Page 4 of Needing You

I’d offered to make our grandma’s lasagna, but Mom had waved me off, citing my tendency to change recipes. I wouldn’t dare mess with perfection, and I’d told her so, but the woman refused to listen.

I planned to grill pork tenderloin for dinner tomorrow and had a few other things in mind for the rest of the week’s menu for Mom and me. Cooking for her was not only the least I could do but a simple joy because of how much I could tell she loved it. I checked my list again—shallots, scallions, romaine… check, check, check. Happy to find I’d remembered everything, I got in line and responded to a text I’d sent to our sibling group chat, then loaded up the groceries for the checker.

The pneumatic doors slid open, and my heart skipped as Kate walked in. She was beaming, her smile as bright as the damn sun that streamed in behind her. Her melodic laugh floated through the noise of the store as she glanced at someone beside her.

Fuck, she was pretty. Still so goddamn pretty, it made my heart stop. I’d barely kept my shit together when she’d showed up at Walker’s asking for me. What had that been about?

She’d seemed nervous to talk to me. Maybe it made sense since she pulled a disappearing act not long after we’d started saying “I love you.” I poured my heart out to her, we slept together, and we got close. Then one day, she’s not at our meeting spot, and I never hear from her again. Literally gone without a trace, except I knew she wasn’t hurt or dead, or it would’ve made the papers. I finally approached her mom and asked if I could talk to her, and she’d just sneered and said, “She’s moved on to better things.”

Not a word, and she was gone. My green little heart broke all over the place, and fuck if seeing her more than fifteen years later didn’t give me a shitty feeling that reminded me of those days after she left.

She stood to the side as an older woman scooted by her, and then shook her head with an incredulous little grin that had me following the line of her gaze to… a kid. No, a teenager. Tall and fully in the his-paws-are-too-big-for-his-body phase, he wore a tank with the sleeves cut off and sweats. Probably coming from two-a-days for the high school football team.

He pushed a cart as he walked closely beside Kate, and she nudged him with an elbow, then patted his back. A half-smile made one side of the kid’s mouth turn up as he followed her into the produce section.

Wait.What?

The way she’d touched him wasn’t a friendly neighbor-boy type pat. It was… affectionate. Caring.

“Sir? Can you sign?” The checker pointed toward the card reader, and I quickly scribbled something and snagged the receipt.

Craning my neck, I could just see Kate and her… shit, it had to be. Her son. They were almost out of sight, but the way they chatted while they shopped looked so clearly mother-son that it had to be true. And why the fuck did that idea give me that flash of heat right before your mouth waters and you puke?

So what? Kate had a kid. She’d come back to Granite Springs, and somewhere along the line met some hoity-toity jerk her parents approved of and got married and had this gangly puppy of a teen.

Maybe that was what she’d wanted to talk to me about. Break the news that if I had any thoughts about getting back with her—which I didn’t—she was off the market.

Well, good for her. Fine.

Though, she’d had to have had him not long after she left if he was that tall. She…

I stopped just before exiting, catching them right as she ruffled his hair. Yeah. Fuck. Fuck.

Fuck.

I shoved the cart out the sliding doors and into the parking lot, narrowly missing getting clipped by a car in the process. I threw everything into the trunk, shoved the cart into a metal cart return thing, and practically dove into the front seat of my car as my heart threatened to beat out of my chest.

The door shut, and I dropped my head to the steering wheel. I sucked in a breath, my mind a static blank—just a motherfucking salt-and-pepper haze. No coherent thoughts had entered since I’d thought of his age and seen her touch his hair in that way—in thatmotherlyway.

Kate had a son.

Kate had a teenage son.

Kate had a teenage son with dark hair who looked a whole hell of a lot like I did before I started packing muscle on later in high school, and even though it seemed insane—itwasinsane—I knew.

The reason she’d wanted to talk to me. The reason she’d seemed so upset when I didn’t want to.

Holy fucking shit, Kate had a son, and I was pretty sure he was mine.

3

KATE

“Thanks for meeting me,” I said with a shaky smile. My girlfriends joined me at one of the cafe tables outside the Granite Springs B&B.

As soon as I’d dropped Jackson off at home and unloaded the few items we’d picked up at the grocery store, I’d called my two best friends. Myonlyfriends. And even though I was the one who’d requested this little get-together, apprehension made my stomach swirl.

April smiled sympathetically. “Of course.”

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