Hold on to Hope

by Jackson, A. L.

  “I just . . . want to be enough.”

  And that was the problem.

  Wasn’t ever sure that I could be.

  Emotion welled in his eyes. “You’ve always been, Evan . . . more than enough for all of us. I don’t think you ever really realized what a blessing that you are. How you made us all better people for being you. How you changed our worlds and in a better way.”

  My gaze drifted to my son who’d slid off my lap and was standing between my knees.

  “You want to tell me about his mother?” Dad hedged.

  Last night we’d tiptoed.

  Only the barest facts given.

  Not that I had a whole lot of information to contribute, anyway.

  HER NAME IS ASHLEY. Decided to sign it, not sure I could get it out if I attempted to say it aloud.

  “And who is she?”

  In discomfort, I roughed a hand through my hair. “Girl from my complex.”

  Speculation and confusion lifted his brow. “And . . . you were in a relationship with her?”

  Didn’t matter that I couldn’t hear him. Could feel the degree of hesitation his questions were coming with.

  Didn’t know what it was that shook my head—shame or remorse or just plain surrender. “More like I was drunk and lonely.”

  Just trying to fill up that vacancy.

  I touched Everett’s hand, still unable to comprehend that something so magical could come from something that had been so superficial.

  “We hooked up a couple times. She moved a few weeks later. We weren’t even close enough that she felt the need to say goodbye. Hadn’t seen her until she showed up at my door in the middle of the night a few days ago.”

  Dad’s head shook, and he bounced his knee, like he was trying to come to grips with this. “I get it, Evan, trying to fill a void when you know something is missing. What I don’t understand is if you were so lonely, why didn’t you come home? Why did you think you needed to separate yourself from us? We love you. You really think we considered you a burden?”

  I huffed out a sigh, hesitated, lifted my hands, dropped them before I was speaking aloud again, “I know that I was.”

  Everything quavered with the memory, and my tongue darted out to wet my dried lips. “You think I couldn’t see it, Dad? See it in all of your eyes that day when you came rushing into the emergency room? The fear? The agony? I didn’t want to be the person who brought that on anymore.”

  When I’d finally felt I’d reached a peak in my life, finally accepting what I’d always wanted, I’d collapsed. Heart function dropping and sending my blood pressure into the danger zone. They were able to adjust my meds.

  But there had been something that had changed that night.

  A realization that had come on when I’d seen their faces.

  I’d known it immediately. It was what they had been waiting on all those years. For the day when they would get the news that I was gone.

  I figured I was nothing but selfish if I stayed and continued to put them through that.

  “Yeah, Evan? Well that agony only increased tenfold the day you took off. And it never went away. So maybe it’s time you stopped fooling yourself into thinking you are less than you are.”

  He hesitated, warred, his attention flickering away before he was pinning me with the force of it. “Frankie.”

  He said her name like mourning.

  My fucked-up heart shook. Shivered and fisted and pulsed.

  He knew. I should have known that he would. I didn’t think I could keep a truth that bright and beautiful concealed.

  I met his eye. “She deserved to have a life that I couldn’t offer her.”

  And I knew, if I was being honest, the root of the problem had been that I couldn’t stick around to watch it happen.

  Sorrow billowed through the air.

  Dad’s.

  Mine.

  The years of loss and the question of where the hell I was supposed to go from here because there wasn’t a whole lot that had changed.

  Nothing but this child who stood like a beacon in the middle of us.

  He exhaled through the tension, fighting whatever war I could see going on in his mind. “She loved you.”

  He said it so simply.

  With so much remorse and disappointment that I wasn’t sure how to remain sitting in the regret of it.

  His hands fisted on his thighs. Like he was having to hold himself back. “Leaving her like that? It was wrong, Evan. I would have supported any decision you had to make, except for that one.”

  My chest felt tight.

  Achy.

  Everett grabbed my index finger and shook it all around. Kid rooting me. Grounding me. Making me feel like there was a bigger purpose for my life than I’d ever imagined.

  I lifted my attention to Dad. Could feel the confession coming raw, a jumble as I forced it off my tongue. “I never wanted to hurt her. I never wanted to hurt you or Mom. Ate at me every single day, and with each day that passed, I felt more out of reach. More distanced.”

  Lost.

  My throat tremored. “Sometimes it hurts too damn bad to stay.”

  “Yet you came back?” he pressed in an encouraging challenge.

  I gazed down at Everett.

  Affection took me whole.

  I looked back up and gave my dad the truth he had instilled in me, his promise forever etched on my spirit, one he’d issued when I was eight-years-old. “You find your purpose when your love for someone else becomes bigger than your fears.”

  * * *

  After Everett’s appointment, I pulled my car to the curb in front of A Drop of Hope. Maybe I should have kept right on driving. Gone back to my parents’ place and spent the day with Everett getting to know the kid who I kept glancing at through the rear-view mirror.

  Mom would be home in a couple hours, but stopping to see her was an easy excuse.

  Hell. Almost a mandatory excuse. She’d barely been able to pry herself away when she’d left to open the café this morning.

  But I knew better.

  Knew why my heart felt like a fucking rock that might crumble where it sat so heavily in my chest.

  Knew why my breaths felt short and my head felt light.

  I thought I could feel her from a hundred miles away.

  Sense her presence.

  Feel her turmoil and questions.

  Didn’t have the right to stop, but I didn’t think I could leave things how we’d left them yesterday, either.

  Could barely stand under all the vulnerability she’d let spill out on the ground between us when she’d come running across the street. Like she was crossing a river of hurt and she was willing to feel it if it meant she could get to me. All the while my spirit had gone mad with the need to hold her. Body demanding the girl it’d been missing for the last three years.

  Knew I didn’t deserve her.

  Fuck.

  Probably even more so now.

  But I couldn’t help but put my car into park, kill the engine, and climb out. I went right for the back and pulled out my son.

  He smiled one of his smiles and patted both my cheeks and for the flash of a second my entire world felt whole.

  Purposed.

  It should be enough.

  Still I rounded the front of my car, hit the sidewalk, and headed for the entrance.

  Wasn’t really paying all the much attention until I was right there, when the super tall, lanky guy stretched his legs out in front of me from where he was sitting at one of the bistro tables in front of the café.

  My attention darted that way.

  His dark hair was unkempt, his jeans ratty.

  “You got a few bucks to spare?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Sorry, man, don’t carry cash on me.”

  “Bullshit.”

  My hand instantly went to Everett’s ear, holding him tighter in a protective stance, because there was just something about this guy that was off.

  “Don’t ow
e you anything,” I told him.

  Not money or an explanation.

  Not that I wouldn’t have given him some change if I actually had any, but still, what the hell was this guy’s problem?

  “No?” It was purely a challenge, and my pulse started to pound harder. A warning blaring somewhere deep in my mind.

  My eyes narrowed, and it was one of those times I really wished my voice was normal. That my words wouldn’t be a tell that would give this prick the idea that I wouldn’t gladly throw down if he even looked at my kid wrong. “You should probably move along.”

  He laughed, and I got the sense the sound coming from him was cynical.

  Mocking.

  There was something in his eyes that set me on edge.

  That alarm screamed louder.

  He pushed to standing, angled his head, got in close. “Whatever you say, freak.”

  The last he spat, his unwarranted grudge hitting my cheek, but it was my own venom that pooled on my tongue. I glared at him from over my shoulder, watching him as he swaggered off the sidewalk, not going to the crosswalk but instead loping across the street like the fucker thought he was invincible.

  Apprehension seethed.

  Another thing about being deaf?

  I’d learned to read people really goddamn well. Sense their spirits. Read their movements. Listen to their intentions.

  Didn’t even have to look that hard to smell the vileness seeping from his flesh, and it didn’t have a damn thing to do with the fact he looked homeless.

  I watched him until he hopped onto the sidewalk on the other side of the street. Whole time, I held my son protectively, making another silent promise that I wouldn’t allow anyone to touch him.

  I pressed a kiss to his temple, breathing relief when the guy disappeared around the corner, realizing I was probably being overprotective.

  Judgy.

  But when it came to your kids?

  There were some things you just didn’t risk.

  Seven

  Frankie Leigh

  Have you ever felt like you were hooked on a moment? Waiting for a specific second to unfold, not sure which it would be, but one-hundred percent certain it would come?

  You might not know exactly where you’d be standing.

  Where the sun might sit in the sky or if the moon might be glowing from the heavens.

  Oh, but did you ever know precisely how it would feel.

  How it would rock you to the core and send the ground rumbling below you, your heart taking off at a sprint, bang, bang, banging against your ribs that suddenly felt too tight?

  That precise second for me?

  It was when the door to A Drop of Hope swung open during the typical time of our afternoon lull. When we were working to restock and clean up and regroup.

  But I doubted there would be any recovering from this. No reprieve from the sight of him, so tall where he stood in the doorway, sun shining all around him.

  A blaze of light lit him up, a beacon so powerful, it was enough to draw me home.

  Same as he had yesterday.

  Only today, my spirit had known he would come. I’d known with every fiber of my being that there wouldn’t be a way to avoid the fact that Evan Bryant had returned.

  I was just goin’ to have to face it.

  Accept it.

  He stood there, holding his son.

  His son.

  His son.

  His son.

  I heard it like an echo shouting in my soul.

  Reverberating. Rebounding. Slamming back into me with little pulses of pain with each pass.

  The child clung to his side like a little froggy with sticky, clinging hands.

  Just like his daddy.

  Cute as a bug when he was so little like that. A smattering of freckles speckled beneath his eyes and running the bridge of his nose.

  Full lips all twisted up in a shy-sort of glee.

  Agony clutched me by the throat, and somehow, my shattered heart threatened to expand. I struggled to remain upright, to fight for the good in all this mess.

  “Did you come to see Grammy?” Aunt Hope’s expression lit up like a kid watching fireworks for the first time on the Fourth of July.

  Wow.

  Had she ever gone from horrified shock yesterday to sweet grammy mode in a quick shift of gears.

  It wasn’t like I would have expected anything less from her. Wasn’t like her givin’ nature wasn’t going to come out on top.

  Not that there was a soul in this whole wide world who would be able to resist that smile, anyway.

  Not the child’s and sure not Evan’s.

  Evan who sent his mama a wide though unsettled grin.

  Like he didn’t know how to stand on the ground that seemed to be undulating, either.

  Everything crooked and off-balance.

  Carly sent me a look. There was hardly any sound coming from her mouth, her words secret and covert and packed with implication. “Oh girl, you are in so much trouble. Have you ever seen anything as sexy as that? I mean, Evan was always cute and all . . . but holy hot damn. He came back with his A-game.”

  Why did she feel the need to do this to me?

  Like she was pointing out what was plain as day.

  Besides, what Evan and I had shared had never been a game, even though he looked like he might as well suit up for a not-so-friendly match.

  Evan rumbled something to his mama, and my stare got tangled in the action, in the way Aunt Hope was over there kissing on that tiny boy’s cheek, the way Evan was staring down at the kid like the child was the one who’d personally placed the stars in the sky.

  The one who’d given Evan a reason to stare at them all through the night.

  Carly reached over and lifted my chin where my jaw had gotten away from me and was hanging down to the floor.

  “Clean up on aisle 4. You’re droolin’,” she said.

  I shot her a glare. “Stop it,” I hissed.

  “What?” She shrugged, all kinds of innocent.

  “You know what.”

  Carly’s brow lifted.

  Clueless.

  Except she was grinning.

  I mean, seriously, did she think she was gonna play some kind of cupid? Because

  Cupid had struck me a long-damned time ago and I was still bearing the wounds of that arrow.

  Bleeding out.

  She started wiping down around the coffee urns, her back turned to the lobby, her voice for me. “You know he came here to see you.”

  “He did not. He came here to see his mama.”

  “Um . . . pretty sure he’s stayin’ with her. Not a whole lot of reason for him to stop by when she’s gonna be getting off here in a bit.”

  I scowled at her. “You’re just dreaming up more drama. Drop it. It’s over, and I’m over it.”

  I tried to build up all the fortitude that I could find.

  “You are literally the worst liar I have ever met.”

  My attention got snagged on the trio when the little boy’s giggle filled the air. So light and sweet and carrying the promise of agony.

  The child threw his head back, grabbing his daddy’s strong jaw and cracking up laughing as Evan nuzzled his face into the little boy’s neck.

  The whole scene was so tender that the flood waters sloshed and dribbled over the side.

  If I wasn’t careful, I was gonna get drenched.

  Carly angled behind me where I’d been leaning over to restock the Blueberry Button Bliss cupcakes. She knocked into my hip as she passed. “Liar, liar, pants on fire,” she taunted beneath her breath.

  Awesome.

  We were back to bein’ ten.

  “I will stab you,” I warned.

  She chuckled. “I’m super terrified of you, Frankie Leigh. I might have pissed my pants. Oh wait, that was just because I was laughin’ so hard.”

  I pinched her side.

  Hard.

  She yelped, then mouthed, “Vicious.”

 
; “I’ll show you vicious.”

  And then my head was snapping forward, a slow-slide of chills rolling down my spine when I felt the shift in the air.

  Aunt Hope was bouncing the child in her arms and murmuring sweet nothings that I knew really meant everything. She rounded to the back of the counter. “Did you eat, my chunky boy? Let’s see what we can get for you. I bet Grammy has something special that you’ll like. You are so sweet . . . yes you are, aren’t you?”

  But that wasn’t what had me trembling.

  Evan had set his sights on me.

  Watching me with this confusing expression that I wanted to pretend I didn’t recognize.

  That I didn’t know firsthand.

  Need and want and this crazy passion that I remembered all too well.

  God. He was not allowed to look at me like that.

  I just might pass out.

  This was too much.

  But there I was, standing there with a big ol’ grin plastered to my face.

  Faked.

  Feigned.

  Forced.

  Thing was, there was a tremor rolling underneath that was real. Joy and hope seeping into the vacant spaces, right to the parts of me that had only wanted Evan to be happy. All the nights I’d spent so lonely and still praying that he could find himself.

  To my left, Aunt Hope was approaching, carrying that little boy, and my heart started to speed, jumpin’ a beat, getting erratic and flustered and blundering out of control the closer they came.

  Aunt Hope slowed when she was three feet away.

  Was that sympathy on her face?

  Empathy seeping free?

  Could she possibly understand?

  No, not even close.

  But still, her smile was filling right up with all her warmth and affection, her eyes softer as she looked between the two of us. “Frankie Leigh. I figured you might want to meet Everett.”

  I got worried I’d swallowed a grapefruit because there was suddenly a lump so huge sittin’ at the base of my throat that it was constricting airflow. Only these little wheezing, choking sounds were getting free.