I was smiling and more than a little sleepy as we drove home hours later. Going against Josh’s wishes of bailing an hour into the reception, I sent him back to hang out with Dean and play, or do whatever it was eleven-year-olds did at weddings when there was a playground and an adult in charge of watching the kids. Luckily, they must have gotten into something interesting because it wasn’t until I went to check on the boys once every hour that I found them still alive and in one piece, sitting at a picnic table looking at videos on Dean’s phone.
Meanwhile inside, I’d laughed my butt off with friends and family of Trip and Dallas, who filled up the rest of the table I’d been sitting at, and danced one song after another with one of the two of them, and even once with Trip’s dad. All those clubs I had gone to in my early twenties had really paid off. Mostly though, I’d spent the night either beside Dallas or in front of him. I wasn’t going to complain even a little bit.
With Louie passed out in the backseat in his chair and Josh playing a game on the tablet his brother was obviously not using, it had been a good night. I was ready to get home, change, and kick off my shoes though.
“Tired?” Dallas whispered the question.
“Little bit,” I answered him. Shifting how I was sitting, I watched his profile in the darkness of the car, taking in that almost long nose, his full bottom lip, square jawline, and the notch of his Adam’s apple. I loved him and it wasn’t even a little bit. It was a lotta bit. “You?”
“I’m fine.”
Hesitating for one second, I reached across the center console to grab his right hand, the one he didn’t use to drive. I didn’t know what it was about doing that that made me feel like an insecure kid again. The nerves, the wonder. The I hope he likes me as much as I like him. But Dallas didn’t pause as he flipped his hand up and linked his long, cool fingers through mine, holding them tight.
I smiled at him and he smiled right back.
Before I knew it, he was turning the car into my driveway. I was too busy looking at him to notice the car parked directly across the street.
I was moving slower than usual as Dallas got out and opened the back passenger door, his hands going to unbuckle the straps of Louie’s seat, gathering him into his arms before I could tell him I’d carry him. He was halfway to the door, and I had just finished closing the door with my hip as Josh got out, too. We were rounding the back of the SUV with me ruffling his hair when it happened.
“Josh!”
I stopped walking so fast, I turned my ankle in my heels. I knew immediately that voice could only belong to one person.
The one person who Josh spotted before I did. Anita was crossing the street.
“It’s me,” she called out to the boy who was frozen in place at my side.
Without thinking, as I straightened up, not giving a single shit about an ankle I had for sure either twisted or sprained, I set my hand on his shoulder. And I panicked a little. I didn’t tell him anything in the time it took his biological mom to cross the street and end up four feet away from us on the driveway.
What was she doing here again?
“You’re so big,” she said before I snapped out of it and took a step forward to block her from seeing him, a sharp pain shooting up my foot.
“Anita, this isn’t the time or the place,” I told her as calmly as possible.
She didn’t even glance at me. Tenting her hands under her chin, the woman who was almost my age but looked so much older tried to peek around me. “You look just like your dad, baby boy. I can’t believe it.”
My hands fisted and I took another sidestep over, faintly hearing the sound of the front door closing. I hoped Dallas had taken Louie inside so he wouldn’t wake up and witness this. As well as Louie had adjusted to all of the changes in his life since he’d lost both his parents, I’d never fooled myself into thinking that one day it wouldn’t catch up to him. I just really didn’t want that day to be anytime soon.
“Anita, focus. You’re not supposed to be here. You can’t drop by like this,” I told her as nicely as possible, fighting the growl in my throat as a hand touched my back, a hand that could only belong to Josh.
“He’s my son,” she finally spoke to me, her gaze going to mine.
I opened my mouth to tell her that he was mine too, but Josh beat me to it.
“Leave me alone,” he whispered.
Anita’s head jerked back, her gaze going to the boy behind me. “Josh, I’m your mom.”
That was the worst thing she could have said to him, and I wasn’t surprised how he reacted.
“You’re not my mom!” he shouted all of a sudden.
Shit. With one hand going to the back of his neck, I started leading him toward the front door, careful to keep my body between him and the woman neither one of us wanted to see. At least I didn’t want to see her. Not like this.
“Josh!” she called out to this boy I wasn’t convinced we both loved equally.
I kept moving him forward, pointing my index finger at her as I stared her down. “Go. Go.”
“You can’t keep me from him!”
“I don’t want to see you!” Josh shouted again, suddenly turning around and moving aside so he could look at the woman who had given birth to him. “I never want to see you again! You’re not my mom today. You’re not my mom tomorrow. You’re never going to be my mom!”
“Josh—”
“No! You didn’t want me! You can’t change your mind!” he yelled at her, his chest puffing.
Fucking shit. I placed my hand on Josh’s shoulder and turned him around, quickly leading him up the pathway to our house just as Dallas came storming out of the front door, his eyes going from Josh, to me, and finally to Anita. It seemed to click. He remembered her. “Take him inside. I’ll deal with this,” he told me firmly as he walked by us.
The last thing I heard as the door closed behind us was his low voice spitting, “Do I need to—”
Josh shrugged my arm off almost instantly, and before I could stop him, he took off running toward his room. The door slammed to a close, and all I could do was stand there, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened. Jesus Christ.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I let out a breath for a minute, kicked off my heels, and went straight for Josh’s room. Partially expecting the door to be locked, I was surprised when the knob turned. I didn’t ask if I could come in. I was going to whether he wanted me to or not. I found Mac on the floor by the bed, his ears pinned back and his expression anxious and focused on Josh, who didn’t even glance in my direction as he plopped down on the carpet and reached for the controller to his game console. His fingers pressed hard into the buttons.
I swallowed. “J, do you want to talk about it?”
He was staring at the television screen, sure, and his fingers were moving across the controller of his game, but I could tell he wasn’t paying attention. I knew him too well to be able to ignore the anger and the hurt radiating off him. This kid was never the crying kind; he usually went straight into getting angry, and that was exactly what he was doing right then.
With that in mind, I wasn’t surprised when he snapped out a “No.”
I sighed and walked further into his room, taking a seat on the floor by the television, my dress forcing me to tuck my legs under me. “All right. Let me rephrase that: let’s talk about it.”