47. Tate
TATE
The front door is ajar when I get there, a silent invitation into a house that suddenly feels wrong.
I step inside, and the comforting scent of Jordyn’s home—something like clean laundry and the faint sweetness of Brody’s cereal—is gone.
Replaced by the sterile, papery smell of cardboard.
Boxes. Stacked by the wall, mouths taped shut, their brown surfaces a stark declaration of intent.
My gaze travels from a half-empty bookshelf to a bare patch on the wall where a framed drawing used to hang.
Dean stands near the kitchen entryway, his posture rigid. He doesn’t have to say a word. The entire story is laid out in the strained set of his shoulders and the chilling emptiness of the room. He met the storm head-on. I’m walking into the quiet aftermath.
Jordyn stands by the window, her back to us, but I see the tension in the line of her neck. She’s trying to hold herself together, but the room itself is coming apart, piece by piece. My hand tightens on the doorknob. My chest constricts. This isn’t just packing. This is an erasure.
I don’t raise my voice. The anger that flickers in my gut is immediately smothered by a deeper, colder ache.
A hollow space opens up inside me, a void where the future I had started to build was supposed to be.
I look at the box labelled “Brody’s Room - Nightstand,” and the ache sharpens into something that feels like grief.
My voice comes out low, steady, but it carries the weight of everything I see. “You were going to leave.”
It’s not a question. It’s a statement of loss. Her shoulders hitch, a tiny, betraying movement. She doesn’t turn around. The silence is heavy, thick with the unsaid goodbyes, the empty rooms, the drive away from a town where her son had finally, finally found his footing.
The disappointment is a physical pain, a heaviness in my limbs. She wasn’t just leaving a house. She was leaving us. Without a word. As if the foundation we had been carefully laying for weeks was just another temporary stop she could dismantle and walk away from.
She finally turns. Her face is a mess of tear tracks and defiance, her shoulders slumped not in surrender but in sheer, bone-deep exhaustion. The fight has gone out of her, leaving only the raw, scraped-clean truth. A long breath escapes her lips, a sound of fractures giving way.
“I thought it was the only way to protect him.”
Her voice is flat. Devoid of the sharp edges she uses to keep the world at bay.
It's the voice of someone who has calculated every possible outcome and landed on the one that destroys herself to save her son. My anger dissolves, replaced by a dull, persistent ache. Of course that’s what she thought.
Survive. Protect. That’s her only programming.
Dean remains a silent, immovable object by the door, his gaze fixed on her, assessing.
Jordyn’s hands twist in the fabric of her worn-out hoodie. Her eyes flick from me to Dean, then to the stack of boxes that hold her son’s entire world.
“It’s not just him,” she says, her voice tightening, cracking over the words. “It’s all of this.”
Her gesture is small, a flick of the wrist that encompasses the half-empty room, me, Dean, Wes and Brody. The connection she never asked for but got anyway. The fragile hope that settled in these walls.
“He'll use it. Don't you see?” The question is a plea.
“Some lawyer will stand up in a courtroom and paint a picture. A single mother who moves to a new town and immediately gets involved with… with three men.” She chokes out a laugh that has no humour in it, just broken glass.
“What if I lose everything because I let this happen? Because I let myself be happy for five minutes?”
The confession lingers, heavy and sharp. It isn’t just about Kyle reclaiming a son he abandoned. It’s about him using the first good thing that’s happened to her in years as the weapon to take Brody away. The fear isn't just about losing her son. It's about losing him because of us.
The logic is sound. Terrifying, but sound.
She is protecting the thing she loves by dismantling the life he is starting to love.
I take one step. Then another. My boots make no sound on the hardwood floor, but the movement pulls her focus.
I stop just inside her personal space, close enough to feel the frantic energy radiating from her, but not touching.
I am not here to console. I am here to stand firm.
“Then we’ll be here with you.”
The words are clear. Unconditional. I don't look at Dean, but I feel his silent agreement from across the room. We are a wall she can either brace against or try to run through. But we will not crumble. I see the flicker in her eyes, the apathetic shield cracking enough to show the wild panic underneath. She wants to believe it. She’s just forgotten how.
“Let him paint,” I continue, my voice low and steady. “Let some lawyer twist it. We’ll be there. All of us. In that courtroom. Right beside you.”
A shudder works its way through her frame. Her face crumples, defenses finally giving way to the sheer, crushing weight of it all. She opens her mouth to speak, but the only thing that escapes is a ragged gasp.
Footsteps, soft and hesitant, sound from the hallway.
We all turn. Brody stands in the doorway, his favorite blue dinosaur clutched in one hand.
His gaze darts between his mother’s tear-streaked face, Dean’s unyielding stillness, and the chaotic stacks of cardboard that weren’t there this morning.
He doesn’t need to understand the words.
He feels the seismic shift in his universe.
His small body goes rigid. His knuckles are white around his toy.
Instinct takes over. I drop to one knee, the motion fluid, immediate. The world of adult problems, of custody battles and boxes, vanishes. It narrows to the six feet of floor between me and him. I hold his gaze, offering him an anchor in the storm.
“Hey, bud. We’re good.”
My voice is the same one I use at the station, the same one I use when an alarm blares unexpectedly.
Calm. Predictable. Safe. The tension in his small shoulders eases almost instantly.
He takes a hesitant step forward, his eyes still on me, seeking the solid ground I represent.
The world settles back into its rhythm. We are here.
He is here. And that is all that matters.
I rise slowly, my knees protesting the movement, but my focus remains locked on Jordyn. Brody shifts closer to me, his small hand finding the fabric of my jeans. The contact is light, barely there, but it grounds something inside me that I hadn't realized was floating loose.
The boxes stare at us from their neat stacks against the wall. Evidence of a decision made in panic, in the desperate mathematics of a mother who thinks subtraction equals safety. I understand the logic. I even respect it. But understanding doesn't make it right.
Jordyn's eyes dart between Brody and me, then to Dean, who hasn't moved from his position by the kitchen.
She's calculating again, weighing variables in an equation that keeps changing every time she thinks she's solved it.
Her fingers twist at the hem of her hoodie, a nervous habit I've come to recognize as her way of buying time when the world moves too fast.
"Tate." Her voice cracks on my name. "You don't understand what this could cost."
"I understand exactly what it could cost." The words are steady, measured. No heat, no pressure. Just truth laid bare. "I also understand what running will definitely cost."
She flinches. The truth hits harder than anger ever could.
Brody's grip on my jeans tightens. He doesn't speak, but his body language screams volumes.
The rigid posture, the way he presses closer to my leg, the death grip on his dinosaur.
He's reading the room with the brutal clarity that comes with his particular wiring. Change is coming. Change is dangerous.
I place my hand on his shoulder, a gentle weight that says stay. Not to her. To him. To all of us.
"We're already part of this," I say, my gaze never leaving Jordyn's face.
The words settle into the space between us, solid and immovable.
Not a declaration. Not a demand. Just the simple, unvarnished truth that's been building for weeks in quiet moments and shared glances and the way Brody runs to us instead of away.
Her breath catches. A sharp intake that sounds like drowning.
"You think Kyle won't use that against me? Three men, Tate. Three." Her voice rises, fraying at the edges. "Some judge is going to look at that and think?—"
"That you have support." Dean's voice cuts through her spiral, calm and factual. "That you have stability. That you have people willing to stand up in court and testify to your character."
She whirls to face him. "Or they'll think I'm some kind of?—"
"What?" I interrupt, my tone still level but carrying an edge now. "Some kind of woman who found people who care about her son? Who built a community? Who gave her kid the first stable environment he's ever had?"
The silence that follows is deafening. Jordyn's mouth opens, then closes. The arguments die on her tongue because we both know what this place has done for Brody. How he's thrived here. How he sleeps through the night now and asks questions instead of shutting down.
Brody shifts against my leg, his head tilting up to look at me. Those big brown eyes hold a question he can't quite voice, but I hear it anyway. Are you staying?
I meet his gaze and nod once. A promise made without words.
When I look back at Jordyn, something fundamental has shifted in my expression. The careful distance I've maintained, the gentle boundaries, the way I've let her set the pace—all of it falls away. What's left is raw and honest and completely immovable.
"You don't get to cut us out."
Not pressure. Not demand. Truth, stated plainly. And I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.