Third Strike

by BJ Harvey

  Because when he tells me the estimated conception date for my son, I realize without a shadow of a doubt that there is no way I am his father. What’s worse, there’s no way it was Millen either. Which means two things: Lana doctored the paternity test I demanded she take, and she was sleeping with someone else while she was engaged to Millen—not just me. In fact, I was so drunk that night, I’m not even sure I did sleep with her that first time, I merely knew I was with her and had woken up in her bed in the morning. The second time, yes there was sex, but I know I used a condom.

  She has finally succeeded in destroying the one good thing I had left in my life and ripping it away from me in the blink of an eye.

  And I have absolutely no idea what to do about it because right now, I’m all he has, and he’s all I have too.

  Drew

  I call Mr. Ross on the way home from the pediatrician and ask if I could come over. He agrees without hesitation. I knew that out of everyone, he’d have my back. I’m not wrong.

  The minute he opens the front door of his house, his smile turns to a frown as if he can read my pain like a book.

  He ushers me inside, helps me set up a portable crib for Travis so he can be put down for a sleep, and almost drags me outside to the table and chairs by the pool. Putting a half glass of whiskey in my hand, he sits opposite me and levels me with what I can only describe as a fatherly stare.

  “Tell me what happened, Drew. All of it. From the start. I want to know what mess you’ve gotten yourself into so I can help get you out of it. After that, we can talk about my son and new daughter-in-law. And if you’re still on a roll after that, we’ll talk about how you’re in love with my daughter and broke her heart without a second thought. Let’s rip off the Band-Aid and get it all out.”

  So not going anywhere near the ‘Ash’ part of that story right now.

  I start with the legal agreements, Lana’s homelessness, and then her complete detachment from both the idea of motherhood and Travis, and my suspicions that she’d planned everything to ruin Millen and Kenzie’s wedding, I figure I’ve gotten away with not giving a blow-by-blow account of how I fell in love with his seventeen-year-old daughter almost fourteen years’ ago.

  I am wrong.

  “And my daughter?”

  That story is harder to tell. What gets Mr. Ross is how his wife knew all along.

  Instead of anger, a warm, wry smile brightens his expression. “Nina always was a wily one in that regard. She could see things other people couldn’t. But the fact she told you to look after our Ashley says a lot about the way we’ve both always seen you, Drew.”

  “Even with your daughter?”

  Mr. Ross frowns. “Maybe not when she was seventeen, or even twenty-four, but now? Absolutely. I’ve watched you grow from a womanizing, cocky, over-compensating college boy who thought he could take on the world to a mature, responsible, successful businessman who might not have it all together in his personal life, but who loves hard and loves deeply. Your mom and my Nina would be so proud of the man you are and the way you stood up and took responsibility for Travis.” He sighs and reaches his hand across the table, clasping mine tight. “Although take it from me, my daughter is like her mother in many ways, and a word of advice: she forgives easily, but she never forgets. You have made a fair few mistakes with her, the biggest being not telling her everything in France. When you get your chance to make things right—and I truly believe you will get that opportunity—it’s that indiscretion that you’ll need to make up for. Not the baby, not even the scene at Millen’s wedding. It’s not trusting her with the truth when she was trusting you with everything else.”

  Those words stick in my head the rest of the night as we sit and drink coffee because after the first drink I knew I’d never stop if I kept going. Then he decides to shock the shit out of me.

  “I’m going to come back and stay with you for a few days.”

  My head jerks back, and I stare at him like he’s lost his mind. “I’m sorry?” I ask, my eyes nearly popping out of my head. Out of all the things I expected him to say, that wasn’t one of them.

  He grins. “Drew, I know you haven’t really had much experience with this, but fathers wade in when their sons need help, and right now, I’ve never seen anyone more at risk of drowning under all of this than you are.”

  “I… um…”

  His smile widens. My chest tightens at the look I recognize in his eyes—it’s the same one he’s always looked at his family with. At me with.

  I try to think of something—anything—to distract myself from breaking down. Not right now. I can do that in a week, a month, a year’s time when I’ve dealt with everything I now have to deal with. My head turns to where I can see the outline of my son—of Travis—in the crib. My heart is struggling to beat after the loss of a son who may not be mine by blood, but who I’ve loved from the minute I laid eyes on him.

  “There are some things we need to sort out before you confront Lana. One of which is talking to your lawyer and making sure that everything is squared off legally before she has any clue you know the truth. There is some recourse regarding the financial support you’ve provided to her and—”

  “Honestly, I don’t care about that. I don’t care about anything except working out how to protect that innocent little boy from his sociopath of a mother. She never wanted a baby—she wanted Millen, she wanted the Ross family, she wanted money, and she wanted a cushy life where she would never have to work another day. She went to more than extreme lengths to make that happen, to hell with the consequences or destroyed lives she left in her wake. But what I won’t do is let her destroy his life. Whatever that means for me, I don’t care.” My eyes are burning, but I refuse to let the tears fall. I’m going to channel this anger into determination and advocate for Travis. Once I’ve done all of that, then I’ll let myself fall apart.

  We go to Sacramento for the night, but by morning, we’re back in the car again and pulling into Millen and Kenzie’s driveway.

  “No. We definitely can’t do this now. Not here. Not today.”

  “You can bet your ass we’re doing this today. I called them last night, and they know they need to hear you out.”

  I stare at the house, dumbfounded. This is too much, too soon. I’m barely coping with all the swirling emotions running through my head to deal with Millen kicking my ass again. “I’m not sure I’ll handle Millen punching me out for a third time.”

  Mr. Ross chuckles and opens the driver’s door. “I made him promise not to do that. At least not today anyway.”

  “Tell me what happened, Drew. All of it. From the start. And so help me God if you leave a single fucking part of this out, you’ll be dead to me,” Millen says, sitting backward on a chair across the room from me. If it weren’t so fucking ironic, I would laugh. Millen and his father may have had their differences over the years, but we all know it’s because they’re so similar in a lot of ways—pinning me down and demanding I confess all, notwithstanding.

  Despite everything, I know that whatever his current feelings toward me may be, Millen and I have been through too much together to ever cut each other off.

  Millen’s dad has taken Travis for a walk in his stroller, but Kenzie has chosen to stay, her eyes flitting between both Millen and me. “I don’t trust either of you not to hurt each other or destroy my house, and since Lana’s bullshit almost ruined my life too, I want to hear everything she’s done so I can plan her downfall.”

  If I were on the wrong side of Kenzie’s wrath, I’d be fucking terrified at that statement.

  Just like I did with his father the day before, I start at the beginning when Lana first proposed her conditions and work my way through to yesterday, the day when the world as I know it, and the future I expected died.

  Halfway through my story, Millen surges up out of the chair and storms over to the wide front window of his living room. Leaning into his hand on the frame, he stares out at the quiet cul-de-sac, his shoul
ders tight, his jaw clenched. “Tell me about Ash, Drew. Lana is a bitch and I’ll be at your back when we take her down like the piece of shit she is, but before we do that, I need to know exactly what happened between you and my sister.” He turns his head and looks over his shoulder at me. “And I mean everything.”

  “You can’t punch me again, Millen. The first two times I deserved it; this time I don’t. The only thing I deserve is the chance to tell you how I met a girl and fell in love with her. How I knew it was wrong to hide it from my best friend. How I knew I shouldn’t be secretly texting her. How I should have fought my feelings. How I shouldn’t have been scheduling work trips to Boston to visit her, declining invitations for weekends away with friends so I could spend time at home with her, and how—when I chose you over her the first time your mom got sick—I went back on that and flew across the country to knock on her door at midnight, caused her boyfriend to break up with her, and then screwed the pooch when she gave me an ultimatum to stop hiding our relationship.”

  “That’s why she ran off to Europe, isn’t it?” Kenzie asks. I nod and watch Millen.

  He doesn’t say a word; he just shifts to lean against the wall, his gaze pinned on me.

  “Wow,” Kenzie whispers, her hand covering her mouth, her glassy eyes moving from me to her stoic husband.

  “And when she came back?” he asks, his voice flat, his mood unreadable.

  “It was strictly platonic. Throughout your mom’s illness and death, it was just as friends.”

  “Until it wasn’t?”

  “Until I realized the kind of life I had in front of me being tied to Lana for eighteen years was not going to make me truly happy. I was sick of denying myself what I truly wanted. I was also following your mom’s advice.”

  That gets his attention. “What?” Mom knew?”

  “She didn’t say anything until the day she called me to the house to talk just before she passed away. She said she’d always known and asked me to look after her daughter but to do it right and make it count. So, after your rehearsal dinner, Ash and I went for a walk, and I told her I still loved her, that I always had, and I always would.”

  “Oh. My. God,” Kenzie repeats.

  Silence fills the room. Kenzie’s eyes move between the two of us, her hands clenched tightly in her lap.

  Millen stares at me, his face impassive. After a minute or so, he speaks. “I shouldn’t have promised my wife that I wouldn’t punch you.”

  “Why?” I ask, gruffly.

  “Because I should punch you. It’s my big brother duty to knock out the guy who broke his sister’s heart.”

  “Should I hit you first so if anyone asks, you can say it was self-defense?” I ask, not an ounce of humor in my reply. “Because I deserve it. You would’ve done it if I’d told you when I was twenty-one that I loved Ash. You definitely would’ve done it knowing I took her—”

  “Oh my God, Drew. Stop before he actually does knock you on your ass again.”

  “Too late,” I retort, my eyes locked with Millen’s, my body tense in preparation for him to launch across the room at me.

  “You’d do it too, wouldn’t you?” he asks, his brow quirked, and I swear I see the slightest twitch of his lips.

  “Don’t you fucking dare, Drew Peters,” Kenzie warns, wrapping her arms around Millen’s shoulders as he leans back into the sofa. “I’d have to break you apart and send you to separate corners of the room, and then supervise the two of you. I deal with enough headaches at the bar, I don’t need them at home. Besides, something tells me Drew has enough headaches of his own to deal with right now. Let’s not give him another one.”

  “How are you so okay with all of this?” I ask her, unable to wrap my head around her calm demeanor.

  “Because I know you, Drew, and I know Ash, and I also know my husband. We’ve all been through too fucking much to let a cockroach like Lana ruin any of our lives. We’ll get past this, and then we can all move on.” She rests her head on Millen’s shoulder, but her eyes are locked with mine.

  “We’ll all get through this, Drew. You’ve just got to have faith.”

  “Kenz, that’s something I think I’m all run out of.”

  “Then I’ll have enough for all of us.”

  Drew

  A few days later, we stage what some might call an intervention, except it’s not the type carried out to help the sick person—in this case, Lana. It’s to stop her destroying other people’s lives to benefit her own.

  The day before the intervention, everything clicked. A business deal and a baby didn’t lock Millen down like she’d thought it would, and it ended up in a very embarrassing wedding cancellation that was the talk of the town for weeks after. Especially when it came out that Millen was in fact now living with a bar manager in Davis.

  That destroyed her—she even admitted that to me in one of our rare civil conversations. What’s clear now is that all of us—every single one of us—completely underestimated how far Lana would go in her desire to make everyone pay for her humiliation.

  Having talked it through with Millen, his dad, and Kenzie a few times, one thing became crystal clear. Lana Mason is the only important person in her life. After being rejected by Millen, then humiliated when I stopped the wedding, she then set out to ruin anyone connected to him.

  “Every decision you made was for your son,” Mr. Ross explained. “And nothing you have done is undoable. In fact, you made sure of that. Didn’t you?” His eyes were full of pride, and for the first time since I left the doctor’s office two days ago, there was a spark of warmth in my chest.

  “She planned to interrupt Millen’s wedding. She knew she was going to give birth, and she made sure it was on the day Millen and Kenzie were finally getting married.” That was from me.

  “Yep. And by insisting on the marriage, she counted on the fact that you’d let that slip at some point during the week you were with us all in France.” That was Kenzie.

  “All because I took her virginity, and she decided I was her one and only, and she had to have me? Whatever the cost?” And Millen, nailing down the trigger event for this whole entire eighteen-year ordeal.

  That brings us to now. Millen, Kenzie, and I sit in my living room as Lana’s key turns in the front door lock.

  Travis is safely back in San Francisco with Harris, Lana’s father. Mr. Ross leans against the wall separating my lounge from the kitchen and dining room, insisting that he be there as a witness so he can mitigate anything Lana might try. With her actions being so unpredictable, there’s no telling what she could do or say, especially if it means hurting Kenzie and destroying Millen or myself.

  “Okay, let’s get this talk out of the way,” she says, flouncing into the room, stopping in her tracks the moment she realizes we’re not alone.

  “Do they have to be here?”

  “Yes, and I do too.” Mr. Ross comes into the room.

  “Bradley, I…” she stutters, her face paling.

  “Mr. Ross will be fine, Lana. I’m here to act purely as a witness.”

  Her head jerks back before snapping my way. “A witness? What the hell, Drew?”

  “The game is up, Lana.”

  “What game? Look, I know I haven’t been around much. I’ve just been struggling with things—with Travis—but I’m getting help.” She reaches out for my arm, but I step back before she can touch me. The way her gaze never strays far from Millen tells me she’s still hung up on the man, which would make me laugh at any other time.

  “Stop with the bullshit,” I say, my tone leaving no room for misunderstanding. She feigns offense, but I don’t let it phase me. “You take a person’s weakness and play on it for your own gain, whatever the cost to anyone else. You play people like they’re pawns in your game.”

  “Guess what, Lana? You didn’t win this round. I told you time and time again after I went to college that I didn’t see you that way. Yet you still manipulated your way back into my life,” Millen says.
<
br />   “You let me,” Lana snarls.

  “I had no fucking choice,” Millen shouts.

  “If you hadn’t met her, we could’ve been happy. I would’ve made you happy,” she says, her tone switching to soft and her version of sweet.

  “You didn’t even make me happy in the ten minutes it took me to take your virginity, Lana. Even then you were selfish,” he retorts making Kenzie snort before quickly trying to cover it up.

  Lana gasps, her mouth dropping open before she snaps it shut, her eyes narrowing to slits. “You like knowing I’ve seduced two men you were sleeping with? Knowing they weren’t satisfied with you so came looking for something better?” she says snidely at Kenzie. Kenzie’s smile falters just a bit. That’s when I snap.

  “Considering we know Millen didn’t go there even when he was blind drunk, and you were offering yourself up on a platter, and given the lengths you took to make sure I believed Travis was my son, I’m wondering whether I went there the first time either. I was drunk, I blacked out, then I woke up with you clinging to me the next morning. Only you know who you actually slept with.”

  “Oh, you fucking went there. Two pumps and a dump does not a good lay make, Drew. No wonder Ashley didn’t stick around.” Her aim is true but not for the reasons she thinks, but I’m smart enough not to show she scored a direct hit.

  “Speaking from actual experience, Lana, I can assure you, nothing is lacking when it comes to Drew,” Kenzie says.

  “Thanks, honey,” I say, my lips twitching while Millen just shakes his head at us.

  “You’re fine with knowing your wife has slept with your best friend and god knows whoever else?” Lana asks Millen, her expression a mix of disgust and misguided hopefulness.

  Millen moves to Kenzie’s side, wrapping an arm around her waist. “The thing with a good woman, Lana, is you love her for who she is and how she loves you. I don’t care if Kenzie slept with the entire male population of Davis. I’d still choose her over anyone else every single day of the week.”