Holding a Hero

by Layne, Lyssa

  Derek had barely put the truck in park, when after an eternity of silence I blurted out, “Thank you for being such a good friend.”

  His brow furrowed in confusion. “Okay.”

  I waited to see if he would ask for more clarification. When he didn’t, I gave him some anyway. “I mean, ever since Cara’s been gone, I haven’t really had a close friend like that. You know, someone I can count on. So, thank you. Our friendship really means a lot to me and I hope that we can stay friends even after all of this is over.” I’d said the word friend about as often as I possibly could have. The only way I could have driven the point home any harder would have been to refer to him as some sort of a brother figure, but all the sex we’d been having sort of made that comparison out of the question.

  “Joss, what’s going on?” he’d dropped his hands to his lap and was looking at me in anticipation of some grand revelation. Only I had already given it.

  “Nothing. I just wanted to say thanks, that’s all.” I reached for the door handle and popped it open. “Ready to go in?” Then I took off without waiting for his answer. One wrong glance from him and I would have recanted my whole statement. And I couldn’t do that. Not if we’d just wind up calling it quits in the series finale.

  ***

  I watched Joss practically run through the parking lot and into the bar. Sort of summed up what had just happened in the truck, really. When I walked in a few minutes later, she was busy chatting with Mattie who was tending the back bar. For a moment, I stood in the doorway taking in the scene. The place was pretty packed, but that was normal of a Wednesday night. It would be easy to let her do her thing and just sit back and relax for a bit. She’d be safe here even if I didn’t have my eyes on her the whole time. Except of course, I would have my eyes on her the entire time and it had nothing to do with how responsible I felt for her, but everything to do with how fucking mesmerized I was by her. And she was hoping we could stay friends after this was over. She had lost her goddamned mind if she really believed any of the crap she’d just ranted off to me.

  On the other hand, if she was bound and determined to keep stalling the inevitable, what was I supposed to do? Not fucking let her, that’s what.

  Then, before I lost my newfound nerve, I marched straight over to her. Acting like no one else was in the room, because to me there wasn’t, I caught hold of her hand mid gesture to Mattie and pulled her to me in one determined swoop.

  Once I had her standing so close to me that I could feel the movement of each breath her body took in and released, I took her face in my palms, leaned down into her and kissed her. Her lips parted for me in an instant, my tongue teasing her mouth and daring her to open up to me completely. And she did. Slowly her arms wove up around my neck while mine simultaneously began to glide down along her back where I wrapped both arms around her and lifted her up, never once allowing our lips to part.

  Once I was confident I’d made my point and turned her legs to Jell-O, making it impossible for her to make another attempt at running, my words softly thundered against her kiss, “I don’t want to be your fucking friend.”

  Stunned, she slowly nodded and gradually slid back down the front of my body until her feet hit the ground again. “Okay.”

  Still leaning into her, holding her steady with my forehead resting on hers, I continued quietly, “I understand that you’re afraid, but you need to understand that I’m not. Which is why I’m going to go ahead and do all of the scary stuff. And all you have to do is let me. Deal?”

  She nodded again. “Deal.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Maybe we were nothing like Tony and Angela after all. Maybe I’d been totally off on that. Maybe we were really like…like, well, I was drawing a blank, but just some other couple who had actually made it in spite of the fact that their union had been based on something completely unromantic and essentially been forced upon them. Maybe we were just going to have to tell our own story and hope it came with a happy ending.

  Whatever the future was holding for us, the present was pretty damn nice for a change. Somehow giving up all control of the situation and putting it all in Derek’s hands had been the easiest thing in the world to do. What was more, it had made me feel something I hadn’t in a long time. Happy. Really, truly happy.

  The next morning when we showed up at Diane’s office for our meeting, I felt an overwhelming sense of confidence. Everything was going to be fine. It seemed so obvious suddenly. It was only logical that the judge would take one look at Travis and his checkered past along with his silent puppet of a wife, then look at me and Derek and see that we were the only viable choice when it came to parenting Wyatt.

  Diane seemed equally confident. Or, at least if she wasn’t, she was very convincing.

  “I’m assuming we’ll be using the same character witnesses we did last time? Your brother and Aunt?”

  I pulled out my notebook. I liked having a place to scribble everything down, especially in situations like these. “Yeah, they’re ready to go whenever you want them.”

  Her attention turned to Derek, who was beside me on the long leather sofa in her office, his hand resting on my knee ever since we sat down. “I’m sure you realize you’ll be called to the stand as well?”

  He agreed. “Absolutely. Put me up there. Please. I want my chance to tell the judge what an amazing home and mother Wyatt has with Joss.”

  Diane made a note. “Great. Before we put you up on the stand, is there anything in your present or past that the other side might feel they could use to their advantage? Anything that could make you an unfavorable character witness? Or worse, an unfit or unsafe adult in Wyatt’s life?”

  I laughed. “Derek? Unfit or unsafe? He’s the only reason Travis hasn’t been able to hurt us this time around.”

  Diane’s expression went from concentrated to concerned. “He’s been threatening you again?”

  “Worse. He broke into the house during the wedding. We found him with Wyatt. It was scary, Diane. If Derek hadn’t been there, I don’t know what I would have done.”

  She put down her pen. “Did you at least call the police this time?”

  “Couldn’t. You know how he is. He had a story all worked out already. It would have been his word against ours and after how things went down last time I tried to get the police involved, I didn’t think it was worth the risk.” That had been a fucking disaster. The police had wound up siding with him, making me look like a total nut job, and to top it off, it had ended up pissing Travis off, making him scarier than he’d been before. I definitely wasn’t looking to repeat the experience. Especially not when he already seemed to be well on his way to graduating from your run of the mill sociopath to a full-on psycho.

  “Damn.” Lawyer lingo, I’m sure. “If we could just get something on record it would make this whole thing a slam dunk.” She exhaled loudly, showing her frustration and I could totally relate. It baffled me how easily Travis could play people and how clearly I saw who he really was. At least the amount of people on my side was steadily increasing.

  “But we’ve still got a good case, right? I mean, Derek and I have to look at least as good on paper as Travis and his wife do. Not to mention, I’ve been raising Wyatt this whole time, I’m the only mother he’s ever known.”

  Diane retrieved her pen again. “I’m glad you brought that up. How do you think Wyatt will handle questioning? He’s four now, correct?”

  “Yes. He’s four. I think he’ll be fine overall. He loves people and doesn’t have a shy bone in his body. But he won’t understand any of it. He doesn’t have a clue who Travis is to him and I really wasn’t planning on rectifying that matter anytime soon. He’s so young. I just want him to be carefree for a little while longer before he learns the truth about his biological parents.”

  Actually, I wanted him to be carefree for a lot while longer. Really, at what age was one old enough to experience the heartbreak of learning one’s mother had died in a car crash while one’
s father was a violent man who had at one point nearly killed you. No one was ever old enough for news like that.

  “Is there any way we can avoid involving him?” It was the first time Derek had said anything since we’d started.

  “Afraid not. He won’t be expected to take the stand like everyone else, but the judge will likely talk to him privately. Which is good and bad. We won’t get to ask any of our questions to show how well loved and cared for he is in your home, however, the other side won’t get to ask anything in hopes of proving the opposite. I’m sure you can’t begin to imagine how your own son could make you look bad, but you’d be surprised how easy it is to lead a witness when they’re not expecting it, and Wyatt most certainly would not be.”

  I shifted back and forth, this part of the conversation was making me antsy and depleting the excess confidence I had originally walked in with. “What do you think the judge will tell him? I mean, how much do I have to prepare Wyatt? I don’t want him to get confused or scared.”

  Diane gave me a reassuring smile. “Not to worry. We’ll instruct the judge ahead of time that Wyatt hasn’t been told about the custody battle or his biological father. I can’t see any reason why he would override your wishes to shelter him from these proceedings as much as possible until such a time comes in which it’s necessary for him to know more. Should such a time even come.”

  I felt Derek lightly squeeze my leg, and when I turned up toward him, his eyes were flooded with such a sense of certainty I felt instantly comforted.

  “Alright then. What’s next?”

  From there we proceeded to outline and discuss the types of questions she would be asking both of us, as well as the ones she suspected Travis’s attorney would bombard us with in hopes of making us look bad. The whole thing went on for hours and by the time we finally walked out of her office building, the sun was high in the sky and scorching hot. It had to be at least lunchtime. Normally my stomach kept track of things like time of day for me, but these days my appetite had been obliterated by the constant worrying and wondering.

  Derek’s fingers were interlocked with mine as we stepped out into the parking lot and I caught myself repeatedly stealing glances at our hands, strangely fascinated by how they fit together so perfectly. How did that work anyway? Was that the key to finding your other half in this life? When your fingers intertwined like two pieces of a puzzle? Because I couldn’t remember my hand ever feeling so right in anyone else’s. It was almost like touching him broke some sort of barrier differentiating where I ended and he began. The whole thing still scared the shit out of me, but if all I had to do was continue to show up, even I could manage possibly falling in love with a man.

  In the midst of my moment of joy, Derek’s phone buzzed. Even before he’d finished reading the text message, he’d started to frown. “We need to get home. Now.” The speed of his steps increased while he said it, dragging me for a second until I could grasp what was happening.

  “What’s wrong? What happened?” My heart was pounding out of my chest.

  “Don’t know yet. Wyatt’s fine, but there was an incident at the farmer’s market.” He yanked the car door open for me to jump in. Thinking back, it was so like him to be all gentlemanly even in the middle of a crisis.

  Derek sped the entire way back to the house and we made it back in record time.

  He’d barely shifted into park when I threw open my door and made a run for the house. Because he’s Derek and travels at humanly impossible speeds, he reached the door same time I did. His arms wound around the front of me, bringing me to an abrupt stop before I could go crashing in, searching for my son.

  “What are you doing?” It was the first and only time I’d ever wanted to punch him.

  “Slowing you down,” he whispered calmly into my ear from behind. “Whatever happened, Wyatt is going to look to you to set the tone of this experience. If he sees that you’re scared, he’ll be scared. So, take a deep breath, put on a smile and then let’s walk in together.”

  I closed my eyes and did as I was told. “Okay. I’m ready. Let’s go.”

  I didn’t wait for his approval. I just pulled the door open and surged onward whether he was still holding on or not. He was, although no longer to stop me.

  “Mommy!” Wyatt came running down the hall toward me, practically throwing himself into my arms. He’d been crying. It took everything I had, not to start bawling as well. I wanted to scream. From pain. From anger. Fury rushed through every vein in my body. I wanted to kill Travis.

  “Hey, monkey man. What happened? Why are you upset?” I wanted to ask Aunt Deb. Wanted an adult to rattle off the chain of events and how they had led to my son in tears, but comforting Wyatt had to come first.

  “The man cameded back. He tolded me that you haded an accident and were gone. He tolded me he was my daddy.” Wyatt hiccupped and buried his face in my hair, his little arms tight around my neck.

  My heart sank to the pit of my stomach. Everything I’d wanted to shield him from, Travis had shot straight at his little heart to shatter it.

  “Shh, baby. It’s okay. Everything is fine. I’m right here. I wasn’t in any accident, and that man is not your daddy.” I knew I was walking a fine line, but I didn’t care. Travis could be the sperm donor, the biological father, half the source of his gene pool, but he would never be Wyatt’s daddy.

  Wyatt didn’t say anything else, but I could feel him twisting my hair between his fingers while he rested his head on my shoulder. Gently, I swayed back and forth holding him to me; a source of comfort I’d discovered when he was only a baby, the only source I really had to offer at this point. It seemed like an eternity before I looked up from Wyatt in my arms to see that there were several people standing in my living room. Among them, a frail looking Aunt Deb.

  Once Wyatt had overcome the worst of his anxiety, we got him settled in my bedroom on the bed with Hattie, where we set him up with a lunch picnic and his favorite movie. Then, at last, I was able to get the whole story.

  Aunt Deb and I came out from the bedroom to find Derek talking to the two men I’d seen with Debbie earlier. As soon as they spotted us, they stopped talking.

  “How’s Wyatt?” Derek walked out from behind the bar to come and put both arms around me. He held me tight for a long while.

  “He’s better, although I expect I’ll be hearing about it again. I would imagine it will take more than just one conversation to work through what happened today.”

  He nodded. Then he turned his attention to the two strangers. “Joss, these are my buddies, Darius Pendelton and Abe Miles.”

  I reached out to shake their hands. “You were here last night.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Abe Miles was unusually polite. It was both charming and freaky.

  “Please, just call me Joss. I mean, Derek says you’re like his family.”

  Darius smiled at me warmly. “Which makes us like your family now. We’re truly sorry about what you’ve been going through. I swear to you, we did everything we could to handle the situation today as efficiently as possible. The last thing we wanted was to scare your boy any worse.”

  “Thank you. But what actually happened?” I turned to Aunt Deb who still looked pale as a ghost.

  “We just made a quick run up to the farmer’s market. I figured it would be fine. We know almost all of the vendors, all of our neighbors shop there…it was broad daylight. I felt safe. I was wrong, Joss. We were there for a little while when suddenly he ambushed us. I have no idea where he’d been hiding, but next thing I knew, he was standing right next to us. Talking to Wyatt.”

  I gripped Derek’s arm to keep myself from lashing out and throwing things. “What was he saying?”

  “I don’t know what he was saying at first. I was too preoccupied with getting Wyatt out of there. But when I went to walk away, Travis grabbed Wyatt’s arm. I tried calmly telling him to let go, and he refused. Instead he placed his other hand on Wyatt’s arm as well and made a comment about sn
apping twigs in two. There was no way of getting Wyatt away from him without risking him getting hurt, so I stood there, stuck, listening to him as he was telling Wyatt how his mother had died in a car accident and was never coming back and that he was his daddy so he would be coming to get Wyatt soon to bring him to live at his real home, with his real family.” My aunt was in tears now. “It was horrible, Joss. Wyatt was terrified and crying, but Travis just kept on with it. He was so engulfed in his own story he never even noticed when these two came up on him. When he wasn’t expecting it, Darius was able to walk up behind him. I have no idea how he did it, because I didn’t really see anything, but next thing I knew, Travis was crumpled on the ground and Abe was rushing Wyatt and me back out to our car.”

  I didn’t even have to ask. Darius just shrugged and mumbled, “Pressure points.”

  “I don’t suppose you actually killed him at the farmer’s market?” I wasn’t even sure if I wanted the answer to be yes or no at that point.

  “No, ma’am. Sorry, Joss. He likely came to a minute or so later. We just needed enough time to get out of there without him causing any more trouble.”

  Abe seemed to concur with his partner, “Yeah, the last thing we wanted was to cause a confrontation that might add more trauma to what your son already had to experience. I’m just sorry we weren’t able to stop him sooner. We were there. He never should have had a chance to get so close to Wyatt.”

  “You stopped him,” I said. “You brought my kid home, bones still intact. I’ll be forever grateful for that.”

  ***

  Darius and Abe ended up staying for the rest of the afternoon, which I think helped Wyatt. Seeing them outside of the scary scene involving Travis, hearing them joke and laugh, learning their names and watching how they interacted with me, was good for him.

  I knew I hadn’t been in Wyatt’s life long, but I’d never once taken the responsibility of marrying his mother lightly. For the length of our marriage, whatever it would be, I was there to act as a father figure to him, as well as a husband to her. Fake or otherwise. Because of this, I’d tried my best to build the relationship between us based on his level of interest. Never once though had I expected a bond quite like the one we now had to form.