Page 47 of Good Girls Don't Date Rock Stars (Rock Canyon, Idaho 2)

Gemma held onto Charlie when he started to run off and said, “Why don’t you show your dad your fish another time? You’ve got to unpack, and I think your dad wants to talk to me.”

“But Mom . . .” Charlie started to argue, looking up at her with those lethal dark blue eyes. So much like his father’s.

It was Travis who saved her. “Actually, Charlie, I was thinking maybe we could spend the day together tomorrow. Get to know each other?”

“Yes! Mom, too?” Charlie asked eagerly.

Travis looked up at her, but his smile didn’t reach his frosty eyes. “Sure, she can come.”

“Yes! I can’t wait to tell Evan. This is so awesome!” Charlie ran over to give Travis a hug, and Gemma’s eyes stung when he whispered, “I’m so glad you came.”

Travis’s strong arms wrapped around Charlie, but his gaze never left Gemma’s. “Me, too, Charlie. See you tomorrow.”

Charlie, oblivious to the tension between them, ran into the house. When Gemma heard the door close, she waited for the explosion she knew was coming.

TRAVIS HAD BEEN abandoned, beaten, and had his heart broken, but he’d never felt so betrayed. And by the one person he trusted the most.

“How does he know about me?” Travis asked, confused.

“I told him. Once he started school, he asked about you, where his dad was. I told him that we were really young, and that you left town without knowing,” she said.

“You mean I left town and you decided not to tell me. Instead, you broke up with me,” he said, unable to resist the dig. The shock of actually meeting Charlie made the situation she’d put him in worse. He saw the happiness and excitement in his son’s eyes at meeting him for the first time, and white-hot shocks of rage had shot through him at what he had missed out on.

Gemma’s excuses only fueled the fire.

“Yes, Travis, it’s my fault. I was wrong not to tell you, not to give you the chance to choose to be involved or not, but in all fairness, I didn’t have a lot of faith in your commitment to me. If I recall, after I told you we should break up, your final word on the subject was ‘okay.’”

After I asked you several times to believe me. “What was I suppo

sed to say when the girl I loved said we should break up?”

“You apologized several times for not fighting for me, but I wonder if the real reason you never really tried to stop me was because you were relieved,” she said, and that gave him pause.

Had he been relieved when Gemma had left him? He remembered the misery and the hurt, but now that he thought about it, maybe. Maybe there had been a small part of him that had been glad she had ended it before he really did screw it up, because that was the way his life had always gone. The minute something good happened to him, something bad snatched it away.

“I was a young, hot mess. After everything I had been through, you really expected me to chase you down and beg you not to break up with me?” he asked.

“No, but I didn’t think it would be that easy to walk away either,” she said.

It hadn’t been easy. For months after that night, he had reached for the phone when he got good news or just because he missed the sound of her voice, but he’d been too proud to break down and make the first move.

But he wasn’t going to apologize for that night anymore. Now, this was about the fact that she hadn’t bothered to contact him in ten years to tell him about his kid. That she had spent several days with him before she’d blurted it out unexpectedly. And he had a feeling if he hadn’t followed her, he never would have known.

“Were you going to tell me? If I hadn’t come back here, if we hadn’t run into each other in Vegas, would you ever have told me about him?”

Her face said it all. “I don’t know.”

Travis was so hot under the collar, he wanted to hit something. He needed to get the hell away from her.

“I’ll be by in the morning to see Charlie,” Travis said, starting for his truck.

“Travis, please, we aren’t done. I don’t want our personal stuff affecting Charlie,” she said.

Travis opened the door with a sneer. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell him what a liar you are.”

Travis ignored her gasp and climbed into the truck. He was too pissed off to care if he hurt her. What he needed was a bottle of whiskey to help him forget about Gemma for a few hours. Maybe after a few shots the truth wouldn’t hurt so much.

Truth. Did anyone tell the truth anymore?

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