Long Road Home

by Stacey Lynn

  “I don’t—”

  Oh no. She’d started it. We were doing this.

  “Refused to leave for school. Took Dad manhandling me into the truck to get me to go. No way in hell was I leaving town with you gone. I figured you got scared of college or whatever and after I left you’d return. Was so damn sure of it. I came home every damn weekend. Drove by Tillie’s so often I was sure she was gonna call the cops on me for stalking her.”

  “I didn’t think—”

  “I know you didn’t.” I didn’t even know what she was going to say, but I knew it would be wrong. She didn’t think I loved her enough. She didn’t think I could handle it. She didn’t think we could do it. She just didn’t fucking think.

  “I was eighteen and had my life exactly how I wanted it, Destiny. I knew exactly everything we’d do. All those nights we spent talking about it, dreaming of it, of traveling and families and settling wherever I played ball, all that shit…I wanted it. I was a kid, we were kids, but I’d found everything I’d ever wanted right here in Carlton. You were the one who didn’t trust it enough.”

  Her chin shook, and tears spilled down her cheeks. She shook her head and turned back to the course. I stopped her with my hand on her jaw and forced her to meet my gaze.

  I was tearing her up.

  She totally deserved it.

  She’d done it to me for a decade, ruined me as a kid.

  She’d done that, and she needed to hear the rest.

  “It was my twenty-first birthday before I ever touched another girl,” I said, my voice low. My body trembled with the memory of that disaster. She jerked like I slapped her, but I kept my hand on her, forced her to listen to me. To really, finally fucking see how I was still so damn in love with her, she was still, all I’d ever need. “Teammates took me to a bar, got me wasted. They’d ribbed me for years for not taking what was easily offered to me on campus. Lived with them in an apartment, six of us in a three bedroom and there was always a girl skittering out of there in the morning. And that night I was so damn drunk, so damn tired of still not getting you out of my head I found some girl at a bar, took her back to my place, and when I came, buried deep inside a girl who looked so similar to you she was the only girl in the bar who’d had a chance of making my dick hard, I came, groaning your fucking name.”

  She flinched and squeezed her eyes closed.

  What an asshole I’d been.

  It’d make me more pathetic if I admitted I still had that damn note folded and tucked away in a drawer in my closet where I kept my watches.

  I’d never had a chance at getting over her. Or I’d never tried.

  Maybe she was the reason I came back to this damn place after all.

  Fifteen

  Destiny

  * * *

  His words were vile. And beautiful. Strung so tight with truths I had never allowed myself to see because I was so damn scared what everyone said about me was true, I couldn’t see past the length of my nose.

  Rebecca had been exactly right earlier.

  I’d been a selfish, anxious girl filled with fear instead of all the confidence Tillie tried to instill. She’d worked so damn hard on it and until Rebecca slapped me with truths I never saw earlier, and Jordan reinforced it all now, two things hit me like a slap upside the head.

  I wasn’t that girl anymore. I hadn’t been that girl for a long time. Moving to Houston at eighteen, living with Tillie’s sister. Graduating college, starting my own career all while being a single mom to a little boy had forced me to grow up. It had forced me to be strong.

  And I still loved Jordan Marx with every single breath I took.

  I could barely process everything he was saying about his twenty-first birthday to respond quick enough, but it turned out unnecessary.

  Jordan had more to say. With his hand on my face, his thumb swiped my cheek. A delicious, warm shiver slid from my throat straight to the tops of my thighs where a need that had been so unfilled for so long sparked to life.

  Oh God. He was turning me on and he still looked like he wanted to rip my head off.

  “We’ve got shit to work through Destiny. A dumpster load of garbage we need to purge between us, but I know what’s at the bottom. I know what we had ran deeper than all that and I might be the biggest idiot of all time, the dumbest man in history to walk the Earth, but I still think what we had is worth the effort to see if we can get back there. I need you to believe that this time.”

  The ground shook beneath my feet and I swayed, my body shaking with fear and excitement. Had he really said that?

  He had.

  I’d still barely been able to get a word out and he’d thrown out everything he wanted…and what he wanted was me.

  I licked my lips to wet them. They’d gone as dry as the Sahara. My chest ached from the harsh breaths it took to prevent me from hyperventilating. All of this was too fast. Too soon.

  His icy eyes dropped to my lips, and his lips curled up at the edges. I braced my hand on his arm, curling around his forearm.

  It was the first time in a decade I reached for him. Where I needed him to steady me and like all those years before, he took that. He bore my weight as my head fell forward, collapsing against his chest, larger than it used to be, just as firm in his resolve to give me everything he knew I needed.

  “You hate me,” I muttered. “And you should. And all of this…”

  “Is scary as fuck. I know that. And yet I’m still here, throwing myself at your feet asking you not to run this time.”

  “Why?” If he hadn’t deserved better a decade ago, he definitely did now. “I’ve done so many things.”

  “Yeah. Bad things. We both know it. But tonight, I sat at my kitchen table with my entire fucking family, eating dinner, laughing, grinning, and getting in each other’s faces and it was beautiful. And I wouldn’t have had that without you, so I’m taking it.”

  A week ago, I never thought I’d come home. And now I was, and he was so damn strong, so damn incredible. It was too much.

  “I don’t know what to say,” I finally admitted.

  He had one hand curled around the back of my neck. His other rose and cupped my cheek, lifting me off his chest until I was looking directly at him. So beautiful. So strong. So determined. So confident. Jordan embodied everything I wanted to be, and it was the first time when he looked at me, I knew without a doubt when he saw me…he did see those things.

  Tears spilled down my cheeks. “I want you to forgive me.”

  “I’ll get there.” His assurance was beautiful. No hint of hesitation, no promise he couldn’t give me now. No lie he’d already done so.

  “Is this…you mentioned your family. Is all of this because you just want Toby?”

  And he’d take me because I came with him. I had no doubt he was a good enough man he could do that, weave me into his life, be a dad. Hell, he could even spend his life with me out of obligation and make it a good one, but that wasn’t fair to any of us either.

  “The next time you say something that stupid, Destiny, I’m going to haul you over my lap and spank you for it.”

  All that pulsing south of my waist became a full-blown throb. “What?”

  “You heard me. Now, I got games to play with my boy. You going to come join us or hang out down here?”

  A night alone to hang out in Jordan’s house like I belonged in it? Sounded beautiful.

  I still wanted to be with them more.

  “I’ll be up in a few minutes.”

  His thumb swiped my cheek again and his eyes dropped to my mouth. That hand on the back of my neck flexed, tightening his grip and he finally blew out a breath. “Take all the time you need.”

  He stepped back and left. But his unsaid words were as loud as his spoken ones.

  Take all the time you need to get used to this.

  Take all the time you need to decide.

  Take all the time you need…because I’m not going anywhere.

  * * *

&nbs
p; I ended up following Jordan upstairs that night and I watched the two of them play video games for hours until I more than gently suggested it was time for Toby and me to get home. At the door to Jordan’s house, there was that moment…that awkward moment where something sweet and hopeful, perhaps something playful could be said.

  Instead, all I managed was a quiet and strange, “Thanks for dinner. It was a lovely evening,” as I brushed past Jordan, his hand on the doorframe giving me no room to pass him without brushing my chest against his.

  Based on the smirk he gave me, chuckling at how very, not-adorably awkward I was making everything, he’d totally planned for that to happen.

  “Yeah, lovely,” was all he’d said, the edges of his full light pink lips tilting slowly up at the corners.

  It was now two days later, and I’d thought of those lips more than humanly healthy.

  I thought of them on my mouth, my neck, that spot on my shoulder he once found that drove me crazy. For the last forty-eight hours I was a walking zombie, but instead of needing brains for survival, I was surviving on memories of Jordan’s mouth and his hands and his body.

  It was my fuel. And for the first time in a decade, there was a very real possibility it might not be a fantasy.

  It could potentially be reality.

  That was terrifying.

  I couldn’t screw it up again. I couldn’t.

  Another vision of Jordan, this time younger, hit me and I closed my eyes.

  His hands shook as they pressed to my sides. We were on his ranch, hidden by rocks and boulders down by the creek and we’d been kissing like we’d been doing for weeks…but this…this was something else. His hands trembled as they slid closer to my hips, farther up, grazing beneath my breasts that changed when he kissed me so perfectly.

  He asked me if it was okay, right before pressing up my shirt to expose my stomach and his head bent, lips brushed my navel.

  The pleasure had been so intense, that initial sting I didn’t know was arousal. Everything inside of me sparked and sizzled in such a beautiful, “this must be what sex feels like,” sort of way.

  I’d learn months later how much more incredible actual sex was.

  “Shit,” I mumbled. I slammed my laptop closed. Work was impossible with Jordan on my brain. If I kept working on a website I was creating, there was a too real possibility the logo I was working on for a law firm would include a giant penis.

  I’d barely managed to finish anything all day on it. Enough was enough. Forcing my creativity to happen when I wasn’t only stuck on Jordan’s lips and skills was bad enough.

  The biggest distraction was when he’d been on his back deck and so plainly stated, “I’ll get there.” So surely spoken, not a waver in his words or the focus in his eyes.

  Almost like it was a done deal.

  A girl could hope. But that still sent me back to the fact that this was my breach to heal and repair and I only had weeks to get moving.

  Procrastinating or running wasn’t an option this time.

  “Hey, Toby!” I shouted, pushing away from where I’d set up my makeshift office at the dining table. “Let’s go get some food.”

  No response came from him which meant he had his headphones on, probably gaming with friends back home.

  I headed up there and knocked on his room. His voice came through the door and I waited a beat and knocked again, and when he still didn’t answer, I opened it.

  I’d been right. He was tucked at his computer screen, game controller in his hand, gaming headphones on his head shouting, “Get ‘em! Kill ‘em! Oh man, he got you.”

  I waved my hands to get his attention and his eyes lifted. His body jolted at the surprise of seeing his mom in his room.

  “Yeah?” he asked, thumbs still wildly flew on the controller and his eyes were on the screen.

  I shouted so he’d hear me. “Close it up! We’re headed to the store! And I need to talk to you!”

  He rolled his eyes and nodded.

  Awesome. Sullen pre-teen mid-afternoon.

  We headed out to the grocery store, throwing every food known to man and boy alike into the cart. I’d mastered the ability before the age of seven to keep my eyes focused straight ahead, ignoring everyone around me. I didn’t have to look at them to know they’d be staring at me with that look of disgust or pity in their eyes.

  But what if, like Jordan said, or Rebecca implied, that some of that disdain for who I was, who I would grow up to be, had all been in my head?

  Had I spent my entire life carrying my own shame and embarrassment and assuming everyone else saw me through that same, broken lens?

  “Can I get this?” Toby asked, breaking me out of my wandering epiphany. He was holding a box of packaged cookies, something we never ate.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  His eyes went wide. “Really?”

  “Yeah.” I shoved his head playfully, chuckling. Sometimes my kid looked at me like I was an alien and who could blame him? “Sure, kiddo. Throw them in. Enjoy the junk while I allow it.”

  For his part, he threw in three packages, grinning. “Might as well take advantage.”

  “Whatever. Let’s go look at the vegetables.”

  “You’re weird, Mom.”

  Didn’t I know it.

  We were picking through the fresh produce when it happened. When I felt someone’s gaze on me, boring into my temples, that prickle at the base of my neck that told me someone was looking. It’d happened more than once since I came back.

  I tossed another apple into the bag, spun it closed and gathered whatever minuscule backbone I had.

  As I looked up, my chest released, and I felt my lips drift up into a tentative smile. “Hi, Mrs. Whitman.”

  She had been friends with Tillie. Not close, but close enough I knew she’d miss her. As far as I knew, the woman in front of me, walking toward us with her eyes glued to Toby, had never spoken an unkind word in her life.

  “Hello there, Destiny,” she said, still smiling down at Toby. “How are you doing?”

  “Okay. You?”

  That looseness in my chest tightened as her aging smile grew and she lifted her head. God. She knew. She and her husband, and their entire family had been neighbors to the Marxs since what seemed like before time.

  “Mrs. Whitman—” I started to say, a warning in my tone.

  She shook her head. “Gloria, child. You’re old enough to call me that now.” She looked back to Toby and that grin on her sweet face widened exponentially. “And you, you handsome boy, you look exactly like your father.”

  Toby’s brows shot up and as if he knew, understood the fact someone else had noticed something only I had spoken to him, he shifted toward me.

  “Mom?”

  “Mrs. Whit—”

  “Gloria.” She continued looking at Toby. Not in an inspecting way, although it felt a bit awkward, but she looked at him like a year’s worth of memories were flashing in her mind’s eye. She shook her head and looked back to me.

  “Don’t lie, child. We may not be in the walls of a sacred church, but God still hears.”

  I had never actually thought God had ever heard anything I’d prayed, begged, or pleaded for, but you didn’t correct Mrs. Whitman in the matters of God and church.

  “I know who his father is,” I said quietly. “And so does Toby. You’re just the first to point it out so abruptly.”

  “Too old to beat around the bush. This the reason for Rebecca’s party tomorrow night? I’m here buying more cherries for my pie.”

  Party? Jordan warned me Rebecca could go overboard but inviting the Whitmans?

  “Uh. Maybe?”

  She laughed a twinkly, soft laugh and held out her hand to Toby. “I’m Mrs. Whitman, young man. Lived on the farm next door to the land your daddy grew up on. You’re a spittin’ image of him as a young boy, getting into all sorts of trouble. I’ve got a thousand memories about the shenanigans he used to pull. And I’m pleased, so very pleased to meet y
ou.”

  I pressed my hand to his shoulder, silently reminding him of his manners.

  He looked at me, then at Mrs. Whitman, then her hand. He slid his hand into her waiting one, and my heart almost burst in a thousand fragile pieces as he asked, “Will you tell them to me?”

  Her other hand came out and covered his, almost hugging his hand like I so desperately wanted to hug him. Not in the store, though. I’d wait until later.

  “I’ll tell you all the ones my senile mind can remember. I promise. Tomorrow?”

  She glanced at me for confirmation.

  I sniffed away tears and nodded. “Tomorrow. Thank you.”

  She stepped back, dropping Toby’s hand as she moved to her cart. “Have a blessed day you two. And I expect to see you sitting in church sometime.”

  We waited until she’d moved down another section and Toby turned to me, eyes bright and wet while wearing a frown. “Do we have to do that?”

  “No.” I laughed and pulled him to me briefly, forcefully, but quick enough he couldn’t get embarrassed.

  “Is everyone coming because they know about me?”

  Yeah, probably. I didn’t know if he could handle that. I mentally scratched a call to Jordan onto my list of things to do to double-check.

  But then another thought popped into my head. One that was terrifying despite the thrill of excitement it slid down my back. One that could be better than a phone call.

  “I’ll check,” I said. “Come on. Let’s finish this up, I have an idea for something else we can do.”

  Sixteen

  Jordan

  * * *

  Running a business was no fucking joke. When I first started the Carlton Resort and Spa I assumed at some point, I’d be able to spend most of the time on the course, or talking up members at the restaurant. Instead, I spent most of the days dealing with vendors falling through on previously made deals and a management staff with little spine to force it through. Don’t get me wrong, my employees, all of them were fantastic people. Good-hearted, strong working Midwest American grit and bone. That didn’t mean they had guts when it came to standing up to someone deciding to jack our costs fifteen percent only a few months after signing on the dotted line.