Me: It was wonderful. The doctors and therapists are so welcoming. It’s going to be a good thing. I can feel it. Benjamin left with a smile on his face. That’s all that mattered.
Maxon: Can I see it?
Me: ???
Maxon: His face. Your face. Dillon’s face.
Two seconds later, my phone was ringing with a video call, Maxon’s name coming up on the screen.
Nerves raced, and I looked around my room as if I were looking for a place to hide before I finally told myself to suck it up, pull up my big girl panties (and keep them there) and answer the stupid phone.
“Hey,” I said, though it was wispy when his gorgeous face came on the screen.
God, why did the man have to be so appealin’?
“Hey, gorgeous.”
Redness flushed. “Maxon.”
It was a reprimand.
Caution.
His smile was nothing but a smirk. “Just telling the truth. Figured you didn’t want any lies.”
“Maxon,” I said again, and he just chuckled.
“Let me talk to Benjamin.”
Chewing on my bottom lip, I pushed down the agitation and moved out of my room and into the one next to it where the boys were putting on their pajamas. “Hey, Maxon wants to say hi.”
“Mr. Mack!” Dillon shouted. He hurtled across the room like his pants were on fire. He jumped up to get into the camera. “Hey! What are you doin’? Are you coming over? Did you work today? Did you know my Nana made lasagna for dinner? It was so good. Do you like lasagna?”
Maxon laughed at Dillon’s erratic train of thought. “Doesn’t everyone love lasagna?”
“Not crazy people,” Dillon said, far too serious.
“Guess I’m out of the woods then because I love lasagna,” Maxon replied, rubbing at that jaw that was sending my mind into a tailspin.
A nosedive right into ideas of reckless things.
“Are you comin’ over?” Dillon pushed.
“Not tonight, Lil’ Dill, but really soon.”
“Did my mom say so?”
“Not yet, but I’m working on her.” He was lookin’ at me with that smirk when he said it, something about him so arrogant tonight, his expression promising he was working on more things than a simple visit to see the boys.
“Hard work pays off,” Dillon said.
Awesome.
All the character I’d been trying to instill in my boys was coming back to bite me in the butt.
“I’m nothing if not a hard worker,” Maxon said, and even through the phone, I could see the way those eyes were glintin’.
I bit down on my bottom lip to stop the spark of need I could feel lighting up in my belly.
God.
This was bad.
“Go on and get ready for bed,” I told Dillon, needing to cut off the direction of this conversation and fast, and the man had barely said anything.
I turned to Benjamin who fumbled to get his pajama shirt over his head.
“Someone wants to talk to you,” I all but whispered, tiptoeing that way.
Benjamin smiled. “Maxon?”
My heart leapt, praying that didn’t make me a fool. Nodding, I shifted my phone around so Benjamin was in view, and I could see Maxon’s expression do its own foolish things.
Leaping and jumping.
“Hey, there Big Ben.”
My heart clutched.
Big Ben.
Oh, no.
Now he was giving my boys nicknames.
This really was bad.
“How was your session?”
“Good. Not hhhard today but next tiiime the real work starrrts.”
It was basically verbatim what his therapist had told him.
“Are you ready for it?”
Benjamin nodded.
“That’s my boy.”
Oh God.
I had to put my hand on my chest to keep my heart from physically spilling out onto the floor.
“It’s bedtime. You better tell Maxon goodnight,” I barely managed, my emotions all over the place.
Wanting to just . . . give. Terrified of what might happen if I did.
“Goodniiight,” my sweet boy said, and Maxon just stared for a beat before he finally whispered, “Good night, Big Ben. I’ll see you soon.”
“Okkkkay.”
I pulled the phone away, and Benjamin gave me the strangest look. One that asked too many questions. One that made me have to turn my back so I could slip out of the room and into mine.
“I’ve got to go tuck the boys in,” I rushed, words a ramble to match the shaking of my hands, the memory of last night too raw and fresh.
Too tempting to repeat again. Because God, looking at him? I wanted to. I wanted to run straight to his door and into his arms.
“Izzy—”
“Goodnight, Maxon,” I told him before he could get in another word. Before he made me stumble. Before he made me lose all reason.
I tossed my phone to my bed and scurried back out to get the boys into bed.
As if I could outrun that man so easily.
Because when I got back to my room, a slew of messages were waiting.
Maxon: Let me take him to his appointment Thursday.
Maxon: I can switch my work schedule around easily, and you won’t have to worry about taking the time off.
Maxon: Let me be there.
Maxon: I’m going crazy over here, Izzy Baby.
Maxon: Fuck, I can still taste you on my tongue.
Maxon: I can still smell you on my fingers.
Maxon: I want you, Little Bird. So fucking bad.
Oh God, that shifted gears and fast. A complete one-eighty. It sent my pulse scattering, draining from my head and rushing to areas where I sure as heck didn’t need my blood pounding.
I fumbled with my phone, quick to respond, needing to get it over with before I let myself get caught up in something foolish.
Me: Fine. Thursday. Come pick the boys up here at my mama’s. He needs to be there at 3:00. You can bring them to my work by 5 after.
Then I quickly shut it off completely. Needing to cut the interaction. As if when I climbed into bed it would stand the chance of escaping him.
Because when I closed my eyes?
He was right there waiting for me, too.
Twenty
Mack
“Wait, let’s get this straight before we move on any farther—you’re actually calling me for advice?”
I could almost see Ian’s smug smile from across the miles, the asshole.
I grunted at him as I accelerated through traffic on my way back to my house after checking in at the precinct. “Fine, get it over with. Rub it in. And then tell me what the fuck I’m supposed to do.”
I’d basically begged Izzy to let me take that kid to his appointment this afternoon. Now, I was sweating bullets so thick I might as well have been in the middle of a 10-70 with shots fired.
“If I had the answer for all the nonsense going down in your brain, I would be a very rich man,” Ian razzed.
“Cut it, man. You are rich. You wanna rub that in, too?”
Wouldn’t call his life golden, but the fucker had sure gotten lucky when it came to the dollar signs.
Ian laughed, and then his tone sobered. “Here’s the thing, Mack, you’re calling me for the answer, and you and I both know you already know what that answer is.”
“And what’s that?” I challenged, changing lanes and passing a couple of cars.
“You know this lands right back on your father’s doorstep. You’ve got to stop worrying that you’re going to follow in his footsteps. Make his same mistakes.”
“Already made plenty of them, haven’t I?”
The chokehold he had on me still felt like steel lining my ribcage. Memories of the path I’d been traveling. Who I’d almost become.
“Yeah, and you were a kid. A teenager who didn’t have a whole hell of a lot of a different choice. And you’ve been running around
for the last twelve years, this badass cop, putting every criminal behind bars so you can prove that you’re nothing like him. Denying yourself happiness, thinking your life is what you owed.”
Ian’s voice twisted in emphasis. “Now it’s time to prove you really are nothing like him. Know you’re scared, and this fatherhood thing came from out of nowhere. Believe me, I get it. But the only answer to any of this is to step up and become the man you were meant to be. The man every single one of us know you are.”
The lump I’d been fighting for the last three days bobbed heavily in my throat. Every question I’d had about pushing my way into their lives rising to the surface.
“And what if that man isn’t good enough? What if I fail? Those boys . . . they’re . . . amazing.”
Affection and fear buzzed through my being.
“Not sure if I can risk bringing them into my life.”
“You really think there’s a chance you’re going to make their lives worse rather than better?”
“You really think I won’t?”
“Uh, yeah,” he shot back.
“You say that so easily. Look what I almost got you wrangled into when I first met you.”
“Again, you were fucking seventeen. And I think it’s pretty clear I went looking for any trouble I could find. It’s not like you dragged me into the sordid life. I was already there. And that was a long time ago, and you don’t come close to resembling that same guy. Hell, you didn’t then. Why do you think you raged against it so hard? Why do you think your father is behind bars now?”
“Izzy.” Answer to that was easy. I would have done anything for her.
“Izzy,” he dished right back, though he served it like a solution.
I sat there silent until he pressed, “Izzy’s here, man. Right there. What are you going to do about it?”
My head barely shook, guts knotted up in the lust that I hadn’t been able to shake since the first day I’d caught sight of her. Had only gotten worse with every interaction. With every pass.
Sunday night out on her porch had very nearly done me in.
“Want her,” I admitted, voice rough. “Want her in a way that’s not even reasonable.”
There I went, cutting myself wide open. But this was Ian. The guy who got me better than anyone else.
“And the boys?”
“Want them, too. In my life. Permanently.”
With Izzy right by my side.
Ian laughed like it was completely obvious. “Then it seems to me the only risk you can’t take is not fighting to have them in your life.”
“Wish it were that easy.”
“It is, man. It is exactly that easy. You go after what you want. You fight for it. You take it. You protect it with everything you have. It’s the only thing that we can do.”
I started to give him shit for being so goddamn sappy when my attention snagged on someone walking along the main sidewalk. He was turning into an alley that ran behind houses in a neighborhood about two miles away from mine.
Maybe it was the color of his hair or the demeanor of his stance, but I knew it the second I caught sight of him in my periphery. “Gotta go.”
Without saying anything else, I ended the call and made a quick left into the neighborhood while I called for backup. I jerked my Suburban to the curb and jumped out, heartrate ratcheting high.
I jogged as quickly and quietly as I could between two houses, eyes darting everywhere, keen, beating back the fury that wanted to come unleashed. Did my best to remain concealed and level-headed, hand on my gun strapped to my side as I slinked along.
A dog started going wild at the fence of the house on the left, barking and growling like a raging beast, paws digging under the wooden slats.
Fuck.
So much for remaining inconspicuous.
I continued moving in the direction of the disturbance, sweat gathering at my nape and dripping down my back.
The feeling hot in the summer air.
Instinct kicking in.
I got to the alley just as the prick was disappearing around the corner along another row of houses.
I started running that way, increasing my pace, caution in every step.
At the corner, I slowed, and I peeked my head around to find the asshole strutting down the alley with his back to me.
Zachary Keeton.
I edged out, keeping close to the back fence, gun clasped in both hands. I tried to keep my breathing controlled and my footsteps quieted as I rushed that way.
Didn’t matter.
Kid’s spine went rigid. Awareness spinning through the dense, dense air. Like he felt me the same way that I felt him.
A clash of convictions.
A collision of creed.
His attention flew over his shoulder, and I was lifting my gun, shouting, “Freeze.”
For one long moment, a blink of an eye, he stayed there, our eyes locked.
Something moved through that link.
A deep-seated hatred that I couldn’t process, even though I felt it to my bones.
Then the asshole took off like he’d been poised at the starting line of a 400-meter dash.
Feet pounding the dirt.
I took off after him, shouting the whole way, “On the ground. Get your ass on the ground.”
Dust kicked up behind him, and he broke right, scaling a fence and hopping over the top of it in a second flat.
I went after him, hiking myself over and dropping to my feet in someone’s yard on the other side. Swings on a swing set swayed, and what couldn’t be more than a two-year-old boy had his face pressed to the sliding glass window watching the action go down.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Not how I ever wanted things to play out.
Innocents in danger. Minding their own business when some disgusting prick decided to get unruly.
Rage burned hot in my blood, and I shot back into action, racing for the fence where the asshole had gone. I followed the chaos, going for the next yard where I heard a dog start yelping in agitation, and I was pushing over the top just as the punk was skating over the opposite side.
I sprinted, pulse racing hard, pants raking out of my throat as I gave everything I had to chase this fucker down.
But by the time I made it over that fence, I’d lost sight of him.
Vanished.
“Goddamn it,” I shouted, chest heaving.
Within minutes, two patrols showed. We scoured the neighborhood for a full hour before I had to call it, refusing to be late to pick the boys up for the first time, wondering all over again if I wasn’t making a huge mistake.
I made it to my house, wary and on edge. After I searched high and low and found no sign of anything awry, I jumped into the shower, quick to dry off and pull on new clothes.
The bruises from the other night were still evident on my body, but it was the dread of who I was, of my life, that was aching in an unbearable way.
Feeling the weight of it, I edged over to my bed and sank down onto the side, and I dug into my nightstand drawer and pulled out the book that always brought me comfort.
The drawing on the spine to match the tattoo I’d had done on my arm and shoulder.
Both scared and fierce.
I opened to one of the passages that I had marked.
The Dragon puffed, smoke coming from its massive snout.
“You set out on a journey you believed your purpose. Your only option. To prove your loyalty to the king. Yet your heart stumbled on that path, knowing it was unsound. Now you tremble in fear?”
Teno rocked, legs curled to his chest where he sat next to the fire, struggling to find warmth in the wrath of the winter. “How can I stand against an army when I am but one man? No more than a stable boy?”
“You stand because you are brave. Because you’ve known all along who you were meant to be.”
For a moment, I let my eyes drop closed, inhaled the words like a buoy, and then I stood to go and pick up my son.
&n
bsp; Twenty-One
Mack
Fourteen Years Old
Beneath the silvered light of the moon, Mack quietly climbed the tree. The tree that was an escape. A stairway to his own personal heaven.
Little Bird’s nest.
With his shoulder, he swiped angrily at the tears clouding his eyes, hating that they were there. He wasn’t a wimp or a coward.
But he wondered if maybe he really was as he rushed to make the ascent as fast as he could.
Every inch of his body hurt.
Inside and out.
Inside and out.
There was only one thing that could make it feel better.
He scaled the limbs, palms of his hands burning as he carelessly grabbed and pulled and hoisted himself higher, desperate to get up that tree as fast as he could. He was almost weeping when he got to the darkened window on the second story of the house, and he crawled on the branch that reached it so he could lightly knock at the glass.
Darkness radiated from within, and he could barely make out the hint of the wispy white curtains that hung at the sides.
Relief stretched like a band across his chest when metal screeched, and the white-framed window was pushed up.
Little Bird poked out her head. Blonde hair fell around her shoulders, her skin soft and pale, hazel eyes wide as she stared back at him through the shadows.
Or maybe she was just an angel. A figment of his imagination that had been sent to rescue him.
“Maxon, what’s wrong? What happened?” she whispered, her words worried and sweet.
He wanted to fall into the comfort of them.
Close his eyes and forget.
“Let me in,” he begged, glancing down and behind him, listening for anything. For any indication that he might be comin’ for him. Or for Izzy.
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