Page 18 of Mace

“Are you sure that it’s a good idea to tell him right now? What if he decides not to help us anymore?” Mace asked. Brooke’s father was investigating Julie, and he had to admit he was grateful for the help. Brooke had lied to him and told him that it was for another case that she was working on, but Mace could tell from the guy’s tone that he didn’t believe her. Mace thought for sure that once she told her father that she was at a safehouse, because there was a threat to her life due to her working on Mace’s case, her father would write her off for good, but he didn’t.

“He’s going to find out sooner or later,” she insisted. He knew that when Brooke got that cute, stubborn look on her face, she wasn’t going to give in. It was one of the things that he loved most about her.

“Can’t we just wait for the baby to actually get here and then break the news to him?” Mace worried that her father would go off like a loose cannon and upset Brooke and that was the last thing she needed. All the stress she was under couldn’t be good for the baby.

Brooke giggled, “No, we can’t wait until he or she gets here. I thought that you weren’t afraid of anything,” she said.

“I’m not afraid of your father, honey,” Mace insisted, “I’m worried about him upsetting you or stressing you out. That wouldn’t be good for the baby.”

“We’ve only just found out about the baby, Mace,” she said. “I’m sure that it’s fine for me to have a little bit of stress in my life. Besides, I need to know if he’s found out anything about Julie’s past that might help us prove that she killed Reece. How about I promise not to get stressed out while talking to my father, and you call your father to fill him in on things?” Mace groaned and Brooke held up her hand as if stopping him from having a full-blown fit. “Before you get pissy about calling him, I promised that we’d keep him in the loop, and we haven’t called him once in the past two months that we’ve been here.”

“Yeah, well, I never promised to keep him in the loop. If you want to update him, go for it, but I’m out. You have no idea what it was like to grow up without a father. Kids used to make fun of me for living with my grandmother, but I learned to ignore them. Finding out that my father not only had another kid but also kept tabs on me, pisses me off, Brooke. I won’t talk to him.”

“Mace,” she breathed. Whenever she started a sentence with his name, he knew that he was in trouble. “We are going to have a baby, and while neither of our fathers are perfect, we still need to tell them about him or her. I don’t want our baby to start out in this world with his or her parents hating their fathers. Please, do it for me,” she begged. Jesus, Brooke knew that he’d do just about anything for her, and she was right.

“Fine,” he grumbled, “I’ll call James and fill him in on the case, and I’ll even tell him about the baby, but I still don’t want him to be a part of our lives. My kid doesn’t need to be disappointed by her grandfather like I was. He or she will have better than James Cooper.”

“Well, calling James is at least a step in the right direction,” she said. She picked up his cell phone from the kitchen table and handed it to him. Mace groaned one last time and took it from her as he headed out of the kitchen.

Finding out that he was going to be a father should have been a joyous occasion; instead, it had turned out to be a crap shoot and now, he was going to have to deal with the father who abandoned him.

Mace knew that he was making a giant fucking mistake when he agreed to call his so-called father. He knew that James would say whatever he needed to in order to get Mace to believe that he was truly sorry, but there was nothing that could be said that would make him believe his old man.

Mace remembered growing up without James in his life. Not only did the other school kids make fun of him, but he also had to watch his grandmother struggle to put food on the table for the two of them. Some nights, she would go without dinner so that he could eat.

As soon as Mace was fourteen, he found a place that would hire him after school, trying to help his grandmother out the best that he could. She hated the idea of her grandson having to help her out and told him so almost every night that he came home late and hit the books to study. He was a good student back then, but things changed quickly after his grandmother got sick. He had trouble working, taking care of her, and going to school—so he gave up school. At the time, he felt like it was a good idea, but looking back, it wasn’t the best. He got into trouble with the law and by the time that he got out of juvie, his grandmother was gone. Not being there for her in the end was his biggest regret. Well, that and getting himself into juvie in the first place.

After she was gone, he was all alone, and that worked for him. Mace found a way to find his way in the world, even earning his GED, and he thought that he had done okay—until he met Brooke. Now, with her in his life, he wanted to be more for both her and their unborn child.

“Let’s get this fucking over with,” he whispered to himself. He called the number that Brooke had given him and waited for James to answer. He went over what to say in his head, and when James finally answered, Mace felt tongue-tied.

“Hello,” James said. “Is someone there?”

“Yeah, it’s Mace,” he said, clearing his throat.

“Hey,” James said. “Have you found anything new about Reece’s death?”

Mace wanted to tell him to go fuck himself, but that wasn’t going to solve his problems. “Yes,” he said. “Julie admitted to me that she killed Reece, and also said that she was coming after Brooke, so I have her in a safehouse.”

“Wow, you moved fast,” James said.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Mace shouted.

“It means that you like her,” James insisted. Mace more than liked her—he was in love with her and planned to ask her to marry him once they were out of this mess, but that wasn’t James’s business.

“That’s none of your business,” Mace insisted. James chuckled into the other end of the phone and Mace wanted to punch the old guy in the face. “Shut the fuck up,” Mace shouted.

“Take it easy, Mace. You definitely got my temper. I didn’t mean anything by it. Just forget that I said anything. Is there anything that I can do to help out with your case against the woman who killed my son?” Hearing James call Reece his son made Mace’s heart hurt a little bit. He wondered if James had ever referred to him as his son, but then again, he didn’t want to be disappointed if he hadn’t.

“No,” Mace said. “I’ve got things covered.” It was a total lie, but he would never take James’s help when it came to taking are of his woman.

“Well, if you change your mind, let me know,” James offered.

“I won’t, but thanks,” Mace said. He ended the call, saying all that he had to say. Brooke would probably be disappointed in him for not telling James about the baby, but he just wasn’t ready to share that part of his life with James. He hadn’t been Mace’s father for a long time now, and something as intimate as a baby wasn’t something that he wanted James to know about. He’d just have to find a way to break the news to Brooke and hope that she’d understand because he wasn’t going to change his mind about James any time soon.

Brooke

Brooke watched as Mace walked out of the kitchen to call his father. She was an ass for insisting that he should call his father when calling hers was the last thing she wanted to do.

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