* * *
Latrice
“How much longer is this going to take,” I asked the lady at the reception desk. I was quickly losing my patience.
“I’m sorry this is taking so long. Officer Sparks needs to finish up some paperwork and things like that and wants to see you in his office again when he’s done.”
“Fine. Can I at least see my son? I’m sure he’s freaking out right about now. He’s never been in any kind of real trouble before.”
“Unfortunately, that’s not going to be possible right now. You won’t be able to see or talk to him until everything else is finished.”
The receptionist got up and walked away from her desk. She must have sensed that I was growing more and more frustrated by the nonchalant way she was treating me. All I could was shake my head as I was left in the lobby all by myself with nobody to answer any further questions.
When I made my way back to Kansas City, I envisioned things going much differently in my mind. The way things had gone down in Chance’s office were certainly much different than how I planned to tell him about CJ.
With nothing but time, I figured there was no use in getting all worked up. Instead, I sat down in the chair that faced Chance’s office so my face would be the first thing he saw when he opened the door.
I wondered how long it would be until that happened. How long would it be until I could get CJ and go home?
There was no sense in dwelling on it. I had no control over anything. I was completely at the mercy of Chance and, if he was anything like the Chance I used to know, I knew that he would leave me waiting there as long as he wanted to get back at me for the secret I kept from him for so long.
The longer I sat there, the more I began questioning whether or not I had done the right thing so many years ago. I wondered if Chance would ever be able to forgive me and if he’d at least be able to see that I was only doing what I thought was best for my child at the time.
“Miss Walker?” a booming voice asked, catching me off guard. I jumped up out of my seat to see another officer standing in front of me.
“Yes, I’m Miss Walker,” I responded.
“Officer Sparks would like a word with you in his office.”
I grabbed my purse and walked towards the door that the officer was holding open for me. I was hoping that another encounter with Chance wasn’t going to be necessary before I was able to leave, but it didn’t look like I was going to be so lucky.
When I walked in, he was sitting down at his desk, his face looking down at whatever it was he was writing.
I was hoping that he was finishing up the paperwork that would allow me to take my son and go home, but I knew that wasn’t the case the moment he lifted his head and looked up at me. The way his brow furrowed, I could tell he was still pissed off.
“Latrice, are you listening to me?”
I shook my head slightly. My mind was everywhere except the room I was in. I hadn’t even realized that Chance had been speaking to me. Hell, I hadn’t even realized that the officer that walked me into the room had already left.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?” I asked.
“I asked you to sit down,” he said after staring at me for a couple of moments, dumbfounded by the way I was acting.
“Is that really necessary Chance? I really don’t have time for any of this. I don’t want to take a seat. I just want to pick up CJ and take him home.”
“That’s not going to happen. Not until you sit down and have a conversation with me.”
The whole situation had already left me drained, both physically and mentally. My chest was feeling tight, and my body was tense. This was the last thing I needed.
“I agree that you and I have a lot of things to discuss. I’m just not sure I can do it right now. Can we set something up and do this some other time?”
The words sounded good in my head, but I regretted uttering them as soon as they escaped my lips. His anger was boiling over to the point that I wondered whether or not I should be afraid of him. He pushed back from his desk and stood up, quickly rounding his desk and stepping in front of me.
“Do this some other time? Surely, you can’t be serious! Can we do this some other time?” he said through clenched teeth. “Who in the hell do you think you are to even ask me if we can do this some other time? You just came in here and told me I have a son. You told me that I have a son that I knew nothing about for ten fucking years, and now you want to tell me you want to do this some other time?”
“Chance, listen.”
“No, it’s time for you to listen to me Latrice. Do you think for one minute I’m going to allow you to come in here and give me this kind of news and then just turn my head and let you walk away?”
I exhaled, completely oblivious to the fact that I’d been holding my breath. Even though he was angry with me, he wasn’t able to hide the anguish that was also coming through in his voice. In a way, my heart broke for him.
“Chance, I don’t expect you to do that,” I muttered with a soft tone, hoping it would calm him down a little bit. “I’m not going anywhere. I mean, yeah, I’m going to leave here today, but I’m back in town to stay. I moved back specifically because I wanted to tell you about CJ. I want you in his life. In all honesty, I feel like you’re probably the only person in the entire world who can save him right now.”
He bent down to my level, his jaw clenching. As he looked into my eyes, I saw it for the first time. The anger that I saw was being replaced by something different. It was a look of concern. The kind of concern that only a parent can have for their child.
“Save him? What does he need to be saved from?”
“He needs to be saved from himself, Chance.”
The look of rage returned, and the concern was gone. His breathing got heavy, and the veins in his neck were visible. I didn’t know when I was going to have another chance to discuss things with him so I continued.
“This wasn’t the way I wanted you to meet your son. Did you see how he’s acting? Did you see how he acts like he’s angry with the world? That’s not how I wanted you to see him for the first time. It isn’t easy to see lately, but I know he’s a good boy.”
“I don’t understand. Why are you telling me this?”
“I’m just trying to explain why we came back. I was having a lot of trouble paying the bills so I took a second job to make ends meet. That meant I wasn’t around a lot, and CJ started finding ways to get into trouble. Things got especially bad at school. He was acting out and not listening to any of his teachers. I was hoping that by coming back home, he could start over again. I thought you could help with that.”
“So let me get this straight. The only reason you are even back in Kansas City is because our son was becoming a problem for you? I’m only learning about him because you need my help setting him straight?”
“Well, yeah but—”
“No, there is no but. You just said that he’s a good boy. Where were you all the time when he wasn’t acting up? Why didn’t you come back then? Why do you seem to think that I had no right to know about him?”
“It was never like that Chance. I thought I was doing the right thing.”
“You thought you were doing the right thing? Well, you weren’t, Latrice. You weren’t doing the right thing. What you did was very, very wrong. When I got out of juvenile, I’d already decided to change my life, but you wouldn’t know that, would you? You took off before you could even see any of the changes I made for myself. I should have been able to be a father to that boy since the day he was born.”
I wanted to remain calm and not allow my emotions to take over, but I suddenly found myself reeling with feelings of regret.
I’d taken ten years of his son’s life away from him, and there was nothing either of us could do to give it back to him. I needed to make him see somehow that the decision to leave was one I was making in the best interest of my child and not necessarily something personal against him.
“I can’t give you any of that time back, Chance, but you need to at least try to see where I was coming from. I always planned for a life together with you, but you seemed like you were going out of your way to prevent that from happening. How many times did you tell me that your boys came first? How often did you leave me hanging when we had plans because your boys needed you? What about when I needed you?”
I wiped my eyes, trying hard to keep myself together.
“When you got locked up, that was it for me,” I continued. “That night was supposed to be a happy one. It was going to be the night that I let you know we were going to have a family. I begged you not to go. I begged you to make me a priority just one time, and you couldn’t do it. I didn’t think things were ever going to change, and I didn’t want to raise my baby with someone who thought the streets were more important than family.”
Before I could finish my thought, the sound of my son laughing echoed through the walls. Chance and I both made our way over to the window to see what was going on. I was amazed by what I saw.
CJ was standing outside with the uniformed officer that had called me into Chance’s office. I couldn’t hear what was being said, but whatever the officer was saying, CJ was hanging on every word and laughing so hard that he had tears in his eyes. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard CJ laugh like that, and it warmed my heart to remember all the times he and I laughed together.
I turned my attention back to Chance. Seeing CJ so happy made it even more important for me to let him know how I was feeling.
“Like I said before, when I got pregnant, I had every intention to tell you. That’s what that whole night was about. I was waiting anxiously, wondering what point of the night was going to be best to give you the news, but because of your boys, I never got that chance. When you left regardless of my pleas, it was clear that you didn’t really love me. I was just a girl who was there when you wanted her around. Even though I realized right then that you didn’t love me, I knew I wanted to keep the baby. He didn’t ask for any of that. I also didn’t think it would be fair to you to be trapped in a relationship you didn’t want just because you knocked me up.”
I started to cry, so I turned back towards the window, not wanting Chance to see me crying. The last thing I wanted him to know was how much he had hurt me when he went off with his boys so many years ago.
There were scars in my heart that I didn’t think were ever going to heal, no matter how much time passed. This man was my first love, and I’d never loved anyone since.
“Latrice?” he asked with a soft and gentle voice that I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard come out of his mouth before.
“Yeah?” I replied, my voice trembling.
“Never once did I ever say I didn’t love you. I’m not sure how you came to that conclusion.”
“Really? You never had to say those words. Your actions said them for you. What was I supposed to think? How was I supposed to feel?”
* * *
Chance
It was hard to form a response to the questions she was asking me. What was she supposed to think? How was she supposed to feel?
I went off with my boys that night like I always did. To me, it was just another night. I had no clue that by doing so, she would ever think that I didn’t love her or that she didn’t mean the world to me.
Looking back, I could see why she felt the way she did. It was never my intention to make her feel that way, but I could understand why the feelings were there.
I knew I had to choose my next words carefully. I had no clue how I was supposed to explain things to her when I still didn’t understand why I’d made the choices I’d made. Still, I had to do what I could.
“You know, I’m not even going to act like I did the right thing. It seems like maybe I made some poor decisions that night.”
Latrice laughed the kind of laugh that only a pissed off woman could laugh.
“That depends on your definition of poor I think,” she told me. “In my eyes, you did exactly what you wanted to do. You got rid of a relationship that was threatening to stand between you and your boys.”
“That wasn’t what I wanted at all.”
“Then what did you want, Chance? You picked them over me all the time. How many times did I ask you not to go and stay with me instead? You never did.”
I stayed silent for a few moments, not wanting to speak without knowing exactly what I wanted to say.
“Latrice, I always loved you. As a matter of fact, I loved you so much that it started to scare the shit out of me. I’d never felt anything like what I felt for you. I put distance in between us sometimes because of that, but I never thought you’d leave. Hell, we’d been together for so long. Both of our families expected us to get married. I always thought we’d get married too. When I got out, and you were gone, I was shocked. I was lost. I didn’t know what to do.”
I wanted Latrice to look me in the eyes and see that I was being sincere. Instead, she kept her chin tucked and never looked up from the floor.
“I really wish I would have done things differently back then,” I told her. “I loved you so much, but at the time, there was no way I could have been the husband you deserved. Not until I got my shit together. When I got out, something had changed in me. I guess it was too late by then.”
“So you’re telling me that you wouldn’t have been able to be the husband I deserved and then in the same breath, you expect me to believe you would have been ready to be a daddy? That night was just the final time I was placed on the back burner. It proved that you didn’t want me. I loved you so much, Chance. I loved you so much, in fact, that I stepped aside so I wouldn’t get in your way. I didn’t tell you about the baby because I didn’t want you to be forced into living a life you didn’t want to live. That’s the only reason I left and never said a word about it.”
“That’s the thing, Latrice. If I would have known you were pregnant, the things I wanted wouldn’t have mattered. The boys wouldn’t have been important to me anymore. Anything I wanted to do wouldn’t have mattered anymore.”
“Trust me, I know exactly how that feels.”
Right then, I got the point she had been trying to make to me all along. I shook my head and sighed about the ways things turned out for the two of us. Back then, I thought I had it all. I had a group of guys that looked up to me and we caused hell in any way we could.
It took getting locked up to make me realize that there was no life in what I was doing. How many friends had I lost on the street to senseless violence? Hell, how many of those lost friends did me and my boys seek retribution for?
It was only a matter of time before I became one of those statistics. I just wish it wouldn’t have taken me so long to realize it.
I decided to get into juvenile law because I wanted to make a difference in the lives of kids who were where I once was. I knew I wouldn’t be able to get through to all of them, but I also knew that if I could turn just a few lives around, it would all be worth it for me.
In doing so, I was able to forge a relationship with the city that I’d once terrorized as a kid. It was much nicer being on the right side of the law for a change.
I took a look out the window again but didn’t speak for a while. I enjoyed watching my son appear happy, which was a lot different than what I’d seen when I first picked him up.
“I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that he doesn’t know anything about me.”
Latrice responded by shaking her head. “No, he doesn’t know about you. The only thing he knows is that his daddy was someone I loved very much and always thought I was going to marry.
Whenever he asked for more details, I just told him that things didn’t work out between us and that I left before ever telling his daddy about him.”
“That’s it? That’s all you’ve told him?”
“That’s it. He wasn’t very old when we had the conversation. Every once in a while, he’d bring up his daddy and ask whether or n
ot I had your phone number. I told him I didn’t have your phone number anymore, but that if he ever wanted me to get in touch with you when he got older, I could do it. I told him that all he had to do was say the word. He never said anything more about it, and I didn’t want to push it.”
“I think we should tell him.”
“I agree that he should know. Like I said, that’s been my plan ever since I decided to come back. The thing is, I don’t want to just drop it on him like this. He’s had to go through so much change in a short amount of time. I think telling him right now might do more harm than good. I’ve been thinking a lot about how we should do this.”
I turned away from the window and took a seat back behind my desk.
“Okay, what have you come up with?”
* * *
Latrice
Happy that he was willing to hear me out, I slid into the chair in front of his desk. I opened my mouth to talk, but couldn’t make the words come out. All of a sudden, I felt very self-conscious and uncomfortable having the conversation with him.
There I was, explaining the best way to raise a son to a man who had never met him. How was I supposed to explain my son’s emotional and mental state to someone who didn’t know it like I did?
At the time, CJ was pretty much mad at the world, but I was there to take the brunt of it. Of course, he was much angrier with me at that point in time.
I’d taken him away from everything he knew. I took him out of an environment that he was comfortable in and thrust him into a situation where he didn’t know anyone. It didn’t matter to him that the environment he’d grown comfortable in wasn’t healthy for him.
He was constantly getting into trouble and his grades were suffering as a result.
“Latrice? What did you come up with?” Chance asked again, snapping me away from my thoughts.
“First, I want you to know that I have no clue how you must be feeling right now. I’m sure you’re eager for CJ to know who you are. I get that, I really do. For right now, however, I think it would be best for him to get to know you as a person before he knows you as a daddy.”
Second Chance (A Secret Baby Romance Novel) Page 3
