Colt
I could see her unraveling with every side street we cruised down. Every minute that passed. She spent nearly two hours holding it together, but only just. I wouldn’t have blamed her for breaking down entirely, for giving in to the panic etched on her face. Hell, I was starting to panic.
When she learned Alex had Jonas, I expected her to stop stressing.
Relax. Finally take a full breath. But if anything, the root of her anxiety changed.
The tension never left her shoulders, the tic in her jaw remained, and her body shrank in on itself while her hands formed tight, white-knuckled fists.
Following Whit’s instruction, I stop the truck in front of a small run-down house and leave it running for Betty.
The patchy grass looks brown and crispy like a batch of overcooked French fries, and the falling-apart front porch is definitely a safety hazard.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but it’s not this.
“You can wait here, if you want.” Her tiny head shake and tinier smile says she wants me to come with her, even if she’s too stubborn to ask me to. “I’ll only be a minute.”
If she genuinely wanted me to stay put, I would.
Though I’d be cracking the window and eavesdropping like a son of a bitch.
I’m too damn curious about her baby daddy not to.
I don’t give a shit about Alex, in general, but I imagine meeting the man Whit has a child with will feel like snapping one more of her puzzle pieces into place.
My seatbelt is undone with one firm press of a thumb, and a rush of hot air floods the truck cab when I crack open the driver’s door. “Let’s go, Mama.”
We’re halfway up the pathway to the door when he steps outside. Alex.
My entire face scrunches with disbelief—I can’t help it.
First, where the fuck did the kid’s blond hair come from?
Second…this dude? I couldn’t even punch the guy because it would be the furthest thing from a fair fight.
Whit’s pretty damn tall for a woman, so I assumed she would only date guys taller than her, but Alex can’t be more than five-foot-eight on a good day.
My guess is one hundred and seventy pounds soaking wet.
Shirt half-tucked into a pair of checkered pajama pants.
I’m having an incredibly difficult time believing this is the guy Whit and Jonas have been wishing was around more often.
“Well, if it’s not Mom of the Year. Took you long enough.” Letting the screen door slam closed behind him, Alex looks Whit up and down with a smug smile. Then his eyes cut to me. “Who’s this?”
“Colt.” I’d shake the asshole’s hand, if he were willing to step down from the safety of his porch.
“Ah, the cowboy nanny.”
My tongue runs over the front of my teeth. I stay quiet, not taking the bait. Besides, it’s not my place to get involved unless Whit asks me to.
And right now, Whit’s not asking me to step in. Instead, she calmly asks, “Where’s Jonas?”
Hooking a thumb toward the door, Alex leans against the off-white porch railing. “Inside playing video games. He showed up a while ago—didn’t want to call you until he’d calmed down. He was pretty upset.”
“You should’ve let me know the second he knocked on your door.”
“I don’t owe you shit, Whit.” Alex picks at the peeling paint, flicking specks of white onto the empty flower beds below. “You sure as hell weren’t in a hurry to tell me when he started going to some ranch every day.”
Ignoring him, Whit calls out for Jonas. When he doesn’t immediately come running, she yells again, full-naming him with that fuck around and find out tone that only moms seem to have. That gets him.
Jonas appears in the doorway, slightly obscured by the screen door mesh. He clips, “What?”
“Get your stuff, it’s time to go home.”
He doesn’t budge. “I don’t want to.”
“It’s not up for debate.”
“He doesn’t want to go,” Alex says, calm and collected, confident he’s got the upper hand. “You should respect that. You come tearing in here like you’re about to save the day. For what? To force the kid to leave his dad’s house?”
Her throat bobs with a swallow.
“We spent hours searching for him. I was terrified something happened to him….” Her voice cracks. “Thinking he could be hurt or kidnapped or worse. Meanwhile, you had him, and purposely took your sweet time letting me know.”
“Because he didn’t want me to,” Alex says smoothly. “And honestly, after the way you’ve been on my ass about being a ‘terrible father,’ maybe it’s time you looked in the mirror. You didn’t even know where your kid was.
“You talk a big talk about knowing what he needs, but when the shit hit the fan, where did he go? Not to you, Whit. Nah, he came to the guy you keep calling a piece of shit. Funny how that works.”
Are you fucking kidding me?
I look over at Whit. Though she does her best to hide it, I see the flinch.
The wound he inflicted without even raising his voice.
Instinctively, I step in close to her, anger vibrating through every muscle fiber and scorching the blood pumping loudly behind my eardrums. I’m fucking shaking.
I thought I wanted to fight the guy in the bar when he was too close to Whit, but this is different. I could kill this guy.
“Jonas, go get in the truck. We’re going.” Whit disregards Alex altogether, focusing her attention back on Jonas, who’s stepped out onto the porch.
Jonas combs a hand through his sun-bleached hair, making it stand up in random directions. He looks between his mom and dad, then over at me, all of us receiving the same downturned expression.
“Jonas,” she says with a low, throaty tone. “We can talk about this at home. Let’s go.”
Jonas mutters something under his breath but slips into his sneakers and trudges down the front porch steps. He grabs his blue pedal bike from where it’s plopped down on the dead grass and shoves past Whit and me. There’s no missing the mumbled cuss words anymore.
I watch Whit watching Jonas as he tosses his bike onto the ground next to my truck and climbs inside, slamming the door. Her forehead and nose are crinkled in the sun, and tears dot her lower lashes.
“Ready to go?” I ask.
She sighs. “Yes.”
“You wanna know what I think?” Alex chimes in again. Of course he wants the last word. “Maybe if you weren’t so wrapped up in proving you’re the better parent, you’d actually be the better parent.”
Protective instinct unfurls low and slow under my skin, making my blood run even hotter. I want to reach out for Whit. I want to comfort her, and tell Alex to go fuck himself, and get Jonas out of this toxic place.
And right when I open my mouth, unable to stay silent for another second, Whit fires back.
“I don’t have to prove anything to anybody, least of all you.
You’d rather buy your kid an expensive toy than spend a single afternoon with him, but because you were around when he needed you one fucking time, you think you’re in a position to judge me? ”
Alex smiles, like he’s humoring her.
She shakes her head, tongue pressed to her cheek. “Why should I give a shit about what a loser like you thinks about my parenting abilities?”
That’s my girl.
With that, Whit spins and walks back to the truck, head high even though I know she’s got to be dangerously close to falling apart.
Alex watches her like he won. “She always likes to make everything dramatic.”
This guy makes a sport of tearing her down and calling it concern for his kid.
And to think, all this time I assumed the worst thing about him was his absence.
Now I think that’s the best thing he can be.
Whit doesn’t deserve this shit. Jonas definitely doesn’t need to grow up with Alex as a role model.
“You really think letting your son hide out while his mom tears apart the whole town looking for him makes you the good guy here?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I didn’t tell him to run away.”
“No.” I step forward, my entire body so tense and stiff, it aches. “But you sure as hell liked that he did. If you gave a shit about Jonas, you would’ve called Whit the minute he showed up. Instead, you used it. Let her panic. Hurting her mattered more than helping your son.”
His smile falters slightly. “Spare me the speech, cowboy.”
Nope. You don’t get the last word with me, bud.
“If that kid”—I thrust my hand in the direction of the idling pickup—“shows up on your doorstep again, you do the right thing and call her immediately. Or you’ll be getting a hell of a lot more than a fucking speech from me.”
Jaw tight, I stride back to the truck, not giving an opportunity for whatever weak comeback he comes up with.
After quickly strapping down Jonas’s bike on the flat deck of my pickup, I throw open the driver door to find Jonas slumped in the middle seat with his eyes closed, Betty awkwardly teetering on his lap, and Whit staring straight ahead.
Her eyes are red-rimmed, cheeks a little puffier than usual, but her face is calm now.
That quiet, though? That scares the shit out of me.
No more than five minutes into the drive, I’m getting antsy.
The truck cab’s hot and tense and reeks like dog breath.
Whit has her hands clasped tight in her lap as she stares out the window, Jonas may or may not be asleep—though the intense scowl suggests he’s awake and refusing to engage—and Betty’s stress-panting from trying to keep herself upright on his lap.
I understand why everyone’s so quiet, but it’s unnerving nonetheless. The silence is thick and sticky, like we’re all chewing on something we can’t quite swallow. And a small voice in my brain is screaming at me to fix this for them.
I shift in my seat. “We should get something to eat.”
If there’s one thing my mother’s taught me, it’s that food fixes everything.
“It’s dinnertime.” I tap the lit-up numbers on the dashboard. “Nothing good ever comes out of being mad and hungry at the same time.”