“What’s going on, baby girl?” Dad asks. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Not a ghost,” Sophia says as she steps around the hugging brothers. “Just an asshole.”
“Sophia!” Delilah snaps.
Sophia shrugs as she steps up in front of me. She knows all about the letter. She knows the man standing out there broke my heart. She knows he wanted nothing to do with his son.
She doesn’t know about the pictures and the updates I’ve been sending every couple of months. She doesn’t know that my heart is still a shattered mess, even though I imagine she has figured it out each and every time I refuse to date or look for someone new.
“Well, this is a surprise,” Apollo says as he joins the guys on the porch.
“Aww, hell,” Sophia mutters. She breaks my line of sight with Drew, bending a little to get on my level. “What do you want me to do? I can tell him to kick bricks? I’ll even kick him in the nuts if it’s what you need. Just say the word.”
I shake my head, not tossing the ideas out entirely, but because I don’t know what I need right now. A warning would’ve been nice, but from the way Lawson is acting, he had no clue his brother was going to show up today.
“I need a minute,” I tell her, my eyes going to Andy who seems quite content to drape the fake grass over his head.
If I was cognizant enough, I would pull out my phone and take a picture. He’s absolutely adorable, but I can barely get my body to inhale right now.
“Are you okay? Why didn’t you tell me he was coming?” Apollo lifts my chin, urging me to look him in the eyes.
“I d-didn’t know.”
“Can you—” Apollo points down at Andy.
“I’ve got him,” Sophia assures him, and then he guides me from the room.
Knowing the kitchen wouldn’t be far enough away, Apollo leads me up the stairs, but even as he closes us into my bedroom, I still can’t take a full breath.
“What’s he doing here? It’s only been a year and a half.” He wipes tears I didn’t know I had from my face.
“Sixteen months,” I correct. “And nine days.”
“You’ve been counting?” He looks disappointed.
“I know how old my son is.”
He frowns at the harsh way the words leave my mouth, but I have more important things to worry about than his feelings.
He said he wasn’t coming back here. He said he wanted nothing to do with us. So why is he standing on the front porch with presents wrapped in Paw Patrol paper?
“Why would he just show up?”
“I don’t know.”
“What does he expect? You to just forget the way he treated you?”
He knows about the letter as well. Sophia, as always, had a hard time keeping her thoughts to herself. I only told her, but everyone, and I mean everyone—including my dad—knows what he did, what he wrote in that letter. As determined as I was to do right by my son, it took months for me to finally heal enough to do more than just take care of Andy. I failed my classes for that semester because despite the progress I made in class, I didn’t have the energy to take the final exams. I got an ulcer which took months of meds to heal, and only the threat of surgery from my doctor made me care enough to get better. I didn’t want to spend weeks in recovery. I didn’t want it to be painful to lift my baby.
Drew did more than broke my heart. He drove me to the point of insanity, and although I’m now weaning myself off the postpartum depression medicine, I’ll never be able to forgive him. He compromised my ability to take care of Andy, and that’s unforgivable.
“I’ll go down and tell him he isn’t welcome here.”
“He’s Andy’s father.”
“He doesn’t deserve him. He needs to leave.”
“Apollo.” Sitting on my bed, I drop my head into my hands. “I can’t make rash decisions where my kid is concerned, and he can’t be forced out. His brother lives right next door.”
I resist the urge to look at my bedroom window—the one directly across from his old one—wondering if he’s going to be staying in that same room again. Not knowing has the potential to drive me as mad as the information being confirmed.
“The donation of his DNA doesn’t give him the right to show up unannounced with an armful of gifts. Bribing a toddler is disgusting. He hurt you both.”
“He’s done nothing to hurt Andy, and my heart isn’t your concern.”
“Wow.” He takes a step back, his hands dragging over the top of his head as he glares at me. “You still have feelings for him. He destroyed you, made it impossible for you to get out of bed, Iz. You had to take antidepressants because of him. He’s horrible, and you’re defending him?”
“Many women have to take antidepressants after childbirth,” I remind him. Hell, he’s the one who advocated for those damn pills when they came up in a conversation he was butting his nose into. “And he’s not a horrible man. My expectations were set too high. That’s my issue to deal with and none of your concern.”
“So you’re just going to let him show up and be daddy?”
“I’m not letting him do anything.”
“So you’re going to ask him to leave?”
“I’m not doing that either. Drew and I will have to have a conversation, but it’s Easter. Andy is excited to hunt eggs, and I’m not dealing with any of it right now.”
He looks a little more at ease, but his hands are still clenched, like he doesn’t know what to do with the adrenaline filling his blood.
“Let’s go then.”
I stand, allowing him to wrap me in a hug when I get close enough. His woodsy scent is familiar and calming, and I focus on that instead of the millions of other things trying to gain space in my head. I won’t think about Drew’s handsome face or the way relief hit me when I first saw him. I’ll never let the fantasy that he’s come back to sweep me off my feet, to be a daddy, for us to be a family get another second in my mind.
“Maybe he escaped and the police will be here shortly to arrest him?”
I chuckle into Apollo’s chest. “That’s ridiculous.”
“I didn’t see any prison tattoos, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t join a gang.”
I almost tell him that Drew would never do that, but the man I thought I knew never existed.
I don’t want a woman in my life because we share a connection I never wanted.
Those words, and many more, were in the letter he sent. I’ve memorized the thing, read it so many times the paper is frail and thin. Each time my mind tries to imagine things differently, I pull that letter out. I read it over and over again until the anger is dripping from my pores, and then I use the fuel to be the best mother I can be.
Chapter 32
Drew
Wanting to cave Apollo’s head in when I watch him come down the stairs with his arm around Izzy’s waist makes no sense.
I may love her, but I also hurt her. I told her to move on and wasn’t even nice about it. It seems she took my advice, and I came here today expecting I’d find exactly what I’m seeing from the doorway. Her going to Apollo, a man that has never been shy about his feelings for her, kept me awake at night, but if she’s happy then I’m hap—actually, no. I can’t even lie to myself about it. I’m not happy. I’ll never be happy without her.