CHAPTER EIGHTEEN #2
“Yeah, because no matter how many times I told him that he needed to wait in line for the slide like everyone else, he figured he could just climb the slide from the bottom and skip the line.”
“And now the two of you are best friends.”
Marco rolled his eyes. “After we created jobs, and someone stood at the bottom of the slide to stop him, while the rest of us blocked him from pushing through from the back. It took him forever to learn to wait his turn.”
“Okay, but he did learn, and now you’re friends.”
“Okay. Fine. Did Jagger learn how to wait his turn?”
I snorted and smiled at him in the mirror as I applied a bit of blush to my cheeks. “In a sense, yes. To be fair though, the reason we didn’t get along for so long was partly my fault too. I have apologized, and he forgave me.”
As if realizing for the first time in his life that his mother wasn’t actually a faultless angel goddess, my son’s green eyes went wide. “What did you do that you needed to apologize for?”
“I was mean to him.”
“How? How could you be mean?” The kid’s brain looked like it was about to explode.
I was in the throes of destroying his reality of me that I could do no wrong.
Here I thought I’d done it years ago when I almost had a coronary and removed nearly every privilege imaginable after he and Austin ran through the grapevines and hid from us for six hours when they were four and six.
Opening my mouth as I applied my mascara, I hesitated whether I should tell him the truth. I could tell him parts of it, I guess. Kids were never too young to learn how to apologize, accept responsibility for their actions, and make amends.
“You might be too young to remember, but we lived in Seattle for a few months before we moved to the island.”
He shook his head. “I know we did, but I don’t remember.”
I nodded. “Anyway, I thought I might be ready to date. So I tried one of those online dating apps where you can chat with people for a while before you decide to meet in person. I was chatting with Jagger. Then we decided to meet in person. Only, I arrived at the coffee shop, realized I wasn’t ready, and I ran away.
Then, he tried to ask me why I did it and I wouldn’t talk to him.
When he recognized me after we moved to the island, he tried to talk to me about it again, and I turned mean. Because I was scared.”
“Scared of what?”
“Of …”
Big green eyes stared back at me, blinking and waiting for my answer.
“I was scared I would hurt the family we had by bringing in someone new. I was scared that I could get my heart broken. I was scared that you might learn to love him too, and then if the relationship ended, your heart could get broken too.”
“You’re not scared of that now?” he asked.
“I’m terrified,” I whispered. “But I’m also stronger.” I locked eyes with him. “We both are.”
“Did you also still miss my dad?”
No. I was relieved he was dead. In fact, I was grateful Josiah was dead. I made sure to thank the universe every morning when I woke up, and every night before I went to bed that my devil of a husband no longer walked this earth.
But I could never say that to Marco. So I just offered him a smile. “It was too soon to start dating after your father passed away.”
“And now it’s not?”
“I don’t think so. But we’ll have to see. We’re going to go out for dinner. Take things slow, and see how it goes. I’m not going to rush anything because I have you to think about.”
He blinked a few more times, wrinkled his nose in that cute way he’d done since he was just a baby, and flicked his coppery-brown hair off his forehead. “I want you to be happy, Mom. Don’t worry about me.”
Spinning around in my seat, I faced the love of my life. “I will worry about you until the day I die. Then I will worry about you from beyond the grave. It’s what mothers do.”
He made a face of slight disbelief before collapsing on the bed in a dramatic fashion. “That sounds exhausting. I’m not sure I want to have kids if all you do for the rest of their lives is worry about them.”
I flung myself onto the bed beside him and brushed the thick lock of hair off his forehead.
“Being a parent is exhausting, but it’s also incredibly rewarding.
Especially when you have such a great kid.
” I tickled his belly, eliciting a laugh.
“I wouldn’t trade away all my worries for one less day of you, kiddo. Know that.”
He swallowed and smiled at me, his round cheeks rosy, eyes bright and cheerful. “You look nice, Mom.”
Unshed tears burned the back of my eyes and my jaw grew tight. I leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “I truly have the best kid.”
“Argh!” He bolted upright, checking himself in the mirror. “Did you just get lipstick all over my face?”
With a smirk, I grabbed his face and kissed each of his cheeks. “No. I haven’t put lipstick on yet.”
“Mooooom,” he moaned, just as there was a knock at the door. Butterflies took flight in my belly as I grabbed my purse. “Can you grab that, sweetie?”
Marco slid off the bed, and I slathered on some tinted, plumping lip gloss in “Razzle-berry Delicious,” double-checked my red waves and makeup in the mirror, took a deep, fortifying breath, and then headed out to the entryway.
“Hi,” came a familiar voice that sent a chill straight down my spine. “You must be Marco. I’m your Uncle Soloman. Your dad and I were brothers.”
A pit the size of the Grand Canyon opened up in my gut as I came face-to-face with a man I hoped to never see again.
Not only because Soloman Aaronson was just as despicable as his brother, but because he and Josiah looked a distressing amount alike.
Both men were tall, with narrow shoulders, scraggly gray and brown beards, no cheekbones, and with disturbingly pale, soulless blue eyes.
Just like Josiah, Soloman was losing his hair, and what he had left was thinning and patchy on his lumpy head.
They weren’t twins, but they may as well have been. Honestly, if I hadn’t made sure of Josiah’s death myself, I would have thought I was seeing a ghost.
My former brother-in-law’s haunting, pale gaze flicked to mine. “Raina.”
“What are you doing here?” I demanded, reaching for Marco, who glanced up at me with wide, confused eyes. I shoved him behind me at the same time I reached for the door and tried to close it, but Soloman wasn’t a small man and pushed it open. “I came to see my family.”
“We’re not your family,” I spat back, just as the headlights of a familiar truck and the crunch of gravel under big tires filled the dark night.
“But we are,” he argued. “Marco here, is my nephew. And I want to get to know him better.”
“Mom?” Marco said behind me.
“Go,” I said, not taking my eyes off Soloman. “Go get Aunt Gabrielle. Now !”
Marco took off through the house, using the door that connected our basement suite to the upstairs of the house.
More gravel crunched, this time it was boots approaching. Both fear and relief flooded me as Jagger came into view—holding a small jade plant this time. “Hello?” he said, his eyes asking all kinds of questions.
I glared at Soloman. “You. Need. To. Go.”
My brother-in-law smirked. “I have to say, Raina, I was rather disappointed that I didn’t see you at Elias’s funeral. He was your nephew. You should have been there.”
“You mean the same nephew you tried to get me to marry after Josiah died?” I gritted out, the burn of Jagger’s eyes on me sending waves of nausea crashing through my gut.
“I have no heir,” Soloman said, his eyes anything but genuinely sad. “Just daughters now. Nobody to carry on the Aaronson name.”
The words came out before I could stop them. “Halle-fucking-lujah!”
Crack!
I was not expecting the smack across my face, or that it would hurt so much. Then again, I do remember seeing my aunt, Mariana, having bruises on her face from time to time. Soloman had plenty of practice hitting women and making it hurt.
“How dare you use that tone or those words with me, you vile harlot!”
A cool, porcelain plant pot was shoved into my hand.
“All right, you need to fucking leave. Before I shove my foot so far up your asshole you taste leather for a week,” Jagger said, grabbing Soloman by the collar and ushering him away from my door.
Soloman Aaronson wasn’t a small man, but Jagger was bigger.
He was younger, taller, and significantly stronger.
He showed my brother-in-law absolutely no mercy as he dragged him toward the road.
I stepped out onto the gravel driveway, just wearing my slippers and holding my palm to my face as I watched Jagger escort Soloman to the road.
“How about I go to the cops and tell them the truth, huh?” Soloman hollered back at me, trying to wrench himself away from Jagger’s grip. “I know what you did to my brother! Marco isn’t safe with you! He belongs with his family. With the Faith. With men who will show him the way!”
Fear buried sharp, ruthless talons into my chest, squeezing my heart and threatening to rip it from my body. How could he know the truth about Josiah’s death? Nobody but my cousins and I knew.
I never told a soul. And the paramedics and coroner ruled it a heart attack. Because it had been a heart attack. That part was true.
“This isn’t over! The Aaronson name will live on. I’ll make sure of it.”
Acid covered my tongue, and I had to grip my belly with my free hand to keep myself from crunching over under the weight of horror that whipped into a debilitating froth inside of me. The idea of losing my son … of losing him to that life terrified me.