Christmas with the Single Dad (The Single Dads of Seattle Book 5)

by Whitley Cox

Holy fucking shit! Liam knew.

  Zak didn’t think anybody but he and Loni knew.

  Had she told her lawyer? She must have.

  Liam swirled the ice around in his glass and stared blankly into the fire. “Had Cidrah done something like that to me and I was on the verge of losing Jordie, I probably would have sunk to a whole new level too.” His gaze pivoted, and he pinned it on Zak. “But if you had come to me beforehand, we could have gone about it the right way. I could have gone to her lawyer. Instead I had to find out about it from her lawyer. It made me look like I didn’t know what the hell was going on with my client—because I didn’t. It made it look like you didn’t trust me. It made it look like I don’t know how to do my job—which I certainly fucking do. And, it made it look like you were threatening her.”

  Zak’s gaze fell to his lap, and he stared at his drink as the memories of just how far he’d stooped hit him in the back of the head like a sucker punch.

  “Fuck,” Zak breathed.

  “Dude, what’d you do?” Mason asked, his voice low.

  Liam took a sip of his drink. “I’m not angry … just disappointed. I’ll always have your back, man. You should know that by now.”

  He did know that. He just didn’t want anybody, not even Liam, to know how low he’d sunk.

  So much for that.

  It’s surprising the lengths a person will go to when they think they’re about to lose everything that means anything to them, when they think they’re about to lose their children. He was ashamed of what his ex-wife had pushed him to do. He’d gone practically insane. He wasn’t in his right mind, wasn’t thinking clearly. He was blinded by the rage, the pain, the heartache, the fear.

  The fear was the big one. The fear that after everything she’d done, she’d still win and Zak would lose his children.

  And the thought of losing his kids, his business, everything he loved, everything he’d worked so damn hard to build, all because a woman who had lied to him since day one just continued to lie. She painted him out to be abusive and an alcoholic, and that had caused him to sink to a new low. A level so far below the surface, daylight was nonexistent. A place so dark and dismal, so void of any life, light or oxygen, not even maggots could survive. He’d found that dark place inside him, lurking, waiting for a moment when he’d been pushed beyond all reason, scared out of his mind. And that moment had come in the form of his ex-wife and her heinous lies. Only then did he reach inside, put a lock around his heart and another around his conscience, and then stepped directly into the darkness. He did what he had to do to ensure he didn’t lose his children.

  He blackmailed his ex-wife.

  Somehow, Zak wound up with a video in his inbox one day from an anonymous email address. He never did find out who sent it to him. Not that it really mattered. What mattered was that in that video was none other than Zak’s wife, Loni, doing three lines of cocaine off a glass table, naked, and then proceeding to get fucked—without condoms—by two men while blowing another. The music in the background suggested that it was some low-budget porno, and it very well might have been, but Zak would hedge to guess someone at one of the orgies was simply videotaping everything to use as leverage later.

  And now that leverage belonged to Zak.

  After he watched the entire video, he made sure the children were with Adam before he drove over to Loni’s house and showed her what he had on her. Then, he gave her his conditions.

  First, she would recant every harsh word and every lie she spewed about him, sign a letter stating that she lied in front of the mediator and that Zak was in fact not an alcoholic or abusive. That he had never raised a hand to her or the children.

  Second, she would accept his terms for shared custody. He was just as much their children’s parent as she was, and he would be with them an equal amount of time. They would decide on days and holidays at a later date, but she had no more power than he did when it came to the well-being of their children.

  Third, he handed her a piece of paper with the amount he was willing to settle for in the divorce. She either had to accept it and not a penny more, or he’d have no choice but to give the videotape to Liam and tell him to file it with the court.

  And fourth, if she so much as touched another drug of any kind during one of her fuck parties, he would make sure she never, ever saw her children again.

  She’d forced his hand, so he had to force hers. She’d made him stoop to her level, made him play dirty. After she’d ruined their marriage, made a cuckold out of him, lied to him and their children for over a year, she still wanted more. She still insisted upon torturing him even more, on taking from him even more. And so he’d reached his limit.

  He lifted his head and stared into the orange flames of the fireplace, watching them lick and flicker. All of his actions, all of his choices came back at him in full force until he felt like an anvil was perched on top of his chest and he could hardly breathe.

  He blinked and swallowed. Suddenly, a short stocky tumbler of amber liquid was thrust in front of his face. He grabbed it and immediately brought the rim to his lips, letting the smooth bourbon slide down his throat. The slight burn at the end was most welcome.

  “Figured you needed this,” Liam said with a deep exhale as he wandered back to his chair. “Falling off a horse that high is bound to hurt. Drink up. It’ll ease the pain.”

  Mason chuckled and finished his beer. “We all lie, bro. It’s human nature. Most of the time it’s for self-preservation, and it sounds like that’s what this chick was doing too.” He drew his free hand down his short, dark beard, his blue eyes glimmering in the muted lighting of Liam’s living room. “I mean, fuck, I lie to myself every goddamn day when I look in the mirror and say I know what the fuck I’m doing with Willow. That being a dad is easy and I’m rocking it.” He shook his head, pulled harder on his chin and made a noise in his throat. “I’m up to my neck in baby shit, man. Spit-up and sleepless nights. And I’m raising a girl. I don’t know the first thing about chick shit. About periods or hormones, training bras or tea parties. I’m royally fucked.” He closed his eyes for a moment and swallowed. “When I decided to go the surrogate route, I knew that it was obviously a fifty-fifty toss up—boy or girl—as it is with any pregnancy. But anytime I pictured holding my baby or playing with my kid, I pictured that kid being a boy. I figured I could handle being a father to a boy. Teach him how to write his name in the snow, throw a football, walk on the street side of the sidewalk when he’s with a woman—you know manly shit.” His blue eyes went wide with terror. “What am I supposed to teach Willow?”

  Zak could remember having similar feelings shortly after Tia was born. He loved Aiden with all his heart, but with Aiden he felt more prepared. He would teach his son the things that Zak’s grandfather had taught him. But what would he teach Tia?

  His little spitfire of a daughter had quickly shown him though that it wasn’t he who would be teaching her, but she who would be teaching him. Every day, every moment he spent with his daughter he learned something new about himself, about who he was as a man, as father, as a person.

  Liam tilted his head, his smile small but also kind as he focused on Mason—their newest single dad recruit. “Boy or girl, we’re all treading water with weights on doing this whole single parent thing. All Willow really needs right now is to know that her daddy loves her and will always be there for her. The rest will sort itself out. Don’t beat yourself up.”

  Just when you thought Liam was a giant dick with a shriveled prune where his heart should be, he surprised them all with his compassionate side and his words of fatherly wisdom and encouragement.

  Liam shrugged, then tucked his cigar between his teeth. “Besides, enough of these fuckers are getting pussy-whipped, you can always get one of their women to give Willow the period talk and take her bra shopping.”

  Shit, Zak spoke too soon.

  Liam chuckled and sucked on the tip of his cigar, his dark eyes holding that devilish gleam they a
ll knew too well.

  Mason didn’t seem overly reassured. Instead, he stood his big frame up off the couch with the grunt normally reserved for a septuagenarian, stretched his tattooed arms and glanced at his watch. “And on that note, I’m going to go see my baby and let her know how much I love her. Maybe I’ll see if I can find a good picture book on puberty that I can buy her. If I start reading it to her now, perhaps I won’t have to have the talk with her when it happens.” He lifted his eyebrows in hope, then dropped them as he stopped in front of Zak, his blue eyes laser-focused. “Aurora sounds like a great woman, and even great women make mistakes. If I were you, I wouldn’t let my biggest mistake be letting her get away.” Then he took his leave, promising to see Liam the following night at some New Year’s Eve party.

  Zak focused back on the dancing flames in the fireplace.

  He was a fool.

  He’d lived his life so strictly, so scheduled, so … rigid. He even demanded rigidity from his kids. His house had rules, and everyone was expected to follow them. No sugar besides special occasions, no screen time besides the weekends, daily exercise, thirty minutes of reading before bed, integrity, compassion, honesty, transparency—always.

  It was how he functioned. How he’d managed to become a success. By demanding excellence from not only himself but from others as well.

  And yet, when threatened with his biggest fear—losing his children—he lost all composure, all integrity and had gone and blackmailed the mother of his children. Then he lied about it. He lied about it to everyone. Hell, in some ways, he’d even lied to Loni, because getting that video filed with the courts was the last thing he ever wanted to do. Not when it meant his children could have access to it later. She was, after all, still their mother. He only wanted her to think he would so she’d let him keep his kids—and his business.

  But no matter which way you looked at it, he’d lied.

  He boasted, even. Told anybody he could that Loni had dragged him through the mud, yet he’d kept his hands clean, refusing to stoop to her level. Only he had.

  He was a liar.

  He’d made a mistake.

  “Having some epiphanies?” Liam asked, flipping the lever on the side of his chair so the footrest popped up. With an ah, he leaned back, brought the cigar to his lips again, shut his eyes and inhaled. “You did what you did to keep your kids. Nobody is going to fault you for that. It’s not like you leaked the video, and I think I know you pretty well to know that you never would leak it. But you put the fear of God into Loni, and that worked in our favor.” He lifted his tumbler of scotch in his other hand and offered a small toast, still not bothering to open his eyes. “Nothing wrong with using the leverage that falls in your lap to your advantage.” He finally opened his eyes, pinning them on Zak as he lifted his glass higher. “To leverage. To liars and, most of all … to forgiveness.” Then he tipped his tumbler back and finished his drink.

  Zak slammed his drink, stood up and wandered over to the leather-top bar to pour himself another. He’d been a right fool. Not only for believing that he was better than he was, thinking that if he told enough people that he hadn’t sunk to Loni’s level that in some way it would eventually be true, but for thinking that he was better than Aurora. That he was above lying to make himself look better in the eyes of people whose opinions he valued.

  Because she obviously valued his opinion, otherwise she wouldn’t have let him believe the things she did. She’d protected her pride and her heart. He didn’t want him to know she’d just been dumped by her boyfriend, who then ran back to his ex and proposed. That had to hurt. It’d hurt Zak if he were in her shoes. He’d have done his best to keep that news under wraps too.

  She wanted him to see her for more than her deficiencies, more than her shortcomings, but for the incredible, beautiful person that she was inside. And he did see all of that—and more. She was amazing with his children, his grandparents adored her, and Zak … Zak hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her since the moment she left on Christmas. Not since Loni—hell, possibly not even Loni—had Zak been so taken, so smitten with a woman like the way he was with Aurora. She was smart and sweet and funny. And when he’d laid his heart bare, telling her about his childhood and his divorce, she hadn’t recoiled in judgment or looked at him with pity. Instead, she’d curled up tighter against him and, without any words, reassured him that there were still good women out there. Good, loving women.

  And he’d gone and fucked it all up with the best, most loving woman of them all.

  He was a class-A idiot who needed to learn to be flexible and forgiving. He only hoped Aurora could forgive him, because he’d certainly gone and made the biggest mistake of them all—letting her get away.

  “Yep, there it is,” Liam said, one eye open as he lounged in his chair, his cigar between his fingers, his empty glass in his other hand. “Just figured out you can’t live without her. That you’ve fucked it all up and you need to go beg for forgiveness.”

  Zak slammed back the full glass of bourbon, sucking in air as it burned its way down his throat. He poured another and did the same.

  “Slow down, bro. Bourbon is meant to be sipped. If you’re going to do shots, there’s Patron in the cupboard,” Liam said, standing up from his chair with grunts similar to those they’d heard earlier from Mason. He approached the bar, setting his glass down on the leather top and pointing to the bottle of scotch next to Zak’s wrist. Zak unscrewed the lid and poured Liam three fingers.

  Liam thanked him, lifted his glass in the air and waited for Zak to do the same. “To epiphanies. May you remember yours in the morning.”

  17

  It was the morning of December 31st when Zak’s phone ringing on his nightstand woke him up.

  Having taken an Uber home from Liam’s, Zak drank a couple more beers before he retired to his cold, empty bed, passing out more than he fell asleep. Needless to say, the ringing in his ears, combined with that of his phone, sounded more like a fire alarm going off inside his brain.

  The call display said it was Loni.

  Oh fuck.

  He did not want to speak to his ex-wife right now.

  But there might be something wrong with the kids.

  Groaning, he slid his finger across the screen and put on the speaker option.

  “Hello?” he croaked

  “Dad?” It was Aiden.

  Zak’s eyes widened, and he sat up in bed, knuckling the last bits of his restless sleep from his sore eyes, his head pounding with every movement. “Buddy, what’s wrong? Everything okay?”

  “Have you talked to Aurora?”

  Zak scrubbed his hand down his face and pulled on his chin. “No, buddy, I haven’t.”

  Aiden sighed. “I know she lied, Dad. But they weren’t like Mom’s lies. Please don’t dump her. Tia and I really like her, and she makes you happy … at least she did.”

  He already planned to go see Aurora today, to apologize and ask for forgiveness, to grovel if he had to. He just needed to shower, pop a couple of Tylenol and down a gallon of coffee before he saw her. The woman deserved an apology by a man who didn’t currently have a meat cleaver severing the two halves of his brain.

  He blinked a few times, saw spots and then decided that keeping his eyes closed was probably better. “Buddy, these are grownup issues,” he finally said, the words in his head sounding like a Slipknot record being played backward.

  Aiden growled on the other end. “No, Dad, they’re not.” His son’s words were heated, full of frustration and pain. Zak wanted to reach inside the phone and draw Aiden into his arms, absorb his hurt. “Learn how to forgive, Dad. Learn that people make mistakes but that we can learn from them, that we can be better people. Isn’t that what you teach us? It’s okay to make mistakes as long as we learn from them?”

  “Even you make mistakes, Dad,” Tia yelled from the background. “And we forgive you for them. Like when you accidentally stepped on my papier-mache bunny that I made at art camp. I fo
rgave you.”

  Zak’s body slowly sank back down into the pillows. “Where’s your mother?” he asked, hoping that Loni wasn’t right there snickering with Craig.

  “Mom and Craig are still sleeping. We’re in the basement so they can’t hear us,” Aiden said.

  Smart move.

  “Please, Dad,” Tia said, her voice closer to the phone now. “We really like Aurora. Doesn’t our opinion mean anything? You can’t just break up with her without our input. We’re all in this together, right?”

  Zak’s head throbbed.

  “We’ll be very disappointed in you if you don’t at least talk to her, Dad,” Aiden said, adopting his best Zak voice. “And as you know, disappointment is worse than being angry.”

  “That’s right, Dad. We’ll be very disappointed in you,” Tia added.

  He knew his words would come back to haunt him one day. Be thrown in his face. Bite him in the ass. He’d known it the moment he’d spouted them off the first time to his children. But it was what parents said. His grandparents had said the same thing to Zak and Adam when they were kids, and he was sure that cavemen and cave-women were grunting similar things to their cave-children back when they were inventing the wheel.

  I’m not angry you left the mammoth meat out for the saber-toothed tiger to steal, son, I’m just disappointed. Or something like that. He wasn’t a history nerd like Adam.

  “We like Aurora. More than we like Craig.”

  “Nobody likes Craig,” Aiden said to his sister.

  Zak’s chest shook on a laugh, which only made his head hurt even more.

  Nobody liked Craig.

  “You’re coming to get us later, right, Dad?” Tia asked. “Can we all go see Aurora together?”

  Zak wasn’t awake or sober enough to think clearly. But the one thing he did know, and had passed out last night knowing, was that beyond a shadow of a doubt, Aurora Stratford was worth fighting for, and damn it, hangover or not, he was going to do his best to win her back.

  “I like that plan,” Aiden said. “Dad?”