“No she’s a lot different than my sister,” Drew argued.
“You know what I mean. You can’t expect your girlfriend to be one way and then your sister to be another, that’s not fair. You’re all the same age, and if she’s comfortable sleeping with her boyfriend, then that’s up to her.”
Drew blew out a breath. “I don’t want her to get hurt, and I feel like they’re movin’ way too fast for this.”
“That’s not your decision.” Tyler looked at his phone, checking the time. “And let me be honest with ya. It’s a real dick move for you to be high-fiving other friends for having sex with their girlfriends and then wanting to hang Dalton for it. It’s a hugely douchebag move. None of this is your decision, you get no say in it, and I’m telling you, if you say something to either one of them, you’ve probably lost a sister and a best friend. Is it worth it?”
He shook his head. “No, it’s not, but I’m having a hard time with this.”
Tyler clapped him on the shoulder. “Wait until your mom finds out you and Charity are having sex. Wanna talk about someone having a hard time with it? Enjoy it while you can, little man, enjoy it while you can.”
That scared the shit out of him, his mom finding out, because he knew she wouldn’t take it well. He was eighteen though; there wasn’t a whole lot she could do to him. It was knowing she would be disappointed that worried him. Since the problem he’d had with the steroids, he’d done everything he could to win back everyone’s trust, and he didn’t want to risk that again. Glancing to the side, he saw that the sun was starting to come up. “You gotta go?”
“Yeah, Mer’s appointment is first one of the day, so I gotta rush back and take a shower. Think about what I said, Drew. You’re all adults now, in adult relationships. You may still be in high school, but not for long. You and Mandy? You’ve always been old souls. Don’t let this bother you so much; it’s a natural transition in life.”
“Are you excited?” Meredith asked Tyler as she lay on the table, waiting for the technician to come in and do her sonogram.
“This makes me nervous,” he told her as he sat next to her, holding her hand.
“Why?” There was hardly anything that ever made Tyler nervous, and for the life of her, she couldn’t imagine what about this would make him that way.
“What if it’s a boy, and what if he’s a disobedient fuck like I was?”
“Then we be his parents and teach him manners and discipline,” she told him slowly. “I know you never had a lot of stability in your life growing up, but your kids will have that. It’s a whole different world for them, Ty. You’re an amazing father, regardless of what you had as an example.”
“My example was Liam and how he treated the twins. Had they not come into his life, I would have no idea how to treat a child.”
“How did he know?” Meredith asked. She hated to bring up William, but he’d never been much of a father figure either.
Tyler bit his bottom lip and pushed his hair back from his face. “Things like that; they’ve always come easy to Liam. He just knows what to do, and I never could figure out how. He’s a born leader, I think. He doesn’t take no for an answer, and he’ll keep at something until he’s mastered it. Stubborn as all get out.”
“Then I’m glad you had him to look up to.” Meredith ran her hand through his hair. “He’s a great example.”
Their conversation was interrupted by a knock and someone coming through the door. “Hello,” the technician said to them. “Sorry we’re a little off schedule today. We had someone call out, and it’s pushed us a few minutes off track.”
“That’s fine,” Meredith told her. “I’ve waited this long, a few minutes won’t kill me, but I am sayin’ this. Right after we’re done, I really have to find a bathroom.”
The technician laughed and had a seat. “Then we’ll get this done as quickly as possible, and I’ll do my best not to press too hard on your stomach.” She looked over at Tyler. “Can you grab those lights for me?”
They were bathed in darkness as she turned the machine on and they heard the steady thumping of the baby’s heart.
Meredith and Tyler gripped their hands together tightly as they heard that sound. It was the most welcome sound ever.
“We have a good, steady heartbeat,” she said as she moved the apparatus around on Meredith’s stomach. “Everything is looking very good. I read your report, and all your test results came back A-okay. So, before I tell you, do you two want to know what the sex of baby Blackfoot is?”
“We most definitely want to know,” Meredith answered for the two of them.
“Congrats, Mom and Dad…you’re having a boy.” She indicated the male anatomy and looked over right as Tyler’s face went white and he slid of the chair and went down flat on his back.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Oh my God, Tyler. Are you okay?”
He came to with Meredith and Ashley standing over him. He was lying in the floor, his back pressed against the hard tile.
“Did you hit your head?” Ashley asked, as they helped him sit up.
“No, I’m good,” he did his best to reassure them, but he still felt a little faint.
Meredith did her best to keep the smile off her face. “You’re good? You passed out.”
It all came back then, they were having a boy. He wasn’t sure why that affected him in such a way, but the room swam again, this time not as a bad. “It was a shock,” he tried to explain.
“This isn’t unusual,” Ashley explained to the both of them. “Let me go get you some peanut butter and crackers, you’ll feel better once you have something in your stomach.”
They were left in the room alone as the technician went with her.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Meredith asked as she had a seat on the examination table. “You went down like a pile of bricks.”
“Yeah.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I’ve never, not once, in my life passed out. You should be proud that you had a hand in it. I’ve always managed to keep my shit straight.” He breathed out a long breath, thankful that his heart was no longer pounding in his ears, he no longer had tunnel vision, and his hands weren’t shaking.
“Even if you’re worried, I’m excited to be having a boy.” She placed her hand on her stomach and gazed at him with so much love. “I hope he’s just like you.”
That almost made him sway again. “We’re never getting any sleep for the next eighteen years; I was a hellion.”
She grabbed his hand. “I told you, this baby is not defined by what you did as a teenager. We’ll be fine because we will teach him what it means to have two loving parents and a loving family. History is not going to repeat itself.”
As Ashley came back in the room, thrusting a package of crackers at him, all he could do was hope that Meredith was right.
An hour and a half later, Meredith was at CRISIS, sitting at her desk, going over some of the paperwork that would make her life easier. She’d had a discussion with one of her workers the week before and told her that she was cutting back in a big way. The board that dealt with the government regulations on the entity had approved Meredith going part-time and moving Jennifer into the role of the day-to-day operations manager. Now, Meredith was going through files—purging, organizing, and showing Jennifer the ropes.
“Do I have to file these every month?” Jennifer asked as she pulled incident reports from a temporary holding folder.
“They should be,” Meredith told her. “But with the pregnancy and all the stuff going on, they’re backed up. Let me take a look through them, and then we’ll see what we need to do.”
Jennifer handed them over and Meredith glanced through, skimming a few of them, until she came to someone that she’d completely forgotten about. “There was an incident report on Stephanie when y’all confronted her about the drug use?”
“Yeah, I thought Christine told you.”
Christine had apparently kept that secret well. It led Meredith to w
onder why she had. “No, she never told me about this. Why don’t you tell me what happened.”
“It was a while ago, and I don’t remember everything, but when we confronted her, she went crazy. She said that she was sick of everyone telling her what to do, and no one could be as perfect as you.”
If someone had thrown cold water on her, it would have shocked Meredith less. “As me?”
“Yeah, she said some really weird things about you, but I figured she got fixated. You know how some women come in here, they see someone who’s gone through a lot and they have their shit together, and they get jealous. I figured you were the one she got jealous of.” Jennifer shrugged. “We haven’t heard from or seen her since she left.”
Come to think of it, Travis had never given her a full report on Stephanie—even when she’d specifically asked him to. She’d meant to confront him about it when they’d gotten back from their vacation, but things had been crazy then. What the hell did Travis and Christine know? What were they hiding from her? “Is Stephanie’s stuff still here, or did she take it?”
Walking over to one of the lockers, Jennifer leaned in. “She left this bag, and she’s never been back to get it. I didn’t want to tell you then, but I don’t mind telling you now—she kinda gave me the creeps. It was like when she looked at any of us, she was walking on our graves. It was that kind of creepy.”
Meredith took the bag and had a seat on the carpeted floor. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to get up, but there wasn’t enough room on her desk to go through the contents of the bag. Opening the drawstring, she dumped it out. “Why wouldn’t she come back for these things?” she asked as she saw a journal, some receipts, and a picture album.
“Maybe she’s planning to,” the other woman speculated as she started going through the receipts.
Drawn to the picture album, Meredith picked it up and placed it in her lap. She turned the first two pages, seeing pictures of Stephanie with another girl who looked familiar, but she couldn’t place her. That wasn’t unusual though; pregnancy brain was in full effect for her at this point. Turning the page, her heart stopped. There in hot pink and black was a birth announcement for a baby by the name of Addalynn. The date of birth was right, and looking at the baby picture, Meredith knew it was Addie. Stephanie was Addie’s biological aunt. She knew it without anyone having to tell her.
“Shit,” she cursed as she tried to get up.
“Hey, don’t hurt yourself,” Jennifer told her as she leaned over and helped the other woman up. “What’s going on?”
“I’m not sure.” Meredith was breathing heavily, trying to control it. “But I think Stephanie is related to Addie.”
“That can’t be right, y’all did an extensive search and nothing turned up. Besides the adoption is legal and binding. Don’t freak out about it now.”
Meredith knew Jennifer was right, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going to come of this. Since Stephanie had come to be at the center, she’d had an odd feeling about her; that was why she’d taken the picture of the plates and had Travis run them.
That was it, the plates. Meredith had to know what he’d found out, and she had to know now. “I’ll be back, I have to run to the shop,” she told Jennifer.
“Are you sure you should be driving? You seem a little high-strung.”
“I’m fine,” Meredith assured her. “Don’t you dare call Tyler. I’ll see him in a few minutes; he’s working at the shop today.”
Grabbing her purse, she made her way out of the building and got into her SUV. It was lucky on her part that Tyler was working today, because when she came in there like a bat out of hell questioning Travis, Tyler would not let it go. He would demand answers, and as the VP, he had a right to those answers.
Her mind raced a mile a minute as she made her way down Louisville Road towards the shop. There were so many questions she had. Number one was where was Stephanie now? Was she still a threat? Something told her that they hadn’t seen the last of the woman, and perhaps she’d just been biding her time, waiting until they forgot about her. It had worked, because Meredith hadn’t thought of her in months, not until the incident report today. Had Travis been keeping an eye on her, or had Christine? Anger coursed through her body. How dare they keep something like this from her? This involved her daughter.
She couldn’t tell anyone how she had gotten to the shop. Within minutes, she looked up and there she was. As she parked, Tyler was coming out of one of the bays, wiping his hands on a grease rag.
“You okay, babe?” he asked as she got out of the car.
Her gaze honed in on Travis, and even from a distance, she could see his mouth move and see the oh shit. “I’m fine,” she told him, her voice strong. “But he’s not.” She pointed at the communications officer, aware that they had drawn a crowd. Everyone had abandoned their post, including Roni, who normally sat in the office.
“Mer,” he started.
She held up her hand. “Don’t. You have some serious explaining to do.”
Tyler looked back and forth between the two of them before he stood next to his wife, putting his arm around her. “And I have no idea what the fuck is going on, so you better be flapping some gums. Otherwise, I can’t promise what’s gonna happen. When it comes to her—I hit first and ask questions later.”
Travis glanced at Liam, silently begging for help, but knew at this moment he was on his own. He’d made decisions, and now he had to stand behind them.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“What the hell is going on?” Tyler asked again, this time not nearly as nice.
“Let’s take it inside the office,” Travis said, marching towards it.
Liam followed and Tyler looked around. “Why are you coming too? Did you have a hand in this?”
“Stop jumpin’ to conclusions and let us talk to you,” Liam told his friend, pushing him through the office and shutting the door.
Meredith had a seat and motioned for Tyler to do the same. Nothing would get accomplished if he stood there, arms folded across his chest, attitude in full effect.
“Did you know that Stephanie was Addie’s aunt?” she asked quietly, throwing a pointed look at Travis.
“What the fuck?” Tyler glared at his two brothers, walking up to Liam and getting in his face. “You knew that and you didn’t tell someone? That woman was living at CRISIS, around Meredith every goddamn day. Addie was there with her sometimes. What the fuck were you thinking?”
“I’ll accept a lot from you, my man,” Liam told him. “But get outta my face. Don’t piss me off.”
It had been a very long time since Meredith had heard Liam speak with that much authority. He wasn’t like he had been when she’d first come here, he didn’t throw it around anymore. When he did speak, people listened. She grabbed Tyler’s hand and pulled him down to the seat next to her. “There are questions that they have answers to, let them answer.”
“When Travis came to me and told me who Stephanie was—it took him a while; there were birth records to go through and family trees—I told him to keep it under wraps. He did what he was supposed to do, he told me about the situation and asked how he should handle it. At the time, the two of you were both completely stressed out, and you deserved that trip to Gatlinburg. You deserved to have a great time and not worry about the bullshit back at home.”
“But we did come home,” Tyler reminded him.
“You did, but by that time Stephanie was long gone. After Christine and Jennifer confronted her, she hightailed it out of here.”
Tyler tried very hard to keep emotions out of this and to be patient with the people he knew only wanted the best for him. “Do we know where she went?”
“We do,” Travis answered. “She got a job with the trucking company that we’ve been doing runs for. Every time we hit Upton, we pay her a visit and remind her of who we are. She knows that we know who she is. So far she hasn’t made a move yet.”
“So far.” He ran an agitate
d hand through his hair. “When were you planning on telling us?”
Liam had a seat on the desk and looked his friend in the eye. “Never. The two of you are that little girl’s parents, and Stephanie lost any rights to her when the adoption went through. What the two of you did was by the book, and no court can overturn. She is no threat to you.”
“You stupid son of a bitch,” Tyler roared. “Why did she come here? Of all places she could come? I’m tellin’ you right now, Liam. Best friend or not, anything happens to my wife or my kid, we’re done.”
“Tyler.” Meredith reached over to grab his hand, her tone gentle. “Stop. This is not worth ruining a friendship over.”
“No, I get it,” Liam cut her off. “He’s pissed ’cause we kept a secret, and I understand that, but you direct that anger all toward me. Travis did what I told him to. I’m sick of you having to watch over your shoulder, I’m sick of you not thinking you deserve this life you have. I’m here to tell you that I got you, and that’s why I didn’t tell you. Have your hissy fit and take a swing at me if you feel like you need to, I’ll give ya one for free, but it’s time to put that chip on your shoulder away, where it belongs. The life you’ve got now is the one you’ve always wanted. Enjoy the fuck out of it.”
The air was ice cold in the office as Tyler’s leg shook. “You done?”
“Yeah, I am, and I hope you are too.”
Both Liam and Tyler left, slamming doors and cursing loudly, leaving Meredith and Travis in their wake.
“I’m sorry,” Travis told her.
His voice was soft, and she could tell by the expression on his face that he was. “I know, I just wish you would have been honest.”
“I didn’t think I had to be. Y’all deserve to live happy and not to have to worry about shit all the time.”
Heaven Hill Series - Complete Series Page 127
