The Brightest Sunset (The Darkest Sunrise #2)

The door clicked softly behind her.

My body sagged in a confusing mixture of relief and defeat.

“Daddy,” Hannah whispered, patting my thigh.

I looked down at her. “Yeah?”

With wide eyes, she shook her head. “Guess what? There’s no TV in Travis’s new room.”

“There’s no TV in the whole place,” Travis complained.

I slapped a hand over my heart and cried out dramatically, “Oh God, say it ain’t so!”

Travis glowered.

Hannah giggled.

And I smiled because, regardless that our lives were in shambles, in that moment, with Travis on my right and Hannah on my left, everything was right.

Over the next two hours, the three of us stayed locked in that room. Alone while the chaos of reality continued to roar outside.

Travis asked questions I didn’t have the answers to. I made promises I couldn’t possibly uphold. But, for those minutes with him lying in the bed beside me, a game of Minecraft playing on his iPad, his heart beating slow and steady, his breaths even and easy, I felt not an ounce of guilt for lying to him.

He needed that.

The simple.

The predictable.

The monotony.

And, a few hours later, as he fell asleep next to his sister, the sun barely sinking over the horizon, I learned how badly they both needed it.

And I had a feeling they weren’t the only ones.





* * *





I was sitting on my couch, my knees pulled to my chest, a glass of untouched wine on the end table, my mind lost in thought, when I heard the bedroom door open.

I fought the urge to fly up off the couch.

“Pizza’s on the counter,” I called, keeping my eyes aimed at the wall. “I wasn’t sure what kind you guys would like so I got a few different—ooph.”

I was cut off when Porter’s hard body hit me. One of his arms hooked under my knees, the other wrapping around my back. And then the couch disappeared from beneath me.

“What the—”

“Shh!” he demanded.

“What are you doing?” I whisper-yelled, looping my arms around his neck to balance myself.

“Your apartment’s too small,” he rumbled, carrying me straight to the bathroom in the hallway.

“I’m working on getting a house. It’s just taking some time.”

“Mm,” he hummed, setting my ass on the bathroom vanity. Bending at the waist, he rested his hands on either side of me and got in my face, his piercing, blue eyes searching mine. “Please tell me you believe me when I say that I had nothing to do with Catherine taking your son.”

“I…uh…know. I heard your message.”

His gaze darkened. “You listen to all of it?”

I licked my lips and nodded. “I just got it last night. Brady blocked your number on my phone.”

“Right,” he mumbled.

“I’m sorr—”

“I had no fucking idea he was your son. You have to believe me or this is as far as we can ever go.”

My heart swelled. “I believe you.”

He eyed me warily and then warned, “No faking it, Charlotte.”

I leaned into him and brushed my lips with his. “I believe you, Porter.”

In one swift movement, he locked the bathroom door and flipped the lights off.

I gasped as the familiar darkness flooded the room. My whole body sagged, but my pulse quickened in anticipation.

Porter’s large frame moved toward me, his hips forcing my knees apart as he wedged his body between them. Gliding a hand into the back of my hair, he tucked my face into his neck. “Talk to me.”

“I don’t know what to say,” I lied, fisting the back of his shirt and nuzzling my cheek against his jaw, the most amazing calm of my life engulfing me.

Using my hair to turn my head, he swept his lips up my neck, and then his breath flittered across my skin as he whispered in my ear, “No questions. No judgments. No faking it. No apologies. Give it to me.”

A shiver traveled down my spine, and I swayed into him, our chests becoming flush.

And then I gave it to him. Everything I could never give anyone else.

“I think he hates me.”

No sooner than the words had cleared my lips, he followed it up with a confession of his own. “I’m drowning in that car all over again without him.”

My breath hitched, an apology burning on the tip of my tongue. But that wasn’t what Porter and I did in the darkness.

Turning my head, I brushed my lips with his. “He told me that I only loved Lucas, and Catherine only wanted him to replace Travis.” I paused to collect myself. “He thinks you were the only one who ever wanted him.”

His body turned to stone, but his head hung low. “Jesus.”

My throat became thick, and I was barely able to speak. “I love him. I swear I do. But he’s right. I want him to be Lucas.”

His fingers tensed in my hair, but the pain at my scalp did nothing to distract me from the anguish in my chest.

“God, it feels so filthy even saying it out loud. You have to know that I love him. Down to the core of my soul, but he’s like a stranger to me.” I tried to push off the counter, desperate for some space, but Porter moved in closer, blocking my retreat.

“He was a stranger to me once. Now, he is the core to my soul. He and Hannah. That’s my life. That love wasn’t ingrained into me at birth the way it was you, but it grew into a wildfire. And I don’t know how to turn it off. And I’m terrified the courts are going to ask me to do just that.”

“Oh God,” I breathed, hooking my legs around his hips and locking them at the ankle as if I could hug him tight enough to erase the pain.

His hand drifted down my back and then crept under the hem of my shirt, flesh to flesh. “Your turn, Charlotte.”

“I can’t give him to you.”

“I’ll never ask you to. But I won’t ever stop trying to get him back.”

My body locked up tight, panic blasting through my system. “W…what?”

He shook his head and pressed his lips to my temple. “There’s enough of him for both of us. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. He’s your son. But I’m begging you not to forget that he’s mine too.”

Closing my eyes, even though the room was already pitch-black, I whispered, “I have no idea what I’m doing. These should be the happiest days of my life, and I can’t stop crying because I know he’s hurting.”

His head came up, and while I couldn’t see him, I could feel his blue stare burning into me. “You’re hurting too.”

It wasn’t a question.

It wasn’t an accusation.

It also wasn’t a lie.

“We’re all hurting,” I admitted, clinging to his shoulders.