Chapter Fifteen #3
Maxie bit her lip, and Zac wrapped his arm around her shoulders.
None of it made Roxie feel any better. Billy murmured something to her, but she didn’t hear what it was.
“We couldn’t get you away from him,” Alexis said, her mood darkening. “He’d snarl and snap at anyone who came near. Dex knows; he got a piece of him.”
Their dad pulled back his sleeve to show a scar near his wrist. “I would have gone back in, but I was upsetting him, and I didn’t want him to turn on my kid.”
His kid. Roxie felt tears clog her throat and her eyes.
“The police were called out and then Animal Control,” Dex said, his voice going rough. “And then Social Services.”
He went quiet, and the pain on his face made Roxie look away.
“They deemed us negligent.” Alexis clenched her hands in her lap, and her foot cocked back on its heel. “They saw the way we were living, hand-to-mouth. Our inattention had put you in danger. They didn’t want it to happen again, so they took you away from us. They took you all away.”
Misery ran through Roxie, slicing and dicing. “I was the one to blame.”
“No,” her mother said, cupping her face. “You were a sweet, loving two-year-old. It wasn’t your fault.”
“It was ours,” Dex said, stepping up. “If I’d kept a closer eye on you… If I’d distracted you with a toy or a cookie…”
He let out a grating sound and ran both hands through his hair. His wife caught him and made him sit again. It was obvious that the “what ifs” had been haunting him for years.
“My father, the oh-so-powerful businessman, wouldn’t help.” From the look in Alexis’ eyes, that was a wound that hadn’t healed. “It wasn’t exactly what my parents had wanted, but they thought they’d get me back. They honestly believed that everyone would be better off.”
“We were barely eighteen by then,” Dex said. “There wasn’t anything we could do. We wanted our daughters, but we couldn’t get you back. We were in too much trouble ourselves.”
The system. Roxie’s hands squeezed into fists.
“It about killed us losing you like that,” Alexis said, her throat thick.
And Roxie had thought she’d had it bad.
Her mom and dad took a moment, their misery like a dark cloak around them. She realized then why Roux had been so cautious. These two couldn’t have borne any more bad news; they didn’t deserve it.
Alexis wiped her eyes, and Maxie passed her a tissue. She smiled gratefully. “Please tell us you were adopted by good families.”
“So, you know we were separated?” Lexie said. Her voice sounded funny, too, and she was leaning into Cam.
Dex caught his fresh tumbler of bourbon.
“We found out that much. We were told that they were having trouble placing you together. Allie didn’t want you separated, but I didn’t want you growing up in the system.
In the end, we had no say in the matter.
We were facing charges. Nobody would listen to us.
We eventually signed away our parental rights. ”
Lexie cleared her throat. “I was adopted by the Underhill family and grew up in East Cobalt. They treated me well.”
With fancy clothes and material belongings, Roxie thought resentfully. Then her gaze landed on Blaire, and she let it go. And love. Dysfunctional as the Underhills were, there’d been love in that household.
Maxie clasped her hands together atop the table and leaned forward. “I grew up an only child in Indigo Falls, but my parents died when I was seven. My grandmother raised me.”
Alexis inhaled sharply.
“Don’t be sad. I loved them all with my whole heart, and I’ve had a very happy life.” Maxie glanced back at Zac. “Now it’s even happier.”
When her parents turned to look at her, Roxie froze.
She felt absolutely sick. For years, she’d dreamt of this moment where she could throw back all the hurt and guilt on the parents who’d abandoned her.
But that wasn’t what had happened. They’d been just like her.
She understood what they’d gone through better than anyone.
And she couldn’t bear to hurt them.
It was Roux who cleared his throat. “Roxie grew up in foster care.”
Dex jerked as if he’d just taken a bullet. His body tensed, and his fist hit the table. “No.”
Roux looked at him forlornly.
Roxie couldn’t hold her dad’s gaze when he turned to her.
“No!” he said more forcefully, as if that could turn back time. “You were adopted. They told us you’d all been placed. It was the only thing that made us back off.”
Roxie’s foot rocked nervously on its heel. “It didn’t work out for me.”
“God,” he said, leaning forward and bracing his elbows against the table. He looked like he might get sick. Alexis rubbed her husband’s back.
“If I’d known, I would have come to get you, baby,” he said, his voice like sandpaper. “I would have stolen you away and we would have run. The law be damned.”
Alexis was openly crying again, and this time not from joy. “We were told that you were better off.”
That it had been for the best.
Roxie took a deep breath that opened her lungs. Reaching past the pain, she latched onto the one thing, the one person, who had always pulled her through. She moved onto Billy’s lap, and he wrapped his arms around her tightly. She leaned into him, needing his strength.
“I don’t regret it,” she said, her voice wavering. “That’s where Billy and I met. I was sixteen when we got married, too.”
Her parents looked at Billy sharply, as if seeing him clearly for the first time—only there was no rejection there. No anger or judgment. There was only understanding, acceptance, and love for the man who’d been at their daughter’s side when they couldn’t be.
Roxie felt the way Billy’s body tensed. A gruff sound left his throat, and, in that instant, she loved her parents.
For loving him.
Maxie pushed her hair back, hooking it behind her ears. “We all went our separate ways, and it’s only recently that we found one another. Roxie put up a billboard for this bar and it made us aware each other was out there.”
“That’s what brought me here, too,” Roux said. “You have Mom’s smile.”
Really? Roxie looked at her mom. It was the one thing she’d remembered vividly about her mother, her smiling down at her with those loving eyes. Did they have the same smile?
“We’ve been looking for you, too,” Lexie said excitedly. “Cam hired a detective, Zac’s been using his law enforcement connections, and Roxie and Billy have been searching online. We just weren’t able to make much progress. We were told the adoptions were closed.”
“Closed?” Alexis said. She looked at her husband sharply. “We never asked for that.”
“But who knows what they had us sign?” Dex’s expression turned stormy. “That bastard.”
Alexis’ chest rose and fell. “I’ll never speak to him again.”
“You’d have to start first.”
Okay, her grandfather sounded like a real piece of work; only one thing was still bothering Roxie.
The pieces had started to come together in her head.
Roux had been the last loop. He was the one that Ingrid had seen in her vision.
He’d come into the bar after the new moon.
It had been the night everything had gone down at The Ruckus with the police and Landers.
Yet he’d followed the billboard. Who had placed the phone call to Carol the clerk? Had that been a false lead? “Did any of you recently contact Social Services, looking for us?”
“Not lately,” her dad said. “We’ve tried a few times but ran into so many brick walls. It would put us into a dark place, and that wasn’t fair to your brothers.”
“Roux?” Roxie asked.
“It wasn’t me.”
She frowned. Had her gut been wrong? Had that been someone looking for another family entirely?
“It was me.”
Everyone turned to look at the youngest person at the table. Maddox rubbed the back of his neck, looking uncomfortable. “What? It’s been a mystery in our household forever. I wanted to know what happened to my sisters, too.”
Maxie grinned and looped her arm around him. “Well, now you do.”
Roxie clapped her hands. “Now we all know!”
Painful as it had been to hear, it was a weight off her shoulders. She’d wanted answers, but the ones she’d gotten hadn’t been anything like she’d expected. Her parents weren’t bad people. They hadn’t given their daughters up because they hadn’t cared.
Kids in foster care often wondered if they were to blame for their situations, but she hadn’t been put into the system because she’d been bad or because she’d been a burden.
She’d had the childhood she’d had because her parents had fallen too deeply in love at too young an age.
Nobody had helped them or believed in that love—except the two of them.
And that made her misty-eyed, happy, and so damn free of the anger and self-doubt that had hung over her head for years.
The conversation at the table picked up again as more questions were asked. Maxie pulled the sketch their mother had drawn out of her purse, and they found out she was an illustrator for children’s books. Their father had gone into the military and was now a self-defense instructor.
That made everyone laugh when they looked at the bouncer.
“Don’t feel bad, Skeeter,” Zac said. “You didn’t stand a chance.”
Roxie got up to go to the bar. Her emotions had been through the wringer. She just wanted to concentrate on the good side of life for a while.
She felt someone come to stand behind her, and she relaxed back against a big, warm body. Talk about the good side of life. “Billy,” she sighed.
He wrapped his arms around her waist as she poured Maddox another root beer. “How are you doing?”
“I’m wiped.” Emotionally, physically, and mentally.
“Better than just getting answers?”
She stilled. That was what she’d always said, wasn’t it? That she just wanted answers.
“Much better.” She looked at the table packed with so many people who were important to her, people she’d known forever, and people she’d only begun to know again.
She laid her hand over his at her waist. “I’m sorry your reunion with your mom didn’t go better.”
He inhaled and his chest pressed against her back. “I want you to meet her. We’ve been… talking.”
“I’d like that,” she whispered. The woman was troubled, but she’d given her the love of her life. “She’s an important part of you. You shouldn’t have to deal with her situation on your own.”
Billy turned her around to face him. His green gaze was inquisitive as it swept over her face. “You didn’t correct me when I introduced myself as your husband.”
Roxie shrugged. “Details.”
“A pretty big one.”
She traced the tattoo on his arm. “Well, I was hoping we were making our way back to that.”
“Like when?”
She pushed at his shoulder. “Billy.”
“Today?” he kept going.
She cocked her head. “Come on.”
He caught her chin. “I never signed those papers, Roxie.”
“Wha… What?”
“I’ve never been your ex.”
“But… Billy! All these years?”
He crowded her closer to the bar. “I was pissed off when I received them, so I didn’t sign them out of stubbornness. They sat there, and you never followed up. When I finally went to sign them, I couldn’t. Because I loved you.”
He caught her chin. “I always have, and I always will.”
“So, I’m an old married woman?”
He winced. “Technically…”
“Talk about big details.” She glared at him, but then bounced up on her toes to kiss him.
The kiss cut through all the confusion and clutter until Roxie realized they weren’t even there anymore. She had all the answers she needed, and she had the man she loved.
Wrapping her arms around his neck, she wiggled closer, cranking the temperature of the kiss higher until someone whistled.
She was grinning when she looked over Billy’s shoulder. Everyone at the table was watching them. Charlie and Skeeter, Lexie and Cam, Maxie and Zac, her parents, her brothers, and even Blaire.
Three little lost girls had found their way home.
“Maxie, crank the music up on that jukebox. Lexie, put on your dancing shoes.” Grinning like a devil, Roxie pumped her arm and let out a “whoop, whoop!”
It was time to get the party started for real.
This place was about to see the biggest ruckus ever.
~The End~