Chapter Twenty-seven – Not Running Anymore #2
“You met the terms of our deal fair and square, so, yeah, we can start on the ramp. I have to run to the station early to take care of a few things that can’t wait, but I’ll get back as soon as I can, and we can head to the lumberyard and get what we need.”
“Thanks, Dad.” Luca headed for the hallway to the bedrooms.
Akela shot one last glance at our plates before going after the teen.
“It’s okay if Akela stays with me again?” Luca asked
I laughed softly. “I think the charade is over, Luca. I think everyone here knows the dog is more yours than mine.”
He grinned, looking at his dad as if waiting for him to contradict my words.
Cooper just sighed. “Let’s talk about it tomorrow.”
Luca nodded and then headed down the hall, whispering something to Akela we couldn’t hear, but the tone was triumphant.
Cooper wagged his fork at me. “He eats my couch again, and I’m taking yours.” He glanced at my barely touched plate. “Speaking of eating. You gonna finish that or let your stomach wake me up in the middle of the night with another monstrous growl?”
My lips quirked, but I sent a loaded look in the direction of Luca’s room. “Maybe I should take the guest room tonight? What did you even tell Luca about me staying here?”
“I told him there were some problems at your house we needed a specialist to fix and that you’d be staying with us until it was handled.”
“Okay.”
“And then I asked how he felt about you and me dating, about you staying in my room while you were here, and he laughed. He said he could tell from the way we were dancing last night that you were already my girlfriend.” Cooper winced at the word.
“When I said grownups didn’t really call it that, he said whatever we called it, he was cool with it.
He likes you, but I also think he liked the idea of the damn dog being here. ”
He was quiet for a moment. “I’ve never brought a woman to my house when he was with me.
The way Eden had people moving through their lives…
what he saw there…I just didn’t want him to have that with me.
I wanted it to feel like it was a safe spot.
” His gaze locked on mine. “But he already feels safe with you.”
“You both deserve so much better than she gave you.”
Cooper’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “You’re probably wondering why I let him stay with her for so long.”
I shook my head. “She’s his mother. You wanted him to have that. To have her.”
“We hadn’t exactly planned to get pregnant, but I still thought Eden was as excited as I was.
In the last few weeks of the pregnancy, she turned into this miserable human.
I didn’t know what to do. I kept trying to make it better until one night she screamed at me that this was all my fault.
That she hadn’t even wanted the baby. That she’d let her manager and me talk her into keeping him.
When I told her I hadn’t known she’d even debated keeping him, she called me a liar and disappeared for a week. ”
“My mom hated what being pregnant did to her body,” I said. “Some women love it. Some don’t.”
“I was frantic to find her. And when I did…she was never the same. We were never the same. She wanted nothing to do with Luca after he was born. She barely even held him. All she cared about was getting back in shape and her next movie.
I hated that he was so tortured. Hated to see, even now, he was wondering if he could have done something. I reached across the table and squeezed his hand like I had earlier.
“I was just about to suggest a divorce, to let her know I’d take the baby and myself out of her life, when he started walking and talking. Suddenly, she was interested. Suddenly, she couldn’t get enough photos of the two of them together. And I thought…I hoped.” He shook his head.
“I just wanted her to feel the same bond with Luca that I did. I didn’t see the truth at first, just like Luca didn’t, that he’d become nothing but a hook for her socials. I stayed too long. I stayed because—”
“You loved her.”
He shakes his head. “No. I loved the idea of her. I wanted what my parents had, and every time I got fed up enough to talk about leaving, she’d reel me back in. She’d cry, apologize, and say she wanted to be better. That she wanted to be a family.
“What finally freed me was walking into our house and finding my four-year-old son wandering the living room, clutching a bag of cocaine with no adult in sight. When I found Eden, she was in our bed with her latest director.”
The hurt of his betrayal sliced through me. I moved, going to him out of almost pure instinct, sitting in his lap, and trying desperately to give him the same comfort he’d given me just by touching him, holding him.
“She begged me to stay. She was already fighting rumors that the girl-next-door image she was known for was just a mirage, and losing her husband and son in one fell swoop would have been the nail in the coffin. I told her I’d let her walk on any child endangerment charges in exchange for my freedom.
But it was a mistake. I acted like a father, not a cop.
I’d already flushed the cocaine, and I hadn’t taken any pictures, so without any evidence to back me, she used her expensive lawyer and fame to secure a dual custody arrangement. ”
I couldn’t imagine how much he’d beat himself up over that over the years. How much it had to have eaten away at him. I placed a kiss on his palm just like he’d done to me earlier. His eyes were glossy, the pain all but dripping out of him.
“Eight years, Andie.” He closed his eyes, holding back the tears.
“Luca paid the price for eight years because I hadn’t done my job the way I should have done it.
He was forced to bounce between us for eight years.
I looked for every loophole. Looked for every infraction.
But he refused to talk to me about what happened there, and I had nothing to take back to the courts.
“Every time Luca started to complain, and I thought I might actually get him to admit what was going on in her house, she’d do something to reel him back in, just like she used to do with me.
She’d take him on some fancy vacation or hook him up with some famous skater for a session.
And whenever she had to break her promises to him, she’d always time it so it looked as if it was my fault, as if I was the one holding them back from doing all these great things. ”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, kissing his temple, running my hands over his shoulders.
“Then, last year, she left him alone for a week while she went to Hawaii. When it came out, she first tried to blame me. She tried to say I was supposed to have Luca, then said the housekeeper was supposed to have stayed, but Helena had been given the week off to visit her grandkids. I’d talked to Luca every day, but he hadn’t said a word.
He’d been alone for a week…” He choked over the memories.
“I would never have found out if he hadn’t broken his arm doing skateboard tricks in the backyard and called me in tears.
I documented the shit out of it and didn’t even hesitate to take her to court.
I’m still not sure if she would have lost custody completely if it hadn’t come out that he’d been skipping school and giving the drugs her friends had left strewn about the house to his friends at the skate park.
The judge ruled in my favor, the case was sealed, and the media was left in the dark, mostly to protect Luca, but it kept her name clean too.
“Luca was furious that I’d taken him away from her.
Living with me meant he didn’t have easy access to the skate park anymore.
I had to drive him there, and I never left him there alone.
I watched everything he and his so-called, much-older friends were doing, so they stopped wanting to hang with him.
They couldn’t get high with me watching.
He skipped class a few more times, took the bus to the park, and was furious when I’d come drag him home.
We were still struggling to find a new normal when Dad had his heart attack.
Coming here for the summer, getting Luca out of that crowd, ended up feeling like the answer to all my problems.”
I heard the doubt in his voice, as if he still wasn’t sure he’d made the right choices. I cupped his cheek, forcing him to meet my gaze. “It was absolutely the right thing.”
His hands surrounded mine, bringing my knuckles to his mouth and kissing them, but he didn’t say anything. I could feel the torture in him as if it were my own.
“I hate that he grew up seeing her pretend, screwed-up life as the real world.”
“He has you and your parents showing him what real life looks like now. More than that, you’re showing Luca, just like you’re showing me, what real love looks like.
You promised to help me make new memories to layer over all the bad ones.
Let me do the same for you and Luca. Let me help you make beautiful ones where family isn’t a beautiful mirage for either of us but the only reality that matters. ”
He kissed me with a fierceness full of the intense emotions the last twenty-four hours had wrought on both of us.
Fear and anger and hurt and trauma. But it was also a promise, a door opening into the next chapter of our lives where light and hope and love lived, where we could finally stop picking at the scars that marred us and revel in the fact they’d healed. That we were whole and happy and alive.