Now And Always (Crown Creek)

by Theresa Leigh

  She went up on her toes and kissed me. Then she inhaled sharply.

  And sneezed.

  “Ugh,” she said, wiping her nose. “Seriously, it’s a mess in here. If you’re not going to clean, I will, and yes, that is a threat.”

  I laughed and squeezed her. “Fine. I’ll clean today, I promise. Now go to work before you get fired.”

  She laughed and headed into the house, coming back in her work clothes to kiss me goodbye before holding her finger under my nose. “I will!” I said again. “Today!”

  And I meant to keep my promise. But three more orders came in through my website, one of them a rush job with a hefty markup. And the thought of having that money in the bank was too tempting to pass up. It wasn’t just for Claire, I reminded myself. She made good money and was definitely secure all by herself.

  It was for that little girl.

  I wasn’t her father. And the way things were going, her real father would never know she existed. He’d never provide for her the way a daddy should.

  That left me. I was all she had.

  I pulled down my goggles and started my table saw and kept working, letting the sawdust drift up like snow.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Ethan

  Freezing rain pelted the house, hitting the roof like a handful of pebbles. Yesterday it had been a balmy April day, with a warm, lilac-scented breeze. But the temperature plummeted overnight, and now all the lilacs were rimed with ice. The cold seeped in through every drafty corner of the garage.

  It was fucking freezing out here. I snatched my goggles from my eyes and dropped them with a frustrated huff, then rubbed tired circles on my temples.

  I needed a break.

  Heading into my house from my shop felt like dipping my toe into a warm bath. I shrugged off the two flannels I’d worn as protection against the cold and rummaged through the fridge for a beer. “Claire?” I called.

  “In here. Under every blanket in the house. If you want any, find your own.”

  I grinned and headed into the living room. She was indeed wrapped in a cocoon of blankets. “You look like a burrito,” I observed.

  “Oh my God, I’d murder for a burrito.” She set her book down on her lap.

  My eye went to the cover, and I walked over to pick it up. “You’re finally reading it?” I gasped.

  She snatched the copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting I had given her ages ago back again. “I thought….” She trailed off, her eyes straying back to the page she’d marked. “It’s getting down to the wire.”

  “You’re not out of the second trimester yet, right?” I craned my neck around to look at the page. “Yes, that’s right. Twenty-five weeks, that’s still second trimester.”

  “This is the earliest she could survive out of the womb,” she said, cupping her belly and looking awestruck. “Can you believe that?”

  I plopped down next to her. “Yeah, but let’s not think too hard about that, okay?”

  “Too late.” She grimaced. “Honestly, that’s why I was avoiding this book. Trying not to think of all the things that could still go wrong. But now?” She tapped her temple. “It got in my head. I’ve spent all this time saying I had nothing to worry about, but I was talking about me, Ethan.” She looked at me, alarmed. “I should have been worried about her!”

  There was pure panic in her hazel eyes. I quickly folded her into a hug. “But you’ve been doing everything right. You’ve been eating right, taking your vitamins. You’ve gone for all the appointments, had all the testing—”

  “Yeah, but there could be something wrong I didn’t even consider,” she moaned into my chest. “Like I know my family history of genetic diseases and stuff but….” She trailed off and stiffened, catching herself.

  Slowly, I pulled back. She darted her eyes away from mine. When she didn’t look back, I sighed. “Claire.”

  “Don’t say it, Ethan,”

  “Okay, I won’t.” I paused. “Okay, I lied. You need to tell him.”

  She shook her head in mute protest.

  “Look, I get it. You think I want you to tell him? Him?” I shook my head. “But Claire, now you’re worrying about things that you could easily find out the answers to. Just by asking him. Isn’t it better to know? You're Claire King. You want to know what to expect."

  "I'm trying to be better about my fear of the unknown."

  “That’s weak and you know it. This is an easy unknown to know. And what if J.D. has a history of hemophilia?” I turned the book toward me. “Tay-Sachs?” I read. “Cystic fibrosis? Oh God, Claire, what if she has that breast cancer gene? What did J.D.’s mom die of?”

  “I don’t know,” she moaned.

  “Claire, you need to tell him. Even if it’s just to get this information.” I stood up. My heart was pounding in my throat. “My God, if I had a kid out there…and I didn’t know about it?”

  “Stop it!” she screamed. “This isn’t the same!”

  “It is! He could choose to have nothing to do with her, but you need to at least give him the choice! You’re doing to him what you used to do to me when you’d set me up on all those dates! You never let me make my own decisions!”

  As soon as the words broke free, I wanted to stuff them back in my mouth. Claire looked at me, stricken.

  I took a deep breath. “Okay, that came out wrong.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “But you need to tell him.” I took a deep breath. “Or I will.”

  Her eyes snapped fire. “No.”

  “Claire, it’s for her sake. You just said you needed to start thinking about her.”

  “Fuck you! Don’t you dare throw that in my face!”

  “I’m not.” I steadied myself. “But it needs to happen.”

  Claire stood up. “Ethan. I’m warning you. Do not do this. Do you hear me?”

  I heard her. I heard her making a huge mistake. I heard her putting her baby…my baby…at risk. I heard her trying to control people’s lives the way she controlled her own. I heard her struggling, and I loved her for it.

  I loved her but I still thought she was wrong.

  Chapter Fifty

  Ethan

  The bus doors swish open. I take a deep breath. My book is hidden securely in my backpack. Surely they will leave me alone today.

  The first burst of laughter hits my ears like a slap. I cringe and then hate myself for cringing when he laughs harder. “Bookworm Bailey! How are you?” I look up, a pitiful hope rising in my chest that maybe, maybe today won’t be so bad. Maybe he’s in a better mood, or he finally realized I wasn’t worth it, or maybe my mother was right and he really wanted to be friends and didn’t know how to show it. I unhunched my shoulders, about to answer, thinking today might not be as bad as I feared it would be.

  I’m wrong. It’s much, much worse.

  I shook my head hard to snap out of the past. I was twenty-three now. A grown man with his own business. I had friends, a beautiful girlfriend—for now—and a supportive family that loved me. I wasn’t that miserable kid anymore.

  I could do this.

  I swung my truck into the lot of Knights’ Garage the second they rolled the front gate open. I’d told myself the reason I needed to arrive first thing in the morning was to get to J.D. before he got underway with the business of the day. But a larger part of me was worried that I’d pussy out if I didn’t do it now.

  The door was heavier than I expected. I had to put my shoulder into it, leaning hard before it swung open quickly, dumping me unceremoniously in the center of the cluttered front office.

  J.D. was behind the desk, half hidden behind a small mountain range of unsorted files and invoices. He tapped away at an ancient, wheezing computer, but looked up when I entered the room.

  The flicker of surprise on his face was gratifying. But the triumph of knowing I’d caught him off guard was short lived. First I spotted the gun hanging there on the rack in plain sight. Then I swallowed hard as his brothers poked thei
r heads in, then positioned themselves at intervals around the office.

  We were all buddy-buddy the night at the pool hall, and we’d spent Christmas night in relative peace. But it looked like having me in their garage had them spooked. They all seemed to be engrossed in their work, but I got the feeling they were circling me. Like a pack of wolves silently surrounding their prey.

  I’m not their prey anymore.

  “Hey, you got a second?” I asked J.D.

  He tapped a few more times, then sat back in his chair. “What’s up, Bailey?”

  I glanced at the circling brothers. “Can I talk to you in private?”

  J.D. sucked in, hollowing out his cheeks, then blew out a sigh. “Scat,” he snapped.

  Without a word, the three of them disappeared. But I still had the distinct feeling I was being watched.

  “Okay, we’re in private,” J.D. said. “What’s the deal? You need an oil change or something?”

  “I change my own,” I couldn’t help but retort. The back of my neck was heating up, which wasn’t good. I couldn’t afford to lose control. Fragile peace or not, J.D. was still a Knight. And they could sense weakness. In fact, they thrived on it. I cleared my throat. “Claire told me about the night…the week before Halloween.”

  If he said he didn’t remember, I was going to grab that gun off the wall, I really was.

  But instead, J.D.’s face registered shock. “She did?” His surprise was palpable, and for the first time ever, I saw something close to fear in his eyes. “Fuck, listen. If you guys were together, I didn’t know.”

  He thought the problem was that I wanted to beat up my girlfriend’s one-nighter? The sheer wrongness made me want to burst out laughing. “No, we weren’t together yet.” And we probably weren’t going to be together after today either, I remembered with a pang.

  For a moment I lost my nerve. I could still walk away. I could go back to Claire and bow my head, beg her to forgive me for even thinking about it. I could make her promises, and I would keep them forever, because that’s how it worked when it came to Claire and me. She’d always had that power over me. But that was okay, because I’d let her.

  J.D. didn’t know. He’d never willingly given her his heart, like I had.

  He needed to at least have the choice.

  “Have you seen her?” I asked. “Claire, I mean. Have you seen her lately?”

  Another flicker of something on his face. “Yeah.” He indicated a round belly. “Shit, did I forget to send a congrats card or something? Is that why you’re here being all vague?”

  My fingers curled into defensive fists, but I consciously uncurled them. “No. You’re the one who should be getting the card.” I paused. “Dad.”

  He snorted. “Fuck off.”

  I held his gaze.

  He was the first to break eye contact. He looked away, then down, then all around the room, like he was looking for an escape. “Don’t you fuck with me, Bailey.”

  “I’m not.” I gripped the bottom of the chair to keep my hands from shaking. “You really think I would?”

  “I know we got bad blood between us—”

  “J.D., I hate your guts.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Fine. Is that why you’re fucking with me then?”

  “Believe me, I wish I was.” I leaned back in my chair. “But you know me. In some weird way, you do. So think about it. Would I really come out here to fuck with you? Instead of just leaving you alone?” I leaned in. “Does that really sound like something I would do?”

  Another flicker across his face, and then an angry flush started at his neck and worked its way upward. He balled his fists until his knuckles went bone-white, and I had to physically hold myself in my chair to keep from running. That old fear came roaring back and sounded like thunder in my ears. “J.D.—” I started.

  He jumped up with a roar, sending his chair toppling to the floor. Slamming his fist down on the desk, he screamed, “What the fuck do you want from me?!”

  Seeing my bully in a purple-faced rage set off every alarm bell in my body. But I kept my voice steady. “I want you to know.”

  He opened his mouth. I braced myself for fists.

  Then he grabbed his chair and dropped back down into it, as boneless as a sack of potatoes. “Great,” he said, rubbing his hands up and down his face. “So now I know. Thanks a fucking lot. You can go now.”

  Was that really it? I couldn’t leave it at that. “What are you going to do?”

  “What the hell do you want me to do?” He laughed, but his laugh didn’t have that same wild, manic joy that it used to. This was the laugh of a man who had nothing left to lose. “Do you think I haven’t noticed that it’s you sitting here telling me I’m gonna be a dad and not her? Where the fuck is she, anyway?” When I didn’t answer, he nodded his head. “Yeah, I fucking thought so. She has no idea you’re here right now, does she?” He laughed again, more defeated this time. “Goddamn, Bailey, you got some big brass ones for daring to go behind her back. She’s gonna cut off your balls and make you eat them in front of her.”

  “I’m prepared.”

  “Well, I’m not,” he snapped. “Fuck, that was just a one-night thing we both regret. I’ve left her alone because I know she wants to forget it ever happened, and I don’t blame her. Claire is a smart, classy girl. For whatever reason, she felt like slumming it that night. Lucky me. I might be dumb, but I’m not so stupid to think she’d want anything more than that.”

  “What the hell are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that if she doesn’t want me to be a part of her life, well first off, I don’t blame her. I don’t even want to be part of my own life.” He looked around. “I got a mountain of debt and a stain on my name. You always had it easy, Bailey. Parents who adored you, a nice comfy life. You and your fucking books, always showing off.”

  Now it was my turn to laugh. “Showing off?” I demanded. “That’s what you think I was doing?”

  He waved his hand. “Whatever. It’s over now. But I’m telling you, if Claire doesn’t want me in her life, then I’m not going to force my way into it.”

  “But you have to do the right thing!”

  “And what’s that?” he asked, with an arch of his eyebrow. He leaned forward and braced his elbows on his desk. “Go ahead and enlighten me, smart boy, because obviously I’m clueless. What’s the right thing to do here? Force a girl who hates my guts to have to deal with me forever? Give my kid the beautiful gift of a shithead dad?”

  “You don’t have to be either of those things.” I couldn’t believe I was saying this to J.D. But I suddenly knew it was true. “You’re not your father. And you’re not a shithead. And...” I swallowed. “Claire doesn’t hate you.”

  “But you do,” he said evenly.

  I looked him in the eye. “I do. But I’m trying not to. That’s why I thought you should know.”

  He nodded and looked down. His throat constricted as he swallowed.

  I stood awkwardly. He didn’t look up. So I walked out of his office with my conscience clear. And my heart broken.

  Because I knew I’d just lost Claire forever.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Claire

  When Ethan’s truck pulled back into the driveway, I set down my phone and put my away message up on my email.

  Cole hadn’t asked the reason I’d requested a work from home day, and I didn’t tell him. What would I say, anyway? Hi Cole, sorry for the short notice, but I can’t come in today. I woke up and my boyfriend wasn’t here and I have a very bad feeling about it.

  And the phone call I’d just received proved I had every reason to worry.

  Through the front window, I could see him climbing down from his truck, and my heart gave its usual happy leap. Apparently, it hadn’t yet gotten the message that it was broken.

  I closed my laptop and folded my hands in my lap.

  He walked into the kitchen and startled to see me sitting there. “Hi. I didn’t expect you t
o be here.”

  He wouldn’t meet my eye. I turned away, because I couldn’t look at him any more than he could look at me. Especially not when I asked, “Would you like to tell me why J.D. Knight just called me?”

  Silence. I looked back at him.

  He looked down.

  “You went to him, didn’t you?” My voice was steady. Calm. I was proud of that fact. “Is that where you were just now? Because I woke up and you were already gone.”

  “Yes.”

  “You went to J.D.? You told him?”

  “I did.”

  A hysterical laugh tore loose from my throat. “Holy shit. You’re not even going to try to lie to me?”

  He shook his head. “No. I would never lie to you, Claire.”

  “But you would betray me?”

  “It wasn’t a betrayal.”

  My voice rose. “I told you not to tell J.D. I told you it wasn’t your call, and you did it anyway. That sounds like a betrayal to me.”

  “You don’t get to make these kind of decisions for people, Claire. You need his information. So you know if the baby has any diseases or whatever.”

  “Oh, come the fuck on,” I scoffed. “That literally came to your mind yesterday. But you’ve been up my ass about telling him for weeks. Months, actually. So don’t pretend this is all clinical concern for my daughter’s well-being.”

  He winced when I claimed the baby as solely mine. Good. I’d wanted to hurt him.

  But then he shook his head. “He needed to know so he could make a decision.” His voice rose to match mine. “You can’t fuck around with people’s lives like this, Claire. You think you know better than anyone else, but you don’t.”

  I stared at him, openmouthed. I felt like he’d wound up and punched me in the gut. It was a struggle to get air. “I don’t think that at all. Is that what you think of me?”

  He shook his head and stared at the ceiling. “He at least needed the option of getting to decide for himself whether he wanted to be a father.”