Page 18 of Long Road Home

And it was all my stupid, selfish, idiotic fault.

I rubbed my finger across my eyes to get a grip on my tears but then Toby stepped out of my hold and closer to Jordan. “I don’t know what to call you.”

Goddamn it. I’d need more time to prepare him for this.

Jordan appeared to take it in stride even with his own tears still rolling down his cheeks. “How about, for now, you call me Jordan. Sound okay?”

Toby pulled his hand out of Jordan’s and shrugged. “Whatever.”

He turned and skirted around me, gone before I could stop him. My heart ached at his posture with his head down and shoulders slumped. He trudged up the stairs, wiping his cheeks and not looking back at us.

“As far as first meetings go, that probably could have gone better,” Jordan said, stepping next to me, eyes on where Toby had disappeared up the stairway.

“Probably.”

“Think he heard what I said to you?”

“Maybe.” I shrugged, and a weird chill slid down my arms. I rubbed them with my hands crossed in front of me and turned to Jordan. “I’ll talk to him. He’s been through a lot and this might have been too much for him, you know?”

“No, I don’t know,” he said and walked past me back to the living room. “I don’t know shit about him and that pisses me off. I’ll try to hold it in check, though, for him.”

I rested my shoulder against the doorway to the living room and said nothing. I had no argument to give anymore.

He paced through the living room, occasionally shoving his hands to his hips and then through his thick, black hair.

I’d be blind not to notice how incredibly sexy he still was. With his back to me, his muscles were still visible through his dress shirt. I kicked the visual reminders of what that body could do out of my brain and shifted my gaze to the front door. I’d blown my chance with Jordan eons ago. There was no point in noticing him anymore. It’d be a miracle if he didn’t spend the rest of our lives hating me more than he did in that moment.

“I need to get my shit together,” Jordan finally said, spinning and facing me. “I…this is too much. But I want to spend time with him, and after, when I can talk to you without wanting to throttle you, we’ll talk about what comes next. What your plans are.”

His eyes flicked to another stack of packed boxes and that square jaw went granite.

He heaved a breath and yanked his phone out of his pocket. “What’s your number? I’ll call you. And when I do, you better fucking answer.”

I rattled off my number, not hesitating a single moment. But I was thankful he was leaving. I had to see to Toby. I had to get my own head and heart settled. He tapped everything in and when he was sliding his phone into his pocket, his gaze caught on something else.

I followed him staring at something on the carpet and moved quicker. Picking up the picture, one of Jordan on the pitching mound his senior year of high school, looking sexy as hell and focused in the middle of a wind-up, I held it out to him.

“I had a box in my closet, everything I’d saved from…well…us.” His glare froze me to my spot. “I showed him everything last night. He took the rest to his room.”

He ripped the photo out of my hand and crumpled it, so much fire shooting from his icy eyes it was a miracle I wasn’t ash. “I really fucking wish I could hate you.”

He turned, hurried to the front door and he was gone, slamming the door behind him. Thank goodness I’d packed all the pictures on the walls or they would have crashed to the floor. I stood in the same spot, tears spilling down my cheeks, unable to move until he’d climbed into a giant SUV parked at the street, and tires squealed as he sped away.

“I knowthis isn’t what you want to hear,” Allison said through the phone. “But this is a good thing, isn’t it? If Toby’s dad is the good man you say he used to be then isn’t it good for them to meet?”

“It’s a mess is what it is.” I sipped my iced tea, curled onto one of the red Adirondack chairs on Tillie’s front porch. Lord only knew why she bought them. There was no way she could have hauled her small frame in and out of these chairs. “It’s not that I don’t see your point. It’s that I’m terrified. What if he does what he threatened?”

He’d taken the words back. He’d apologized. Said he’d never rip my son from me. That didn’t mean something wouldn’t shove him over the edge and change his mind.

Plus, his parting words still rattled in my brain.

“I don’t think you should sell Tillie’s house,” Allison said, jolting me in my chair. Iced tea sloshed over the rim of the glass.

“What?”

“Hear me out. You have three weeks until school starts, right?”

I did not like where she was going with this. “I don’t have the vacation time for this, Allison.”

---