by Jessie Lane
Pushing him back far enough to look into his face, “Man rule number one, what the women don’t know, won’t hurt them.”
Seth burst out laughing as Belle gave a huff of frustration.
Annabelle
The hotel room door closed behind us as Seth and I walked towards my truck in the parking lot. There was a full day of work ahead of me and I had to get Seth back to school. I’d pulled him out during his lunch so that he could talk to his father and so that I could arrange for Bobby to spend some time with him at our house tonight while I was working. He’d be late to his next class, but it was time well spent and it wasn’t like he was behind in any of his classes anyways. He’d managed to maintain an A average so far in school, which I considered a miracle since he had half of my DNA. The boy definitely took after his father not just in looks and athletics, but in the academic area as well.
We both climbed up in the truck, and neither of us said a word until Seth’s high school came into sight.
“I’ll always love you, Mom. No matter what.”
Boy, I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear that until he had given it to me. I felt the telltale pricks in the corners of my eyes that meant tears were threatening, and quickly squashed the urge to let them free. My emotional defenses had started crumbling the minute Bobby had walked back into my life and now I seriously needed to get my shit together. Walking through this world with your heart on your sleeve would get you nothing except a bucket load of misery, and who wanted to live life like that? There would always be room in my heart for my boy, though, and the reassurance that he was offering that he would always love me in return was a blessing I would never take advantage of.
Parking the truck in front of the school’s front entrance, I turned in my seat to face him. “Thank you, honey. I’ll always love you, too. I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you’re willing to forgive me for what I’ve done.”
He shook his head for a second before reaching across the seat to pull me into a tight hug. “You need to forgive yourself, Mom. I forgave you a long time ago. You did what you thought was the best for us and what kid wouldn’t be lucky to have a parent that did that for them? We’re going to find a way to work all of this out. I promise.”
Huffing a self-deprecated laugh, I told him, “Shouldn’t I be the one giving you promises here?”
Pulling back to look me in the face, he smiled. “Doesn’t matter who does it this time. All that matters is that we’ll get through this together.” Letting me go, he grabbed his book bag out of the backseat and started to open the door to get out.
“Don’t forget that it’ll be your dad who meets you at the house after football practice tonight. I’ve got to stay at work late.” I almost choke on the words. Now that Bobby was in his life I would have to get used to talking to Seth about his father. Somehow, it felt like I’d stumbled on a new form of torture having to refer to Bobby as ‘Dad’.
“Yeah, Mom, we made those plans like fifteen minutes ago. I haven’t forgotten them that fast. Give me a break.” Seth hopped out of the truck before I could give him a playful smack on the arm and jogged into the school without looking back.
I sat there marveling for a minute over his confidence that everything was going to be okay now that Bobby was in our lives. I only wished I had that same kind of confidence.
Chapter Thirteen
Bobby
I let myself into Belle’s house with the spare key that she’d given me. Seth would be home in a few minutes and I was looking forward to spending some time alone with him while Belle was working. Stepping into the dark house, I shut the front door behind me and started to walk forward to the kitchen so that I could turn a light on when movement in my peripheral vision at the dining room table stopped me. Turning to face the threat, I was surprised at who the unexpected intruder was. Teagan. Even in the dark, with nothing except the dim light from the just rising moon filtering through the sliding glass doors behind her, I could make out red hair pulled back neatly from her face. She was staring at me blankly, with no hint of shock at my presence here in Belle’s house, which meant one of two things. Either she knew I was here, or she was a master at hiding her emotions.
The fiery glow of a lit cigarette moved from where it had been hovering over its ash tray upwards to a feminine mouth where it then stopped so its owner could take a drag. As she exhaled her husky voice murmured, “Long time no see, Bobby.”
Somehow, I got the impression that this visit was no coincidence and she was far from happy to see me. Moving towards the kitchen, I turned on the light, went to the fridge, which was thankfully equipped with my drink of choice, grabbed two beers and then turned around, heading back to the dining room table. Setting the second unopened beer next to her already opened and half consumed one, I sat at the opposite end of the table from her. Scanning her from the top of her head to where her midsection disappeared underneath the table, I noted that the years had been good to her physically.
Same bright red hair pulled back in a severe bun at the nape of her neck. Her thin face with its high prominent cheekbones and lips that were so full they were almost too big for her face, told me that she might look like the same stick skinny girl that she’d been in Georgia, but she also might be a bit leaner and harder than she’d been before. It was hard to tell for sure, though, since she was wearing her Marine Corp cami’s and her oversized issued seabag was on the floor, still stuffed with her gear. That meant that she’d dropped whatever she was doing to come straight here when she’d presumably found out about me. Why would she feel the need to rush here to Texas to confront me? Looking for some kind of clue, I pulled my eyes from her seabag back to her face and looked her straight in the eye.
The rest of her face and body posture might be impassive, but the eyes gave it away. They were the same blue with green flecks, but they didn’t look as young as the rest of her. The shadows there told me that while the outer packaging of Teagan Robert’s might look damn good, on the inside, she’d seen too much and carried too many demons than could be exorcised. They also seemed to burn with a near fanatical intensity that said she meant business. Not a mild mannered let’s sit down and talk like reasonable adults business, but more like a if you so much as blink the wrong way I will bust a cap in your sorry ass business. Belle and Seth were her family and she wasn’t going to let anyone mess with her family.
There were two problems with her assumptions. For one, I wasn’t here to mess with them. On the contrary, I was here to claim them. For two, I wasn’t just anyone and I wouldn’t let her stand in the way of me obtaining what I considered mine. However, at the moment, Teagan Roberts looked like a junkyard dog at the end of her chain. That meant I was going to have to handle her with care in the hopes that she wouldn’t try to chew me up and spit me out while inadvertently ruining what I was working for here.
“Long time no see, Teagan. What exactly are you doing here?”
“Funny, that’s what I’ve come to ask you.”
There’s nothing like knowing your suspicions are right. The woman had traveled from God knew where to come warn me off her best friend. Looked like some things never changed. She’d done something very similar when I’d first started pursuing Belle in high school. Only she hadn’t shown up at my house unexpectedly to do it. Back then, she’d pulled me aside in the school’s hallway to let me know that if I hurt her best friend, she’d kick me in the balls so hard I’d be feeling them every time I tried to swallow my food for a week. Back then, I hadn’t taken her very seriously. I wouldn’t be making that mistake this go round.
“You might want to specify what exactly it is that you’re looking for here, Teagan. Do you want to know why I’m here in Texas? Or do you want to know why I’m here in Belle’s house?”
She took another slow drag off her cigarette. “Oh, I know why you’re in Texas. I want to know why you’re here in her house. I can honestly say that it’s the one place on God’s green earth that I never expected t
o see you at.”
Fury ignited inside of me. Of course she never expected to see me here. She’d helped Belle keep the secret of my son from me. Unlike Belle, her father was still very much alive and still in Sylvania. Not that I would expect her to have some kind of close relationship with him since he wasn’t much better than Belle’s father had been, but the point was, she had the means to get in touch with me or my family if she’d wanted to let me know about Seth. So why should she expect me here? I didn’t realize until this moment just how mad I was at Teagan, too. For helping Belle keep Seth from me over the years and maybe for smoking that damn cancer stick in front of me, too. Not that she would know that I was an ex-smoker and she was waving temptation in my face like a red cape at a bull, but that didn’t stop the irrational urge to blame her for doing it on purpose anyways.
Taking a long pull off my beer gave me a few seconds to calm down so I wouldn’t flip my shit on her. Starting a fight with Teagan wouldn’t help me get to where I wanted to be with Belle or Seth. It would be better to see if I could turn her into an ally than give into the urge to lash out for things that were in the past and couldn’t be changed.
Setting the beer down on the table, I answered the original question, “I’m here in this house because this is where my family lives. Now why are you here?”
Stubbing out her cigarette in the ashtray, she then spread her arms wide and gave a sarcastic smile. “I’m here because this is my family and I’ve always been welcome here. The same can’t be said for you.”
Tapping a finger on the side of my beer bottle I fired back, “They’ll always be your family, Teagan, I get that, but they’re my family, too. Now it’s my turn for a question. How would you know I was here since that would be classified information?”
The side of her mouth tipped up in a cat that ate the canary grin. “Funny thing about trying to plan a surprise when you’re coming home from overseas. Sometimes, you are the one who gets a surprise. I called a mutual friend of Belle’s and mine to see if they would pick me up from the airport only to be warned that Belle already had a surprise visitor here. You could say that this individual is extremely concerned as to Belle’s frame of mind about you showing up here in Texas and finding out about Seth. They urged me to get here as fast as possible. That’s why there’s practically still sand from Afghanistan on the bottom of my boots. I didn’t even have the time to change after we were released from duty.”
Through gritted teeth I snarled, “And who the hell is so concerned about my being here? The Sheriff Belle’s been fucking?”
“Now, now, Bobby. That green-eyed monster impression you’re doing doesn’t look too good on you. Charlie Jenkins is a good man. In fact, I was hoping one day Annabelle would give in to his many requests of a long term relationship. He’d be a good husband to her and a good father figure for Seth.”
I lost control of my temper and exploded. “Why the hell are you being such a bitch? I get that you’re mad on your friend’s behalf. I hurt her and you’re trying to protect her.” I waved a finger between the two of us. “You and I both know I’m not some dickhead scumbag like the two of you grew up with. So why are you bending over backwards to keep my family from me when I’ve just found them?”
Calmly, as if she didn’t care just how badly she’d pissed me off, Teagan took another cigarette out of her pack and lit it up. Fucking fantastic. She was going to be a goddamn chimney smoker in front of me. Once she’d taken a long inhale and blown it back out, she looked me dead in the face, as if she considered me no threat at all, and started moving those full lips of hers.
“I’ve got all kinds of patches from the service, you know. A patch that says I’m a proud Marine. A patch that says I’m a veteran. A patch that says I was there for Iraqi Freedom and a patch that says I’m there for Operation Enduring Freedom, but what I really need is a patch that says I was there for Operation BB-DB-AB”.
“Is there a chance you’re going to start to make some sense anytime soon?”
She kept going as if I hadn’t spoken at all, “You see, the beginning of that war was BB, or ‘Before Bobby.’ I was there to watch as a little girl the same age as me walked on eggshells around a father ten times as violent as mine; always careful of what she said or did. Hoping that one day he would wake up and love her like all the other fathers loved their little kids. Then, I watched her survive the crushing blow the day she turned into a teenager, her father once again did not get her so much as a fucking slice of cake, but instead came home and said now that she was old enough to be a whore like her mother and she should get out on the street and start paying their bills right before he knocked the ever living shit of her. Instead of completely crushing her spirit from having all her hopes and dreams of a real family brutally ended for her, she learned to buck-the-fuck up and do what she had to do to get by.”
These were all things I already knew about Belle’s life growing up. Frankly, I didn’t want to relive them and be reminded how someone so innocent, so goddamn beautiful all the way down clear to her soul, had suffered so needlessly. Why was Teagan bringing this shit up?
“I was still there when DB rolled around. Otherwise known as ‘During Bobby.’ For that period, I watched one of the strongest people I know do something that even I can’t do to this day. I watched her muster up the courage to love someone when she’d never been loved before in her life by anyone but me. I stood on the sidelines, scared as shit that you were playing some glorified high school prank on my best friend that would end up in her utter humiliation, wondering that if you were playing her, would she be able to survive getting her hopes up that someone could care about her before those dreams were smashed to pieces. You stayed around for two years, though, and it seemed like Annabelle’s dreams were coming true. It was the only thing I’d wished for in life. To have Annabelle finally have someone to fill those holes inside of her. You gave her that. Then, you took it away.”
Jesus. She was going for my jugular tonight.
Teagan took a deep breath and kept going as if she were playing a chess match instead of verbally tearing me into little pieces. “Which brings us to AB. ‘After Bobby.’ Thanks to you, I watched her become a shell of herself. Only this time, I wasn’t there for her because I was in boot camp. Why had I left my best friend alone so that I could go to boot camp?” She pointed a finger at me. “Because YOU promised me that she’d be taken care of. YOU told me that you loved her and she would never want for anything again; whether it be food, clothing or love. Then, YOU fucking left her behind like she was a piece of trash on the side of the road you couldn’t bother to pick up. So, even if I didn’t hate you for leaving her behind, I would still hate you on principal because I couldn’t be there for my best friend when she was hurting the most. Hell, I couldn’t even find her. If she hadn’t found a way to contact me while I was still in boot camp I wouldn’t have had any idea of how to find her. So excuse me if I think you’re worse than dog shit on the bottom of my shoe. You didn’t find your best friend a shadow of the person she used to be while also pregnant and worried about how she was going to take care of a baby all by herself. I, on the other hand, did.”
My rage boiled over so quickly that I saw red. It would be a miracle if my blood pressure was in any kind of normal range and not shot sky-high through the roof. “Now, wait just a damn minute! I didn’t know she was pregnant and if I had, I would have taken care of her and Seth.” Teagan opened her mouth to say something and I cut her off with a slash of my hand through the air in front of her. “Just shut it. I get that she’s the only family that matters to you, so I understand your need to protect her, but you don’t know the whole story; so you should keep your mouth shut ‘til you do.”
Snapping her jaw shut, she waved her hand at me to continue. “I fucked up sending that letter. I knew I’d made a mistake immediately after I’d sent it. I sent another letter, spilling my guts out to her. Apologizing for what I’d said. The minute I was allowed to make a phone call, I cal
led my parents and told them what I’d done and asked them to help me find her so I could apologize. The problem was, she was already long gone. So, yeah, breaking up with her and letting her down on my promises and our dreams was wrong, but that didn’t give her the right to keep my son from me. Not that it’s any of your fucking business, either, but I’ve already apologized for all of this to her. I’m done explaining myself to people about this. It’s between me, Belle and our son. No one else from here on out. So you can stand behind them and support them, but you’re going to keep your goddamn nose out of our business.”
Her eyes widened and her mouth opened again to say something.
“I damn well mean it, Teagan! This. Is. My. Family. I’m trying to fix it! I will not have you messing it all up for me out of some twisted sense of protection. I love Seth and I still love Belle, even if I have the occasional urge to choke her out for what she’s done. Shit, mistakes and circumstances came between me and my family once before. Now, nothing will stop me from claiming my family. Do you understand me, woman?”
“You should probably stop yelling at Aunt Teagan now, Dad.”
Whipping my head around, I found Seth propped up against the wall behind me with his arms crossed over his chest, one ankle crossed over the other, and one side of his mouth twitching like he was trying to hold back a laugh.
Running frustrated hands over my hair, I dropped them by my sides and tipped my head back to the ceiling, looking for divine intervention or a black hole to swallow me up. Talk about screwing shit all up.
“God, Son. I’m so sorry you had to hear tha—”
Shrugging his shoulders, he replied, “No biggie, Dad. It was kind of cool to hear you telling her that you wanted us.”
Man. The kid just un-did me sometimes.
Walking forward until we were just a few feet apart, I reached over, hooked an arm around his neck and tugged him over into a one-armed hug. “Never doubt it from here on out, boy. I’ll always want you.”