Second Chance Dad

by Angela Benson

  She wiped at her face with one hand while gripping the steering wheel with the other. She’d endured so much in her life. So much. And she’d risen above every hardship, every challenge. But she didn’t know if she could do it this time. Before, she’d always had Dillon’s love to fall back on. Now that crutch was gone.

  “I’m not in love with Monique,” his voice sounded again, and even the wounded groan that came from her lips couldn’t mask the sound.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Later that night, Monique finished rinsing her coffee cup and placed it in the dishwasher just as the doorbell rang. She closed the door to the dishwasher and headed for the front of the house, wondering who would be visiting at this hour. She was certainly in no mood for company. When she pulled open the door, Donald’s smiling face greeted her.

  “May I come in?” he asked.

  She held on to the door. “It’s late, Donald, and I’m not feeling well.”

  His smile faded and his face turned serious. “You heard us, didn’t you? I could see it in your eyes at dinner.”

  Donald’s words went in her ears and down through her lungs, almost suffocating her. He took advantage of her lapse and pushed the door open, letting himself in.

  “It’s not as bad as it sounded.” She stepped back as he pulled the door closed behind him. “Have you spoken to Dillon about it?”

  A chill much greater than the mild temperatures would suggest surrounded her, and she wrapped her arms around herself. “Not yet,” she said.

  “But you’re going to, aren’t you?”

  She turned and walked toward the family room. Donald followed her.

  “You are going to talk to him about what you heard, aren’t you?” he asked again.

  She dropped down onto the couch, followed by Donald. “What’s the point, Donald? Dillon was pretty clear in what he said.” She wished she could get his words out of her mind, but his “I’m not in love with Monique” kept repeating in her head.

  “Dillon was talking crazy, Monique. Even a blind man can see that he’s in love with you.”

  Monique had thought Dillon was falling in love with her again. She’d hoped it. But his very words killed that hope. “Dillon doesn’t want to be in love with me, Donald. You heard him.”

  “What I heard was a scared man running away from the best thing that’s ever happened to him.”

  She eyed him skeptically. “Dillon, afraid? You must be joking.”

  Donald relaxed back into the couch and studied her without speaking.

  “Why are you staring at me?” she asked, uncomfortable with his eyes burning into her.

  “I’m trying to figure out who’s the bigger fool— you or Dillon.” He leaned forward. “You know, Monique, I’ve never been in love. I’m twenty-six years old and I’ve never been in love. Not really. And sometimes that makes me sad.”

  Monique didn’t know what to say. Donald was never at a loss for female companionship, though now that she thought about it, he hadn’t brought any of his dates around to any family gatherings since she’d been back in town.

  “But look at you and Dillon,” he continued. “You fell in love—real love—in high school. You were separated, but even time and distance didn’t destroy the love that was between you. And now that you’ve found each other again, you’re both too stubborn to embrace that love. Instead of Dillon talking about how he doesn’t love you and you walking around all hurt because he said it, the both of you should be planning to spend the rest of your lives together. I know that’s what I’d be doing.” His speech complete, Donald got up from the couch and kissed her on her forehead. “You left him, Monique, so you’re going to have to be the one who holds this together. If you don’t fight for him, you’re gonna lose him because he’s too afraid to reach out to you and be left again.” He squeezed her shoulder, then left the room. She heard the front door click as he let himself out of the house.

  Dillon woke up the next morning with Monique on his mind, so his first action of the day was a phone call to her house.

  “Good morning,” he said when she answered.

  “Dillon?” her sleep-filled voice responded.

  “Last time I looked,” he said with a smile. He eased down in the bed, wishing she were there with him. “Feeling better this morning?”

  “A little,” she said. She still heard his painful words, but they didn’t stab at her heart as deeply as they had yesterday and last night.

  “Are you sure you don’t need to go to the doctor?” There had been a hesitancy in her voice that concerned him.

  “No,” she said, sounding more definite. What she needed was for him to love her. For him to want to love her.

  “How about coming over and having breakfast with me and the boys?”

  “Ahh, not this morning, Dillon,” she hedged. “I want to get in some Christmas shopping since I don’t have the boys underfoot. You know the day after Thanksgiving is the biggest shopping day of the year.” She hoped her fake cheer satisfied him, because right now she felt anything but happy. Maybe a day of Christmas shopping would help. It definitely couldn’t hurt.

  “So you’re going to spend the day at the malls?” he said with what she thought was disappointment in his voice.

  “That’s right.”

  “Am I keeping you?” he asked, a bit of impatience in his voice.

  So he was finally getting the message. She’d deliberately kept her responses short in the hope that he would come to that conclusion. “I do have to get to the malls,” she said with a lightness she didn’t feel. “I don’t want all the good gifts to be picked over.”

  “You’re still joining us tonight for the camp-out, aren’t you?” He sounded as though he really wanted her answer to be affirmative. Yesterday, she would have believed he did. Today she wasn’t so sure.

  “Well, I was thinking about that. Maybe you and the boys should do it without me. I don’t think they want me there anyway. Not really.”

  “You have other plans?”

  “With the holidays coming and everything, I have a thousand little things to do. You know how that is.”

  “Yes, I guess I do.” His response was terse and she guessed he had lost all patience with her.

  “Well, give the boys a kiss for me and tell them I’ll see them on Sunday.”

  Monique stood outside Dillon’s front door on Sunday morning, dreading coming face-to-face with him again. Her holiday errand running had been a bust. The knowledge that Dillon didn’t want to care for her had kept her lamenting what could have been. Again. Why did it seem her life was going in circles? She’d felt on the verge of having it all only twice in her lifetime. Ten years ago, when she and Dillon had been in love, and the month since she and Dillon had made love on Halloween. And both times, she’d been denied. The first time she’d had the love of her child and memories of Dillon’s love to keep her sane. Now, she would have to rely on her love for Glenn and Calvin to keep her sane because Dillon’s love was out of reach.

  Strengthening her resolve to handle herself with dignity and not show how devastated she was, she reached for the doorbell.

  “Let me do that for you, beautiful.”

  She jumped at the sound of Donald’s voice. “I didn’t hear you drive up,” she said, noticing the black-and-white patrol car now parked behind her vehicle.

  “Gotta stop thinking so hard.” Donald pulled a key out of his pocket and inserted it into the door. He pushed it open, then waved her in before him. “After you.”

  “We probably should have knocked, Donald,” she said, going in before him.

  He gave her a long look, then sighed. “You haven’t talked with him, have you?”

  “Donald—”

  He lifted his hand. “Don’t even try to explain. Just consider, this your lucky day.” He turned from her and walked to the front of the hallway leading to the bedrooms. “Hey,” Donald yelled at the top of his lungs. “Where is everybody?”

  As if on cue, Glenn and
Calvin rushed out of their room and down the short hallway to their uncle. “Uncle Donald,” they both said cheerfully. Then, seeing her back near the foyer, they added, “Moni.” “Mom.”

  “Are you going camping with us next time?” Glenn asked Donald, who had picked Calvin up and was holding him over his head.

  “Not me,” Donald said, placing the boy back on the floor. “I like sleeping in my nice, firm bed. Camping is for you outdoor types.”

  The boys seemed genuinely pleased by that answer.

  “Hey, how’d you guys like a ride in my patrol car?”

  “No, Donald,” Monique interrupted, understanding the man’s plan. “There’s no need for you to do that. You must have to get to work.”

  “Aw, Mom,” Glenn said.

  Donald shook his head. “No problem. I have permission from the chief to give these two big guys a tour of the town.” He rubbed Glenn’s head. “How about it, men?”

  “Yay,” both boys said, clapping their hands.

  “Are we going now?” Calvin asked.

  “Right now. You guys get your jackets.”

  “Okay,” they said and rushed out of the room.

  “Hey, hey, slow down.” Dillon almost bumped into the boys when he came out of the bathroom. “Where’s the fire?”

  “Uncle Donald is taking us for a ride in his police car,” Glenn said. “We’ve got to get our jackets.”

  “Yeah,” Calvin added. “We have to get our jackets.”

  As if that were explanation enough, the boys rushed off to their bedroom.

  Dillon glanced down the hall at Monique and Donald. “What was that all about?”

  “I’m taking them for a ride in the patrol car,” Donald said. When Dillon joined them in the foyer, Donald clamped an arm around his older brother’s head. “Are you deaf or something? They told you what we were going to do.”

  Monique watched the brothers with a heavy heart. Though Dillon pushed at Donald’s arm and chastised him, his love for his brother was evident in his eyes. She’d seen love of another kind in his eyes when he looked at her. But looks weren’t enough for her.

  “Monique, this guy is a wimp,” Donald said to her. “I don’t know what you see in him.”

  Monique didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing.

  Dillon finally broke out of Donald’s hold. “Morning, Monique. Ignore my brother here. He’s reverting to his childhood.” Dillon glanced at his brother. “Then again, maybe he never left his childhood.”

  “We’re ready,” the boys said as they bounded back into the room. “Let’s go.” They each grabbed one of Donald’s hands and began pulling him to the door.

  “I guess we’re leaving,” Donald said with a crooked smile. “The natives are restless.”

  Monique smiled. Regardless of how hurt she was that things weren’t going to work out for her and Dillon, she was happy for the life her son had found. “Have fun, guys,” she said, feeling better about the day.

  “We will, Mom,” Glenn said.

  “Okay, Moni,” Calvin said.

  Monique looked at Dillon. “I guess I’ll be going, too,” she said as they watched the boys lead Donald to the police car.

  Dillon pushed the front door closed with one hand and tugged at her arm with the other. “Don’t go. We don’t get much time alone. Let’s take advantage of this.”

  The caress in his voice and the glint in his eyes worked together to make her forget what she’d heard yesterday. Almost. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Dillon.”

  He pulled her into his arms and touched his lips to hers for a kiss. She wanted so much to give in to her feelings for him, but she knew doing so would only prolong the agony. Using willpower she didn’t know she had, she kept her mouth closed and resisted the primitive urge to yield to him.

  He pulled back. “What’s wrong?” he asked, concern in his eyes.

  She stepped away from him. The temptation to give in to her feelings for him was greater the closer she was to him. “What are we doing, Dillon?”

  He gazed into her eyes and she was forced to look away. “I thought we decided. We’re in a relationship.”

  “I know,” she said, feeling foolish and insecure and so very much in love. “But to what end? What do you want out of this relationship?”

  “What do most people want out of a relationship?” He rubbed his hand across his head—a gesture of frustration, she knew.

  “But we aren’t most people, Dillon,” she said softly. “We have a history, and we have a child together.”

  He moved away and leaned against the wall. “I know, Monique. I know.”

  She swallowed. It was now or never. “Are you falling in love with me again, Dillon?”

  Dillon opened his mouth, but no words came out. He closed it.

  Monique fought back the tears that were destined to fall. “I guess that settles it.” She took a deep breath. “I need to go shopping.”

  She turned and took confident steps to the door. “Wait a minute, Monique,” he called to her. “Can’t we talk about this some more? I just need some time.”

  Monique didn’t turn around. She couldn’t. She couldn’t put herself through any more secret moments of shared passion. Not only didn’t Dillon love her, he didn’t want to love her. The former she could handle because she could hope that, in time, he’d come to love her. But the latter truth defeated her.

  “I’ll be by later to pick up Glenn,” she said. She opened the door and walked out of the house and away from the man she’d loved all her life.

  Dillon stared at the door as it closed behind Monique. He knew she wanted him to tell her that he loved her, but he wasn’t ready to make that kind of commitment. To give her that kind of power over him. Not yet.

  As he continued to stare at the door, his heart beat faster in his chest. You’ll make her understand, he told himself. Just give it some time.

  But he wasn’t so sure he was right. The hurt in her eyes told him that she was closing her heart to him. He quickly opened the door and rushed out after her.

  “Monique,” he called to her. Already in her car, she looked up at him. His heart hurt at the tears that he saw streaming down her face as he approached her. Had someone else put those tears there, he’d be out looking for them now to give them a piece of his mind and maybe even his backhand. But how did he backhand himself?

  He pressed his hand against her window just as she started the car. “Please, Monique,” he said. “Let’s talk about this.” She looked at him again. “Please.”

  She rolled down the window and turned off the ignition. He opened her door so she could get out, but she didn’t move. He stooped down next to her. “Are you in love with me, Monique?” he asked softly.

  She looked into his eyes and he saw the anger behind her tears. She loved him and he’d known it. But it had been easier not to deal with the emotion.

  “I love you, too,” he said, the words awkward on his lips. It had been a long time since he’d told a woman he loved her. In his experience, that declaration had been a losing game.

  “You don’t have to say the words, Dillon,” she replied with a sad smile on her face.

  But he did have to say it. He had to say it so he could come to grips with what it meant. “It’s true,” he said. “I guess I’ve never stopped loving you.”

  Monique shook her head slowly from side to side and her lips turned down in a larger frown. “Loving somebody should make you happy, Dillon. What you feel isn’t love.”

  “How do you know what I feel?” he asked, insulted by her rejection of his affection. “You’ve never known how I felt. If you had, we wouldn’t be in this situation now.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Her tears dried up and her eyes flashed her anger.

  “You know what it means. You want me to love you, to feel good and happy about loving you. But look what loving you in the past has done for me, Monique? I have a nine-year-old son whom I’ve only known for three month
s.”

  “But I explained that, Dillon. You—”

  He shook his head. He didn’t want to hear her excuses now. “It doesn’t matter what your reasons were. What matters is how you chose to handle our problem. And it was our problem, Monique.”

  “That’s exactly the reason I didn’t tell you. Glenn wasn’t a problem for me. He was a baby. A baby born of the love I felt for you. But I knew that’s the way you’d see him, the way you’d see me. I knew it and I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t.” Her tears were back now. “It would have killed me.”

  “So you chose to kill me, instead?” That got her attention and her eyes again flashed at him. “How do you think I felt when you left? When I tracked you down and found you married and pregnant? All that was beyond my experience, Monique. My experience told me that when people loved each other, they stayed together and worked things out. That’s what my parents did. And that’s what I thought we’d do. But you just walked away. Just walked away.” Dillon felt the hurt as if it were that day ten years ago when he’d gone looking for her. “Something inside me died that day, Monique. I became a shadow of the person I was meant to me. I can love my parents. I can love my brothers. I can love my boys. And loving each of them fills me up. But loving you? You’re right. Loving you isn’t something I relish, because I know firsthand what it means to love you, Monique. I’ve got the scars to prove it.”

  When he stopped talking, he knew he’d said too much, but he also knew he’d spoken from his heart. He waited for her response.

  “So this is where we are,” she said softly, defeated. “You can’t forgive me. You can’t separate the scared girl I was then from the woman I am now.” She started the ignition. “Maybe you’re not in love with me at all, Dillon. Maybe you’re still in love with your high school sweetheart.” She shook her head. “And that’s a shame. We could have had the family and the life we both want.” She reached for the car door and pulled it to her, forcing him to move away from her.