A Field Guide To Catching Crickets: ( a sexy second chance tearjerker romance )

by Unknown

  A few of the rubbings are attached to days I’ll never forget. Me and Sloan, my old truck, root beer floats followed by sex on a quilt under some big, old countryside oak tree until it got dark. God, the history we share. I hope to hell we can multiply it many times over for our future.

  After ten rubbings, I’m stopped in my tracks, strangely jolted out of my skin, as I gaze at my own initials, save the suffix of junior.

  H. H. S. Jr.

  I read it over and over along with the dates under the initials. A seven-year-old child. My mind wants to believe one thing, while my heart—which is hammering out of control—wants another. The dates, the initials, the junior suffix. Every piece connects to when she left, and now, for the first time, I know why. As the pieces I read again to convince myself of what I’m seeing zip through my mind to form a complete story, they shatter as quickly.

  Her son was mine?

  Clutching the rubbing to my chest in my shaking hands, I stifle down a sob. Seven. I grip my throat and swallow down nausea. My emotions flying out of control, bouncing between disgust for Sloan and her family and sorrow for the loss of my son.

  “Seven,” I mutter, forming fists that I slam against my thighs, then onto the wall.

  Where do we go? A child—my child. Our. How the fuck?

  The gravestone rubbing crunches as I finger it into a tight roll. No wonder she was terrified to tell me. We had something together—we had love—and we could have raised our son together. It might not have been an ideal start, but I would have married her and taken care of her and my son had I ever been given one ounce of consideration. One damn ounce. How did my son die…our son? Did she hurt him? Kill him? Is that what she can’t tell me besides the fact that he was mine?

  As I walk out of the den, voices blast down the hall. I wonder momentarily if they’re in my head. I stride toward the kitchen, to arrive at an argument between Sloan and—for fuck’s sake—Hollyn Lynch?

  I’m stunned for the second time in the last ten minutes. All color in Sloan’s face vanishes when her eyes catch mine.

  “Hawke?”

  “The fuck is Hollyn Lynch doing here?” I shout.

  Sloan’s eyes are dinner plate–sized as she gasps. Her mouth drops open as she backs up while I charge into the space.

  “Me?” Hollyn says with amusement in his eyes. “What are you doing here?”

  Shaking my fists at them, I yell, “I’m the father of her fucking child!” Then I open the scroll of paper.

  “Oh my God, Hawke.” Tears waterfall down her cheeks.

  “Is that all you have to say?” I thrust the paper at her chest then pull it back, frantically rolling it up to protect all I have of this deceased son of mine. “Who the fuck are you, anyway? And what the hell is he doing here?”

  Hollyn chuckles as he sinks his hands into his pockets and leans against the kitchen island. I don’t have the brainpower to process anything. Such as how do they know each other?

  “Hollyn Lynch? That’s not his name,” she says, and squints her eyes looking at him then me.

  She doesn’t know him? This man standing in her kitchen, whom she was arguing with minutes ago? Hollywood slime, Euro trash, player, cocksucker. Criminal.

  “Holl,” she mutters. “Wait, what? Hollyn Lynch?” she repeats, looking at him as her brow creases.

  I exhale sharply, wishing my anguish could disappear as rapidly.

  “Sloan, we need to talk,” I say through clenched teeth. “What the hell is going on? I’m so—”

  “Hawke, wait,” she interrupts as I spin to leave.

  I twist to look at the two of them. Sloan’s face is crimson, her breathing rapid. I’ve never seen her appear quite so flabbergasted. I wonder if she was this shaken when she found out she was pregnant with our baby. Or when she realized she was moving to Europe to escape telling me I was going to be a father. Or when our son fucking died. Did she feel the way I do now? Like my heart has been hacked from my chest.

  Hollyn, on the other hand, smirks, as though he has a handle on the whole situation, as though I’m the intruder.

  “Wait? For what? Yeah…I can’t wait to hear what might come out of your mouth next. Who the fuck is he to you? You have no idea who he really is.”

  Hollyn takes several steps toward me. I want to flatten his ass. I’m not a small man, and I’m easily a good three inches taller and about a hundred pounds heavier than him. Flatten? No. Exterminate.

  “The hell she doesn’t.” His voice is deep, laced with humor and a smug I-have-something-you-can’t-have tether that’s tied to my nuts. “I’m her husband. The father of her child. Who the fuck are you to her?”

  I’m stunned backward by his admission. Husband? His son? Hollyn Lynch got my Sloan pregnant and married her? Jesus.

  As of this second, I want to be outside the universe they take oxygen from.

  Everything I know to be marginally true evaporates as I pace toward the front door with my ears ringing. My mouth is so dry I can’t tell if my tongue is stuck to my throat or my cheek. My brain and heart are moving at match speed, though feel denser than a block of concrete.

  More than a decade of lies. From my second family, my best friends, my girl. Or whoever the hell the woman who owns the house I’m walking out of is. Will I ever walk back in? Is this how we’re ending? It sure as fuck isn’t the new beginning I had in mind.

  I hear her hoarse, trembling voice one last time as I exit the house.

  “Dammit, Holl! What are you doing? He knows nothing about us!” She sobs.

  I don’t stop. I don’t care.

  Us.

  “Who are you?”

  Rage thunders through me as an evil smile creases Holl’s face. I hate that I loved him somehow. Love and hate. How can two such overpowering feelings collide? What does that make? What’s a word for that? I don’t have one. No one who went through what I did would. No one could imagine something that dark.

  It was a different kind of love. Everything about it was physiologically fucked up.

  He cups my face then tries to kiss me. I shrug out of his arms—away from his sweetly scented cologne, away from the lips that made love to me one minute then took every part of my body for years on end in trade for one thing: my son’s wellbeing.

  “What does it matter, Petal?”

  “It matters to me. You’re some, what? Hollywood producer?”

  Hawke. He’ll never forgive me for any of this. It was never supposed to come out this way. I had a plan.

  “How the hell? I thought you were an indie filmmaker.”

  “I’m both, and I’m still yours,” he says in a low growl.

  Still mine. I grind my teeth for fear of lashing out at the man I spent seven years of my life living with. Seven years in his castle on the outskirts of Amsterdam. I wasn’t allowed to leave, except for the outings with him to create films.

  “You’re not his father.” I sob, thinking about the scroll Hawke held. Our son. Hawke’s baby boy. “That was cruel. You had no right to say that to him.”

  “Damn right I’m his father!” he shouts inches from me.

  The lines on his face are deeper now, his stubble graying. Though I still don’t know how old he is. Maybe late forties…early fifties? He’s angular, handsome, and oddly charming. And while I don’t want to admit it, he loved me in his own insane way. Me and my baby. He’s also the devil, who took and gave me everything. Made me sacrifice, but rewarded and punished me.

  “Who took care of you and the boy for the term of his life? Who paid for all of his medical bills and yours? Who helped you when everything went wrong that night?”

  That night. I thought the arc of my life had changed when I found out I was pregnant with Hawke’s child. We—my parents, actually—decided I’d have the baby in Amsterdam, where my grandmother lived. I adored her, but I didn’t want to move across the ocean. I begged them to let me tell Hawke, but I didn’t have much choice. I was eighteen, but still, my parents felt Hawke should be left
to go on with his life plans while we McQueens dealt with my situation. My mother said it would be okay to tell him a few years down the road, but then everything changed the night Hawke Jr. was born.

  “Who left me there to die with him until I begged you?”

  “I came to your rescue. Got you the help you needed. He lived.”

  Lived. Yes, he did. Barely. For seven years that were likely miserable for my sweet angel. I’ll never know.

  Oma was traveling in Italy, visiting her sister for a month. I was camming in my room that night. I’d created my own storefront on a site for cam girls. My plan was to make some quick cash in hopes that I could save up enough to go back to Hawke—once the baby was born. It was easy money with my handful of regular clients who wanted me to entertain them in the safety of my own bedroom. I figured it was harmless—guys who wanted a nice girl-next-door type to watch. Sometimes, all they wanted was someone to talk to; other times, they wanted to watch me get off.

  Holl was one of my regulars; he was also my favorite client. He was kind and funny. I felt comfortable with him—truth be told, I had a huge crush on him to boot. The night I went into labor, I was camming with Holl. He asked me to get off in the shower; it was one of his favorite things to watch. It was a typical night until I slipped and my world went black. I only know what happened because I always kept footage of my sessions. So every second of that night was recorded for me to play back. Over and over.

  I was a little more than six months pregnant, and my fall tripped me straight into labor, twelve weeks before my baby was due. I woke up hours after my fall in a pool of blood and pain. I had no idea I was in labor—it was too early. I thought maybe I’d cracked my tailbone, and God only knows what else.

  Holl watched me, talked to me. He told me to be calm, told me I’d be all right. I begged him to come, to call an ambulance to help me; I shouted my address at him time and again. I knew it was stupid to give my address or real name to anyone I cammed with, but this was an extraordinary situation. I couldn’t get to my phone. I was helpless, terrified, and he was a familiar face; a nice, handsome, reliable man who seemed to care about me. He didn’t scare me.

  Though he should have.

  I learned all too soon.

  I knew he was local—he had told me that much about himself. That, plus he was a filmmaker of some kind. And that he liked watching cam girls.

  I knew Holl would get me to Hawke. I’d have a pocketful of cash in no time. Then the three of us—me, Hawke, and our baby—could live out our lives making films and traveling the world just as we’d always discussed. I was so naïve.

  Everything changed that night.

  “He could still be alive if you had gotten there when I asked.” I ram my hands into his chest and scream, “It was your fault!”

  Holl’s nails pierce the flesh of my wrists in an oh-so-familiar way as he pulls my chin up to him, forcing me to look into the black of his eyes.

  “My fault? I saved you. Don’t you ever fucking forget that piece, Petal,” he says in a dark tone that makes my knees, my guts, and the entire world feel like Jell-O.

  I was deep in labor when he finally showed up. We are saved, I thought. Until I tried to leave him soon after I’d left the hospital, soon after he’d taken us in. I left my baby there at the castle, unthinkably imagining I could go back with someone to get him. I didn’t get far.

  Most people have never felt a hand closing around their throat. Thinking death sounds like dessert, like something you crave more than oxygen.

  “I loved you. Your eighteen-year-old boyfriend could never have given you what I did. Everything.”

  “You took everything! Kept me from everyone. You stole two lives. Two innocent lives. Maybe more. Yes, you fuck. You stole more! My family, my lover… You are an evil creature!”

  The sting of Holl’s hand as it collides with my face sends me tumbling backward. “You lived that lie as much as I did. Don’t for one second put what we did on me.”

  “You held me against my will!” I snarl through clenched teeth as his fingers grip my neck, and he hauls me off the floor.

  “Against your will. Ppfft. I made a deal with you. It worked for both of us.”

  “I never wanted that deal! I wanted my son. I wanted my lover.”

  “Then you should have left.”

  “You wouldn’t have let me, based on that one time I tried. You barely let me live.”

  “It was a lesson you needed to learn. Freedom has a price. You didn’t really want it that badly.” My head hammers against the wall as he forces his mouth on mine and grinds his nails into my jaw. “You’re still mine,” he says.

  I twist my face out of his hands, away from his lips. I spit on him, and I’m rewarded with another wicked slap.

  “You’re nothing to me,” I say. “Nothing. You gave me nothing.”

  “Take it back. I gave you his life,” Holl says, piercing me with an evil glare. “Seven years of his life. You got that, and I got what I wanted. You. Then you left me when I tried to give you some space. I never should have trusted you the day he died. You shouldn’t have run. That made me angry, but you weren’t that hard to find.”

  Mick. Dear God, Mick.

  Holl drags me by my hair and cracks open the champagne he brought earlier when he showed up in my backyard unannounced.

  “Hello, neighbor,” he said.

  My reaction was silence.

  “Yes. Right next door.” He pointed and winked. “It’s not the castle, Petal, but it’s cozy being so near you again.”

  Mick. Fucking hell. Enjoy the neighborhood…

  “Funny how the trail of breadcrumbs to you was so fragrant. Smelled like pussy and rosebuds. Just the way I like you.” Holl grabs two glasses from the open, unpacked box of glassware sitting on the floor near the oven. He fills them before handing me one then weaving his arm through mine just as he had the night we made our deal. “I should have known you’d be shacking up with someone already, cheating on me.” He clucks his tongue as his eyes darken.

  “That look of surprise on your face tells me otherwise. Does your big man, who claims he’s the father of Holl Jr., know anything about you?” he asks as he lifts my chin and examines my face.

  When he licks his lips, baring his teeth, I know. He’s certain I’m his again. But no one’s life is at stake now. It was different when my son’s life was on the line until I agreed to be Holl’s.

  “My God, he doesn’t, does he? Maybe you and I can make another little deal.”

  The second I walk out of Sloan’s house, I conference-call Fletch and Hux. One of these fuckers had better level with me as soon as they get to my house. Is he my son? Is she married to that cocksucker?

  Once I’ve reached my front stoop, I enter the code to my security system. Another thing to change. The door nearly falls off its hinges behind me.

  As I wait for Sloan’s brothers to show up, I pour myself a shot of tequila. Then I call a buddy of mine known to everyone in the industry as Chainsaw. I ask him to dig up anything he can on Hollyn. Any little shitty piece of dirt that slimebag has rolled in, I want.

  Wife.

  How many things is she lying about?

  She had the gall to actually put the ring I’d bought her from Tiffany’s on. Yeah, I couldn’t help but notice that when she saw me and slammed her hand over her mouth in a gasp. My ring. Her husband?

  I grab the scroll and unroll it on top of my island, pinning the corners with mugs. My son. He has to have been my son. The birth date, though, is approximately five months after Sloan left. So either he’s not my son, or he was born prematurely. His initials match mine exactly. And Junior—that’s only used if the kid’s name matches the dad’s exactly.

  Who did he look like? Me or Sloan? A combination? What did he like to do? Legos? Play catch? A thousand questions, a few of them haunt me, including: How did he die? And why did she never tell me?

  Fletch and Hux arrive an hour later, a new bottle of tequila in hand
. As we walk into the kitchen, I rip into both of them, deservedly so. At least, I think.

  “You fuckers!” I slide two mugs off the edge of the rubbing, allowing it to roll up before they see it.

  Hux snatches glasses from the cupboard as Fletch digs into my refrigerator and comes out with a few limes. Tails between their legs, they say nothing, save a few simple apologies about how they didn’t know much about Sloan’s whereabouts for a while.

  “As in, she ran away?” I ask, gripping a knife and quartering a few limes.

  “As in, she doesn’t say much about it. She apparently lived with a guy for most of the time she was there. Told my folks she’d run off and gotten married to some loaded dude who lived in a castle, she was old enough to do what she wanted,” Hux says as he pours shots then hands each of us a lime.

  “She had all kinds of stories, most of which sounded like complete bullshit. We were never allowed to contact her or go after her or she would fall off the face of the earth, she said. My folks flipped out until she told them she’d call once a month. When she did, apparently she seemed okay to them. They figured she was rebelling because they’d made her move even though legally she was an adult. There’s a lot of backstory, other stuff you’ll need to hear from her.”

  “And the boy?” I ask after I sink my shot back, appreciating the sting it leaves as it coats my throat with fire. “Your nephew, guys? My son… Is he… I mean, was he mine?”

  “He was yours. Sorry, man,” Fletch says, meeting my eyes with his somber gaze.

  We stand in silence for a minute. I walk over to the balcony on the other side of the kitchen, gasping for air. “And you never fucking told me! You people are my family! What the hell is wrong with all of you? We were both eighteen, we could have raised him together!”

  “We couldn’t tell you,” Fletch says. “Sloan told us recently she was going to come back to you early on, but then, she didn’t want to leave him. She won’t talk to us about it. This is stuff our folks have filled us in on.”