Dawson Family Boxset (Books 1-3)

by Emily Goodwin

  And Jackson—oh my God, Jackson. Tears fill my eyes and I pull my boots off, knowing Mrs. Dawson has a strict no-shoes rule, and start to cross the kitchen, mumbling that I needed to check on Jackson too. I’ve never been upstairs in this house, and each wooden plank creaks slightly under my feet.

  Daisy is in town, adamant about seeing Jackson. Most kidnappings happen when a non-custodial parent takes the child. We have a recipe for disaster and I have no idea how long the danger will be there. Everyone is freaked out enough right now, making me think there’s a good chance Daisy will actually try to do it.

  Suddenly, the thought of dropping Jackson off at school on Tuesday terrifies me so much dizziness crashes down on me. My heart hurts and I can’t bear the thought of anything bad happening to that sweet little boy.

  “Scarlet?” Mrs. Dawson calls softly. I blink away tears and look up the stairs. “Is that you?

  “Yeah.” I dash up the rest of the stairs and step into the dim light spilling out of the open bedroom door. Weston’s large frame is bent over a bed. He kisses Jackson’s forehead and pulls up the blankets.

  “Come here, honey.” Mrs. Dawson picks up on how upset I am right away and pulls me into a hug. If only she knew…

  “Do you really think she’ll do it?” I whisper, not needing to explain what I’m referring to.

  “I don’t know.” Mrs. Dawson pats my back, stepping away and motioning for me to follow her. She steps into the room across the hall, going right to the window which looks out at the street in front of the house. “I’ll be honest and say I never really liked Daisy, not even when she was just a teenager. I questioned her faithfulness to Wes while he was deployed, but that’s not the issue at hand.” She lets the curtains fall shut and turns back around to face me.

  “Motherhood isn’t easy, and I’ll be the first to admit that. There were times when the idea of running away seemed like a dream come true. But never forever. A childless vacation can be a welcome—and needed—escape, but the thought of being away from my children…” She shakes her head. “I don’t understand how she did it. We thought maybe it was post-partum depression, and Wes did everything he could to find her the first time she left. They weren’t on good terms, but he was worried sick. And then she showed up at Jackson’s first birthday party, acting like nothing happened.”

  She lets out a heavy sigh. “I’ve accepted that there are certain things you’ll never understand. People do unspeakable things for reasons that make sense to them and them alone. I’ve stopped seeking answers for questions that shouldn’t be answered.”

  “That’s…that’s very wise.” My throat feels thick. Like I might burst into tears or puke or something.

  “And don’t worry, honey. Weston cares deeply for you. He’s been smitten from the start. It was pretty obvious.”

  I smile, wishing I could close my eyes and erase my past. “Yeah, it was obvious.” The stairs creak and Quinn stops in the threshold of the room. She’s holding a phone, and the screen is glowing.

  “Do you know the passcode to Wes’s phone?” she asks me.

  I shake my head. “Why?”

  “His motion sensors are going off.” She holds it up, and I see the alerts.

  “Try Jackson’s birthday,” Mrs. Dawson suggests.

  Quinn looks down at the phone. “Wes wouldn’t be that predictable—well I guess he is.”

  She opens up the security system app, impatiently tapping her fingers on the back of the phone case as she waits for it to load.

  “Oh shit. It’s Daisy.”

  “What?” Mrs. Dawson rushes over.

  “She’s just sitting on the front porch. Looks like she’s waiting for someone to answer the door.” Quinn shakes her head. “She did say she wants to talk to Wes.” With a sigh, Quinn turns and goes down the hall.

  And I’m back to not being able to breathe.

  My heart beats loudly, echoing in my ears. I clench my fists, digging my nails into my palm. Wes’s deep voice comes from the hallway, and the second he comes into view, I spring forward, wrapping my arms around him.

  “Maybe if you ignore her, she’ll go away?” I say, attempting to make a joke. I’m shaking, and Wes holds me against his firm chest. Even now he’s calm and collected.

  “I wish.”

  “Then we should.” I don’t want to let him go. If I let him go, he’ll talk to Daisy. He’ll find out everything.

  “Come get some coffee and something to eat,” Mrs. Dawson says softly. “Jackson and I made chocolate cake that I could use some help eating.”

  “That sounds good,” Quinn says. She peeks in at Jackson before turning down the stairs. Mrs. Dawson goes down with her.

  “You okay?” Wes asks, running his hands down my arms. “You seem freaked out.”

  “Well, it’s not every day your boyfriend’s ex-wife storms back into town and under-the-table insinuates she’s going to kidnap her son.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” I interrupt before he can go on. “This’ll blow over, right? It has before.”

  “Yeah.” He lets out a deep sigh. “Fuck, it’s weird seeing her.”

  “Yeah, that would be. Was she like this the last time she showed up?”

  “No, not at all. The last time was even more fucked up. I came home from work and she was just there in the kitchen making dinner like it was something we did every night.”

  “That is fucked up.”

  “Yeah.” His eyes fall shut for a few seconds. “I don’t have feelings for her anymore. I need you to know that.”

  “I know you don’t.”

  He cups my face. “You’re the only one I want.”

  Tears burn my eyes. Thankfully it’s too dark in the hall for Wes to see them. He puts his mouth to mine, kissing me hard and desperate.

  “Do you want cake?” I ask, stepping in closer.

  “Yeah.” He rests his head on mine for a moment. Then he steps back, takes my hand and goes downstairs.

  The kitchen isn’t nearly as tense as it was a few minutes ago. Mrs. Dawson is talking to one of the twins on the phone, and Dean and Archer are very animatedly telling a story to Quinn about something that happened back in their college days. I can tell by the look on her face this isn’t the first time she’s heard the story.

  Mr. Dawson brings Wes a cup of coffee and pats his back. God, this family is perfect, and their faults and flaws are exactly what make it so.

  “What’s the plan?” Mr. Dawson asks Wes.

  “I don’t know.” Wes takes a drink of coffee. “She’s not going to leave until I talk to her, so I should bite the bullet and just do it. I’ll give her copies of the papers I filed so she knows what’s going on. Part of me doubts she’ll even fight for Jackson.”

  Mr. Dawson nods. “I agree. Lay everything out so she knows exactly what’s going on and then tell her if she wants to see or talk to you again, she’ll have to go through the legal system.”

  Wes pinches the bridge of his nose. “This is the last thing I need right now.”

  Shit, I almost forgot amidst all this chaos that the election is only days away. He told me he wasn’t nervous or stressed over it, but I know better.

  “It’ll be okay in the end,” Mr. Dawson assures his son. “She’s been gone his whole life. There’s no way she can take him away from you.”

  “Right.” Wes doesn’t look convinced. He takes another drink of coffee. “All right. Time to get this over with.”

  I step forward, thinking I’m going with Wes. His face says otherwise.

  “I think it’d be best if I go alone,” he tells me.

  No. He can’t go alone. Because if he’s alone with her, there’s no telling what she’ll say. I won’t know. I’m slipping into panic mode and part of me wants to run for the hills, seek cover, and never come back up to see the light of day again.

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” I put one hand on the counter to steady myself. “I can stay in the car or go inside.
”

  “It’s late. Stay here. And I’ll grab some things and come back.” Wes frowns. “I don’t want to wake up Jackson and worry him. I’m staying with him tonight.”

  “Good idea.” I swallow hard, doing everything I can, not to freak out. My life as I know it might be over in a few short hours. “So you’re going to wait until morning to talk with her?”

  “No, I’ll go now. Or else she’ll be on the porch all night and I don’t want attention drawn to this matter. The quieter I can handle this, the better it’ll be for Jackson’s sake.”

  “Are you two staying?” Wes asks his sister.

  “If Emma wakes up, we can stick her in her car seat and head home,” Archer says. “But I don’t want to wake her up either.” He rests a hand on Quinn’s shoulder.

  “You guys can come stay with us,” Quinn says, looking at Wes and then me. “Daisy might not know where we live yet, and I think she’d have a tough time sneaking around or breaking into our house.”

  “Right,” Archer says dryly. “We’ll throw a cat at her. We have enough of them.”

  “No one is throwing my cats. I was referring to the upgrades I did for our home security system.”

  Quinn and Archer’s house is more secure than Fort Knox, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find out they have a panic room.

  “Thanks,” Wes says. “But we’ll be fine at home. I’ll talk to her and try to diffuse the situation. If we’re lucky, she’ll be gone by morning.”

  Poor Wes. He looks so tired and I want nothing more than to go home together, taking advantage of an empty house. We’d have sex—and I wouldn’t have to muffle my moans—and then I’d rub his back until he falls asleep.

  But after Wes talks to Daisy, there’s a chance that’ll never happen again. And it will be totally my fault.

  34

  Weston

  This is the last fucking thing I want to be doing right now. I used to hope Daisy would show up like this just so I could serve her with divorce papers, but things are already in the works and can get taken care of. I’ll have to call Mr. Williams tomorrow and see how her showing up like this affects my case.

  Exhaustion hits me, making the short drive from my parents’ house to my house challenging. All I want to do is take Scarlet up to bed, fuck her senseless, and pass out naked next to her.

  We have a good thing going, and I can’t help the sick feeling that’s forming in the pit of my stomach that all this soon-to-be ex-wife drama is too much for her. I’m terrified of losing her, of having her decide this isn’t what she signed up for and take off running for someone with less baggage.

  I know events unfolded in such a way tonight that anyone would be shocked, but there’s something different about Scarlet. I don’t know what it is, but it has something to do with Daisy showing up announced. I suppose I can’t blame Scarlet if she doesn’t want to be involved with all this.

  Just the thought of her leaving makes me feel sick to my stomach. I don’t like very many people, and I love even fewer. Scarlet is one of those people who I like a whole lot and also love with my whole heart.

  She’s the perfect fit for our family. We just click, as lame as that sounds. I get her, and she gets me. She and Jackson get along perfectly, and she’s been more of a loving mother to him than Daisy ever was. Actually, Scarlet has been here for nearly two months. That’s longer than Daisy stuck around after Jackson was born.

  I slow at a stop sign and see a shooting star streak across the dark night sky. My mind immediately goes to Scarlet, and I can hear her honey-smooth voice whispering make a wish.

  I don’t believe in wishes. You make your own dreams come true, and it has nothing to do with a wish. But right now, I’m desperate. I close my eyes. “I wish Daisy would go the fuck away and Scarlet, Jackson, and I can get back to being a family.”

  Feeling stupid, I open my eyes and shake my head at myself. I let off the brake and the Jeep inches forward, getting closer and closer to home.

  Daisy is still on the porch when I pull up in front of the house. A white car is parked in front of me. It’s the white car we saw the other night. Fuck, that makes me even more pissed. She was driving around spying on us.

  “Wes, you came.” Daisy stands, stiff from the cold, and comes over.

  “Stop.” I close the Jeep door behind me and hold up a hand. “I’m not here to be won over or any of your other bullshit. I’m here so you’ll go home.”

  “Can I at least come in? I’m freezing.”

  “Fine. But when I say we’re done, we’re done.”

  “Fair enough.” Daisy goes up the porch steps and picks up the doormat. “You got rid of the key?”

  “That was an obvious place to hide the key. I took it out the day you put it there, but you weren’t around enough after that to figure it out, were you?”

  “Wes, I’m…”

  “Save it.” I use my body to block her line of sight when I punch in the alarm code and turn off the system.

  “I’m sorry.”

  I wasn’t expecting an apology this early on in our conversation. She wants something, I’m sure of it.

  “Wow.” She looks around the living room. “It’s different yet the same.”

  “What do you want?” I ask her. “It’s late and I’m tired and want to get this over with.”

  “How’s Jackson? He’s at your parents, isn’t he?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Oh, please, Wes. I know you and know you’d only trust your mom with our son.”

  I don’t like hearing her say our son. It’s what he is, and I’m well aware she’s his mother, but it sounds so wrong. She hasn’t raised him. Hasn’t been here to sit up with him when he’s sick. To calm his fears in the middle of the night.

  “What do you want?” I ask again, taking a seat on the stairs.

  “I want to give us another shot.”

  “No.” I shake my head. “Daisy, I don’t love you anymore. I stopped being in love with you before you left and we both know that. You didn’t love me either. We had issues from the start and should never have gotten married to begin with.”

  She folds her arms over her chest and I look at her, really look at her for the first time. We were freshmen in high school when we met. She was a cheerleader and I was a football player. She went to Greendale, another small town in this county, and Eastwood’s rival when it comes to high school sports. We dated on and off throughout high school, and I proposed before I left for my first tour overseas. We got married shortly after that, and she moved around from base to base with me until my time in the army ended.

  We should have broken things off then, but we wanted to give it one last shot. Daisy’s mother was the one who put the idea in her mind that we’d magically fix things if we had a baby, and neither of us expected it to happen the first time we tried.

  The moment we knew we were having a baby, things changed. For me. Daisy didn’t want a kid, and I’m sure the resentment started there. I hoped things would change when she gave birth and held our sweet, tiny son in her arms, but it didn’t.

  Not everyone is cut out for motherhood, she told me just a few days after Jackson was born. I chalked it up to pain and exhaustion. It was a red flag of a warning. Several weeks later, I came home from work to find Jackson screaming and crying in his crib and Daisy nowhere to be seen. Judging by how dirty his diaper was, we guessed she’d been gone at least half my shift, having left poor little Jackson alone in his crib.

  The raw, painful emotions come back with a vengeance, and I remember it all too well: sitting in this living room, holding my crying baby to my chest and having no idea what the fuck I was going to do. I didn’t know anything about babies. How was I going to raise one alone?

  “You left us,” I say slowly. “And now we’ve started a life. A good life. Why do you want to take that away?”

  “I don’t, Weston. We were happy once. We can be again.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “It can be.
” She walks through the living room, going to the photos hanging on the wall. She stops before one of Jackson, and her face pulls down with emotion. “He looks just like you.”

  “Luckily.”

  She turns, eyes brimming with tears. “Wes,” she pleads.

  “Don’t.”

  Sniffling, she wipes her eyes and looks back at the photos. “Whose baby is this? One of your brothers’?” She’s looking at a family photo we took over the summer, and Jackson is sitting front and center with Emma on his lap.

  “No.”

  “Quinn?”

  “Yes.”

  Daisy turns, eyebrows raised. “Wait…she and Archer?”

  “Stop, Daisy. It doesn’t matter. You left us,” I repeat. “All of us.”

  “I miss your family.”

  I let out a sigh. “They don’t miss you.” She’s been gone for so long but still knows about us. I wish I could take the memories back. I just want her gone.

  “I’m really sorry.”

  “You already said that.” I rub my forehead. It’s been years, but the same round-and-round arguments are certain to take place. “Look, Daisy…I’m sorry too.” I get up and step around the stairs. “I’m sorry for the way things worked out. But you made your choice and now you have to deal with it. You can’t come back into our lives and expect everyone to just accept you.”

  “But a girl can dream, right?” She unzips her coat and lets it slide to the floor. “You’re even more handsome than I remember.” Running her eyes over my body, she advances, wrapping her arms around me and trying to go in for a kiss.

  “What the hell?” I push her away.

  “Wes,” she cries. “You were the first man I slept with. I want you to be my last.”

  “No.” I shake my head, wanting her out of my house. “What don’t you get, Daisy? I. Don’t. Love. You.” I reach into my jacket pocket and pull out my wallet, getting out enough cash to cover one night at the local motel. “Here, get a room for the night. This isn’t happening.”