Long Road Home

by Stacey Lynn

  And shit. I should have peeked.

  “Are you freaking kidding me?” Rebecca Marx shouted right in my face.

  God, I couldn’t escape them. What next? His mom would be right behind probably, threatening me and trying to get me to take off like she’d always done.

  My heart raced at Indy500 speeds and I blocked her way from getting inside. Rebecca was a couple years older than Jordan. The girls in her grade had been some of the meanest to me. Rebecca didn’t participate much, but she still made it clear she thought I was trash and not good enough for her brother. She’d also had no problems standing by and letting their torture happen. When Jordan and I started dating she’d stopped some of it, but only because it looked bad for Jordan. I was pretty certain the day I disappeared she and her mom threw one helluva celebration party.

  The last thing I needed was Rebecca showing up at my door screaming in my face.

  “He has a son? And you never told him? And you think you can bring him back here without letting any of us know and what? You’re going to steal off into the night again and not give my brother a chance to know his son? Do you know what he’s going to do when he finds out?”

  “Jesus, Rebecca,” I whispered. I whipped my head in the direction of the stairs and cringed. She had to be shouting louder than Toby’s music. “Can you stop screaming?”

  “Answer me!”

  “How do you know?” She hadn’t been at the funeral. But shit… blood rushed from my face, chilling me to my bones. “Jordan—”

  “He doesn’t know. I figured it out. He took a picture of your kid walking away from him. Only Jordan would be dumb enough to not realize that kid looks almost exactly like him.”

  I stepped forward, pushing her back onto the porch and I closed the door behind me. Toby didn’t need to hear this. Not before I talked to him. “Did you tell him?”

  Rebecca had always been beautiful. All the Marxs were with their jet black hair, but where Jordan had these eyes that were so light blue they sometimes sparkled like glass, Rebecca’s were almost as black as her hair.

  When she glared at me, like she did now, it was frightening. Her lip curled. “Not yet. But you’re going to or I will.”

  “I know.” She opened her mouth, but I held up my palm. “I will, but I have to talk to Toby first.”

  Tears filled her eyes and her chin wobbled. The sweetness of the look on her face almost made me cry. Damn it. I had royally screwed all of this up. “Toby? Toby is my nephew’s name?”

  Shit. Her gaze went to the windows upstairs like she was searching for a glimpse of him and came back to mine. Her chin wobbled stronger. “I have a nephew.”

  “Tobias Jordan,” I said, my own tears clogging my throat. “His friends call him Toby.” Sometimes TJ, but that wasn’t as common.

  Her mouth formed the words, but no sound came out.

  “Listen, Rebecca. I’m sorry. And I’ll make this right somehow. But I need to explain it to Toby first and see what he wants before I talk to Jordan. Can you give me some time?”

  All emotion she showed evaporated in a blink. “He’ll want his family. Or at least he better, Destiny, because if I find out you took off with him again and are going to hide him from us, you are mistaken.”

  “Rebecca—”

  She turned on her heels, holding up her hand. “You can have until tomorrow, but then I’m telling Jordan.”

  She ran down the driveway, hopped into a silver truck and took off.

  Damn it, damn it, damn it.

  The door behind me opened and Toby glared at me. He was shooting daggers out of icy eyes exactly like his father did earlier.

  I pressed the palms of my hands to my forehead and groaned.

  “Who was that?”

  It was time. Do or die. Sink or swim. Time to completely blow up my precious son’s little life. Putting the final nail in my coffin where I unequivocally earned the title of Worst Mom in the World seemed like a fun way to end the worst day ever.

  “Let’s go inside,” I said, my shoulders falling with the weight of everything that was bound to come at us. I pulled open the screen door. “I’ll explain everything.”

  Toby’s gaze went behind me. “Who was that woman?”

  Several moments passed.

  God give me strength and not have him run upstairs and slam his door again.

  “That was Jordan’s sister.” My voice was so soft I barely heard myself. His icy glare slid to me and his jaw tightened. “That was Rebecca. Your aunt. Can we go sit down and talk?”

  Four

  Destiny

  * * *

  “I never meant for you to find out this way.” I slid onto the couch where Toby curled up into one corner, knees to chest, chin on his knees. I took the opposite corner, crossed one leg, foot under my knee, and faced him.

  “I used to ask about him.”

  For years. Until he turned eight. I thought he’d accepted his dad wasn’t in his life and that was it.

  What a fool I was.

  “To explain what happened, I need to go back to the beginning.” And how did I explain it all to a ten-year-old boy so he understood when I was beginning to doubt I even understood what I’d done? Tillie was wrong all those years. I wasn’t strong. I didn’t have the strength my mom lacked. I was just like her…with fast feet when life got tough.

  “You know Grandma Tillie raised me, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, well, my mom was on drugs. Big time. From what I know, from Tillie and people around town, the story goes that Mom buckled me into my car seat when I was six months old, set a pile of diapers next to me, a can of formula, and then…she disappeared. The next morning, when I was screaming my head off and had been for hours, someone finally called the cops.” I continued the story. The taunting. The teasing. Name-calling. White trash. Junkie. Druggie daughter. Some kids even called me trashcan kid because I’d essentially been thrown to the curb. I told Toby everything, crying when it got too hard. Holding him when he cried for me, even though he was still so mad at me. I told him about meeting Jordan. How while Jordan always tried to protect me, things got worse after we were together. “His family is loved in this town, honey. Everyone loved him. And no one, not a single person, even Tillie, although I think she changed her mind at some point, wanted us together.”

  I told him about the baseball scholarship. That Carlton practically threw him a parade when he signed his full-ride to KU.

  “I was going to follow him. We had it all planned. And then I got pregnant.”

  “And what?” Toby asked. “He didn’t want it?” He flinched and swiped his face. “He didn’t want me?”

  “No.” I squeezed him in my arms as my boy, my baby but too large for my lap, burrowed into me. “He would have wanted you. I swear it, had I told him…I swear Toby, he would have loved you.”

  “You never told him?” His hands swiped his cheeks and those blue eyes were filled with so much pain my entire body ached. “He didn’t know?”

  He tried to shove off me, but I held him tighter. He had to understand but how could he? The kid was ten. “He would have given up everything Toby. He wouldn’t have gone to school. He would have given up his dreams and I didn’t want that. We…you and I…if he had stayed for us, we would have been hated in this town. I didn’t want that for you.”

  He pushed off me again and I let him go. My boy paced back and forth, crying, hands fisting and flexing and spun to me.

  “It was wrong.” I sniffed back more tears. “It was wrong of me, I know that. I knew it then. But I was a teenager and all I saw in my life was being this despised and hated woman who made the golden boy of Carlton give up his dreams and then I kept picturing you and I hadn’t even met you yet, but I loved you with every fiber of my being. I wanted to protect you from the same life I had growing up. I wanted better for you. I swear it. I didn’t do it to lie to Jordan or hide you from him, I did it to protect you.”

  I rushed everything out so he
heard it all, even if he couldn’t take it all in, but even then the lie was thick on my tongue.

  I’d had every intention of hiding him from Jordan, especially once he hit the Majors. I watched him sign for the Rockies on Draft Signing Day, right after his college graduation.

  Then I forced myself to never pay attention to his name again. I gave him that. I gave Jordan the ability to follow his dreams without any baggage following behind him. I went to college and made a career for myself. And I gave Toby a really, freaking great life.

  I’d just hidden him from his dad, who would have always been as proud of him as I was.

  Toby stood in front of me, jaw jutted out, black brows furrowed, his face pinched up in a way I knew in ten years he’d be even more handsome than his dad always was. “I want to meet him. I want to know him.”

  “I know.” I nodded fiercely. “You will. I’ll figure out how to set that up as soon as possible.”

  By tomorrow. Before Rebecca spilled my secrets all over town.

  His chin wobbled again, and that fiery determination turned sour. “What if…will he like me?”

  Oh God. My heart. My stupid, selfish, breaking heart. “Yes.” I reached for him and pulled him to my lap. His knees slammed into my thighs and his shoulder lodged into mine. “Yes. I swear it. He will love you. I promise that too.”

  “You lied to me.” He cried into my shoulder. My shirt was soaked with tears I had caused.

  Never was I more disappointed in myself. “I will never do it again. I promise that, too.”

  I held him until his tears dried and his body went lax in my arms and pushed him off me. “I think upstairs, somewhere in my old room is a box I hid. It’s filled with everything I had of Jordan when we were together. Would you like to see it?”

  He pressed his lips together, fought another chin quiver and nodded.

  * * *

  “He played baseball in college? He was that good?”

  The contents of that box I’d had was easy to find. It was a shoebox I’d started filling, beginning with a movie stub from our very first date to see Iron Man. I also had the dried flowers from the first homecoming dance he took me to, sealed in a small Ziploc bag. It contained everything from snippets of Jordan playing baseball, every photo of us I’d ever taken. Before I’d taken off, I’d cleaned out my room of every memory of him and shoved everything into the small, but bursting at the seams, box.

  Now it was littered all over the coffee table in the living room and Toby was going through each photo, running his finger along the face of his dad.

  “Yeah,” I said, doing my best to avoid the onslaught of emotions this trip down memory lane caused. God, I’d loved the boy in the photos so fiercely. Loved him enough to think denying him one of the greatest gifts was actually the best thing for him. For us.

  What would have happened had I not run?

  It was a question I asked myself a million times over the years.

  “You should Google him,” I said. “He played for the Rockies.”

  “Seriously?” Toby’s brows shot up in surprise. “My dad hit the big time?”

  Dad. That one word. It was the first time he’d said it and he didn’t hesitate. How could I have done this to him? To both of them?

  “I know he was drafted to them. I don’t know what happened after that. But I really didn’t expect to see him here.”

  Why was he here? What had happened? Seemed I had some googling of my own to do. Like find a way to reach him, for one, but worst-case scenario, and it was definitely the worst, I could call Rebecca in the morning.

  “That’s crazy cool.” Toby’s voice went soft along with his gaze and he flipped through more baseball clippings. “Do you think that’s why I’m so good at basketball?”

  I sniffed back more tears. “Well, we know you didn’t get your athleticism from me,” I teased, trying to lighten the mood a little bit.

  “Yeah.” He grinned at me. “You can’t dribble for anything.”

  My smile died. “I’m sure that he has given you a thousand awesome things that make you, you. Your athletic talent is definitely one of them, but it’s not the best.”

  His finger ran gently over the photo and his chin wobbled. “I look like him.”

  “And you have his really big, kind heart.” Lord knew he didn’t get that from me either. Not when the last decade of my life had been filled with selfishness. I shook off the thought. “Listen, kiddo. It’s late and this has been one heckuva long day. How about we pack it in and figure out the rest tomorrow?”

  He bit his bottom lip and looked back to the photos. “Can I look at this a little bit longer? I can do it in my room.”

  “Yeah.” I shoved a stack of photos into a pile and dropped them in the box. “You can look as long as you need to.”

  He nodded and slid out a photo that made my heart stutter. Fourth of July Parade. Jordan had been given his own parade float for not only making all-state baseball honors four years in a row but for signing his full-ride. The float was decked out in KU red and blue, their bird mascot at the helm of the float. He’d insisted I ride in it with him, because where we were going, we were doing it together. By then, people in town had gotten used to us, but they never once changed their opinions about hating it.

  But I couldn’t say no to Jordan even though I hadn’t wanted to be there. In the photo, Jordan had one arm around me, low on my waist, holding my front to his side. His other arm was lifted into the air, waving and smiling, and I had my head tilted back. I was smiling up at him like he was my hero, knowing I was leaving and walking away. In that moment, during that parade, I let him hold me as much as he wanted, searing that day into my mind because I knew it’d be the last time I saw him. The last time he held me. Later that afternoon we’d gotten into a rip-roaring fight I started, and two days later I was gone.

  “You were really pretty too, Mom.”

  I winked at Toby. “I was?”

  His grin wobbled. “Well, you’re not bad now. Just old.”

  I flung a pillow at him and he laughed. Then I helped him pick up the mess we’d made, and we headed upstairs. Once he was in bed and I kissed him goodnight, I went to my own room and crashed into bed, hoping like hell I’d be able to fix the other mess I’d made, too.

  Five

  Jordan

  * * *

  I slept like shit. I couldn’t even blame it on the four beers I had before deciding getting plastered because my high school girlfriend was back in town was the lamest thing I could do.

  I’d stopped early enough to spend a few more hours hanging out with Ryan and Cooper before taking off. At some point, Rebecca had disappeared, some lame excuse about needing more wine. I didn’t question it even though she had a stocked wine fridge in her kitchen island. My sister was crazy.

  Still, she’d returned less than an hour later with two bottles of wine and tears in her eyes which she refused to talk about.

  I spent the rest of the night quiet, thinking…regretting how I’d treated Destiny at the funeral.

  I’d been a dick to her in front of her son, and I didn’t actually like being a dick to people.

  By the time I left the ranch, it was too late to do anything but head home where I proceeded to toss and turn until four o’clock in the morning before giving up the ghost and getting out of bed.

  I worked out. Went to the Golf Resort where I spent two more hours pretending to do paperwork when I gave that up, too.

  The perks of being your own boss and owning everything? I could do whatever the hell I wanted. I told Alicia, my assistant, to forward any emergency calls to me, but other than that, I was taking the day off.

  She’d sputtered at me, confused. I worked every day. All hours. My schedule wasn’t set, and I fucking loved my job, so I was almost always on the resort in some capacity, even if it was playing a round of golf every once in a while. I’d picked it up in college one summer and found I liked the frustrating as hell sport.

  Now, I was
still in my suit, the jacket flung over the backseat in my SUV, and my hands were wrapped around the steering wheel.

  It was almost nine o’clock in the morning as I pulled up to Tillie’s. The boy I saw yesterday was in the driveway, dribbling a basketball and wearing bright blue Beats-looking type headphones on his head. He wove the ball between his legs and pretended to shoot it above the garage door where it’d slam against the wood siding before jumping for a rebound.

  The kid was good. Moved smoothly, confidently. Had no idea how old he was, but the graceful way he moved the ball around, fancy footwork included, grabbed hold of me. I couldn’t pull my eyes off him. It was several shots later when he snagged the faux-rebound, tucked the ball under his arm and turned. He slid the headphones off his head to the back of his neck and looked directly at me staring at him from my Escalade—like he knew I’d been there all along.

  Damn. He was a good-looking kid. I searched him for a hint of Destiny but couldn’t find much. He was her kid. Wasn’t he?

  He stared at me, biting his lip. I couldn’t exactly peel out of there without looking like some creepy stalker so with his eyes still on me, I hauled my ass out of my SUV and shut the door.

  “You’re good,” I said, walking up to him. As I got closer, his shoulders went back, and his chin lifted.

  “I’m okay.” His chin quivered as he spoke and then that lip went back into his teeth like he was trying not to cry.

  I ignored it. Not to be a dick, but the kid had spent the day at his great-grandmother’s funeral the day before. Apparently he knew her.

  “Your mom inside?”

  Mom. I’d rolled that word inside my brain for hours last night. Destiny was a mom. It sparked a thousand thoughts, a hundred memories of talking to her about kids we’d have. It meant she’d been with other men. Not that I was a saint. But Destiny had been mine. I was her first. And she’d made me work for it for well over a year before she gave me that. At one point when my thoughts had drifted to how many men she’d been with since me…I’d fought the urge to slam my fist into a wall.