A vibration sounded from the nightstand, and my head twisted toward the source as the face of Jack’s cell lit up. Resolutely, I ignored it, but when it sounded again, only a couple of minutes later, my curiosity won. With a wary look, to the shadowy hall beyond the narrow door slit, I brought up the missed calls, finding them both from ‘Randi.’
At that precise moment, a text came through, and because I was holding the phone, I got a preview. Again, from ‘Randi’ reading, ‘Sugar, let me know as soon as you know.’
Stretching my hand, I was about to return the phone when the next text came through from ‘Mom’ asking ‘Jacks did you tell her? I can’t wait to meet him. Call your mother!’
Letting the phone drop back to the stand as if it were a dangerous snake, I rolled over. Within seconds of settling comfortably, I heard the clink of Tristan’s crutches. He stopped in the hall bathroom and afterward pushed open my bedroom door.
“Morning, Momma!”
Mustering a liveliness that, after viewing the texts, I no longer felt, I return chanted the greeting, and Tristan asked, “Can I feed Bal…ly…?”
When his words dwindled, I rose to see what his wide eyes beheld and spied Jack’s socks and shoes among my discarded clothing. Falling to my pillow, I brought a reassuring hand to my robe, and in a desperate attention diversion asked, “What do you want for breakfast?”
Deciding he would choose a cereal, Tristan hobbled off, and after taking the time to pull on a pair of jeggings and a long tunic top, I followed. My bare feet hit the cool tile of the hall floor, and my strides stopped when I saw Tristan propped on his crutches before the couch. Jack was blinking the sleep from his eyes.
“Did you spend the night?” Tristan quizzed, and since I was behind him, unable to read his face, I tried but failed to read his tone.
Jack pushed Bally’s snout away from his face and sat up. “I thought if I was here when you first woke up that we could drive through McDonald’s and get some breakfast.”
“Okay.” Tristan took a couple of steps toward the kitchen, then undeterred, turned as he made a second inquiry. “But did you spend the night?”
Jack’s gaze came over Tristan’s shoulder to meet mine, and I only grinned back. Tristan’s persistence was a direct genetic link from his father, and it was fun to watch paybacks come back around to Jack.
“Actually, I did,” Jack admitted. “It got really late, and I thought we could surprise your Mom with some breakfast. Is she still asleep?” With an innocent expression, which would have fooled even me if I had not been staring into his eyes at that very moment, he made the inquiry.
“No, but we could still surprise her.” Tristan was gleeful at the idea.
“Okay, buddy! I’ll just go tell her that we are going to the store for… for…”
“For toilet paper!” A slight bounce accompanied Tristan’s exuberant answer.
“Are we? Are you out?” Jack inquired of the hall bathroom, which he hadn’t been in since the previous afternoon.
“No. But I can hide the rolls.” Tristan’s matter-of-fact statement had me staring, yet again, in surprise. Maybe he was more like his father than I would have wanted, I thought, while comparing the toilet paper deception to the cryptic phone messages I had just intercepted.
Darting into my room before my son discovered me lingering, I stopped before the dresser and brushed my hair into a ponytail. Expectantly, I turned from a happy, glowing reflection when Jack rattled a knock and entered.
In a loud stage voice, he explained, “Tristan and I are going to the store to pick up some toilet paper.”
Perching on the bed, he pulled his socks and shoes on while shooting me an impish smile and then retrieved his phone.
With a slight pucker of a frown, he paused long enough to punch in presumably answers to the texts and then clipped the device to his jeans.
“What do you want from MickyD’s?” The whisper was in the midst of a quick but hungry kiss.
“I don’t care. Whatever Tristan picks out for me.”
“You okay?” His fingers drifted down my neck, from the slightly visible whisker burns, to my chest where the slight sweet bruises on sensitive skin were now covered by a stretchy modest shirt.
Fiddling with the hair bands scattered on the dresser top, I wanted to demand answers to those texts. At the same time, I didn’t want to show my insecurity.
The best way to solve this custody issue, if there even was one, was for him to marry me. The only way to solve the issues of my heart was for him to fall in love with me.
“Yeah.” Catching his eyes in the mirror, my reply was neutral. “I was just thinking about some stuff. We need to talk.”
“Okay. About what?”
“Just stuff. It can wait.”
“Okay, if you’re sure.” With a lingering sweet hug, he was gone, leaving me time to bring my emotions under control.
♪♫¨♫♪
“So you really want to talk?” Jack closed the distance between us on the couch later that afternoon as soon as Tristan was napping in his room.
“Not when you put it like that!” I curved a smile into his hair, and when we adjourned to my room, happily put the talk off for a hushed half hour or so.
Jack inside me was something I had become addicted to after only one time, and now, after a continuous fix, I knew I was in danger of becoming a crazed junkie for his sex.
We were quiet in the aftermath, and I thought he might be asleep until he spoke. “I need to talk to you too, but you go first.” His fingers gently brushed over the line of my caesarean scar.
Pulling away from his hand, I twisted, reaching for the glass of iced tea I had brought to the room. After dousing my parched throat, and succumbing to a sugar rush, I blurted, “I need to schedule the paternity test, and I guess I just wondered how long you were staying. Not because you have to be here for it. But, because I don’t want to take up a day while you’re here. And it has to be done by—”
“Paternity test?” Propping on an elbow, he shoved hair from his eyes.
“I have to do it since I cashed the check, right?”
“What?” He seemed genuinely confused and unbothered about something that consumed my thoughts the better part of each day, and that irked me.
Slinging out of bed, I stalked to the dresser, jerked open a drawer, and pulled out the fearsome folder. Flinging the long legal sheet into his lap, I kept walking and closed myself in the bathroom.
When I returned, dressed, he had also slipped on everything except a shirt and shoes. The paper lay abandoned on the bed beside him.
Softly, his eyes searched mine, “You know this was before…”
Before he’d seen with his own eyes that Tristan was his? Or before we’d fallen back into bed together?
Crossing to the door, I cracked it to hear easily down the hallway. “Before what?” While pacing the room, I came too close to him, and he reached for my hand.
“I remember signing this letter. But after that, I tried to call you to find out when the surgery was. If Tristan was mine…” Here, he slowed at whatever he saw in my eyes and carefully proceeded, “and I was beginning to have a feeling he was, or else you wouldn’t have called, right? I wanted to be around for this surgery, to make sure he didn’t want for anything. To just be there. Anyhow, like I told you at the hospital, I had the lawyer figure out the details of the surgery, and ever since, I’ve never thought of this,” he rattled the paper, “again.”
“So?” With that sarcastic rejoinder, I snatched the paper, which weighed so hard on my heart and head. The paper that he had ‘never thought of again.’ “That doesn’t change the fact that I have to do it right? That Tristan has to do it.”
The last part of the sentence was added as a correction when I considered, for the hundredth time, this test that Tristan would not even know was an indignity—a test done on kids whose fathers were reluctant to claim them.
“No, Mariss, honey.” His dark eyes were as sweet
as the endearment. “I’ll get it straightened out first thing in the morning,” he promised of Monday.
“So…” This time the word was hesitant, and I paused, wondering if I dare speak the next thorn in my soul– my real fear within the words of that letter. “So, are you going for custody or not?”
Standing, he moved to the chair where his shirt had been flung, and I tried not to hunger over the decorated arms and sinewy shoulders shrugging into stretchy cotton. Not able to sit through this deliberate hesitation, I surged to my feet, and with a tip of my chin, glared into his eyes.
This man had loved me all over. Was he now going to commit the ultimate hate and fight me for the only thing besides him that meant the world to me?
“Jack?”
“I’ve missed almost five years of his life. And they were hard years for him. I wasn’t there for what he was going through. I have a lot of making up to do.”
His words may as well have been chipped in bricks, because as each one hit, I flinched with pain and sank back to the bed, feeling crushed by the weight.
“You’re a great mother.” His words were soft. “And I know my life is probably not the life for him.” Before I could breathe easier, he continued, “I would, of course, change what I’m doing. Stop touring. I was already in the process anyway of some huge changes in the music. That’s what these meetings have been about.”
My cell came to life with the ring tone Clayton had set up at lunch one day, a recording of himself in a crazy voice saying, ‘Missy pick me up.’ Jack glared at the device. I ignored the ring tone as if it hadn’t happened and demanded, “What are you saying?”
Tearing his eyes from my phone, he met my gaze, and I saw sympathy, as well as some type of determination, in their dark depths. “I’m saying I don’t know yet. I guess I’m saying that I don’t want six states between my son and me. And I’m still trying to figure out what to do about that.”
My breath felt sucked out in a suffocating second, and I sought sanity. Maybe this wasn’t as sinister as it sounded. It was expected that he would want some time– perhaps weekends and holidays. I recalled my own childhood.
The next level, joint custody, would rip me in two, but if it happened, I was beginning to see how great of a father he would be. As for full custody, I couldn’t even think it without tearing.
“What then? Holidays?” Studying his stoic face, I pushed out the words, seeking clarification. “Joint?”
Finally, he spoke, but it was the last thing I wanted to hear. “I want more than that. So much time has been wasted. I want it all—”
“Noo!” The word growled out of my mouth as more than one syllable, and I felt like I was going to puke. “No.”
I wanted to scream every curse I knew and call him every ugly name. I wanted to cry. I wanted to take Tristan and run. Instead, a plea squeaked from kiss-swollen lips. “Don’t do this…”
“Listen…” Before I could blink, he was across the room kneeling beside me, but the harder I hurt, the harder my heart became.
How could he have shared a passion so hot, and all along had this agenda simmering on the back burner? There was no way he gave a damn about me, and if he was this cold, there was no way he ever would.
‘Did you tell her? I can’t wait to meet him. ’ The text flashed into my mind. I supposed I had just been told. And the next text, the beautiful Leanna Miranda Gavin, ‘Sugar, sugar, sugar…’
Are WE banging as friends ? My thoughts took that ugly turn. Is that all Jack was capable of? What if Leanna Miranda silently had feelings for him too?
Phase three: ‘Make Jack want me as much as I want him’. Epic fail.
Putting as much distance as possible between us, I swore, “I will fight you on this. And I may not have money. But don’t forget, I know things.”
“What do you know?” Getting back to his feet, he seemed slightly crestfallen but also amused as if it were one of our word games. Defiant, dark brows arched. “That I sit at home with my dog most nights? That every chance I get I spend it with my family? A stable family I might add. Parents who are loved by the public and who have been married for more than half their lifetime. A grandmother who hasn’t missed a church service in twenty years. A sister who is the newest sensation of the surfing culture, and an uncle and grandfather who—”
“You have a rape charge that was never resolved!” Interrupting his accolades, I spat the threat.
CHAPTER 23
Astonishment crossed his face, maybe because I would even say such a thing to him.
Suddenly, it felt strange to me too, that I could respond with such hate after reacting with the degree of love and passion that passed between us minutes ago. Part of me was sick at the evil words I had just flung between us. Did this make me as cold as him? Still, I rationalized; like a mother lion, I was fiercely protecting Tristan, even if I had to take a tiger by the tail.
“I explained that to you.” He seemed hurt by my words, disappointed in me, and ashamed this thing was a part of his past. “It’s not true, and you said you knew.”
“You should go.” Unable to look at the mixture of emotions on his face, I turned. Unfortunately, I faced the mirror, so I didn’t miss the slow fury infusing his face.
“That’s always your answer isn’t it?” he taunted nastily. “Distance.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know how to make you scream.”
A shocked breath lodged in my throat, and I wrestled with my gaze, trapped by his dark challenge.
The soft answer used as sarcasm instead of seduction heated up my insides and inflamed my fury. It was corroboration that he could be intimate in my bed and indifferent out of it.
As I eyed the various things on the dresser, choosing what I wanted to throw, he went on with the argument, nailing in his point.
“You wouldn’t tell me about Tristan because you felt safe with this secret living so far away. When you got mad at the hospital you wanted me to leave, and now you’re saying it again. You run away from problems or push them away from you.” Softly, “I know more about you than you know about yourself.”
“You think you’ve got me figured out after knowing me for a couple of weeks?”
“No, I do.” His voice was low with an underlying something that I could not identify. “I do have you figured out—at least, the only part I need to know—”
“Momma?” The tiny voice whipped me around, and protectively, I advanced on my little boy, who was peering into the slit of the door. “Want to see what I can do?”
A pull of the doorknob swung the door in, and I grinned, seeing his mischievous smile, wondering what it was concerning this time. Bally was on his heels minus any pranks on her fur.
A piece of me wanted to glance at Jack, to see his proud smile, yet I was so hurt by his deceit and accusations that I couldn’t.
“Ready?” Standing in the doorway, Tristan left us hanging in suspense as he dragged out the moment.
“I’m ready!” I accompanied his enthused exclamation with an equally excited smile.
“I know I’m ready!” Jack’s deeper voice agreed.
Dramatically, Tristan held his arms slightly up, and his crutches rose like wings. Watching the floor, he took one step, then another, then another! Swaying some, he caught himself on his crutches, and then turned his eyes to mine, seeking my reaction.
We reached him at the same time, our knees doing a synonymous guitar-solo-type slide the last couple of feet across the floor. Enfolding the tiny body in a bear hug, I dabbed my damp eyes on one of the soft tee shirt sleeves of his tiny shoulders. Jack’s fingers brushed mine as he participated in the hug the best he could, and realizing I was being selfish, I passed Tristan his way. My eyes emotionally filled again while watching them wrapped together.
Despite every fear I had about Jack entering our lives, I knew it was best that Tristan grow up with his father in his life. But dammit, I was his mother. He needed me too, and Jack needed
to understand. Full custody was not in anyone’s best interest, especially Tristan’s.
Jack went with Tristan to the kitchen for the chocolate milk and Teddy Grahams the tot requested. I flopped face down on the bed, by sheer willpower holding in my tears. Tears of happiness. Tears of fear. Tears of sadness and betrayal.
From the den, the television noisily came to life with one of Tristan’s shows and then Jack was back with me. The mattress dipped with his weight, and I stiffened but remained with my face comfortingly in the comforter. It could be my imagination, but it smelled like Jack.
“I don’t fly out until Friday. And since my schedule is going to be busy for a couple of weeks after that, I don’t want to change plans and miss out on time with Tristan just because we had a fight.”
A fight? The two words were hysterical. My whole life was culminating into one giant train wreck, and he called it a fight?
“We didn’t have a fight.” Rolling over, I glared into his face. “A fight is something eventually over and done with after a few apologies.”
And, makeup sex! My mind tormented with sensations barely passed.
Jack quietly studied my face, and I could not find even a trace of guilt in his features. Oddly, mirrored in his expression seemed to be every emotion I was feeling– the biggest of those being betrayal.
Choosing not to respond to my words, he looked away. “All I’m saying is, I can spend my time with Tristan here, or take him to the hotel every day. So figure it out, and let me know. Also, before I fly home, we are telling him.”
When he stood, I propped on my arms, incredulously inquiring, “You would really do that?” Deepening my voice, I ridiculed, “I’m your father, and by the way, you’re living with me from now on!”
“You know that’s not what I meant.” Offended by my words, he exited the room, heading down the hall to the den. Grudgingly, I watched his departure with as much interest as I ever had, the way his jeans molded to his backside, and the stretch of his tee shirt on his shoulders.