Chapter 15 #2
I turned around to find Teddy in nothing but the sweatpants he’d gone to bed in, his long hair falling in loose waves around his shoulders.
Even now—furious and hurt and feeling like the world’s biggest idiot—I couldn’t help but notice how beautiful he was.
Couldn’t help but notice the swirls of ink covering his skin, my name scarred over his heart.
Teddy’s attention went from my face to the kutte and back again. Whatever he saw made him take a step forward, mouth opening to say something I wasn’t ready to hear.
Before he could speak, his phone erupted from somewhere nearby, the buzzing aggressive and insistent.
He located it on the coffee table and glanced at the screen before silencing it. “My mom. I’ll call her back later.”
The phone immediately started vibrating again.
“Jesus,” Teddy muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose.
A cold knot formed in my stomach. Lucy Riggs had nerves of steel—she’d raised four boys in the MC, held down the fort when Paul was locked up in the eighties, survived raids and lockdowns, and God knew what else.
She wouldn’t be calling unless something was wrong.
I’d learned that over the past 30-plus years of being part of the family. Or formerly part of the family.
Whatever the hell I was now.
“You should get that,” I said, my voice coming out steadier than I felt. Anything to delay the inevitable. Anything to give me time to reassemble the careful walls that had crumbled so spectacularly last night.
I moved to hang the kutte back on its hook, trying to make it seem like I hadn’t been standing there memorizing every patch like they were tea leaves that could tell me our future. “Just answer it. It could be important.”
He hesitated, his gaze flicking between me and the phone like he was trying to decide which crisis to handle first. The phone buzzed again, more insistent somehow.
“Sorry.” Teddy sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Just... give me a minute. If I don’t answer, she’ll just keep calling until I do.”
I nodded, and he grabbed the phone before disappearing back into the bedroom. “Timing is impeccable as usual, Ma,” he drawled, closing the door behind him with a soft click.
Alone again, I smoothed my fingers over the leather one final time before forcing myself to step away.
The smart thing would be to leave it alone.
To pretend I hadn’t seen it, hadn’t understood what it meant.
To finish out the remainder of my stay with grace and dignity, and all the other things I was supposedly good at.
With that in mind, I knelt in front of the hearth and worked on coaxing the fire back to life, eager to have something to focus on besides the weird fluttery feeling in my chest that, for once, I couldn’t blame on AFib.
Through the bedroom door, I could hear the low rumble of Teddy’s voice—too muffled to make out what he was saying, but his tone was reassuring. Seemed whatever crisis Lucy had called about wasn’t much of a crisis at all.
Once the fire was blazing again, I moved into the kitchen and poured myself a cup of coffee, doctoring it with cream and sugar before taking a careful sip.
The rational part of my brain—the part that had gotten me through the past two years—knew I should be happy for him. Proud, even. But the rest of me—the messy, irrational, still-in-love-with-him part—felt like I’d been gutted.
My phone chimed on the counter where I’d left it last night. I wiped my hands on a towel before reaching for it, unsurprised to see a string of messages from Addie and Sky.
The girls were not early risers. Never had been. During breaks from school, they kept what Teddy had always referred to as ‘brunch hours’—lounging around in bed until ten or eleven o’clock in the morning.
But when faced with the possibility of reuniting their divorced parents, they had no trouble getting up before the sun and texting the next phase in the Parent Trap Playbook they’d been running all week.
Sky
morning mama!!
how are things going??
Addie
How’d those gingerbread cookies turn out?
Sky
did dad help?
My fingers hovered over the screen as I tried to figure out what to say. I typed out a response, deleted it, tried again.
Me
They came out great. Your dad’s been a huge help.
Technically, it wasn’t a lie. The cookies had turned out perfectly. And their father had helped me. Multiple times, in fact.
Addie
Did y’all watch The Muppet Christmas Carol like I suggested?
Sky
did dad cry during it???
My face heated, and I nearly dropped my phone at the memory of kneeling before Teddy while Scrooge faced a bleak future with the Ghost of Christmas Future on the TV behind me.
The way he’d groaned my name and dragged his fingers through my hair.
Hardly a story I’d share with my daughters, though I suspected it was exactly what they were after.
Me
He handled it like a champ.
My traitorous brain helpfully supplied the image of Teddy, head tipped back, eyes closed, shuddering with pleasure as I swallowed him down.
Sky
not buying it.
dad’s a secret softie, and nothing will convince me otherwise
Addie
Looks like the storm’s in Minnesota now. How are the roads?
Me
Roads haven’t been plowed yet, and it’s still pretty icy, so looks like we’ll be here through Christmas. How are things with you two?
Addie
Things are good here.
Sky
we’re at the bakery, helping piper make all the things!
she said to tell you hi
can you believe bakers have to be at work when it’s still dark out?
Addie
There’s enough here to feed the entire MC.
Sky
Or dane for a couple of days.
ANYWAYYYY
how are things with dad going?
have y’all talked about what happens after Xmas??
Addie
Maybe you could extend your stay.
If the roads are still bad, I mean.
Sky
yeah!! and you could do new years together
I heard summit ridge does this huge thing with fireworks and food trucks
The messages kept coming, each one landing like a tiny knife between my ribs. They were so excited, so certain that their plan was working. That forcing their parents into close quarters had somehow fixed everything that had broken between us.
Me
We’ll see.
My default was always to say yes. Even if the answer was ninety percent no, I’d perform some kind of emotional sleight of hand—placating them temporarily while hiding the bigger picture.
I stared at the screen a moment longer before starting a new message—a longer one, one that would burst their bubble but felt necessary.
They needed to understand the reality of the situation.
I know you girls meant well with this whole plan, but I need you to understand—
I stopped. Deleted it. Started again.
Your dad and I can be friendly, but that doesn’t mean—
Deleted again. The blinking cursor mocked me with its incompleteness, its inability to capture the impossible situation we’d found ourselves in.
What was I trying to say? That I’d spent two years unsuccessfully trying to figure out who I was without Teddy, only to realize I’d never truly stopped loving him the second I saw his Bronco in the driveway?
That I was standing in his kitchen wearing his shirt and drinking his coffee and already grieving the loss of something I’d never actually had?
That I just learned that while I’d been treading water in Texas, their father had been building a kingdom in Colorado?
That we’d finally, finally talked about Levi, but somehow it had only highlighted everything else we’d never addressed.
The truth was, I didn’t know what to tell the girls.
Didn’t know how to explain that their parent trap had worked too well, in that it had forced us to finally face each other, finally be honest, finally remember what we’d been before grief and exhaustion and all our failures had turned us into strangers.
And none of it mattered.
Because in four days, I was going home.