Page 86 of The Billionaire's Heart

She takes a deep breath and starts again as she wipes the tears out from under both eyes and sits up straight. “Okay, I can do this.”

Jeff takes her hand and holds it in her lap as he watches her with love in his eyes, trying to give her some of his strength.

“I was born in a very small town in Tennessee called Cotton Grove. Your grandparents were good people.”

My heart races when she mentions grandparents. I have grandparents. Holy crap. I have a family. It sounds so foreign to me.

“I, on the other hand, was a horrible teenager.” She swallows hard before she continues. “When you grow up in a town of less than a hundred people, a teenager will find trouble if it doesn’t find her first. And I found as much as I could.”

I watch Jeff squeeze her hand in support.

“I did every drug I could get my hands on, which then led to more drugs. Everything was about getting high, stoned, or drunk. Or all three. I didn’t care what it was, I would take it, smoke it, or inject it.” She looks off into the distance. “I broke my parent’s heart so many times.”

“You don’t need to do this if you don’t want.” I tell her as my heart is breaking along with hers.

She shakes her head. “No, you deserve to hear this. Once I turned eighteen, my parents kicked me out. I bounced from one place to another and eventually ended up in Nashville with a guy named Shawn. We were doing every drug under the sun we could get our hands on. Neither one of us could hold down a job, so we did things I’m not proud of all in the name of getting high.”

I notice Lynn isn’t looking at me or Ian when she’s talking about this part of her life. Instead, she’s either looking down at her hands or at the coffee table in front of us. She is embarrassed to be telling us, two complete strangers, her life story.

“One day, I started vomiting. A lot. Shawn freaked out and rushed me to the hospital in a friend’s car. He dropped me off at the emergency room doors and then left me there because he had to get the car back to his friend. I thought he was coming back. He said he was coming back, but I never saw him again. Later on, I learned he was trying to come back to be with me at the hospital, but because he was really high, he crashed the car and died in the accident.”

“I’m so sorry.” Ian says empathetically.

Lynn nods in appreciation for his sympathy. “He also killed a family of four.”

It’s quiet for a few moments while we all ingest what she just told us, but then she continues. “I was in the hospital for a few days for a couple of reasons. First, I was coming down off my high and going through terrible withdrawals, and second, I learned I was pregnant with you.” She looks directly at me.

“Mia, you have to know that not once did I ever think that I could get pregnant. I was such a stupid idiot. It just never occurred to me and Shawn, and we never took precautions. That cost money that was better used on more drugs.” She’s watching me for my reaction.

“So, my father isn’t Jeff. It’s the guy that died in the car accident?”

She nods, “Shawn Smith. Yes. He was your father.” She fidgets with the hem of her shorts. “I panicked when they told me I was pregnant. I was alone, twenty-three years old, broke, and a drug addict. The only thing I could think of was to call my parents.” She looks to the ceiling, “And God bless them, they dropped everything and rushed to my side.” Lynn wipes her tears with a tissue she pulled out of her purse.

“You should know I stayed clean the rest of the pregnancy. It was one of the hardest things I ever had to do, but I did it. But the day you were born…” she shakes her head, “I did not want to give you up once I took one look at you.” She smiles at me. “You had the cutest little nose.”

“She still does.” Ian taps the tip of my nose as I give him a dirty look.

“But, my parents insisted, emphatically, that I give you up. And they were right. They were getting older, and I was in no shape to raise a child. I had no skills, no money, no job, no prospects, and I was jonesing for a hit. So, I gave you to the nurse and watched as she carried you out of my life. It was the last time I saw you and the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

“It was one of the most selfless acts you could have done.” Ian tells her as I sit there in silence, just processing everything.

“Well, after that, I got high a few more times, but hated myself every second of the day. At one point, I contemplated suicide, and that’s when I realized I needed help. Real help. So, Ichecked myself into a rehab center. Stayed there for a long time. But I got myself clean and have been ever since.”

She looks at Jeff. “Then, I met Jeff one night when I was waitressing at a diner in Georgia. He was the most handsome man I had ever met.” She smiles up at Jeff. “He came to the diner every night to eat pie for a week before he finally asked me out.”

“I was out of Navy bootcamp and just sent to Kings Bay Base,” He turns to Lynn, “and she was just the prettiest thing I had ever seen.”

She smiles lovingly up at him, and you can see that they are still in love after all these years. “After about a year of dating, he proposed, and we were married. Eventually, we had two sons, twins, Jacob and Joshua. We moved to just outside of Daytona Beach and have lived there ever since.”

She looks up at me with an almost apologetic expression, as if she has lifted a weight off her shoulders.

“Thank you for telling us all of this. It’s a lot to process.” I’ve got a death grip on Ian’s hand, and I don’t know why, so I loosen it.

“Honey?” Jeff says to Lynn and then nods towards the tote bag he brought in with them.

She throws her hands up. “Oh! I brought pictures. This entire album is yours if you want it.” She opens the tote bag and pulls out a huge, old looking photo album and opens it on the coffee table between us to the first page. “I’ve been adding pictures to it all these years, hoping I would eventually get to meet you again.”

“You’ve been making this for me all these years?”

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