Page 100 of Just Exes

I wish my life would end.

I didn’t fucking protect him. I didn’t do my job as a father.

I knew the moment Luke called me and said they’d found a body that it was my boy, but there was that unknown hope that Andy was still out there. Maybe Missy had dropped him off somewhere, like his birth mother had … or maybe she’d given him to someone else in order to hurt me.

Missy is as manipulative as she is beautiful.

It’s no surprise when Lauren comes to my side and pulls me to her. She doesn’t flinch at my sobs. All she does is hold me close and let me release my pain.

She’d take it on as her own if she could.

And I’d do the same for her.

Maybe that’s when you know your love for someone is real. You’d gladly take every ounce of their pain and lift it onto your shoulders. You’d rather be the one to suffer, the one taking each stab to the heart, than watch them hurt. Loving someone means their pain is your pain, and you’re there to carry them when they’re down.

Right now, Lauren is ready to carry me wherever I need to go.

* * *

Lauren and Luketried to talk me out of coming here, but I can’t accept the truth until I see it for myself.

Their love for me is what has them by my side as we walk into the police station.

Cory doesn’t want to show me the pictures to identify the body. He suggests Luke do it for me, but I shake my head. It has to be me. I’ll regret it as soon as the photo is put on display in front of me. My hands go to the desk to stop myself from falling when Cory shows it to me.

My worst nightmare is now my reality. I’ve seen plenty of crime scene photos. I knew not to expect his smiling face. But he was my son, and it tears me apart.

My little boy.

Correction: my little boy’s body.

The decomposing corpse isn’t the boy I played soccer with or the son who wanted to be a cop, just like his daddy, when he grew up.

All I have left of him now are memories.

* * *

“Hey,”Lauren whispers, her voice shy, when I walk into the bedroom with a towel wrapped around my waist, post-shower.

I got in the shower the moment we got back from the station. After seeing those photos and the autopsy report, I was hoping to wash away all the thoughts of how my son had suffered.

It was comforting to have Lauren by my side this time. I went through it alone when Andy went missing. Sure, I had Luke, but there’s a difference between a lover and a friend consoling you.

I sit on the edge of the bed. “Can we talk about why you left now and how my dad admitted it was him who had asked you to leave?”

She lifts her hands up, and her brows gather in. “Gage … I can explain.”

I stop her from going on. “As much as I want to be angry with you, you thought you were doing the right thing for my father.” I let out a heavy sigh. “So, for that, I don’t know what I think about it.” We’ve both made mistakes that we regret, and every time I look at Lauren, I see her regret for letting me go.

Her face softens, her eyes watering, and she gives me her back while she moves to the closet. She opens my bag and starts dragging out clothes. My chin trembles when she grabs my hand to help me up and then releases the towel.

“Will you tell me about Andy?” she asks, tossing it to the side.

My shorts are in her hand, and she helps me step into them while I share story after story about the little boy I wish she could’ve met. I don’t stop while she helps me get dressed or when she drags me to the bathroom to comb my hair. She takes care of me while I give her my memories.

* * *

“I knowit’s not exactly sane for a woman to suggest her boyfriend talk to his ex-wife, but in this case, I think it might help you heal,” Lauren says from across the kitchen table.

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