Our old man wasn’t much of an example, that was for sure, and I wanted my kid to have better. He’d already gone this long without a father-figure, the least I could do was be a good one now.
“Uh… Hey there, champ,” I said, waving awkwardly.
He stepped closer and looked up at me, squinting. “How’s your head?” he asked.
I touched my fingers to the stitches — they were still tender, the skin around the wound puffy and swollen — and shrugged.
“Still attached,” I joked.
That got him to crack a smile.
Tenley huffed. “You should bandage that,” she said, nodding to my head. “I’ll be back in a few hours, you call me if you need anything at all, okay honey?” she said to Cal, bending to kiss his cheek.
Then she stomped down the front steps away from me. “What, no kiss on the cheek for me?” I called out after her. She turned to glare at me, and seeing that Cal wasn’t paying her attention, flipped me the bird when she got into her car.
God that girl was a firecracker. How had I forgotten how much I loved that?
But then she was gone, and it was just me and the kid.
We headed inside, and I stood around not knowing what to do. Did I… give him a tour of the place or something? I didn’t know, but he seemed content to look around on his own. He headed into my kitchen and opened the fridge right away.
“You don’t have any drinks in here for kids,” he said.
I shook my head. “I didn’t know you were coming over.”
“Don’t you ever have kids over?”
I shrugged. “Not really.”
He frowned, side-eying the beer and wine coolers — those were kept stocked for the ladies; I could be a gentleman sometimes.
“Are you always drunk?” he asked.
Shots fired.
Kid wasn’t pulling punches. Yeah, he was mine.
“I’m not drunk now,” I offered. He seemed to accept that. But then he was looking at me with a judgmental look that screamed Tenley.
“Aren’t you going to bandage your head?”
“What?”
“My mom said you should, aren’t you going to?”
I laughed. “Not everyone has to listen to your mom, kid. Just you.”
He didn’t seem to find my joke funny. “But she’s right isn’t she? You should, or it could get infected.”
“Planning on going to med school?” I asked, arching an eyebrow at him.
“I’m in eighth grade,” he said, like I was an idiot for even suggesting it.
I threw up my hands. “Okay, okay, you win.” He followed me as I trudged my way to the bathroom and pulled out my dusty first aid kit. I wasn’t even sure what I had stocked in the thing. Knowing me, it was probably just condoms and Q-tips.
Surprisingly, it looked like there was enough gauze and dressing to do the job without making me look like an experiment from a Halloween movie. The whole time I was working on it, though, the kid was standing in the doorway, just watching me. It was awkward and I didn’t know what to say to him. How did you talk to kids?
“So, uh… What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“A baseball player,” he said right away. “Or maybe a preacher like grandpa.”
I almost winced at the reminder of his grandfather, the formidable preacher that turned his daughter to sinning with his authoritarian views. But it was a lot of fun to sin with her, let me tell you.
A lot less fun to have Preacher Alexander’s hand wrapped around my throat, choking the life out of me while my toes dangled in the air and Tenley screamed at him to stop.
That was the last time we ever tried to get his permission for anything. The last time I came to the front door when I picked her up, or she told them where she was going or what she was doing.
The problem with never giving your kids room to bend is that they were liable to snap. And when Tenley snapped, she was more than happy to do it in my arms, naked and moaning my name. All those things her daddy thought I’d done to her never happened till he put his hands on me.
After that? You better believe I’d done every dirty thing she’d let me.
Of course, there was plenty she still was too shy about back then. I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d still be so shy about it these days. If she’d be any more adventurous with another a dozen years behind her.
After seeing the way she acted when she dropped Cal off, I didn’t think there was any hope of me finding out.
“Baseball, huh?” I asked, deciding that grandpa was too sore of a subject to delve into. I didn’t know what he’d ever heard his grandparents say about me. If they’d said anything at all, I could bet it wasn’t anything good. Better to play by the Golden Rule. I couldn’t say anything nice about that old man, so I wouldn’t say a damned thing.
“Yeah!” Cal said, brightening up as I finish my bandaging. “Do you like baseball?”
I shrugged. “Can’t say I ever played. Guess I’ve watched a few games here and there, but it’s never really been my thing.”
“Oh,” he said, deflating before my very eyes. It was crazy to watch, but it really was like someone just let the air out of the kid. His shoulders slumped, his head drooped, even his spine curved forward like he’d just been beaten down.
It tugged at my heart, made me feel guilty as shit. He was trying to find something that we had in common and I was being thick as tar.
But shit, I didn’t know anything about baseball or any of the sports stuff. My dad wasn’t there to teach me, and once I was older, I got into girls and bikes. Never bothered with sports.
You idiot, some voice in the back of my head said, a mental smack upside the back of my head. Think of a way to bond with the kid and keep him from being bored out of his mind until his mom came back for him.
“But there is a game happening today at the park. We could go watch it if you want?” I asked, wondering if it could possibly be that easy.
“Really?” he asked, eyes going wide like I’d just invited him to Disney World. Kid seemed easy to please, or maybe he was just that eager for a relationship with me.
I needed to remember that. Remember that he was a kid, that he wasn’t like other people I could just forget about or let down to do my own thing. Not only could it seriously fuck him up for life at this age, but he was my kid. I couldn’t abandon him. Wouldn’t. As hard as it was going to be for me to adjust with how I acted and spoke around him, I knew I had to make an effort. I wasn’t going to be a deadbeat absentee asshole like my dad. I refused.
“Yeah, for sure. But we have to walk. I’ve only got the motorcycle and I can’t ride it with the medicine I’m taking,” I said, thankful for the excuse. I didn’t even have an extra helmet. Definitely not one sized for him. But I saw the flash in his eye and knew my boy had the same bug I did.
“You have a motorcycle?” he asked, his voice almost a whisper.
I chuckled and nodded. “Yeah, wanna see?”
His eye went huge, and he didn’t say anything. Just nodded mutely.
I led him through the kitchen into the garage and flicked on the light. The garage was a mess but sitting pride of place in the middle without any junk around her was my onyx baby. She was a Triumph Rocket Roadster, simply gorgeous, and when she got going, she earned her nickname ‘Umph.’
“Whoa,” Cal said, walking right up to the bike, his hand hovering over the mirror-finish. “Can I touch it?”
“Knock yourself out,” I chuckled. “Wanna sit on it?”
I thought his eyes might pop out of his head. “Can I?”
“Hell — I mean, heck — heck yeah! Hop on.”
“You can say hell, you know. It’s in the Bible.”
“Is that true?”
He nodded.
“So, you say it around your mom?”
At that, he got suspiciously quiet.
“Mhm, that’s what I thought,” I teased, patting the seat.
He was a little short, but I managed to help him ge
t his leg swung over the bike. And sitting up there, he looked like the happiest kid in the world.
“Will you take me for a ride? I mean… When you don’t have medicine?”
I laughed. “Sure, if your mom says it’s all right.”
As much as I knew that Cal was my kid too, I also knew that Bear was right: I wanted to stay on Tenley’s good side. And that meant telling her before I put her son on the back of a motorcycle. It was a subtle thing, in my opinion, but even that much took a lot for me to remember. Keeping other people in mind had never been my strong suit.
“Come on, we should head out of here if we don’t want to miss the game.”
Cal nodded and hopped off the bike, looking at her longingly as we headed out of the garage and I flipped the light off.
He might have had Alexander for a last name, but the way that kid looked at that bike was one hundred percent Calhoun. It was crazy, to see the evidence right before me that he was like me even though we’d never met. I knew Tenley said that, but people always said weird shit like that about kids and parents. They were always searching for connections when there weren’t any.
But with me and Cal? It was already obvious that there were similarities. And I had to admit, it was pretty cool.
12
Tenley
I left Knight’s place — without Cal, which felt so wrong — and drove. I didn’t have any plans for the day before Cal asked to go to Knight’s, so now I suddenly had an entire day free to myself.
I didn’t know what I was going to do with it, of course. But since I was already in the car, I took the opportunity to cruise around town, looking at it through adult eyes for the first time. There were so many memories — too many of them were with Knight.
Who was I kidding? All the ones coming to mind now were of Knight. Every one of them. Because now that I was back in Rockford and I’d slept with him, there was no way I could get him out of my head.
I tried to remember what Kait had said. Tried to remember that he was no good for me, that he only ever led to trouble. I wanted it to sink in. I wanted my body to stop wanting him, my heart to stop living in the past.
But then I drove past the garage that used to belong to an old guy that always smelled like sardines, and I saw that the sign had been updated. It said ‘Calhoun’s Garage’ in bold red letters, and I just stared at it, barely able to believe he could manage it.
Out of all the things Knight had said to me back then, the last one I expected to become a reality was him growing up to buy this place. It was closed tight at the moment, but it didn’t look too different. Aside from that sign.
And I couldn’t help but remember the last time I was here, the memories flooding back like a tidal wave, whisking me away with them.
* * *
I didn’t want to go into that garage. I didn’t want it to be true. Telling him was going to make it real. It was going to make the whole thing true and then there would be no escaping it.
That would be that.
That would be my whole life settled.
I hated that I didn’t get any choice in this. But what was I supposed to do? Really? What choice did I have? Being fifteen and pregnant didn’t exactly leave me with a lot of options to go against my parents’ wishes.
We were leaving. I hated it so much. I hated them for making me, but I couldn’t leave without telling Knight. And if I didn’t do it right now, I’d never get another chance. I’d managed to slip away from my father long enough, but I knew he’d come looking for me before too long, and if he found me with Knight, he’d probably kill both of us.
I had to hurry, I knew that. But I wanted to make it last. I wanted—
I stopped myself. It didn’t matter what I wanted anymore. Going after what I wanted was what got me in this awful position and now I had to pay the price and lose the one thing I wanted more than anything.
“You’ve got to do this, Ten. Just be brave,” I muttered under my breath to myself, trying to put on a brave face as I sucked in a deep breath and headed in through the big bay doors of the garage.
Right away, I saw Bear and Knight working on that old bike they swore they were going to share. I didn’t believe it for a second. Bear got Knight to do all the work and then he’d claim that he didn’t want Knight riding it until he was eighteen or something stupid like that.
I’d heard enough stories about their relationship, and I didn’t know why the hell Knight believed his brother this time, but he always wanted them to be closer siblings. He wanted them to have each other’s backs. It broke my heart to see him continuously trying only to be pushed back again.
But not as much as what I was about to do
Bear spotted me first, since Knight was under the bike, contorted around at an awkward angle. Bear grinned and wolf-whistled at me, just to rile Knight up.
“Stay right there, bro, a straight hottie just walked in and I’m calling dibs,” he said, smacking Knight on the arm. Knight grumbled something and I heard the ratchet turn again. Bear laughed and smacked his brother another time.
Then Knight looked up and spotted me, his eyes going wide, so blue even across the distance. I swallowed past the thick lump in my throat, wishing I could make it go away.
“Fuck you, man,” Knight said, climbing out from under the bike and punching Bear.
Bear chuckled and held up his hands. “Just jokes, just jokes. I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone,” he said, walking backwards out of the room.
Knight shook his head and wiped his greasy hands on a rag he had looped into his jeans. He smiled and moved closer to me, and my heart just ripped itself into confetti.
I didn’t know how to do this. How to break this to him. Should I tell him everything? Tell him why I’m leaving before my parents whisk me away to live in secrecy?
I knew that wasn’t the answer before I even asked myself the question. If I told Knight everything… He’d go crazy. I just knew he would. He wouldn’t stop looking for me. He’d destroy himself in the process if he had to.
Maybe it was vain to think he’d go through all that for me, but I didn’t think it was solely for me. I didn’t think Knight could stand to have someone like my dad take something away from him. Something that I knew he thought of as his. Because it was. It was his baby that made my parents decide we needed to leave Rockford.
I didn’t know how Knight would react to the idea of a baby either. I didn’t know if he’d be happy or if he’d be scared. Would he even want to be a dad? Or would he try to convince me to give it up — or worse, get rid of it? He’d have to know I couldn’t do that. I had to keep it. It wasn’t my idea of a perfect future either, but I didn’t really get a choice anymore.
At least if I didn’t tell him, he wouldn’t tear his life apart over it. Hopefully he’d forget about me, he’d forget about what happened, and he’d never know any better.
That was how it had to be, I was sure of it.
I just hated it. I hated the idea of telling him that I was moving and not telling him anything else. But that’s what I was there to do, and that’s what I needed to be brave for.
It would be so much easier if I could talk to him about it. About everything. These past months I’d been with Knight, he’d become my best friend, the person I could talk to about all the bullshit with my parents and their expectations of me. He was the only person who saw right through my dad’s wholesome preacher act and saw what he was really like.
Knight was the only one that could make me feel better about all of this, but for his sake, I couldn’t tell him any of it.
He looked at me, and I realized that I could still hear the inflection of his voice in my memory — he’d asked me a question — but I didn’t really hear a word he’d said.
“What?” I asked, trying to focus on him more. Trying to remember how he looked right now, grease-smeared and sweaty from working in this hot garage, his blue eyes looking at me like I was the only important thing in the world. His lips curved up in a half-g
rin and he shook his head.
“What’s going on with you, El?”
I nearly cried at his nickname for me. Everyone had always called me ‘Ten,’ short for Tenley. But Knight had decided it would be smooth to make the joke that it was obvious I was an eleven, not a ten. And ever since then, he’d called me El when it was just the two of us.
Now hearing it was like taking a cheese grater to my heart. The wound was still so raw and fresh, and he didn’t even know it was there.
But he saw it. He saw something, because the joking left his expression and he got much more serious in a hurry, his brows furrowing, mouth falling into a frown.
“Tenley? What’s wrong?”
I bit my lip and shook my head, willing myself not to cry. I couldn’t. Not right now. I had to get through this without cracking. For Knight’s sake.
“I’m leaving,” I finally said. The words sounded so loud to me. It seemed like they echoed off the metal walls of the garage, reverberating until eternity. The words were final. There was no argument to be made against them, nothing to be done about it. It just was.
“What?” Knight asked, confused. “You just got here babe. You’re not making any sense.”
I shook my head, my breath stuttering as I tried to inhale deeply to steady my nerves. “No… I’m leaving, Knight,” I said again, taking a step back from him for effect.
He was still confused, but only for a moment. Then his frown grew darker, his clear-blue eyes clouding over. His jaw hung slack and he just stared at me. He stared at me so long and so hard that I almost felt like I should leave it like that. Just turn around and walk away. But before I made that decision, Knight asked, “Why?”
“We’re moving,” I said, looking down at the dirty concrete floor so he won’t be able to see my tells. It wasn’t exactly a lie, but it wasn’t exactly the truth, and Knight knew me well enough to pick those apart in my facial expressions. It was annoying as hell.
“Moving? Since when?”
He shook his head, scowling, his jaw clenched tight as he ground his teeth together.
A Baby for the Daddy: Boys of Rockford Series Page 7
