Page 4 of The Ruthless and the Strong

Lizzie

Present Day

The notification beepedon my phone and I looked down at it. The Uber I ordered would be here in five minutes. Small hands grabbed onto my own, and I looked down at the big green eyesof my five-year-old little boy. My green eyes. Hunter took after his father, from his mannerisms to his boyish grin, with those adorable dimples on both cheeks. Except for his eyes. Those were all mine.

He was looking at me with so much trust and love in them, my heart ached.

I’d never thought I could ever love anyone as much as I loved Hunter. But he had become my entire world since the moment he was born.

I tried so hard to give him a structured life. One with both his mom and dad by his side.

That couldn’t be the case now. And he was too young to know. He didn’t realize that Mommy and Daddy were getting a divorce, or that we were moving back to Chicago to live there permanently, not to just visit Grandma and Grandpa.

At the good old age of twenty-six, I’d failed.

“Mommy.” He tugged on my hand.

I used the other one to brush aside his bangs, showing me his cute little face with his ruby red, chubby cheeks. “Yeah?”

“Are we going on the airplane? The one that goes up and up and up in the sky?”

I smiled and ruffled his hair. “Yeah, sweetie. We’re going on the airplane to see Grandma and Grandpa. Are you excited?”

He smiled at me, showing off one missing tooth. “Yes. Are we going to see Auntie Livia and Uncle Mason and Maxie and Emmy?”

I nodded, though my heart thudded something fierce in my chest at the sound of Max’s name. I was surprised Hunter still asked about him. Even though I had been back home to Chicago, mostly on the holidays to visit my family and Olivia, I didn’t see Max all that often. Hunter didn’t see Max that often either, but the time that he did see Max, those two clicked more than Hunter and Sam. Max had brought him a full superhero toy set one year for Christmas. My little boy really loved superheroes, particularly Marvel superheroes and especially Captain Marvel, and a Captain Marvel action figure was included in the set. It had been, and still was, one of Hunter’s favorite toys to carry around with him wherever he went.

Sam hadn’t been happy about that.

But no matter, because I wasn’t going to take away my son’s favorite toy because his father didn’t like the man who had given it to him. After that, whenever I went back to Chicago for the holidays, Hunter always asked for him, and it wasn’t like I couldhaveavoided Max, considering we’d spent a good portion of our time at Olivia’s house and she lived next door to Max.

Olivia and I had been best friends since seventh grade, and Max had been her guardian for a good portion of her senior year.

When Olivia married Mason, Max’s brother, Mason had bought her the house next door to Max because he knew Olivia had a hard time being far away from Max—the result of being abandoned by both of her parents, first by her dad when she was twelve, and later by her mom when she was seventeen. Olivia hadn’t seen her mom since. Last we heard, she was living in New York at Mason’s old place. Mason and Olivia’s mom had history, and that had been a big issue when Mason and Olivia first started seeing each other, but things were different now. And Olivia and her dad were on better terms now, though they weren’t as close. Not like she and Max were.

Olivia and Max had a codependent relationship, and for the longest time, I had been envious of her for having that closeness with him, considering I had loved him since the first moment I’d laid eyes on him.

At twelve, I didn’t know what love was, but I knew Max gave me butterflies when he shouldn’t. He was fourteen years older than me, a full-grown adult when we first met. But he had been a constant at a time in my life when everything had felt so out of my control. I knew a lot of what I had felt was out of my control was nothing more than me being a teenager, but still, my love for him stuck. I had fallen in love with him so quickly, it was hard to remember a time in my life when he didn’t exist.

He was dependable and secure. He seemed to have everything figured out even then, and here I was, still struggling to figure who I was now that I wasn’t married to Sam anymore.

“We’re going to be living with Aunt Livia and Emmy for a while,” I said. “Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

Hunter’s eyes lit up. I knew he wouldn’t be sad about leaving California. My baby had trouble making friends because Sam had insisted on enrolling Hunter in a private school in Los Angeles, and we had placed him in the same room with a bunch of entitled kids who had everything they ever wanted handed to them.

I didn’t want to raise my son to grow up entitled, even if our family was well off, so there was a disconnect between Hunter and his classmates. And kids can be so cruel.

“What about Daddy?”

I tried not to show too much emotion when I said, “Daddy has to stay here because of his job.”

Hunter nodded, but he didn’t ask more. It was unfortunate that Hunter and Sam weren’t closer to each other, but Hunter was a momma’s boy, through and through. When he was born, Sam was in his first year of medical school.

Now he was in his first year of his general surgery residency program, trying to become a cardiothoracic surgeon like his father. Sam had kept a busy schedule. He had missed more birthday parties than he had attended, and some days, we wouldn’t even see him. He would come home well after midnight after staying at the library for several hours to study.

I knew his profession would be demanding; I just hadn’t realized how much, and I wished I had fought him more when he decided to move us to California for med school, but I hadn’t, wanting to get out of Chicago… to get away from Max.

But I didn’t know anyone in California, and with Sam gone so often, it had felt like I was raising Hunter on my own.

---