Chapter Forty-one – Not a Moment Too Soon
Chapter Forty-one
Cooper
NOT A MOMENT TOO SOON
Performed by Tim McGraw
When I woke, I was alone in my childhood bedroom. Andie’s spot next to me was no longer warm, meaning she’d been gone for a while. It pissed me off that I hadn’t noticed her leave.
My bare feet hit the wood floor, and I hissed at the cold.
I tugged on an old pair of sweats from the dresser, slid on a pair of socks, and grabbed a UCLA sweatshirt from the closet that was nearly a decade older than my son.
The lull of voices coming from the kitchen sent me in that direction. I found my parents huddled together, coffee cups in hand, staring out the sliding glass door into the backyard.
I joined them, heart soaring at the sight before me.
Andie and Luca were rolling large, round balls in the snow.
They’d already built two snowmen and were working on a third.
Akela and Bowie were racing around them in circles, kicking up powdery flakes.
Andie was in more of my mom’s clothes, the jacket well-worn.
I hated, with a ferocity that continued to surprise me, that it wasn’t my coat on her body.
But as neither of us would ever be able to wear my old leather one again, I’d just have to make sure she inherited a different one of my jackets.
“How are you holding up?” My dad’s voice brought me out of my reverie with a jolt.
His eyes dripped with concern, but his lips were twitching.
When Dad showed up at the station yesterday, he’d helped me cut through the red tape and handoff of the entire drug investigation to the feds like he’d never left the force. Watching him work made it easy to forget he ever had.
By the time I got into an interrogation room with Randy, he was coming off a high and already cracking.
He gave up everything—meeting Marla this summer while selling her the speedball she used to keep her weight down, how she’d brokered the deal with her aunt, and how Muirgen had funded the lab while planning to use her network to distribute.
When Muirgen found out he and the Suttons were selling locally, she’d been furious and told them to stop. They hadn’t. The fact Ralph had been dealing to his classmates to pay for a lift kit on his truck was disgusting. The fact kids had died for something so pointless was heartbreaking.
When asked where the Suttons were, Randy didn’t even hesitate to give them up, pointing to a campground east of town. Now they were all behind bars.
The charges would come, for the dead teens, for the drugs, and for Sookie. But the rest of the case—the cleanup, Muirgen’s murder, the ties to her operation in Vegas, and any deals to be made with the FBI and DOJ—was out of my hands now. It all belonged to Special Agent Hannigan.
The only thing I still wasn’t sure about was how Randy had known we were coming the day we’d raided the cabin and the pizza had still been warm.
Cleaver had taken it as a personal mission to find out how he’d known we were coming, and I decided the deputy was just the man to figure it out.
He’d more than earned a chance to head it up in my book.
It left me with nothing pressing on my desk and time I could spend where it mattered.
With Andie. With Luca. With my family.
“I’m good. Better than good,” I told my dad.
Andie’s laugh drew my gaze back outside to where Akela had his paws on her shoulders and was licking her face—the face I loved and had hoped to kiss myself this morning. I was now jealous of a dog.
“I’m sorry for what she’s been through,” my mom’s voice was soft and anguished.
After we’d made love, hot and furious and then slow and languid, last night, Andie had told me what had happened with Hannigan and how my mother had stayed at her side through it all.
My heart tugged, wishing I’d been the one who’d been here but feeling so damn lucky I had parents like mine.
People who loved with all of themselves and never held back.
For so long after Eden’s betrayals, I’d thought I’d never be like them again, but Andie had returned to me those pieces of myself I thought I’d lost.
“She’s one of the bravest, most resilient people I’ve ever met in my life,” I said softly, not removing my gaze from the woman I loved playing with my son and the dogs. Light all but poured out of her. It was as if nothing bad had touched her yesterday.
None of us said anything for a few moments as we watched the joyful scene.
Finally, Mom twined her arm with mine, leaned her head against my shoulder, and said, “I’ll have your grandmother’s engagement ring cleaned so you can give it to her.”
I looked down in surprise. Since I was a teenager, Mom had told me she was saving the ring for whomever I married.
It had long been a contention between my sister and me.
But when I’d told my parents I was going to propose to Eden, Mom hadn’t mentioned the ring, and I hadn’t asked for it.
I’d known, even before Eden had revealed her true self, there was no way in hell she wanted a ring that had belonged to someone else.
My mother, offering it up now without even a hint of hesitation, said more about her feelings for Andie than any words she could have offered.
Andie would love the ring, cherish it because of its ties to my family.
She wanted to belong to us, and this would prove to her it wasn’t only me, but my parents, who believed she was ours.
Those damn tears that had leaked out last night threatened again.
I ground my teeth together to hold them back.
When my phone rang and I pulled it out to see Eden’s name on the screen, I cringed. I had no desire to deal with her today, to let her break into the peace and love I’d found, but putting her off would only infuriate her.
“Eden.”
My parents’ brows rose.
“I want to speak to my son. He isn’t answering.”
“We’ve had a lot happen here.” I inhaled a breath, trying to decide how to approach what had happened, and then just told her the simple facts. He’d interrupted an attack on Andie, but he was fine, and she’d protected him.
I was surprised her voice was shaky when she asked, “Is he okay?”
I watched as Luca laughed at Akela bounding through the snowball he’d just rolled. “Yes. He’s good. He’s amazing. As always. Right this minute he’s laughing and playing with the dog. He and Andie are building a snowman. He’s—”
“I want to talk to him. Right now.”
I opened the slider and hollered out, “Luc, your mom needs to talk to you.”
His smile disappeared. His shoulders slumped, but he came bounding up the porch steps to take the phone from me.
“Mom.”
I couldn’t hear what she said, but it took his sullen look and turned it furious.
“No, Mom. I don’t want to come live with you. I’m happy here. I’ve got friends. I’ve got Grams and Pops. I’ve got a dog you’d hate. I have Dad and Andie. I finally feel like I’m wanted and loved—”
She cut him off. He listened, throat bobbing, face softening.
“You do?” He rubbed a hand over his chin.
“I don’t know. We don’t say it often. But I love you too.
” Then whatever she said next brought back his fury.
“Go ahead and try. I’ll just tell the judge I want to be here.
I’m thirteen. He’ll listen to me—” His face turned red as she interrupted him once more.
“Well, if you want the whole truth to come out, then you’ll have to tell the piece about me breaking and entering, because that was how I got involved to begin with.
I broke into her house. How would that look on your social media page?
Or how about I just post on my accounts about the time you left me alone for a week while you went off to Hawaii to screw your director, and I broke my arm.
Or how about the fact the same director was married and I had to go to school with his son who—”
I grabbed the phone from him, put it on speaker, and said, “Look, everyone just needs to calm down.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down, Cooper. My son was almost killed on your watch.”
The fear I’d felt yesterday, walking into Andie’s house and seeing Luca with a gun aimed in his direction, hit me all over again. A fierce stab that tore through my soul.
“You’re right. He was. But the situation has been contained.”
“Contained,” she laughed. “So now you get to keep your little bimbo and—”
“Don’t call her that!” Luca snarled.
To both our surprise, Eden started crying. “I just… I just want you to be okay.”
“If that’s true, Mom… If you really want me to be okay, then you’ll let me stay with Dad. Let me stay here. This is where I want to be. This is the happiest I’ve been in a really long time.”
It tore at me that my thirteen-year-old knew enough about what being unhappy was like that he could tell the difference. I couldn’t speak, so I simply wrapped my arms around my son’s shoulders, pulled him to me, and kissed his temple.
Eden sniffled on the other end. “I miss you. I miss all the fun we had together.”
Luc’s back stiffened. “I’m not a social media hook, Mom.”
“What? Of course not,” Eden’s voice went cold. “Why would you say that? Is that what your father has been telling you? That I just want you for my engagement numbers? That isn’t true. I just told you. I miss you. I love you.”
“If you really love Luca, Eden, you’ll want what’s best for him. And what’s best for him is being here in Swift Rivers with us.” I jerked around as my mom tsked behind us, her face as red as Luca’s.
Eden didn’t miss the sound. “Oh great, now I’m on speakerphone with the entire Wylee clan.
I’m hanging up. If this is what you want, Luca, fine.
But don’t come whining to me when you end up miserable, lose your entire following because you can’t post any more skateboarding videos, and then want to come back to LA.
Just remember, you made this choice, and I tried to stop it. ”
The phone went dead.
Outside, Andie came running up the steps with the dogs on her tail, snow flying, a smile on her face. She slid the glass door open. “Hey, is Luc coming back out?”