Page 1 of Finding You

Chapter One

DALLAS

Dallas was a fixer. He rarely met a problem he couldn’t solve with either a few clever words or a fat roll of duct tape, and he liked having that role in everyone’s life. It made him feel sort of…worthy. Accepted. Needed.

It was also probably one of the main reasons Katie hated him, apart from the fact that his sex drive was low. He knew that part was why she’d been driven to another man’s dick—so to speak. He sure as shit couldn’t fix that. He tried. Doctors, therapists, medications had done nothing.

And the fact that he couldn’t make himself better had been plaguing him since the divorce.

He’d tried with her when it happened. He didn’t rush off and leave. He offered mediation and couples therapy to see if they could make their little family work. Instead of being reasonable, she laughed in his face and told him if he was smart, he’d call a lawyer and get papers filed before she did.

It was the one time he took her advice without question.

It hadn’t done much for him, of course. His lawyer was cheap because he was a broke-ass elementary school teacher who used what was left of his measly life savings to pay for the retainer. It got him weekend custody and every other Thursday with Audra, which was killing him.

That wasn’t how he’d wanted to start off his life as a dad. He’d expected sleepless nights and 2:00 a.m. feedings and a lot of shitty diapers and tons of spit-up. He hadn’t expected to be barred from the delivery room. He hadn’t expected to be the fourth person to hold his child after she’d been born.

But Katie had never really been kind. It was something he was coming to accept about his past. He’d put blinders on because he just wanted to be happy. He wanted a family. He wanted to be everything his parents weren’t.

They’d divorced when Bronx was seventeen and he was five, and they both wanted to go find themselves, which left tiny Dallas on his own both emotionally and physically. Bronx became the unofficial caregiver for his little brother. He didn’t have any regrets, of course. Bronx was a good kid who’d turned into an even better man. Dallas had his single dads group to get him by, but Bronx was the only one he’d ever let close when he was actually falling apart.

Once upon a time, Bronx had been wiping up Dallas’s childhood snot. Years later, Bronx was wiping his drunk-ass face from vomit because he had never been able to hold his liquor.

Dallas eventually pulled it together though, which was just in time for Bronx’s life to fall apart. Right now, Dallas was a four-hour flight from home, sitting on his brother’s back deck while they stared off into the distance, his brother existential crisising all over the place. His marriage was over, and he hadn’t seen it coming.

Bronx and his son had been out of town for Lucas’s goalball tournament and had returned home to half the house empty and no note. For a moment, Bronx told him, he’d panicked and thought something happened to Jules.

Bronx had been halfway through dialing 9-1-1 when Lucas had turned to him and sighed out quietly, “He’s gone, Pop. He left us.”

Apparently, Lucas had seen the signs. Bronx had not. The irony of that was lost on no one.

“Have you talked to him this week at all?” Dallas asked into the silence between them.

Bronx shook his head and let his head fall back against the chair. “No. He answered once when Lucas called him, but he was a fucking shithead about it. Lukie ended up yelling at him and throwing his phone across the room. Shattered the screen to hell. He asked me to change his number when we picked up his new one, but I’m not ready for him to cut Jules off like that yet.”

Dallas passed a hand down his face. He understood why Lucas was hurting so much. His nephew was already in his hormonal teenage phase. The kid didn’t need a dad pulling a disappearing act on him.

“So what now?”

Bronx snorted and lifted a brow at him. “I mean, you’re the expert on divorce.”

Grimacing, Dallas flipped him the bird. “Thanks, asshole. I meant, what do you need?”

“The truth?”

“Always. Please,” Dallas added. He wasn’t normally so polite with Bronx, but right then, he needed to be.

“The truth is, I’m fucked. My practice is still new, so my pay sucks. I can’t afford this place on my own, and Jules made it really clear he wasn’t interested in helping us out. I can get him on child support and alimony, but that’s not going to cover the mortgage plus everything else Luke and I need to survive here.”

Bronx had been living a very expensive life. Jules had come from money, and he was unapologetic about the way he spent it. Dallas had always been a little worried, considering Bronx was living above his own personal means, and he was still fresh from graduating veterinary school.

The adjustment would be painful for both Bronx and his son. And there was little Dallas could do to offer help on his teaching salary.

“Do you have any idea what you’re going to do about it? Will you fight him for more?” Dallas asked.

“No. I’m going to be the shittiest father in the world and sell the house and move.” Bronx rubbed his hands down his face, looking devastated. “And I think I’m going to take you up on your offer to move closer.”

In any other circumstances, Dallas would have told him that taking his kid out of his school and making him start over somewhere new didn’t make him a shitty father. And even in this case, it didn’t. But it was complicated because Lucas had been attending the same school for the blind since he was in pre-K.

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