Most of all, he wanted to be the one giving her those smiles, those laughs, that life. He wanted to make everything good and right and magic for her.
Cady and Millie disappeared around the corner.
“Heather—”
He stepped closer. He didn’t dare kiss her. Not here, in the front yard, where anyone driving by could see, especially not when Millie could backtrack at any moment. But he wanted her to know that it wasn’t simply the baby pulling him closer to her. That even if there was no baby, he would still want her in his life.
This wasn’t the time or the place to tell her all of that. But surely, he could give her a glimpse.
“Listen, Heather. That day in the parking lot, when we were sitting in the car, you asked me—”
His words were cut off by the slam of a car door. He glanced sideways, then did a double take.
A police cruiser, parked behind Heather’s car.
And a police officer, walking toward him.
It could be nothing. Heather’s car was parked on the wrong side, maybe.
“Mr. Sorenson?”
Heather grabbed his hand. Or did he grab hers? Hard to tell. All that was certain was that her fingers, tight through his, were the only thing holding him steady while the rest of him bounced from possibility to possibility like the world’s most terrifying game of ping-pong.
I didn’t do anything. Not this time.
“Mr. Sorenson, I need to ask you a few questions.”
Nothing. It’s nothing. I’ve done nothing.
A startled yelp came from the side of the yard. Millie. Oh God, whatever it was, Millie and Cady were going to see it.
Heather’s fingers slipped from his.
“Sure. Let me grab my daughter, and we can go inside.”
“Not here.” The cop glanced toward the side yard, then to Heather. “I need you to come with me.”
No. Not again. Not here. Not now.
Cady’s whimpers sliced through him.
“I—Sure, but what is this about?”
“We’ll talk at the station. If you don’t mind.” The cop’s tone made it clear that he was only being polite for the sake of show.
Cooperate. Stay quiet. Think, damn it.
“Sure. Of course. I need a second to—” He looked to Heather and immediately wished he hadn’t. She had taken a step back—when?—and was watching him with her hands over her mouth and all kinds of horror in her eyes.
She thought he had done something.
It hit him straight in the gut, driving the air from his lungs. No matter that the cop hadn’t divulged any details. No matter that she knew him, that she was carrying his baby, that she understood him better than anyone else in his world. She couldn’t see past the police officer. Past his history.
Her face flushed deep red, the shade of guilt and shame, and he knew he’d read her mind without an ounce of psychic ability.
He’d been such an idiot.
“Call Darcy.” He spoke to Heather but kept his eyes locked on Cady, now in Millie’s embrace. “Her number’s inside, on the fridge. Tell her to come get Cady. And ask her—Have her or Ian call Carter.” Xander didn’t know what the hell was happening, but it wouldn’t hurt to have Ian’s brother the lawyer on hand.
Of course, he had thought it would be good to have Heather at his side, too.
He turned to the police officer, who was taking everything in with eyes that didn’t miss a beat. “I need to say goodbye to my daughter. The little one.” He nodded toward Cady. “Let her know her mother is on her way.”
A brisk nod was his only answer.
He crossed the space quickly, pulling Cady into his arms with a murmured word of thanks to Millie.
“Come here, pretty girl.”
Cady burrowed into his shoulder, and he closed his eyes.
She’s too young to remember this. She’ll be fine.
It helped—for the moment.
From the corner of his eye, he was aware that Heather had put an arm around Millie and was speaking to her in hushed tones. He caught a glimpse of Millie’s eyes, wide and terrified behind her glasses, and cursed the universe for letting this happen.
I haven’t done anything!
“Cady,” he whispered, “Daddy has to go away for a few minutes. Heather and Millie will stay with you until Mommy comes. I’ll see you as soon as I can, baby.”
She wailed and clung to his neck. Heather stepped up and reached for her.
“It’s okay,” she said quietly. “You go...do what you need to do.”
He didn’t look at her. What was the point? He wouldn’t see anything there that he hadn’t already seen in too many other faces.
“Shh, Cady. Shh,” Heather crooned as he handed Cady into her arms. “It’s okay, sweetie. Everything’s okay.”
“Oh yeah,” he said as the police officer moved closer. “Everything’s just right as rain.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
HEATHER HAD KNOWN too many days that had lasted a lifetime over her years. The first time she watched Travis being taken away... The day she found out she was pregnant with Millie... The days after she left Millie, when every breath had found a new way to shred her heart.
And now this one.
She stayed at Xander’s with a struggling Cady and an oddly silent Millie until Darcy and Ian arrived, breathless and frightened. She passed on everything she knew and repeated Xander’s request for Carter, not leaving until she had heard Ian make the call to his brother and knew that legal intervention was at hand.
Once everyone was settled and Cady was happily in her mother’s care, Heather led Millie to the car. They made it one block before she had to pull over and hold her weeping, shaking child.
Every unintelligible question, every cry of fright and worry and disbelief, cut straight through Heather. She knew exactly what Millie was feeling. She knew every side of it, and worse, because she knew what would come next.
Right as rain.
She didn’t know what Xander might or might not have done. Everything she knew about him told her it had to be a mistake, a mix-up down at the station, but there was so terrifyingly much she still didn’t know. Even those things she did know came only from him.
Dear God in Heaven. She was having a baby with someone who had gone to jail, and she’d been so busy convincing herself that his past no longer mattered, so busy convincing herself to go with her gut, that she had never even done a Google search on him. What kind of idiot had she—
But no. She had spent too many years making herself believe that history wasn’t destiny to not give him that same privilege. She had been right to believe in him. To focus on the future.
Except that now, she knew what that future would hold. She’d read it in the bitter understanding she spotted in his eyes when she backed away. She’d seen it in the head down, shoulders hunched walk of shame as he walked to the cruiser. She’d heard it in the harsh resignation of his voice when he told her that everything was right as rain.
She knew every one of those. She had lived every one of those signs before, and she knew what they meant: that he hadn’t been truly surprised when the cop came to his door. That he had been waiting for the other shoe to drop. That even if he hadn’t done anything now, even if it truly was a mix-up, that it was only a matter of time.
Exactly the way it had always been with Travis.
* * *
WHEN XANDER TEXTED to say he was on his way home, Heather gave thanks. When he asked what time Millie would be going back to Hank’s, she answered, and told him to come to her house. Because yes, they needed to talk. Even though she already knew everything he had to say. And even though she knew exactly how this was going to end.
When Hank came to get Millie, she met him in t
he driveway and told him everything that had happened. No surprise, he’d already heard the basics via the Darcy-Brynn connection. She was able to assure him that Millie seemed to be over the worst of it.
“We watched a funny movie and ate popcorn,” she said. “There were questions, but not too many, and thanks to Travis I was able to handle most of them.”
That was probably the first time in her life that she had been grateful for Travis’s criminal history. Proof that there was a silver lining to everything?
No, she thought, closing her heart. Not this time.
“Carter won’t talk,” Hank said, “but he did tell me it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. Xander will be at work tomorrow.”
Thank you, God.
“That project you were working on with him,” Hank said. “It’s done now. Right?”
“All done.” There was no way she was ready to tell Hank that her next venture with Xander—the one that would tie her to him for life—was just beginning.
As soon as Hank and Millie drove away, Heather headed inside. She had fifteen minutes before Xander would arrive, and she needed every one of them.
Going straight to the computer, she pulled up the sample schedule she had made for Hank. Quickly, without allowing herself time to think, she made a new one tailored for a baby. She followed it with a proposed timeline of increased visitation, one based on nursing and napping and maternity leave.
It was practical.
Efficient.
Heartbreaking.
She sent the documents to the printer just as she heard the slam of Xander’s car door. Unnecessary, she knew. She would email them to him anyway, and they would need to talk and negotiate. There would be lawyers involved. She had no illusions that this would be a final draft.
But she needed something to hold. Something to keep her hands occupied so they wouldn’t betray her and pull Xander close so she could check to make sure he was okay, then rest her head on his shoulder and cry out everything she had felt when the police showed up.
She couldn’t give in.
She wasn’t going to let her daughter—her children—grow up bracing for the worst every time a police car slowed down.
She opened the door before Xander could knock, gesturing for him to come inside. He did so silently, following her into the living room, where she perched on the edge of the rocking chair—the one piece of furniture where he couldn’t sit beside her. The papers were rolled up, taped and growing damp in her palms.
Xander glanced from her to the sofa. His lips tightened.
Hope flared in her at that tiny spark of grit. If he was angry, if he was fighting, if he was determined to prove to her and the world that he was a changed man...if she knew he believed it himself...
Then his head bowed, and he sank to the sofa with a weariness she had seen too many times, dragging her heart down with him.
“Are you okay?” She had to know that first. She was going to have to be cruel and hard for enough of the night. She could allow them both this bit of compassion.
“Depends why you’re asking.” He shoved his hands in the pockets of the jacket she hadn’t asked him to remove. “Or what you’re planning.”
No. It shouldn’t depend on anything or anyone else. It should be up to him, not up to whatever she or fate or life might throw at him.
She waited.
He sighed and hunched forward, elbows on knees, curled in on himself. Protecting himself. “It was—Well, not a misunderstanding. There was some trouble out at the Cline place. Seems someone decided to use it as a storage place for some illegal substances.” He put finger quotes around the words. “And idiot me left my notebook there that last night.”
Some of the fear seeped out of her.
“Lucky for me, I had never gone inside. There was nothing to link me to the stash, as Carter pointed out over and over. All they had was my notebook, and my own confession that I had gone out there to take pictures.” He paused. “And my record, of course.”
That said everything, didn’t it? Because she knew as well as he did that the red flags wouldn’t have flown so furiously if his past hadn’t involved bars.
“Did they charge you with anything?”
He glanced up at her, too fast for her to read his face before staring at his shoes. “Does it matter?”
It was the despair in his voice that broke her. The hopelessness. Like he couldn’t believe that the world wasn’t as ready to let go of his past as he was.
“I want you to be okay,” she whispered.
He shrugged.
“Xander?”
“They slapped me with a ticket. Trespassing. And a stern warning to keep my nose clean, because I am now officially on their radar.”
Which meant that this would undoubtedly happen again. Each time, she knew, would steal another piece of his resolve, another piece of his resistance.
For the first time since he arrived, he looked right at her. “This is the end, isn’t it?”
She hadn’t known how much she wanted it to be okay until that moment, him watching her every breath, braced as if waiting for the blow he knew she was about to deliver.
“Yes.” She made the word come out steady. This was what she had to do. For Millie, for herself, for the baby to be.
He continued to watch her. She met his gaze head-on, letting him see the hurt she knew was written in her face. He needed to know that this was killing her, too. She couldn’t do anything else for him, but she could give him that.
* * *
WHEN, AT LAST, he looked away, it was to stare at the floor again. “Can’t say I’m surprised.”
He wouldn’t be. Not after she had turned away from him in his yard.
“But see, there was this one little part, this one little voice inside me that kept saying, wait, Heather’s different. She gets it. Sure, she got caught by surprise and had a moment of doubt, but who could blame her for that?” His hands fluttered back and forth as if searching for something solid, something real to ground him.
She wished to God it could be her.
“I can’t do it again,” she whispered. “I won’t put Millie through that again.”
“You mean you won’t put yourself through it.”
“She’s just a little younger than I was when Travis started getting into trouble. Seeing that happen to someone you love—it does things to a kid. It makes you feel so damned powerless.” She ran her thumb over the edge of the tape on the papers. “I gave Millie up once to keep her safe. I’m not going to stay in something that’s almost guaranteed to mess up her life and make her feel the way I did.”
“And the fact that I didn’t do anything—that doesn’t make any difference, does it?”
“But you did do something.” She had to force the words out, one broken syllable at a time. “You did go out there. And you did trespass. And you did break into that computer, and because you did those things, every time something happens in this town, the police are going to suspect you. Every. Single. Time.”
“I’m not Travis.”
No, he wasn’t. He was stronger and smarter and more insightful. He was the man she loved.
She had spent the last hours trying to convince herself it wasn’t true, but that had proved impossible. She loved him. If she needed any proof, it had been handed to her on a silver platter as she fought to keep from breaking down when he climbed into that cruiser.
But none of that would matter. None of that would keep the police from watching him. None of that would prevent her children from being reminded, over and over, that he could wind up in the back of another cruiser at any time.
“I can’t...” Her voice faltered.
“Can’t what, Heather? Can’t believe the police would do that?” His voice took on an edge she had never heard from
him. “Or can’t believe in me?”
The worst moment of Heather’s life had been when she placed her hands on her cold, wet child to see if she was dead or alive. This, though—this was a close second.
She wanted to tell Xander she believed in him. She wanted, desperately, to pull him close and whisper that she believed in him. That she loved him.
But love, she knew, was no guarantee of innocence.
She held the damp papers toward him. “I think the best thing would be for us to come to an agreement about the...about this baby...as soon as possible. So we both know where we stand.”
He looked at her hand. At the papers. She saw his confusion, his slow understanding, and then, God, then, she saw the utter emptiness that was left when a man had had his very reason for living ripped out of him.
I’m sorry, Xander. I am so, so—
He stood. Swayed. Walked forward to take the papers from her.
And kept walking until he was out the door.
* * *
WHEN XANDER GOT into the car, he was shaking so badly that he didn’t dare drive. Not right away. He had to wait until he could see something other than the utter blackness of his future, until he could hear something other than the flatness in Heather’s voice as she talked about...about...
The emptiness inside him turned inside out and upside down as it was replaced by a sudden, blinding fury.
She had given him a goddamned schedule.
He ripped the tape from the papers and unrolled them, smoothing out the creases that were proof of the tightness with which he’d crumpled them as he stalked out the door. There was enough light from the dash that he could get the idea of what she was proposing.
She’d been fair, he’d give her that. It was as close to a 50-50 split as was possible. He flipped to the second page and saw how she had broken things down, month by month, starting from birth through the first year.
The baby will need to stay close to me for the first few weeks while we get a nursing routine established...
Did she build in time to run away and leave this kid, too?
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