Page 115 of Don't Take the Girl
"She didn't love me anymore," he says with a furrowed brow, surely reflecting on the day she left. "The story I told you was true. She left, without a word, on a regular day, for a mundane errand, and never came back. A person that loves you could never do that." His eyes find mine. "I could never walk away from you. It's why I chased a woman who wasn't worth chasing." He gestures toward the house. "She knew the house that she left us in. I never left it, and she never looked back."
Well, that's not exactly true. She called when I turned fifteen and asked my father to put me on a plane. And he did. Just like that, without asking what I wanted, without preparing me for what I'd find when I got there. I'm still mad about that.
"Why did you guys move to Willow Creek, of all places?"
He chuckles, the question clearly lightening his spirits. "Honestly, it's a fate straight out of a country song. It's where the car broke down. We were nineteen when we left the ranch. Back then, I wasn't balancing the books. If I had stayed, I had a job, but there wasn't much I could do to help the business from states away back then."
I lean forward. "Why didn't you move back after Mom left" —I pause, holding up my fingers to count off the years she actually stayed—"two years after I was born? You could have gone home then."
"I searched for your mother. I thought maybe I'd gotten it wrong, maybe there was an accident that kept her from coming home, but then I received a summons for divorce, and the paperwork was filed in a Florida county court." He puts some wings on his plate. "By the time that paperwork was filed, another two years had passed, and Grandpa passed, which meant I was no longer just an heir to the ranch. Baylor and I were in charge. You're too young to remember, but you went on a week-long camping trip with the Downs family the week I went to settle the estate and bury your grandfather. Baylor and I didn't handle losing our dad well. We got in a fight, and he said a lot of things…" he draws off, and I can't help but wonder if any of those things were about my mother. He shakes away the memory.
"What kinds of things?" Trigg pressures.
My father looks between us and takes a drink of his beer. "It doesn't matter. He said them out of anger. We lost our dad. I know he didn't mean them. I don't hold them against him." His shoulders sag, and I don't know if I believe him, but I can tell he wants to believe the words.
Laney's hand tightens around mine. She knows those summers spent with my mom were brutal. I always knew my mom had left, but knowing and understanding are different beasts. At eight years old, I was already manufacturing reasons why she chose to walk away, reasons that had nothing to do with me being too much trouble, too loud, too needy. When Laney walked into my life, I watched her walk through the world, collecting pieces of Seattle like they were sacred relics. Every one of her junk journals had multiple pages dedicated to the city because she knew that was where her mom and dad met. Laney had never actually lived in Washington state, yet she had pages upon pages of clippings, bar coasters from places she'd never been, napkins from restaurantsshe'd never eaten at, magazine cutouts of a baseball team she hadn't watched, Pike Place Market, the Puget Sound. You name it. If it was Seattle-related, she found a way to weave it into her journals somehow. I know it's because all those items were rooted in dreams of her father—this mythical man who might still be out there, might still want her.
Watching her create stories with junk and craft alternate endings around a family that didn't exist had me doing the same on afternoons when we shared the same blanket on a patch of grass in the backyard. It's an innate human need, this desperate want to know who you are, where you came from, to be part of a nuclear family where the DNA that created you actually wants to stick around.
When Laney found out where I'd been spending my summers, I told her how much I hated them. But talking about hurt and living inside it are two very different kinds of torture. I kept those summers I spent with my mom a secret because I wanted to hold onto the dreams Laney and I had spent hours creating about the parents who were out there waiting to love us. Those were good dreams. Reality fucking sucked.
My reality for those three summers sucked the life out of me one day at a time. And when I found out the truth about the man who tried to hurt Laney, when I realized her father wasn't some romantic figure waiting in Seattle but a predator who'd already tried to destroy her once, I couldn't break her heart the way mine had been shredded. I couldn't watch her beautiful dreams crumble into the same ash mine had become. But now, sitting here listening to my father's story, I see that living in fear of breaking hearts in the name of protection isn't really protecting anything at all. It's just another kind of abandonment, another way of saying someone can't handle the truth of who we really are.
"Dad, Trigg isn't my cousin." The words hang thick in the air. "Baylor didn't say those hurtful things to be cruel. He said them because he loved Mom first. Trigg is my brother."
For a moment that stretches like an eternity, he sits frozen. Iwatch his eyes, see the exact moment Baylor's words begin their relentless replay, every barbed comment, every bitter accusation suddenly reshaping itself in his mind, taking on new meaning and weight. The woman he married and planned to build a life with had kept the cruelest secret of all. She hadn't just slept with his brother; she had his child.
"How old are you?" The question comes out strangled, directed at Trigg.
"I'm one year older than London."
His face drains of color as he grasps at straws. "You weren't there." His voice breaks on the words. "When I went to bury my father, you weren't there."
The funeral. The one time in twenty years the brothers might have reconciled, when grief should have brought them together. Instead, pride and misunderstandings kept them apart.
"She put me up for adoption." Trigg's voice carries the weight of abandonment, steady but laced with an apology that isn't his to give. "Baylor didn't know I existed until I was five years old."
I can see him struggling, his world tilting on its axis as twenty years of assumptions crumble to dust. But beneath the shock and betrayal, I catch something else flickering in his eyes—regret.
He sets his napkin down with the careful precision of a man trying not to shatter completely. When he rises, he says, "If you'll excuse me"—his voice is barely recognizable—"I think I've lost my appetite this evening."
"Thanks for helping me clean up,"I say as Laney puts the last container of food in the refrigerator after boxing up the leftovers from the dinner that was barely touched.
"Of course." She closes the fridge door with a soft click. "I mean, helping clean up has its advantages. I got to eat more food while putting it in containers." The smile she offers is genuine but cautious, like she's testing the waters between us.
I can't help it—it comes as natural as breathing. I step into her space and slide my arms around her waist, drawn to her like gravity. It's the closest we've been in days, and God, I've missed this. She doesn't push me away, but I can feel her hesitation, the way she's holding part of herself back.
"I'm glad you came tonight," I murmur, my eyes drinking in her face like I'm memorizing it all over again, cataloging every detail I've been starving for.
"Me too," she whispers, her palms settling on my chest. But there's something careful in her touch, like she's reminding herself not to fall too easily back into this.
"Laney." Her name comes out rougher than I intended. "I hate this distance between us. You're all I think about, and waking up without you next to me is torture. I don't want to keep doing it."
Her expression softens, and I watch her resolve waver. She wants this as much as I do. I can see it in the way her eyes linger on my face, the slight lean of her body toward mine despite herself. "I know," she admits quietly. "I don't like it either. I miss you."
Those three words make my chest tighten with a mix of relief and longing. I want to kiss her, to close this unbearable gap between us, but I can sense she needs more than just my touch right now.
Leaning my forehead against hers, I breathe in her familiar scent. "Then talk to me. Don't shut me out. Let me be there for you." Those are the same words she gave to me the morning we woke tangled up in each other after the Fairfield’s watch party. Her strength and certainty fueled me.
