“You would’ve failed.”
She snorted. “Thanks for having so much faith in me.”
“How would you ever go to college? Uneducated and destitute is not a good look.”
“I’d be happy. I’d have my child with me today. I’d have Jameson.”
Genevieve laughed. “Oh, goodness. If you think he would’ve stuck around while you gained fifty pounds, held a snot-nosed toddler on your hip, and made him Hamburger Helper for dinner every night, then you have no realistic idea of marriage. Plus, military men are issued free passes when it comes to infidelity. All that time away from home.”
If she ever referred to Johnny as snot-nosed again, she’d need a plastic surgeon to repair her perfect nose.
“You would know about infidelity, having cheated on my dad. Someone you were supposed to love.” Chloe was astute. She deduced their history at a young age. “You’re the last person to give marriage advice.”
The betrayal burning through her like acid during her drive from Riverhead waned. All that remained was the bitter aftertaste of disappointment. She turned to leave.
“In the end, I was right,” Genevieve called out as Chloe walked to her car. “You did what was best. Keep that in mind when you’re giving me the silent treatment.”
Chloe swung around. “You told him I did the unthinkable!”
“And he believed me. Let that sink in.”
It already had.
Jameson spent ten years believing she terminated her pregnancy. Believing she didn’t love him.
That didn’t say much for the bond they built that summer.
“As the old saying goes, Genevieve . . . Don’t call me, I’ll call you.” She paused before getting into her car, looking at the woman who was supposed to love her above all else. “I wouldn’t sit by the phone waiting, if I were you.”
“Where are you going? You have to forgive me sooner or later, Chloe.” A hint of panic edged her voice. “I’m your mother.”
“Home. No, I don’t. And not anymore.”
Home. Maine Lane.
A property on the other side of a twelve-foot-tall, professionally manicured hedge. A property that provided her with something she’d never found here.
Comfort. Solace. Acceptance.
And ten years ago . . . love.
He was there, in their spot.
The meeting spot. The swing.
Exactly where she waited for him ten years ago. Instead, he bailed, went to California without her.
Leaving her alone, pregnant, and terrified.
“You don’t take direction very well, do you?” Still reeling from Genevieve’s deceit, Chloe tapped her watch as she approached the carriage house. “I’m calling the sheriff in five minutes.”
But finding him here gave her hope, even though he believed her capable of aborting their baby.
A whopper of a whoops, yes, but once the panic subsided and their California plans were set, the reality that she’d soon become a mom took hold. Chloe wanted that baby. With every beat of their synchronized hearts, she wanted him.
And him, too. The man who sat smirking at her.
“He better bring a posse with him if you think I’m leaving before I get answers.”
If you think I’ll sit on that swing and wait for you ever again . . .
But she didn’t say it out loud. Because she would.
Leaning back against the porch railing, she maintained distance. Getting too close was risky. Despite their mutual hate, the attraction had not only survived ten years and a tragedy, it thrived.
“First, tell me this,” she said, the question nagging her since the ball field. “When we sat here and ate cheeseburgers the other night, and you were high and mighty pissed at me, and I cried all over myself apologizing for my mistake?”
He tilted his head, waiting.
“You thought I was apologizing for having an abortion?”
“Since I thought you had one, yeah.”
And he forgave her. Apologized himself.
“If I hadn’t polished off the bourbon that same night, I’d be enjoying some Kentucky hospitality right now.” He held up her bottle of tequila. “Instead, Jose and I are working on a puzzle we don’t have all the pieces to. You do. Care to partake as you talk?”
She smiled thinly.
“I’m dying to hear you justify abandoning a pregnant teenage girl, so I’ll pass. And since you seem affronted that bad shit happened after you ran away with your tail tucked between your legs, I’ll need to be sober to make sense of it.”
“More for me,” he said and sipped straight from the bottle. Recapping it, he added, “Anything to numb the pain.”
That simple, yet oh, so selfish comment let loose a decade-long tirade.
A diatribe she’d added to every time she went to Riverhead.
“You think you’re in pain? Which kind, Jameson? The physical kind? Try giving birth to a human being. Try going through twenty hours of labor with no drugs because you wanna make sure you’ll remember what your baby looks like. What he sounds like. What he smells like. What he feels like the first and only time you hold him in your arms.”
She leaned forward, waving her hand until his gaze met hers, forcing him into eye contact.
“Or do you mean emotional pain? When a social worker comes into a hospital room and rips that hours-old newborn from your arms and gives him to strangers. When you stare at the closed door she went through, praying she brings your baby back to you. That she realizes you made a mistake. That maybe you won’t totally fuck up his life as a single teenage parent trying to raise a boy who has no father. When you stare at that door, praying the jerk who knocked you up and then abandoned you, forcing you to give up a child you love but he doesn’t, rescues you both. Really does want you.”
“Chloe, I—”
“No,” she said, holding up a hand when he interrupted her. “You don’t get to talk yet. You get to listen. You’ve lived in blessed ignorance for years while a person I grew inside my body lives with someone else. Belongs to them, not me, because you left me to take care of him by myself.”
The cathartic flow of words continued, pouring from her soul.
“Now that we’ve covered physical and emotional pain separately, let’s combine them. Like when you cry so long and so hard your eyes swell shut. When you cry still, to this day. Or when your breasts leak milk for weeks because your aching body knows you gave birth, but you don’t have a baby to feed because you had to give him up. Or when you touch the stretch mark on your stomach every morning, knowing your precious child is one town over, calling another woman Mommy.”
He swallowed, scrubbing a hand down his face.
“Or,” she continued, her arms spread wide. “Here’s a real hoot. When you sit on a porch swing and pine for that fucking coward boy who didn’t love you or his own kid enough to take you with him. When you wait, one day, then one year, then one decade, for him to come home. While life passes you by.”
Heavy silence followed her string of confessions, and it was palpable.
“That’s pain, Jameson. In every single form a person can feel it.”
He stared at her, his face pale, his eyes damp.
“But go ahead,” she added, flicking her hand at him. “Tell me what ails you. Tell me how bad you’ve got it. What hurts so I can make it better?”