of this house and out of our lives and never fucking look back.” Those last three words are full of every twisted, painful feeling that’s ripping me apart inside. Millen stands at my back, his hand cupping my shoulder. Kenz comes to my side, wrapping her arm around my waist, and when I lift my eyes to Mr. Ross’s, I only see pride shining back at me.
Her face contorts in anger. “Fuck you all. This isn’t over, Drew,” she snarls.
“Yes, it absolutely is, Lana,” Mr. Ross announces, his statement low, menacing, and very final.
With one last scathing look at the four of us, she huffs and storms out of the room, slamming the front door as she leaves.
Over the next few hours, we all make a start on packing up Travis’s bedroom. It’s a painful reminder of how just a few days ago, I had a gorgeous little boy who looked up at me like I was his entire world, and now, he’s gone.
Kenzie comes up to me and pulls me in for a big hug before stepping back. “We’re going to go. I’ll reach out to Harris tomorrow, and we’ll sort out getting Lana’s things moved into storage or something. Just remember we’re here, whatever you need, Drew. Okay?”
I nod. I’m going to be alone in my house, my son no longer my son, and it hits me like a sledgehammer to the chest.
She gives me a hug, brushing her lips against my cheek and giving me a squeeze before stepping back and looking over to her husband who’s standing beside her. “We’ll meet you in the car.” She gives him a kiss on the lips and disappears out into the entryway with Millen’s dad following behind her. The front door opens and closes soon after.
“Do you remember how easy we thought life would be back in Texas? We had money, freedom, and an endless supply of women,” Millen says.
I snort half-heartedly. I’ve already got enough regrets in my life to consider any more. All the time I wasted, the lies I told, the loyalty I held up as a wall between what I truly wanted and what I believed I didn’t deserve—and still don’t. “We thought we had it all.”
“Now I do,” Millen says, looking out my front window toward his car where his wife is. “You will too.”
I lock my eyes with his, wondering how I ever got so fucking lucky as to share a dorm with Millen Ross fifteen years ago, and for his family to take me in as if I was their own. How can the two of us be standing here, comrades in arms, even when one woman tried to destroy everything the two of us had ever had?
Millen moves forward and lifts his arm, hooking his hand around my neck, and giving a firm squeeze as if to make sure he has all of my attention. “This too shall pass, Drew. I can see in your eyes you don’t believe that, but you’ve got Kenz, and me, and Dad, and yes, even Ash. Thinking back on it, it all makes sense, and I’ve realized that she was only ever truly happy when you were around. You’re going to get over this, Drew. It’ll be hard, and it’ll be rough, but we’re all here to help you through to the other side,” he says, pressing his forehead against mine.
My entire body is tense. I’m unable to move as I wait for the guillotine to drop.
Instead, he shocks the shit out of me as he pulls away and grins. “Then we’ll get her back.”
Drew
Two months have now passed. Lana is gone, the application for our annulment has long been filed and granted, and I’ve been splitting my time between work, and getting drunk. In the past, I would’ve tried to take my mind off the pain in the bed of any willing woman, but not now. When you’ve had the best, the rest don’t even ping on your radar. Basically, whenever I don’t have to look like I’ve got my shit together, I’ve been kicking my own ass and escaping my feelings with alcohol.
I have no legal ties to Travis; In no way, shape or form is he, or will he ever be, my son. I saw the remorse on Harris’s face when he plucked Travis out of my arms for the final time the day after I kicked Lana out of my life. I heard his apology on behalf of his sociopathic dau
ghter, but the damage was too deep and too catastrophic for his words to come close to repairing the damage Lana had done. In all honesty, I will be happy if I never see a member of the Mason family ever again.
Returning to work, I sat down with my boss on my first day back from my paternity leave and asked for as many work trips as possible, even going as far to suggest he send me across the country to help set up a new satellite office we’d talked about.
He didn’t like being an enabler in my attempt to escape my mess of a life, but knowing me for almost seventeen years, he gave me what I wanted. It’s what I thought I needed.
On a day-to-day basis, I was barely functioning. To anyone on the outside, I was coping. In reality, I was a fucking liar.
Behind closed doors, I was an empty shell, the two halves that filled me up—my son and my Ash—both gone. Millen and Kenzie were both sympathetic to my plight but said they had to accept Ashley’s wish to stay away, telling me she had assured them she’d contact me when she was ready. I did ask them to tell her about Lana and Travis, but I left it at that. When it came time for her to see me again, I wanted to be the one to apologize.
Today it hit me I had to go home. With Thanksgiving approaching, my boss called an end to the trip.
I thought I was doing better than I’d expected and thinking ahead, I asked Kenzie to check the house for me and make sure everything for Travis had been given away or taken to Harris. It was just too painful to deal with myself. One day I hope I can check in on the little guy and have it not rip my heart out, but I’m nowhere near being there yet.
Walking through my front door, it’s the deafening silence that gets me first. I’ve spent nights alone in different hotel rooms, and they were quiet, but not like this. After dumping my bags in the doorway to my bedroom, I move through the living room to the dining and kitchen. Every surface is clean; every counter is tidy. There’s no sign of life apart from a bunch of flowers sitting in a vase on the coffee table with a small white note nestled inside. I pick up the card and turn it over to find a handwritten note from Kenzie.
Drew, We missed you! Remember you’re not alone. You’ll always have us, and you’ll always have Ash. She may not answer your messages, but I do know she’s answering emails.
Checking Lana’s old bedroom, I’m grateful that Harris followed through on his promise to remove any sign of Lana’s existence from my home. The only thing that she has left me with is an ass-load of baggage and regrets, both of which have been weighing heavily on my mind, both of which threaten to tear me down and rip me apart.
After walking down the hallway, I stop in the doorway to Travis’s old room, staring blankly at the white wooden door and taking a slow, deep breath. Just rip off the Band-Aid, Drew.
I stand in the middle of the room, turning around in a slow circle, taking in the sky-blue walls I’d painted on the weekends before he was born, the wood panel floors I’d sanded, polished and oiled late into the night for a week after work.
Now, this room is as empty as my heart and serves as a painful reminder of what I thought I had, and what I’ve now lost.
Just when I thought I couldn’t hit a new low, life decides to come out swinging and kick me down, this time in the form of a solitary white baby sock lying on the ground. I stand there staring at it, pressure building in my head, threatening to explode and bury me whole. It’s something so small, seemingly inconsequential, yet signifying one of the most important people I’ve lost.
My knees give out from under me, and I stumble back, my body crumbling down to the floor as I slide down the wall. Sitting there, I stare at that small piece of cotton for what seems like forever, my eyes burning from the strain, my head pounding, my slumped shoulders heavy, pulling me down.
I remember the last time I thought I’d reached rock bottom. It was after Millen’s canceled wedding to Lana when I stood up for my best friend and stopped him from making the biggest mistake of his life.
“I’m drowning, Ash.”
“That’s okay, Drew because I’m here to hold you up.”
I wish Ash were here to hold me up because the weight I’m carrying feels so heavy, the burden back-breaking, the pain debilitating.
Sitting there, I bend forward and lay my head on my arms as the first tear falls, soon followed by another, and another, and I don’t try to stop them or swipe them away. I let them pour out, hoping that it’ll cleanse me. When I think they’ve all been let out, a new wave of burning ache rolls through me as I wonder when the hits will stop. Two months I’ve been running away from everything my life has now come to. The drinking was to numb the pain, but it never made me forget. I’ve avoided my home—a house I always hoped I’d raise my children in with Ash—because I thought the old adage of “out of sight, out of mind” would ring true. It didn’t.
My first heartbreak was the loss of my mom. The next, the day I realized Ash had lost hope and left Boston. The last, finding out my son was nothing more than a pawn in Lana’s sick game, and even though I was the only father he had ever known, I had to give him away. He has a mother who could not care less, and who knows who his father is. There’s probably a man out there who doesn’t even know he has a son.
“I loved you. I’m still in love with you. I always will be. I don’t think I’ve ever stopped loving you.”
Ash’s declaration of love in France, the same night I told her I loved her.
“I loved you the minute I saw you. I think I loved the idea of you before I ever met you. You are the one constant in my life I never wanted to lose, and when I did, I was lost—until five minutes ago when you knocked on my door.”
The first time I said the three words she’d been wanting to hear since the day we met.
“I’m lost now, Ash,” I whisper hoarsely to the empty room, daylight no longer streaming through the blinds, dark shadows lengthening along the floor.
With my back against the wall—in all the ways it could be—I have a choice to make. I can sit and wallow and let Lana win, let the weight anchor me to this floor until I can no longer move, or I can ask for help.
After sitting there for three hours, today’s breakdown has made me realize I’m not okay, and without help, I may never get to a place where I can be again. Acknowledging I’m caught in a swirling downward spiral and unable to see a way out is the first step. One of many I’ll need to take to get my life back on track. One thing is for certain: something about this breakdown has lit a fire deep inside me. I’m not going to let Lana fucking Mason destroy everything I’ve worked hard for and rip the woman I love away from me.
Pushing myself up, I stand straight, my vision clearing as I meet my eyes in the mirror still hanging on the wall opposite me. I look wrecked, but there’s something different there too. Where there was resignation, there’s a flash of determination. A new plan forms in my mind, something I should’ve done a long time ago. Better late than never.
I’m going to work on myself first, then work on finding Ash and making her mine, once and for all.
The rebirth of Drew Peters. I kind of like the sound of that.
Drew
At first, I was numb. I didn’t want to feel anything because I was feeling too much. Everything that has happened, everything that I’ve done, everyone I’ve lost—all of it was weighing heavily on my mind and my heart, and I knew the only way I’d ever lighten that burden and start making resolutions for myself was to talk to someone.
Leaving Travis was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life. I never wanted to be a father who abandoned his son and through her warped manipulation and scheming, Lana made me do that exact thing.
My new therapist, Derek, who I’ve seen a few times so far, suggested part of my guilt with Travis could stem from unresolved issues with my father and childhood. A week after he said that, I called my father.
A knock at the door brings step two of the evolution of Drew Peters in the form of my father. The man may have been out of my life for the first twenty y
ears of it, but I’ve been holding him at arm’s length the rest of the time. I haven’t fully let him in because—in my mind—my mom took the first shift up until her death when I was sixteen. In college, I met Millen, and his family adopted me like I was one of their own, and Ash… well, she became my everything.
I know it’s not necessarily his fault that he isn’t a part of my life.
His shock at seeing his grown son cry is unexpected. More so, the fact he comes around the table, sits down on the couch beside me, wraps his arm around my shoulders, and tells me whatever it is, it’ll be okay. In that moment, it’s exactly what I needed my father to say.
This is the same man who has been there before. He’d been forced to make an impossible choice between two women he loved in very different ways for different reasons, both sides with children involved. He had children with his wife but didn’t know about me. We’ll never know whether that would’ve changed what happened.
“I may have made a decision when pressed, Drew, but to this day I can’t say whether it was right or wrong.”
“At some stage, we’ve got to stop living in the past and focus on the future. It’s something my therapist has been drilling into me since I started seeing him.”
“He sounds like a wise man,” my father says.
I look up from my hands to meet his eyes. “I’ve made so many mistakes.”
He regards me for a few moments, his eyes roaming my face, his expression soft. “Yet none of them are unforgivable. Despite everything you’ve told me, your family—Millen, Ash, and their parents—all of them have stood by you. They were there for you when no one else was, and for all the mistakes you say you’ve made, I know you’re just as loyal as they are. That’s how your mother raised you, and that’s how the Ross family continued to raise you once she was gone.”