25. Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Five
Mia
L aura stayed by the door until it had clicked shut and Tyler was completely gone. “If you want to leave here, I can have us out and on our way in twenty minutes. I can help you escape.”
“Oh, yeah?” A bitter chuckle escaped. “And where would you be taking me? To some lawyers? For the Kenny Connors’ trial, perhaps? ’Cause I hear I’ve been summoned for a command performance.” I wasn’t dragging Tyler and Victoria into the mess my mother was creating. Not a chance.
“The only person who knows—”
“Yep. Taryn.” I shook with what I told myself was anger. “I am not testifying at the trial or anywhere else. Do you understand me? I need you to get me out of it.”
“I’ve been trying to do that.” Laura crossed her arms. “There are very few options since our primary residence is Nashville and the whole debacle is happening in Nashville.”
“So, change our primary residence. We own more than one house.”
“I would have needed to do that before they served the subpoena. It’s too late now. Trust me, I don’t want you there either,” Laura muttered. “Flee the country. That’s it. But you’d probably never be able to come back. ”
Never be able to come back? Tyler. The baby. I glanced toward the bassinet. Either price was high. On one hand, I’d have to admit to the world what had happened with Kenny and how we’d handled it; and on the other, I’d have no choice, no chance at a family with Tyler.
“What will people think of me?” I twisted my hands in my lap and wished I’d let Tyler stay.
“That you were a fifteen-year-old girl led astray by, at the time, a forty-something man.” Laura sank into the nearest chair.
Led astray. She still didn’t understand. I’d admitted I hadn’t told Kenny no. At the time, that had felt like the most important part. The older I got, the more I realized what wasn’t said mattered just as much, and I’d never said yes. Of course, his hand over my mouth had prevented me from saying much of anything.
“Why don’t we go away for a few days, let the lawyers straighten things out? You’ve always wanted to go to Bali. Maybe now is the time. You’re taking a break. Why not make it a vacation? We’ll give them a chance to find a loophole.”
“You want me to go to Bali?” The words were stiff, foreign.
“Tyler can look after the baby.” Laura held my gaze. “You hid the pregnancy. Not just from me. As far as I can tell, you hid it from pretty much everyone. The Mia I know would have been shouting it from the rooftops if she was sure she wanted it, if she was sure she was making the right decision. You don’t do things you love quietly.”
I swallowed. It was eerily accurate. The baby made a noise, and I drew the bassinet closer. The right thing to do was impossible to know.
“I’m not going to Bali.” No matter what, I couldn’t take away the option of being with Victoria and Tyler, not until I was sure I didn’t want it. Right now, I wasn’t sure of much .
“Somewhere else, then? Maldives? Cape Verde? Name the place, and I’ll book the tickets.”
“I want to see the subpoena.” If Laura really understood how difficult it would be to talk about what happened in Kenny’s office, this push to escape would be loving and unexpected. Instead, it felt like she was trying to rip me from Tyler, from here, from the life I built without her.
If Tyler were in my shoes, I knew what he’d do. He wasn’t a runner. Vanishing would be off the table. Leaving wouldn’t be the right thing to do in any scenario. Of course, Tyler would have done more to stop Kenny in the first place. My mother’s affirmation that at least we were safe wouldn’t have been enough.
People would know I’d stood by and let more girls get hurt. I was party to other girls being manipulated, allowed them to feel worthless, less than. The realization caused my stomach to twist.
I imagined Tyler standing beside me, sliding his hand into mine. I wanted to bottle his strength and use it like an elixir for what was to come. Someone like him wanting to be with me was an inoculation against the rest of the world’s vitriol. No one else knew me like he did. If he saw value in me beyond my voice, beyond my ability to entertain a crowd, maybe it was really there.
Victoria stirred, and I laid a gentle hand on the mound of blankets. Good mothers slew beasts. Threw open the closet doors and banished the things that went bump in the night. Letting the Kenny Connors of the world win meant I was leaving them for my daughter’s generation. These things just happen wasn’t good enough anymore, should never have been okay in the first place.
“The subpoena, Mother. ”
Laura rummaged around her purse and tugged a folded envelope from the depths. Lips pursed, she handed it over.
“I have to appear in four days.” A cold sweat broke out across my body as I scanned the document. “Four days! When did you get this?”
“A little while ago.” Laura shifted in her seat.
“How long ago?”
“Does it matter? I was working on getting you out of it. When it seemed like I might not be able to, I came here. I certainly wasn’t expecting to find you barefoot and pregnant.”
“I had shoes on, nice ones too.” I tossed the subpoena on the bed and rubbed my cheeks. What a disaster. Today would never have been my favorite day, or I never expected it to be. But Laura’s arrival, the subpoena, realizing I really, truly loved both Tyler and our baby, and now having to figure out where all the pieces went in the next three days was too much.
“Well, you’d better be wearing spectacular shoes when you waltz into that appointment,” Laura nodded toward my expanded tummy, “’cause that belly won’t be gone by then. People will be talking. We can only hope it’s about your shoes.”
Understanding dawned, and tears pooled in my eyes. I hated crying in front of her. I should have let Tyler stay. “The press will hound Tyler.” All the months of hiding the pregnancy had come to this. Once again, Kenny would be a black mark stamped on my life.
“After all of your social media bragging about your Pretty Boy, there’s little question about the father, is there?”
Bali was looking more appealing. If I went, I could stop the press from going after Tyler, from caring about Victoria’s existence .
I stared at my hands in my lap and wished I could quiet all the churning thoughts. “I need to be alone while I figure out what I want to do, okay? Just give me a bit of time.”
Tyler paused in the doorway, and my heart kicked at the sight of him. Love for him flooded me, and rather than fighting it, I let it rise and flow. I’d have plenty of time to fight that tide later. The papers were in his hand, and I wondered if Katie had helped him fill them out. How long would it take Katie to weasel into my place?
“Can you tell me what’s going on now?” He ran his free hand through his hair, and then came to stare into the bassinet where Victoria lay sleeping.
“I’ve been subpoenaed for a deposition in the Kenny Connors case.” Admitting that was the easy part. The rest of this was going to be hard. I’d talked to the lawyer we’d hired. The case wasn’t in court yet. If I broke things off with Tyler now, I might be able to protect him from the onslaught, from the disaster of my life careening around the corner.
“I figured it had something to do with him.” He took a deep breath. “When do you have to go?”
“I have to present myself in four days.”
“Four days?” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Four days.”
“I’m going to…I’m going to head back to Nashville with my mom as soon as I’m out of the hospital. I can’t fly, so we have to drive.” My chin wobbled, and I prayed I could keep it to gether.
“As soon as you’re out of the hospital?” He sank into the chair beside my bed, but his gaze was focused on Victoria, not on me. “And after…will you come back?”
This was the hard part, the words I dreaded saying. “I don’t know.”
His jaw clenched, and it took a moment for him to respond. “I want you to. Selfish or not, I want you. I want this life we’ve built together.”
A sob slipped out, and he dropped the papers on the bed, his arms circling me, his lips in my hair.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I cried.
“Come back to us, Mia. We can figure the rest out.”
“I’m a mess, and I don’t just mean because I gave birth. I mean, like, seriously fucked up.”
“You’re not—”
“I am.” I pulled back from him and took a shuddering breath. “You know how I know? ’Cause for the last, like, four months I have been convincing myself that the baby was in love with you. Not me. The baby . Because if I was the one in love with you, I didn’t know how I would ever be able to leave.” My voice cracked. “I don’t want to leave, but I can’t stay.”
“Why can’t you stay? Beyond the court case, why can’t you?” His voice was rough, and he averted his gaze.
“I don’t know how to be a mom. I don’t. I don’t even know if I want to be one. And…and I can’t screw up her life or your life while I figure it out. I won’t.” When I looked up, he was staring down at me.
I could have hidden the truth behind my work. For almost nine months, I’d been telling Tyler I’d never stay, so he might have believed I wanted my old lifestyle more. But lying to him felt wrong. My love for Tyler was unequivocal, visceral, the realest thing I’d ever experienced, greater than any stage, any performance, any song I’d ever written or heard. When I looked at Victoria, thought of her, held her, I loved her, too. They deserved the best version of me, and that person wouldn’t exist for months, possibly years. Kenny’s case would detonate, shrapnel sinking into all of them, destroying everything.
“Will you stay with me one last night before you leave? I don’t…I don’t want this hospital room to be goodbye.” His voice hitched. “I don’t want this to be goodbye at all. I love you. I love you, Mia.”
“I love you, too.” Another sob almost consumed the words. “But I just don’t know if I can be good for you, good for her.”
“What did Laura say to you? What did she say?” His hand gripped mine. “Nobody’s perfect. We all make mistakes. We’re both going to make mistakes. You’re good for both of us. You are.”
“But I don’t feel like I am.” My voice was thick with tears, my throat burning from holding back the sobs. I wanted to stay with him, stitch together the pattern of our lives.
Victoria deserved a mother who wanted to be a mom, who knew how to be a parent. If only I hadn’t spent nine months wishing for a different outcome, maybe I’d have some of these answers, or I’d at least have considered the questions. Figuring out what I wanted was too much, and I was out of time.
It turned out, sticking my head in the sand wasn’t the answer at all to motherhood or to what had happened with Kenny.
“I wish I could say it enough times that you’d believe me, that I could make you believe me,” he said.
“I wish it was that simple too. ”
He let go of my hand and went to my bag, rifling through it. At last, he pulled out a lollipop, ripped off the wrapper, and stared at it for a moment. “Some days, this is a poor substitute for a cigarette.”
“Don’t start smoking again.” Through my tears, I smiled. “It’s gross. I love the way you smell—like candy.”
“I hate her for what she’s done to you, the way she’s manipulated you.” He twirled the lollipop, not putting it into his mouth. “You’re incredible, and the only time she lets you feel that way is when you’re dancing to the tune she plays.”
Maybe that was true. For the last few years, the one person I trusted and had turned to in a crisis had been my mother. “My relationship with her is all I’ve known.” I drew my hair around to rest on my shoulder. “I don’t think I’ll be a good mom.”
“You’re not like her.” He squeezed my hand.
I might not be like her, but I’d been raised by her. When I was cornered, I bit back like Laura, willing to say or do whatever I needed to get out of a jam, to come out on top. There was too much of my mom in me to be sure I wouldn’t eventually slip into my mother’s shoes. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t imagine changing my mindset was as easy as Tyler made it seem. Just don’t be like her. Simple. Impossible. Half the time when I was acting like Laura, I couldn’t see it until afterward.
Even if I was sure I wanted to be a mother, sure I could overcome my upbringing to do better for Victoria, there was still Kenny’s trial looming. I didn’t want to drag Tyler and Victoria into this version of the spotlight. The press coverage would be dirty and ugly and filled with my most shameful moments.
“There’s no version of you I don’t love.” He peered down, his cognac eyes intense. “I’ve seen every side of you in the last few months. I love all of them. I don’t know if I’m being fair saying these things to you. You’ve been very clear from the start about where we were headed.” He searched my expression. “But I’ve seen what regret looks like—desperate and ugly. I don’t want that for you. I don’t want it for me. So, I’m putting everything out there. Whatever is happening with you, I want to be part of it. I don’t care how messy the situation is. I don’t care how hard our life is.”
When I met his sincere gaze, my resolve faltered. He’d stand beside me. Hell, he’d probably carry me on his back like an albatross for the rest of our lives if I asked. There was no question Tyler was the kind of man any woman would want in her life. Without Victoria, I’d stay with him, let the madness consume us. I loved our daughter too much to risk everyone’s happiness and well-being.
“Can I think about it?” Tears were pooling in my eyes, slipping down my cheeks. There’d be no more thinking. I’d made my decision.
His shoulders sagged, and he nodded. “Yeah, of course.”
“But when we’re released, I want to go home with you. If that’s okay?” One last time.
He’d been focused on the baby, and at the tremble in my voice, he smoothed down my hair. “You’ll always have a home with me and Victoria. You’ll always be welcome. You never have to ask.” His voice cracked, and he bent to pick up the baby.