20. Ford
CHAPTER 20
ford
T he rest of the trip was as stilted and uncomfortable as the first half. The flight home was no better. She slept for half of it and stared out the window numbly, wearing her headphones for the other half.
We arrived home late and crashed. The jet lag was real.
Around three a.m. I heard someone crying. Correction: someone was trying to cover up the fact that they were crying. My head was fuzzy and for a second, I thought it was Peyton. It would make sense. She’d cried more in the last week than I’d ever seen her cry. But it was too low and too rough.
“Mom?” Cash whispered. “Mom,” his voice cracked.
I sat up. “Hey bud, what’s going on? I think your mom is down for the count. She took extra Ambien last night.”
“Oh. It’s okay,” he sniffled like he was barely holding it together. “I-I’ll…talk to her in the morning.” He turned to go.
“Hey, hold on. Give me a minute and I’ll meet you in the hall.”
He hurried out and I quickly pulled on a pair of sweats and a T-shirt. When I shut the bedroom door, he was sitting on the floor in the hall, guttural sobs coming from the deepest parts of his chest. His eyes were swollen like he’d been crying for hours.
What in the world? Had someone broken into the house and scared him? No, this was a devastated cry. Not a scared cry. Had Charlie gotten another boyfriend and made out while he was watching?
I squatted in front of him. “Cash, what’s wrong?”
His blue eyes were almost translucent. “My dad doesn’t want to see me anymore.”
“What?” I snapped. That tool was actually following through on his threat? “What did he say to you?”
That’s when I realized he was gripping his phone to his chest. He handed it to me and my eyeballs burned at the texts Braxton had sent him.
Braxton
You get that this is your mom's fault, right? You want somebody to be mad at, be mad at her.
Dad, please. I miss you.
Braxton
I told you not to call me that anymore.
What does that even mean, I can’t call you Dad anymore?
Braxton
It means I'm done. Finished. My job is completed. Ford can do the rest.
You think I want to watch some other guy take my place?
I'm still your kid!
Braxton
Are you? When's the last time you stood up for me? You knew your mom was getting married and you hid it from me!
She loves Ford. That’s not a crime.
And she never would’ve gotten a divorce if you hadn’t cheated on her.
Braxton
Stop talking about things you know nothing about!
This isn’t fair. I’m just a kid. I can’t control what my parents do!
Braxton
Fair? Life isn’t fair! It’s better you learn that lesson now.
I’m making my choice and my choice is walking away.
Don’t contact me anymore.
About fifty swear words exploded in my head. I glanced up at Cash. “When did he send these?” I said through gritted teeth.
“Yesterday.” His mouth pulled into a deep frown and his cheeks were splotchy. “I was going to wait until Mom woke up to tell her. But I couldn’t sleep.”
I pulled him into my arms and hugged him so tight. “I’m sorry your dad is so freaking selfish.” Peyton hated it when I talked badly about Braxton in front of Cash, so I hardly ever did. But I couldn’t hold back now. “If he can’t see how amazing you are, what a great kid you are, he’s a bigger tool than I ever thought.” That only made him cry harder. “Hey,” I tried to quiet him. “We have a good relationship, you and me, right?” He nodded. “I’m going to be your dad now, okay? I’ll take care of you. We’ll do all kinds of stuff together, like we already do. Do you want to skip school tomorrow and we’ll go out on the lake? We can go fishing? What do you want to do?”
He sat back, lifted his shirt, and blew his nose into it. “I can’t. I have football conditioning and if I skip school, I can’t go.”
“Yeah. Okay.” What else could I do to make this better? “You wanna play some Madden on the Xbox?”
He blinked. “Now? At three in the morning?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll be dead for school.”
I shrugged. “You can sleep in and I’ll take you late. It might help you relax. Take your mind off of everything.”
“Yeah.” He forced a smile. “Let’s do it.” But he made no move to stand. His eyebrows met in the middle, his brow furrowed. “You’d really step in and be my dad? Like that’s something you want to do? My mom isn’t making you?”
“No way. She hasn’t said a word. But I’d love to be your dad if that’s what you want. It would be an honor.” I held up my hands. “No pressure, though. You can decide and it doesn’t have to be right now. But no matter what, I’ll always be here for you.”
“Like…would I call you Dad?”
“Up to you. I’d love it if that’s what you want. But just Ford’s okay, too.”
He gave me the tiniest smile. “Okay. I’ll think about it.”
Two minutes into our first game, his tears had stopped. Ten minutes in and he was laughing and trash-talking, back to his old self. But the longer I sat there letting him beat me, the more I knew I couldn’t do nothing.
I nudged his shoulder. “Hey, can you not say anything to your mom about those texts from your dad yet? Give me a little time. I have something up my sleeve.”
“Uh, sure. Okay.”
Peyton never let me say anything to Braxton. Even when he’d deserved it, she kept her metaphorical arms out, holding me back. No more. It was time to confront Braxton once and for all.
I took Cash to school at 11 a.m. At 11:30, Peyton was still asleep. I set a hot cup of coffee on the nightstand with a note that said, “Good morning, beautiful.”
An hour later, when she emerged from the bedroom, makeup done and hair blown out, she was quiet. She spent the afternoon avoiding me, scrubbing every line of tile grout in the bathroom. I went outside, brushed Grace Note down, and took her for a ride.
When I got back, Peyton had moved to the grout in the pantry.
I wasn’t going to push her. Truth be told, after the kiss in the pool, I was terrified. My mind went over every possibility of what it was that she was so scared to tell me. Maybe she was a serial killer. Or she’d taken a DNA test and found out we were secretly cousins. Or she was undercover paparazzi and she’d made a fortune off her pictures of me. All ridiculous.
I might’ve thought she was gay if I hadn’t known her so well. But Peyton liked pretty men way too much for something like that. Even if any of those were true, none of them were big enough to be ‘the end of us.’
I walked into the kitchen a little before five to find her making dinner, an apron tied around her waist, AirPods in her ears. She stirred a pot of something delicious smelling, then picked up a handful of chopped basil and sprinkled it over the sauce.
I walked over to see.
She popped out an AirPod and gave me a brief smile. “Hi.”
“Hi. Is that Tomato Basil Chicken?” It was my favorite dish on the planet.
“Yes.”
I scratched my eyebrow. “Cash hates that dish, remember?” I wouldn’t have said anything, as tense as things were. But if Cash ever needed his mom’s home cooking, it was tonight. “Are we picking him up from practice?
“Cash rode home with Lemon’s boys and he’s eating dinner over there.” She held my gaze. “Because I promised that I would tell you everything when we got home and I’m going to keep that promise. But I think we both need a real meal first after traveling all day yesterday.”
She was buttering me up.
My mom threw a hearty meal in the crockpot early in the morning whenever we worked cows. Working cows tends to bring out the worst in people. It’s stressful and a touch dangerous and fuses become very short, very quickly. Inevitably, at some point, she and Dad end up screaming at each other. But feed my dad something warm and filling and he’d forgive just about anything.
I was banking on Peyton hoping the same would work with me. I should’ve told her she didn’t need to go to so much trouble. I wouldn’t hate her, no matter what it was. But I was starving.
“It’s going to be at least an hour and a half. We’ll eat at 6:30 on the dot.” She reached for the AirPod she’d set down.
“I need to run an errand,” I said. “I’ll be back in plenty of time.” I leaned over and pressed a kiss to her temple. “Deep breaths. It’s going to be fine, Peyt.”
Her lips pursed into a thin line and with a shaky hand, she put the AirPod back in.
I hurried to my Jeep and took off for Peyton’s old house. The pale purple craftsman with the black trimmed windows. The house Braxton lived in now.
Seeing his boring, silver sedan sitting in her driveway incensed me. What kind of man cheats on his wife and then doesn’t give her enough money to keep the home they built together so she can raise his son without uprooting him? Selfish d-bag.
Add what he was doing to Cash on top of that…yeah, this man needed a come to Jesus and I was about to make it happen.
I strode to the front door and pounded.
He yanked the door open and I didn’t even try to hide my smirk at the fact that I was at least two inches taller and thirty pounds heavier, all muscle. The man was a soft, skinny pencil pusher, who hired out all manual labor.
When he saw it was me, he winced and stepped back like something repulsive had crossed his path. “What do you want?”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Okay, maybe I could’ve worded that better. “Are you trying to scar Cash for life, telling him you aren’t his dad anymore?”
He rolled his eyes like a middle management Karen confronting an incompetent barista. “It’s none of your business what I do.”
“Oh, it’s my business if it has to do with my wife’s son. Cash loves you, despite how you’ve hurt his mother.” I looked past him into the house. Everything in it screamed Peyton. The paint, the wallpaper in the foyer. The furniture she’d reupholstered. She’d done them all herself to save money. “What kind of jerk forces the wife he cheated on out of her dream home, moves in himself, and doesn’t pay child support?” I threw my hands out. “I mean, honestly, man. How can you even stand yourself?”
Braxton’s face twisted with fury and it looked like I was about to be punched in the face. Bring. It. On. But also, maybe I should’ve brought Jeff. I didn’t need this to be on the news.
Braxton shoved me off the doormat and slammed the door shut behind him, glaring me down like the Angel of Death. “You really are the dumbest person I’ve ever met. Like so unbelievably gullible it’s mind-blowing.” He poked me in the chest. “If anyone should’ve been paying Peyton child support, it’s you .”
I blinked. “What are you talking about?”
“Are you serious?” His eyes bulged. “You still don’t get it? How stupid do you have to be to try and break up the wedding of a woman you slept with—” Yes, I’d done that. “—only to find out she’s pregnant. And then—” he snorted “—you actually believe her when she tells you the baby isn’t yours ?” He poked me three times, once for each word. Then he guffawed and followed it up with a slow clap. “There’s gotta be some kind of award for this level of stupidity.”
My head was spinning, trying to wrap around what he was saying. I scanned the timeline. But I’d scanned it before. Way back when I found out Peyton was marrying Braxton because he’d knocked her up. In the end, I’d had to let it go because…I chose to trust Peyton. That she was marrying Braxton because she was pregnant with his baby.
I held up a hand, taking a beat. “Are you saying Cash is mine?”
He hooted. “Yes, moron. How could you seriously not know? He looks just like you.”
It felt like the world was tilting. “No. He looks like Peyton.”
“He has her nose. And her eye and hair color. But it’s your eye and hair color too. Everything else is Dupree DNA.”
The image of Cash crying in the hall last night flashed into my mind. Pale blue eyes. Check. Brown wiry hair—exactly like mine used to be before I learned about hair product. Check. Crooked smile. Check. Stocky build, broad shoulders. Check.
Everything went sideways and I dropped my head, propping my hands on my knees so I didn’t pass out.
“Oh, man.” Braxton laughed like this was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. “You really didn’t know. He looks nothing like me and everything like you. His mannerisms, the way he walks. His singing voice.”
I lifted my head to look at him. “He can sing?”
“You’ve never heard him sing?” he asked like he didn’t know how that was possible. “The kid won’t shut up. In the shower, in the car, at church. They wanted to give him the lead role in the musical last spring and Peyton said no because…”
I scanned his face, waiting, like whatever he said next might flip my world upside down. But my world was already flipped. Completely upended, spinning uncontrollably through space, gravity never to be restored.
Braxton shrugged. “She didn’t want you to hear him sing.”
That’s why Cash wouldn’t sing with me. Peyton had told him not to. Another layer of deception. It felt like someone had shanked me straight in the gut.
If I’d cared one speck about my dignity, I would’ve gotten in my vehicle and left. Finding this out from Braxton, of all people, was going to rank as the most humiliating, heartbreaking moment of my life. But I still had questions.
“Why would she do that?” I asked, feeling like I was climbing out of my skin. “Why wouldn’t she tell me something like that?”
“I’ve already said way too much. She’s going to be pissed.” His lips pressed together like whatever . “Cash couldn’t possibly be mine. Peyton and I weren’t together for months before she got pregnant.” That was the opposite of what she’d told me. “Now get off my porch.” He flicked his hands at me, walked back into the house, and slammed the door in my face.