Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
Ben
After my week with Gray, it was time for me to bring him back to Palmer. We alternated weeks with him and spent one day of the weekend together. It was slow and steady. We were in no rush. We were finding our happy medium, and I was gaining her trust back one step at a time. I let her lead the way.
I’d learned from my mistakes and grown into a man I could be proud of, just as she had grown.
I was so incredibly proud of all she’d accomplished in the past two years.
I wouldn’t give up on her or on us. I loved her too much.
I wouldn’t give up unless Palmer asked me to, and she hadn’t.
I had gone to therapy monthly, taken her out on dates, taken Gray to Daddy and Me classes, gone back to work.
Done whatever she asked to prove to her how much I wanted to change. How much I had changed.
I didn’t blame her, honestly. If the situation were reversed and her crazy ex took my son, I didn’t know if I could’ve looked in her eyes without feeling disgust, either.
The irony of that thought wasn’t lost on me as I walked up the stairs to her apartment and learned what I was about to. As I reached her door, I found myself staring into a set of familiar eyes. Eyes I’d never forget in a million years.
He turned to me, nodded, but didn’t linger. He didn’t recognize me. I meant nothing to him, though he took everything from me. I knocked on Palmer’s door with a fire in my belly, bile rising in my throat.
“What the hell was Nathan Creswell doing here?” I asked, my body trembling with anger.
“How do you know Nate?” Palmer asked, taking our sleeping son from my arms.
“How do you know Nate?”
Her skin flushed scarlet. Before she answered, the realization hit me. No. There was no way her Nate was my Nathan. “He was…my ex. The one before you.”
My stomach dropped. “What are you talking about?”
“Nate and I dated for eight years before you and I got together. How do you know him?” she asked again.
I shook my head, finding it hard to catch my breath. I couldn’t tell her. Not now. Maybe not ever. Perhaps therapy wasn’t working as well as I thought if I could still lie so easily. “Just from…you know, around.”
She gave an unsure laugh. “Okay…”
“What was he doing here?” I pressed. “I thought you hadn’t talked to your ex in years.”
“I hadn’t,” she said, her voice guarded. “He came by my office yesterday. Wanted to grab brunch. We just got back.”
I kept my face still, emotionless. I couldn’t react. To react would be to lose it.
“We’re seeing other people, Ben. You agreed.”
I did, technically, but just because she pressed the issue. She needed space from me, and I couldn’t blame her. “Right, yeah. Of course. I just didn’t realize you were seeing him. You said he was an alcoholic. That he cheated on you.”
“People change, Ben. I’m not dating him, anyway. We just went out for brunch. As friends.”
“Are you planning to see him again?” I clenched my fists at my sides.
“Maybe. We didn’t talk about it. Is it a problem?” she asked, walking to lay Gray on the couch. She headed back to me, her arms crossed.
“Not at all. I wish you the best, you know that. But I’m not giving you up.” I nodded, hoping I sounded more genuine than I felt.
“I never asked you to,” she said, a hint of a smile on her perfect lips. I leaned down to kiss them, just barely.
When we parted, the crimson of her cheeks had darkened even more. I still did that to her. “Listen, I’ve got to go. I have work in an hour.”
“Sounds good.” She leaned forward, giving me a quick hug and a peck on the cheek. “See you this weekend?”
“See you then,” I vowed. By this weekend, all would be well again.
By this weekend, Nathan Creswell wouldn’t be in my way.
I waited until she’d shut the door to dart down the hall and onto the street in time to see which direction he was headed.
He stopped at a little red sports car, digging in his pants pocket for his keys.
Adrenaline coursed through my body as I approached him.
“Hey, bud, can you help me with something?”
He looked up, his lip curled. “What’s that?”
After you’d killed once, it wasn’t that hard to kill again.
I wondered if he felt the same. Then again, he wasn’t a murderer. Not technically. It was just manslaughter. Wrongful fetal death, they’d called it. A .28 alcohol blood level, a stoplight he couldn’t be bothered to stop at, and a car crash that would end the world as I knew it.
“I’ve got something in my car, but I can’t carry it by myself. It’s for Palmer, the woman upstairs. She didn’t want to leave her son alone…”
He groaned, looking up at the apartment building. He didn’t want to help me. That was the kind of person he was, but he’d do it for Palmer. He wanted her again. At least for a little while.
“Fine. Sure.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Where’d you park?”
“Oh, great, thank you so much. I’m just right around here,” I told him, pointing around the side of the building, past the security camera’s line of vision.
I’d never stepped in front of them, keeping a safe space.
If anyone watched them, they’d never see who he was talking to.
He followed me around the building and toward the back of the parking garage.
“You really parked in a shitty spot to be unloading something,” he said, looking behind him at the journey he believed we’d be making.
Oh, how wrong he is.
“I know, man, what can you do? This street is always packed. Everyone’s constantly in and out.”
“You live here?”
“Not anymore.” But soon. “This is me.” I pointed to my silver Mazda. “It’s just in the trunk.”
He walked around to the trunk, and I opened my driver’s side door, grabbing the tire iron I kept under the seat and popping the trunk. I shut the door, and Nathan opened the trunk. He looked up at me with confusion. “What the h—”
I swung, ending the sentence and, from the amount of blood that spurted from his skull, I’d guess his life.
I hit him again, just to be sure. He fell into my arms, and I shoved him in the trunk, groaning and grunting until his weight was off of me.
I closed it firmly and wiped away the spattered blood from my face, arms, and the car.
I used my shirt to clean the weapon off last, tossing it back onto my floorboard.
I stared in the rearview mirror, adjusting it. I couldn’t feel good about what I’d done, but it was what was necessary.
Nathan Creswell had already taken two of the four things that mattered most to me, and I’d be damned if he took the only two that remained.
I said I’d do anything to keep Palmer this time, and I meant it.
Anything.
I pulled out of the parking garage and headed in the opposite direction than I’d been intending to. I might be late for work. I needed to make a pit stop in Red River. Thanks to Kat, I knew the perfect place to bury a body.
It was the least I could do for her.