Softhearted (Deep in the Heart Book 2)

by Kim Law

  “Do you love him?” Jill asked, and Heather startled at the change in subject.

  “That doesn’t matter,” she said.

  “Of course it matters,” Trenton pushed her. “Do you love him or not?”

  “I’ve loved men before,” Heather argued, and both of them laughed.

  “No way you’ve ever loved anyone the way you do Waylon,” Jill guessed. “We’ve watched you, sweetie. We backed off from this thing between you two a while ago because we saw what was happening.”

  “And we wanted that to happen,” Trenton admitted.

  Heather gawked at her. “But you don’t even believe in love.”

  “I don’t believe in it for me,” Trenton corrected. “But look at Jilly. She’s found it. Twice with the same man. And it’s real. This could be real for you, too. So we’re just saying, don’t throw it away because you’re too afraid he’ll leave you someday.”

  “Or because you’re afraid he’ll eventually do something to make you leave him,” Jill added.

  But I’ve already left him.

  Heather didn’t say the words out loud. She couldn’t make herself speak. Because she knew that Waylon would never consider taking her back. She’d turned her back on him after he’d said he loved her. She’d walked away without a word.

  And she’d done it in front of Jill’s entire wedding party.

  The three of them grew quiet, and Heather took one last look at the wildflowers growing where the barn had once stood. Though there was upheaval roaring inside her, there was also a newfound peace. She nodded, holding back the tears that threatened to fall. It was time to go. And in more ways than one.

  She turned for the house then, her two best friends walking at her sides, and she’d made it only a few feet when she heard horses pass behind her.

  Jill stopped. “Did you hear that?”

  Her question surprised Heather, and she looked over at Trenton to see if she’d heard it as well. Only Ollie had heard it with her before. Trenton had already turned back toward the open field and was stretching her neck out as if to see. “I don’t understand,” she murmured. “There aren’t any horses back here.”

  Comfort settled over Heather’s shoulders. “It’s my mom,” she told them. “She’s been talking to me lately. I think she’s telling me it’s time to forgive my dad and get on with my life.”

  Neither of them questioned her on speaking with her mom, but Jill did ask, “And what’s she telling you that your life is?”

  Heather wanted to be the fearless person they thought she could be. She really did. But inside, she knew that wasn’t her. She was made to take the easy route, she supposed. Not to put her neck on the chopping block.

  She linked her arms with her friends’. “She’s telling me that my life is in Atlanta.”

  Waylon stepped from his lawyer’s office two weeks before his court date, and though he wouldn’t feel 100 percent until he had Rose home with him for good, he felt better about his case than he ever had. Patrick’s showing up at the wedding had actually ended up playing in Waylon’s favor. After Billy had hauled the man away for public intoxication and assaulting a citizen, Patrick had begun to squeal. He still wanted Waylon to give him his $6,000 back, of course. But that had been about pride. What he’d shared about the Jameses, though . . .

  Well, the Jameses had finally messed up.

  They’d uncovered Patrick a couple of months before, and had been keeping him on “retainer” until they felt he could be of the most use. And apparently, the most use meant having him throw around lies and accusations while the cameras were rolling. Waylon and his attorney had been able to piece together that the Jameses had planned to subpoena production for the tapes, to be used during the hearing. From their point of view, video of Patrick spewing lies would have been catching Waylon red-handed, and for good measure, they’d also instructed Patrick to start a fight. Meaning, get Waylon to throw the first punch. They’d forgotten, however, that although Waylon had plenty of vices in the past, fighting had never been one of them.

  He looked over at his dad, who walked tall beside him. As the man had promised, he was standing by Waylon’s side throughout this whole process. He’d insisted on coming today, and though Waylon could have easily handled the appointment by himself, he had appreciated the support. Just knowing he had someone in his corner as he’d worked through final plans with his lawyer had made the day a little easier.

  They continued down the busy sidewalk in downtown San Antonio, Waylon seeking out his truck parked near the back of the next lot, and he didn’t notice when his dad stopped walking. Discovering himself alone, Waylon turned back to find the other Peterson standing in the middle of a city of steel and pavement, with far too many cars whipping past, looking about as out of place as Waylon had ever seen him.

  Yet as he stood there, his dad also seemed to be comfortable in a way Waylon had never seen, either. Or maybe it was just the first time Waylon had been able to actually see his father that way.

  “Everything okay, Dad?”

  Charlie nodded. Then Waylon noticed his hands trembling.

  “Dad?” Waylon rushed back, but before he could reach his dad’s side, his dad held up his hands to ward Waylon off.

  “I’m good,” his dad said. “Just thinking.” His thoughts seemed miles away. “And regretting.”

  The heavily weighted words cemented Waylon’s feet where he stood, and the two men remained in the middle of the foot traffic, facing off, four feet apart. “What exactly is it that you’re regretting?”

  Fifty-one-year-old eyes that matched his stared back solemnly, and Waylon clenched his jaws together in frustration. Surely they weren’t going to have that conversation now? In the middle of the sidewalk?

  He wasn’t even sure he wanted to have that conversation. Hadn’t they been doing okay without it?

  But a part of him did want to have it. And that same part wanted to do it right here and right now. Because he was tired of feeling like he was in limbo. Tired of faking it so he didn’t have to face reality. His dad shouldn’t have left the way he did. He shouldn’t have continued for years without acknowledging that fact.

  And the part of Waylon that wanted to have this conversation also selfishly wanted his father to hurt because of his actions.

  His dad took off his hat and clasped it in his hands, obviously ready to clear the air, and a muscle in Waylon’s jaw twitched.

  “I’m regretting many things,” his dad started, eyeing Waylon as if keeping tabs on a feral cat. “First off, I watched you in there today. Fighting for your daughter. And I know how that fight will continue when it’s before a judge. I’ve also watched how you are with her.” He scrubbed his fingers over his cheek and stretched out his jaw. “I was always the more traditional type. Thought a kid needed to be raised by his mother. I thought getting out of the way was the right thing to do.”

  “It wasn’t.” Waylon could only manage two clipped words.

  His dad nodded. “Maybe not. And I can see that Rose is definitely better off for having you in her corner. But your mother and I couldn’t make it, son. We tried.”

  “Excuses.” A bead of sweat rolled between Waylon’s shoulders. This didn’t feel like a real conversation. Not the one he wanted.

  “It’s not excuses.” His dad picked his monologue back up, but he no longer looked directly at Waylon. “The thing is, we never should have gotten married in the first place. We fought all the time, and that was no good for anybody. Hell, I stayed out in the pastures more than I ever stayed in the house. What good was I doing by sticking around?”

  “I stayed out there with you.”

  When his dad’s words cut off and he looked back over at Waylon, Waylon continued.

  “Do you not remember that? How, if I wasn’t in school, I rode right there beside you until after dark? I also headed out with you before sunrise. I was your damned shadow, Dad. Because I looked up to you. Because I loved you”—his voice cracked, but now that he
’d started, he was unwilling to stop. “And you never once returned that love.”

  Pain filled his dad’s eyes. “That’s not true. I loved you. It broke me not to have you with me.”

  “Yeah? Then why not take me when you left?” Waylon ground out. “Like I begged you to do.” His dad started to shake his head, but Waylon pushed on. “Don’t you dare say that it was because Mom needed me there with her. I heard her tell you I could go.”

  “That doesn’t mean that she didn’t need you.”

  “And saying all these words now doesn’t mean you ever believed them, either.” Disgust coursed through him. Why have a conversation if you weren’t really going to have one in the first place? He was done with this crap. “Be real for once in your life, Dad. We’ve been living together for six weeks now, pretending things are fine and that we’re getting ‘better.’” He air-quoted the word. “But neither of us believes it. Hell, neither of us has even made one honest attempt at making anything better. We just skate along the surface, hoping the ice doesn’t crack. And now you think you can fix all these years of pain by feeding me a line of crap?”

  He nearly spit at his father’s feet.

  “Prattling on with useless words does not mean you’re clearing the air,” he told his dad. “We have issues, and I’m tired of ignoring them. Deal with it, or get the hell out of my house.”

  The ultimatum suddenly set Waylon free, and as he took a step back, gasping for air as his tirade came to an end, his dad’s eyes bulged with fear. Feet shuffled along beside them, someone bumped into his dad. But Waylon didn’t look away from the man who had all his same features. These were things that should have been said years ago.

  “I don’t want to leave,” his dad begged. “Please, son. I’m sorry. I’m not good at this, okay? I never have been. It’s one of the reasons I couldn’t make things work with your mom. But I’ll work on it. I’ll do whatever you want me to do to fix it.”

  “Because you don’t want to lose Rose?”

  Waylon wanted Rose to have a relationship with her grandfather. She loved him very much. But if she had to, she could have that relationship with his dad living in another house.

  “No.” His dad’s voice carried more assuredness than it had before. “I do love Rose, yes. But it’s not her I want to stay for. It’s you, Waylon. I want to do right by you. I swear I never meant to hurt you before, and I do understand that I did.” His dad’s chest rose with the breath he pulled in. “And truth be told, I’ll probably find a way to do it again. But tell me, and I’ll make it better. Tell me, and I’ll do my best to be the dad to you that you are with your daughter. Because I never understood that a man could be that kind of dad before today.” The steam ran out of him. “I never understood, Waylon. And that’s the biggest regret in my life. That I wasn’t that kind of dad to you.”

  Waylon stared back at the man he’d spent too many years resenting, and as if forgiveness had been sitting there waiting for him to take it, he suddenly felt as if he’d been handed the most precious gift of all. He’d just needed to hear the words. To see that he wasn’t the only one in the relationship who’d been hurting for the past twenty years.

  The last shred of resentment lifted, and at the same time, his remaining worry over whether he was truly doing the right thing for his daughter floated away with it. He was the right thing for Rose. He finally had no doubts. And his dad living in Red Oak Falls was the right thing for them.

  He nodded as his thoughts tumbled into an order that made sense, and when he looked around as if coming out of a long slumber, he caught more than one pair of eyes cut toward them. And he almost laughed right there in the middle of downtown San Antonio. When he and his father finally decided to clear the air, they certainly did it right.

  But at least they’d done it. Heather would be happy to—

  He stopped the thought before he could finish it. Heather wouldn’t anything. Heather was gone. She’d walked away from him without so much as a word or a chance for explanation. No matter what kind of professional opportunity she’d been presented, he’d deserved better than that. They’d deserved better.

  At the same time, he wasn’t a barbarian. He understood the need to chase a dream, to take an opportunity when it presented itself. And because he did understand, he also hoped he’d someday be able to wish her well. If not personally, then at least in his head.

  Today wasn’t that day, though. It was nowhere close.

  But today was the day that he got his dad back.

  “That’ll work.” He stuck out his hand, not knowing at first what else to do—nor what else to say—then grinned at both the absurdity of his actions and his words.

  As his father hesitantly put his hand into Waylon’s, Waylon shook his head and brought his dad in for an enveloping hug.

  “I love you, Dad.” He’d known he did, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever said it to the man.

  His dad’s embrace surrounded Waylon. “And I love you, son.”

  If he’d seen it from an outsider’s point of view, Waylon might have been embarrassed at the sight the two of them made on the very public street. But then again, maybe he wouldn’t have cared at all.

  He had his dad again. For the first time since he’d been seven years old, his world didn’t feel as if it sat on ground waiting to crumble under his feet.

  They finally separated, and as one, they turned for his truck. They’d gone about half the distance when Waylon looked over. He thought about the fact that Blu Johnson had made more than one appearance at his house recently. “If you’re going to keep living with me, I say we set some ground rules. Namely, what you can and can’t do with a woman in your bedroom.”

  His dad chortled. “I’ve already got that one covered. Loud music.”

  Waylon’s jaw went slack as he recalled the music coming from his dad’s room only two nights before, and Charlie Peterson nodded, as if impressed with his own ingenuity.

  “That’s right,” his dad said. “You’ll never hear a thing as long as I’ve—”

  “Stop,” Waylon interrupted. “I get it. And I’m incredibly sorry I brought it up.” He felt as if he needed to wash his eyes out with peroxide—even though he’d seen nothing of what had gone on behind his dad’s closed door. “New ground rules,” he suggested as he thumbed the unlock button on his key fob. His truck chirped ten feet in front of them. “I buy you lunch today before we head home . . . and then you and I never speak of this again.”

  His dad laughed once more. “I can work with that deal. But I will go ahead and tell you,” he continued, as he headed for the passenger’s door, “that I do enjoy playing loud music.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “When you tire of staring at the walls you’ve carefully erected, knock them down and create the future you want.”

  —Blu Johnson, life lesson #99

  Waylon stood before the ten-foot-high wooden doors of the courthouse, his daughter on one side of him, and his father on the other. And relief filled every fiber of his being. He’d won. He had his daughter back.

  The hearing had been short. The Jameses had originally been granted temporary custody due to Waylon’s incapacitation, and though they’d come with depositions and statements from all manner of people willing to lie for them, Waylon’s lawyer had a rebuttal for everything. And when he’d presented the money trail leading directly to Patrick, Marcus and Madelyn had picked up their things and left. They’d not only lost, but they’d left with shame. They might have originally had the best intentions for their granddaughter at heart—though Waylon could argue that point—but their intentions had gotten buried in their hubris.

  Waylon looked down at his daughter, who’d insisted on wearing a very specific outfit today. A purple tutu, a green top, and her pink-and-black striped leggings. Then he recalled Madelyn’s horrified expression when Waylon had escorted his daughter to the restroom, and she’d come back wearing this concoction. Her outrage alone had been enough to make the moment wor
thwhile. But the idea had been Rose’s.

  When they’d talked on the phone the night before, Rose had asked him to bring the clothes, and with that simple request, he’d seen so much of her mother in her. Rose might love her grandparents, but she wanted to be home with him. And she’d intrinsically understood the Jameses had been the ones who could prevent that. So she’d bucked the system. She’d not dressed the way Madelyn preferred. She’d been 100 percent herself.

  And there’d been no way he would have said no to that.

  “Are we going to open the door and go home, Daddy?”

  He smiled at Rose. They’d been heard last today, so the court had emptied out. But he’d wanted to stand here for a moment and take in the power of the judicial system when done right.

  He nodded. “We’re going to open the door and go home, Rosebud. But first, I need to know where you want to eat dinner. Because we’re celebrating big tonight, and we need to make sure we do it right.”

  She nodded solemnly, and he could see her thoughts start to churn. He shouldn’t have said she had to decide before they walked through the doors. She could take days to reach a decision.

  “Let’s go to the truck,” he suggested. “Grampa and I will get you strapped in, and you can keep thinking the whole time.”

  “That’ll work.” She nodded, and Waylon winked at his daughter as he took her hand. The two of them went ahead of his father, Waylon pushing on the outer door, and then he stopped in shock at the sight that awaited him.

  “Look at all our friends, Daddy!” Rose squealed and ran out the door before him, and Waylon turned to his dad.

  “Did you know about this?”

  Charlie shook his head as the two of them followed Rose out. “No idea.”

  “What do you suppose they’re all doing here?” Waylon spoke from the side of his mouth. There had to be at least seventy-five people standing on the steps to the courthouse, all from Red Oak Falls, and all having traveled over an hour on a workday to get there. Several of them had also come with signs.