Chapter 14
CHAPTER 14
FORD
Ford:
:picture of DNA results:
Rios:
Congratulations! It’s a girl!
Sawyer:
:GIF of Deadpool cracking his knuckles: Preparing to be favorite uncle.
Unknown number:
Kid won the lottery.
Ford:
Thanks, assholes.
Of course the moment the paternity test results had arrived, I’d texted my brothers. The scientific confirmation of what my gut already knew still felt like a brick between the eyes. I was a dad. For real. But there was no time to mentally process that I truly had a kid. A fully formed person, with likes and dislikes and quirks I hadn’t even begun to scratch the surface of learning. One I was now the sole parent of. Or would be as soon as all the legalities were sorted. Mom and Mimi had celebrated with pink champagne, sparkling pink lemonade, and a behemoth German chocolate birthday cake—apparently Peyton’s favorite.
And I upended my entire world to start making a stable one for my daughter.
The moment I had proof of paternity in hand, I contacted Peyton’s caseworker in Oregon and started the process of claiming her. The Amber Alert had been canceled. I’d been granted emergency custody while the rest of the legal machine did its thing to finalize the arrangement. I’d already started dependency paperwork to get her benefits and taken her to get her military ID. My job situation was still up in the air. I was on emergency leave for the next few weeks, and my command was exploring the potential for a remote position. I wasn’t sure how fast they’d come back with an answer about that, but for the moment, I was dealing with the problems directly in front of me.
Right this moment, that included a very reluctant teenager.
“We’ve gotta talk about school, kid.”
Peyton immediately pulled into herself, shoulders rising toward her ears, knees tucking into her chest where she sat on the window seat in the kitchen. It was just us for the moment. Mom was in court, and Mimi had a meeting with one of the shops that carried her art.
I settled in across the table with a second cup of coffee. “I know you don’t wanna, but that’s one of those non-negotiables of the world. If we don’t get you enrolled ASAP, the powers that be are gonna come after me, and I kinda don’t think that would look great for them letting you stay with me.”
Her head snapped toward me, some of the color leeching out of her cheeks. “You think they’ll take me away?”
Shit. I was traumatizing her without even trying. Father of the year, right here. “I mean, there’s no reason for them to now. But that’s one of my jobs as a parent. To make sure you go to school.”
She slumped, blowing out a long breath as she stared at the scuffed toes of her Chucks.
“Is it the big catch up you’re worried about or being the new kid?”
“Both.” Her fingers restlessly picked at a loose thread on her sweater. Mom and Mimi had taken her to pick up a few things, and her foster mom in Oregon was supposed to be making arrangements to send her stuff, but I made a mental note that we needed to order her some new clothes. The climate here was a lot warmer than where she was from.
“Everybody’s gonna be talking about me.”
I dragged my focus back to the current issue. No reason to blow smoke up her ass. “Yeah, probably so. That’s the nature of small towns, and you’re big news, here. But that doesn’t mean it will all suck.”
Peyton shot me a glare. “How would you know? You were never the new kid. You grew up here.”
“That’s fair. You’re right. I wasn’t the new kid. Not until college. I was the guy who made friends with the new kid and intervened when she got bullied.”
That earned me a look of speculation. “Are you talking about Bree?”
I hadn’t actually brought her up over the past several days, though that had been a challenge. I didn’t know how much Bree wanted to do with us, now that she’d discharged her duties by uniting us in the first place. But this was relevant.
“Yeah. She had a rough start in life. Came here when she was a good bit younger than you. That would’ve been third grade for us. Some people weren’t kind.” I could still remember the first time I’d seen her, all knobby knees and defiance covering up so much hurt, as Zack Pickering made up some nonsensical, bullshit rhyme about her being unwanted by anyone.
“Did you beat them up?”
I blinked. “What?”
“Your hands curled into fists.”
Shit, they had. I forced my fingers to relax and bought myself a little time by sipping the coffee. God, I’d missed Mimi’s chicory blend. “It’s probably bad parenting for me to admit it, but yeah, I did. Violence shouldn’t be the first response. I wish I could say it was never the right response, but some people don’t respond to anything else.” And I’d never been one to stand by when someone needed protecting.
“Did you get in trouble?”
“Oh yeah. I was suspended for a week. So was he. Our schools have a zero-tolerance policy for fighting.”
“Did you regret it?”
“Not for a moment. I got an incredible friend out of it.” And I’d gone and lost her.
I hadn’t seen Bree again in the week I’d been back on-island, juggling all the details of changing my life. From long experience, I suspected she was hiding. But it would only be a matter of time before our paths crossed again. Hatterwick just wasn’t that big. I wanted to believe that her breaking the silence to help with Peyton was the potential start of a thaw between us, one that would allow me to begin to repair what I’d damaged all those years ago. But that was wishful thinking. She’d been there for Peyton because she identified with her. It didn’t take a shrink to figure that out. It wasn’t about me.
But I couldn’t forget how she’d looked at me with something other than loathing or chill fury for the first time in forever when she’d said, We’ll figure this out .
A slip of the tongue? Or did it mean something?
Peyton huffed. “I guess if I’ve gotta.”
For a moment, I forgot what we’d been talking about. Oh, right. School.
“Unfortunately, you gotta. But there’s one more thing we’ve got to sort out before we go enroll you.”
“What’s that?”
“Our home address.”
“We aren’t staying here?”
I couldn’t gauge how she felt about the idea of that, but I’d been giving this some thought the past several days. “That’s an option. But I was thinking we could get our own place. See, I’ve been gone from home for a long time, and as you’ve seen, Mom and Mimi have kinda expanded to take up all the space. They’d clean out to make room for us and be happy to do it, but it might be kinda cramped. I thought you should have a say in where we live.” And it would hopefully keep me from leaning too hard on them. They’d disagree with that, but Peyton was my responsibility. I had a lot of missed years to make up for.
She blinked in obvious surprise. “I get an opinion?”
“Of course you do. I mean, we’ve got a budget to stick to, but I thought we could spend the rest of the day checking out options for places to rent.” Being the off season, we ought to have a decent selection. I’d already put a call in to Rene Johnson to set up some showings.
Maybe it was a mistake to rent something. Maybe I ought to wait until my job situation was sorted, then look at actually buying a house. But much as I adored my moms, I wasn’t sure if they’d be able to let me be the parent if we were living under their roof. Not that I had a damned clue how to be that parent, but this wouldn’t be my first trial-by-fire experience, and I was committed to figuring it out. I felt like Peyton and I needed our own space to do that.
Or maybe I just didn’t want my moms to have a front-row seat to my inevitable fuck ups.
Peyton stared at me, a faint line forming between her brows.
“What?”
“It’s just…” She trailed off, dropping her gaze.
“Just what?”
“Never mind.”
“No really. Say what you’re thinking. All of this is a huge change for both of us, and good communication is the only way we’re gonna get through it.”
She sucked in a breath. “It’s just… you’re taking all this awfully well.”
“All this?”
“I mean… me.”
Did that mean her foster family had considered her a problem? One of those “too much” kids? Curling my fingers around my mug, I chose my words carefully. “Peyton, you’re my daughter. You may have been the world’s biggest surprise, but I’m not upset you exist. I’m only sorry I didn’t know about you sooner. So that I could have been there with you growing up. Helped your mom, whether we worked out as a couple or not.”
She angled her head, apparently fascinated by that. “You would have done that?”
“Hell yeah, I would have done that.”
Her lips pressed together, another clear sign she wasn’t sure she could say what she wanted to.
“Communication, remember?” I prodded.
“I just… Mom never talked about you. Ever. And for a long time, I wondered if that was because you were a bad guy.”
I had so many questions for Casey. And I’d never get the answers. “Fair question to have, under the circumstances. But you came anyway.”
“Yeah. I thought I’d do some recon to find out what you were like, if it was even worth telling you who I was.”
“Guess Bree kinda spoiled that.” And thank God for it. I may have only had a week of knowing I was a dad, but nothing on earth could make me give this kid up.
Peyton’s lips twitched. “Yeah. But it was okay because she insisted you were a good guy. The best guy.”
Had she really? That definitely was not the assessment I would’ve expected from Bree Cartwright after all these years.
“What’s your verdict?”
She studied me for a long moment with those eyes so like mine. Then her lips quirked up the barest hint. “You’re all right.”
From a suspicious teenager, that felt like the highest form of praise.
“I can work with that. You’re pretty okay yourself.”
The quirk turned into a brief flash of an actual smile.
“So how ’bout it? We go look at houses, and then maybe get some lunch while we’re out?”
“Sounds like a plan.”