Page 70 of Awakening the Sheriff

“That’s not how I remember it.”

“Maybe you need to have your memory checked, then. You seem to have issues remembering shit correctly.” I didn’t wait for her response. “And did you tell Byron I should pay more child support? Because he seems to believe that too.”

She turned a deep shade of red. “He must’ve misunderstood.”

Yeah, right. “Child support isn’t a topic you should’ve discussed with him in the first place. When we split, we agreed to keep the kids out of it and handle it like adults. And now you go behind my back and tell these despicable lies? How can you do that to me and, above all, to our sons?”

“Keaton, I—”

“I wasn’t done yet!” I took a deep breath, unclenching my balled-up hands. “Byron thinks you want to move back to Atlanta with him, Mandy. He truly believes that. Is that another one of your lies?”

She shifted in her seat. “I might want to move back. I hate it in Seattle.”

“Fine, but not with Byron.” My voice shook with anger. “You don’t want that responsibility. You never did, never wanted custody, so why would you tell him otherwise? Don’t you realize how much you’ll hurt him when he finds out you lied?”

Mandy lowered her gaze, seemingly lost for words. My entire body trembled with a mixture of rage and heartache. The woman I had once loved was now a stranger to me, someone who would go to such lengths to hurt not only me but our children as well. When had she become that person?

Mandy looked up again, her eyes blazing. “I never wanted kids to begin with. You pressured me into it.”

She might as well have hit me in the kneecaps, cut my legs straight from under me. My whole body went weak, my head dizzy. My sons meant the world to me, and the thought that she regretted having them was too much to bear.

“You don’t mean that…” It came out a hoarse whisper. “You can’t mean that.”

“We were good before we had kids, Keaton. I loved our life, the freedom we had, the traveling we did. All that changed when we had kids, and it was never the way it was.”

“It’s supposed to change! Of course your life is never the same after having kids. But it’s supposed to make it richer, better.”

“Well, it didn’t for me, and the older I get, the more I realize that. You wanted kids, Keaton. I never did.”

I closed my eyes. No, initially, she hadn’t wanted kids. She was right about that. And I had given her time to change her mind, and she’d come around. We had talked about it. A lot. And I had made no secret of how much it meant to me. But did that equal pressuring her into it?

I took a steadying breath, then opened my eyes again. “If you felt pressured into having kids, then I apologize for that. I never intended to cajole you into something you didn’t want, and to this day, I thought we were on the same page. Clearly, that’s not the case, and I regret that more than I can express. But I can never regret having our sons, Mandy. They’re the absolute joy of my life, and I love them more than anything.”

She swallowed, having a hard time looking me in the eye. “Byron says he thinks you don’t even like him.”

More lies, but I was too tired to fight them. “I don’t need to like him to love him. He’s my son. He’s a part of me. Yes, he can be a major pain in the ass, and I may not always like him or agree with what he does, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love him. My love for them is unconditional. Irrevocable.”

“Well, if you want them to love you back, you’re going about it the wrong way. They hate you for moving to Forestville.”

Was there no limit as to how deep she would sink to hurt me? “What have I done to you that you would be this cruel, hitting me where you know my weakest point is? Do you hate me that much?”

She cringed, and for the first time, shame filled her expression. “I don’t hate you.”

“Then why? Why would you do this?”

“You should never have moved there.”

“Weshould never have moved. I didn’t make that decision by myself, no matter how much you’re trying to gaslight me into thinking I did. We made this call together, and you may now regret it, but that doesn’t change the facts.”

“The kids and I, we all want to move back. You’re the one who’s blocking it, and now that you’ve foundlove”—she said the last with venom—“you’ll never want to leave again, not even if it ends up costing you your relationship with your kids.”

“Look, Mandy, you can move back anytime you want, but you’re not taking the kids with you. You wanna go that badly? Go. I won’t stop you.”

“I can’t! Everyone would consider me a terrible mom who abandoned her kids.”

That was what was stopping her? Seriously? All that was holding her back was her fear of losing her reputation? Not the fact that she’d miss her kids, that she’d barely see them. All she cared about was herself. Why had I never seen that? “What does it even matter? You’re already being a terrible mom by lying to them and turning them against me!”

“Keaton—”

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