Chapter 28
Imade it until Wednesday without asking my mom about my dad.
I wanted to ignore everything my sister had said Sunday night.
I wanted to get on with my fucking life and go back to how it was before, just Danny and me, fumbling our way through toddlerhood.
Yeah, and every time I tried to tell myself that, Harper popped into my head and made my chest hurt.
I tiredly made my way up the stairs to my mom’s house to pick up Danny. Letting myself in like I always did, I registered my mom’s and son’s voices coming from the bedroom end of the house. Instead of joining them, I wandered to the dining room slider that looked out over the backyard.
My mom’s yard was small but meticulously cared for, with her vegetable garden at the back, flower beds along the sides, and a meandering brick path. The deck was her haven, with potted mums everywhere and a maple tree shading it from the setting sun. The yard as a whole was like a miniature English garden.
This evening, I was compelled to go out the slider and sit on one of the chairs by the wrought-iron bistro table where my mom and Danny liked to eat their lunch. Normally picking up Danny was my favorite time of day, but tonight I was out of sorts. Tired in a soul-weary way.
Mills had been leaving school at the same time I left after football practice this evening. I’d kept my head down in the parking lot, acting as if I didn’t see him angling toward his car, when he called out my name and jogged over to me.
Is everything okay with you, Coach?he’d asked, walking beside me despite my refusal to slow my pace for him.
Everything’s fine, Mills. What’s up?
You’ve been distant. Lisa noticed too. And I overheard four of your players in my sixth hour saying you’ve been weird at practice all week.
I haven’t been weird.
Quiet, they said. Disengaged. Having Coach Castillo run most of practice.
I’d grunted. Oscar had been running things more this week, taking over drills, overseeing scrimmages. I’d been glad to let him because I was running on fumes from not sleeping.
You seem off-kilter, Mills had continued.
I’d merely grunted again and been over-fucking-joyed to reach my SUV. Night, Mills, I’d said, blowing all of it off in his presence.
I hadn’t been able to blow it off as I drove to my mom’s though.
I knew damn well I wasn’t in top condition for anything. How could I be when I only got a couple of hours’ sleep every night, and those hours were riddled with dreams of Harper?
The woman I loved.
I couldn’t deny it anymore as much as I wanted to.
Dakota was right. I’d fallen in love with Harper Ellison. The last thing I’d ever set out to do.
My dreams of her were relentless, and surprisingly only a fraction of them were sexual. They were of her laughing at something I said, of us taking Danny out on the boat, of her eyes sparkling as she teased me. I’d had one dream of her behind the counter in the shop she and my sister and Cambria wanted to open, spreading her jewelry pieces across it proudly and confidently.
So much for our fling staying strictly physical.
I heard the door slide open behind me. Then my son’s enthusiastic steps burst outside and crossed the deck to me.
“Dada!”
“What are you doing out here?” my mom asked as I picked up my boy.
I hugged him for an extra second, then kissed his nose, eliciting that giggle I loved.
“It’s peaceful,” I said, wishing that peace could penetrate the turmoil inside me.
She pulled out the other chair and sat, as if understanding I needed…something.
Danny climbed up on my lap, fiddling with my watch, talking about things I couldn’t understand in his own language.
“Were you surprised when Dad left?” I asked my mom.
Her head whipped in my direction. “Where did that come from?”
“Dakota said you weren’t surprised when it happened.”
My mom didn’t speak right away. Danny wiggled down and descended the two steps that led to the brick path. The yard was fenced in on all sides, so I let him go where he wanted, keeping an eye on him as he marched along.
“No, I wasn’t surprised. Was there a reason you and your sister were talking about this?”
Danny trotted to one of the flower beds, chasing a butterfly. I didn’t normally talk to my mom about personal stuff. I could shrug off her question now, or I could grow a pair and level with her.
As much as I didn’t want to talk about my feelings, ignoring them hadn’t gotten me anywhere.
“I’ve been seeing someone,” I finally said.
“How did I not know this?”
“We kept it secret.”
“Harper Ellison?”
I guess even when you managed to keep a secret in a small town, you still couldn’t keep it from your mom. I expelled a breath. “Harper Ellison.”
“Did she break up with you?”
“I ended it,” I said. “Before anyone could get hurt.”
I felt her look pointedly across the table at me even though I didn’t take my gaze from my son.
“It doesn’t take a master’s in psychology to figure out you’re hurting, Max.”
“Why weren’t you surprised when Dad left?”
She hesitated, letting nearly a minute tick by before she spoke. “Your dad and I got married because I got pregnant. I don’t think he ever loved me.”
That hit me like a linebacker from behind, the guy you never saw coming. I staggered, closed my eyes. Tried to get it to sink in. “Did you love him?”
“On some level I did. Or I loved the man I thought he was for all those years.” Her voice pitched low, full of emotion. “I’m pretty sure he had other women the whole time we were married.”
I didn’t have a high opinion of my father, but that still stunned me. “I had no idea.”
“I didn’t either at first. As the years went by, he worked longer hours, came home later. He could’ve worked day shifts and had his employees cover nights at the bar, but he didn’t. There were plenty of nights he claimed to fall asleep on the couch in his office, and I suspect he might have, but not alone.”
Jesus.
My dad had managed Billy’s, a small bar that closed about fifteen years ago. He’d been gone a lot of evenings; that was true. As far as I knew, that was what his job required. That’s how it’d always been.
I guess now I knew why.
Looking back with a new perspective, it was so obvious.
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
“I’m over it now,” she said.
“Are you though? You haven’t been involved with anyone since.”
“That’s something we do well in this family, isn’t it? Avoid relationships?” She laughed, trying to lighten such an ugly truth. “Are you going to be the first to find the courage to change that, Max?”
I leaned my head back and closed my eyes, still reeling from everything she’d revealed, but the truth had never been clearer. My dad was a world-class self-centered asshole. Apparently he always had been.
Harper wasn’t that.
She was caring and sexy and laughed easily and often. She made me laugh, made me look at life differently. Made me love her.
And she loved me.
She’d said she would never hurt Danny, and I knew she meant it. It was my job—mine and hers together—to make sure our relationship didn’t get to the point where we hurt Danny.
IfI could convince her to give me another chance.
“I believe I am,” I said, a new determination burning in me. “I just need to figure out the best way to apologize and convince her.”