Don't Let Go (29 page)

“I just found out about you two days ago,” she said.

“I just found out about you two hours ago.”

Becca laughed, and even as that put my heart at ease, I saw Seth’s eyes narrow a little.

“So, do you have any other brothers or sisters?” she asked. “Like, that you grew up with?”

Seth’s eyes glazed over a bit. “I did,” he said. “I had a little brother who was adopted, too. “His name was Shon.”

“Did?” she asked, picking up on something I hadn’t.

“Yeah, he died six years ago,” he said, averting his eyes.

“Oh—” I said, my chest contracting. The pain in his expression was palpable. “Seth, I’m so sorry.”

He nodded and put his hands in his pockets, a self-protecting gesture that made him suddenly look younger.

“It was a stupid accident,” he said. “He was—”

A thud from overhead halted his words.

“What was that?” I said.

Both hands were out of his pockets and he was at the base of the stairs in insta-cop mode in two-point-five seconds. I would have followed, but I was watching Becca. And she wasn’t startled. Her glance upward wasn’t questioning or scared, it was panicked.

It was
busted
.

“Who’s upstairs?” I asked.

My tone was calm, and in that moment I was very proud of my control. Seth stopped his progression mid-step and looked at me.

“Nothing!” she said defensively. “Nobody.”

Her worry over where Seth was standing, however, told otherwise. As did a second thump and the subsequent creaking.

“Becca, who is in this house?” I repeated. The tone was making a comeback. “Alone with you. In the middle of a school day and work day when you didn’t think anyone would be home.”

“Mom, it’s not like that,” she said, holding up her palms.

“Please tell me what it’s like, then,” I said. “Before I go find out for myself.”

“Mark, come down!” she yelled upward, darting one look at me and then at the floor.

“Mark,” I whispered, closing my eyes. Not because I was being nice. More because my rage had taken the power of speech away.

“Mom—”

“Becca Ann White,” I began, not caring anymore that Seth was seeing all this. So damn be it. “What is the rule on boys in this house?”

“Downstairs, I know—”

“And what about when I’m not home?” I said, hearing the rise in pitch.

“No one at all.”

“And during school hours?” I said. No—I yelled it. I did.

Her eyebrows dipped into a frown. “During school hours? There’s not a rule for that.”

“Exactly!” I said, walking closer and enjoying the look on her face that questioned my sanity just a little. Good. She needed to worry. “Because you are supposed to be
there
.”

“O
kay
.” The death glare.

This was why wild animals sometimes eat their young.

And the boy still hadn’t made an appearance. “Mark!” I yelled. “The stairs aren’t that hard to find, young man. Please get down here.”

“Oh, my God,” Becca said, her eyes filling with angry tears. “I hate you right now.”

“Well, good,” I said under my breath as a little piece of my soul broke away. “I’m doing my job. What the living hell are you thinking, skipping school and bringing him here?”

Feet appeared in my line of vision. Big sneakers, followed by baggy jeans and a jersey sweatshirt. The face it was all attached to looked worried. Well, at least he was that smart. He paused at the bottom as Seth stared at him for a beat before letting him pass.

He stood next to Becca, who did nothing but glare at me through her tears. Disgusted, I thrust my hand into the boy’s hand.

“I’m Becca’s mom, by the way,” I said. “Since you are too rude to step up, and she’s too rude to introduce you, I’ll do that myself.”

Becca’s mouth fell open, as if she couldn’t believe I could still shock her. Mark mumbled something including his name and how nice it was to meet me. I think. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Seth grin and look away. I wondered if his—mother—had ever had to do the same.

“Mark, I would’ve liked to have met you a different way, but since I didn’t, let me fill you in. Becca isn’t allowed to skip class. Don’t know if you are, but she’s not. You aren’t allowed in her room. Ever.”

Echoes of my mother’s voice rang in my head, but I was too far gone to think about that.

“You will respect those things, and keep all your personal property in your pants, and we will get along just fine.”

“Mom!” she yelled, tears fully streaming down her face, black eyeliner coming with it.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry,” Mark said, his words barely heard over Becca’s carrying on.

“You can go, Mark,” I said.

“I drove,” Becca said through her sobs.

“He looks like he can handle a six-block walk, Becca,” I said. “Mark, have a good day.”

He wheeled around with big eyes and briefly squeezed her hand as he passed. Didn’t make it three more steps, however, before Seth deftly plucked an object from the side cargo pocket of the baggy jeans.

“Don’t think you’re quite old enough for this,” Seth said.

A stainless steel flask. Joy. Becca’s face contorted as if she’d seen death up close and personal.

“Unless you have lemonade in here—” Seth unscrewed the top and sniffed. “Whoa, most definitely not lemonade.”

“Hey, that’s mine,” Mark said, attempting to bow up with whatever he had under the three-sizes-too-big clothing.

“Really?” Seth said, holding up the flask. “Yours? You bought this yourself? I’m impressed. You must have one hell of an ID.”

“I’m twenty-one,” Mark said.

Seth laughed. “Yeah, I can see that. Why don’t we call the school and see if maybe they have something different.”

“Shit,” Mark muttered. “Okay, it’s my dad’s. Just—can I have it, please? I’ll leave.”

“Sure,” Seth said. “Kitchen?” he asked me in passing. I pointed, and he walked around the corner, leaving a perplexed kid in the entryway. I heard the sound of liquid going down a drain, and then he was back. “Here you go,” he said. “Tell your dad he has good taste.”

“You have no right acting like this,” Becca said. “You’re not family.”

To his credit, he only faltered a second. Me, on the other hand—I saw ten shades of red.

“You’re right,” he said, putting a hand on my arm before I could say a word. “But I am an officer of the law, so . . .”

“You’re a prince,” Becca said, acid dripping from her tone.

“Yeah, I get that a lot,” he said, opening the door for Mark.

When he closed it back, I focused on Becca. On her hate, her embarrassment, and my own disappointment and absolute mortification that the meeting with Seth went so sour.

“Drinking, Bec?” I said, my voice cracking. “Seriously?”

“We hadn’t even had any yet,” she said.

“Yet,” I echoed. “Where’s your head?”

Her fists went up in her hair, like she wanted to pull it out. “Oh, my God, I wish I was anywhere else but here!”

“You were supposed to be. Clean yourself up and get back to school,” I said, feeling all the inflection go out of my voice. I was so angry that she’d blown my trust. Again.

She swiped at her face, essentially just smearing black around. “Are you kidding me? There’s like an hour and a half left.”

“Then you’d better hurry it up,” I said.

She narrowed her eyes and scoffed and wheeled around in disgust. “I can’t believe you,” she said on her way up the stairs. She stopped and I had the feeling something profound was coming. “You humiliated me today.” Or that.

“Ditto,” I said through my teeth.

Becca glanced at Seth and back at me. “Yeah, I’ll bet. Awfully high and mighty on the subject of boys, aren’t you—since your stellar example of restraint is standing here?”

I felt all the blood drain from my face, and the quiet was deafening. I saw it—the moment that passed through her brain when she knew she’d gone too far. I had a fleeting thought through the pounding in my ears that that was at least proof she still had a conscience. Then I turned and walked to the kitchen.

I pulled two glasses from the cabinet and started to fill them with ice when I heard footsteps behind me. Heavier footsteps than Becca’s. Slower.

“I have sweet tea, water, and orange juice,” I said, opening the fridge. I stared at the pitchers without seeing them and grabbed one of them without feeling it in my hand.

“Sweet tea is fine.”

I turned to look at my son. A man. Standing in my kitchen. Not too many days back, I was in awe of seeing his father occupying that same space. It was surreal.

He pointed at the pitcher I was holding. “That’s fine,” he reiterated.

I looked down at it and realized it was the tea. “Okay,” I said, pouring into both glasses.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Of course,” I said. I wasn’t. I was numb. I was standing in my kitchen, talking to my son. Talking to my son. A miracle of all miracles. And I was mortified and horrified and distraught. Where had I gone wrong with her? How could she talk to me that way? How did it get this far?

“Juliann—I mean—” Seth stopped and let out a wary breath. “I just realized I haven’t called you by anything yet. What do I—”

“Most people call me Jules,” I said. “Your gran—” Yeah, I was doing it, too. “My dad gave me that nickname when I was little and it stuck.”

“Well, Jules, you don’t seem okay,” he said, pulling up a nearby stool. “And that would be okay if you’re not. You don’t have to pretend anything. That was pretty intense.”

“Intense.” I sank onto a stool and buried my face in my hands. “I am so sorry you had to witness that,” I said. “That thing you said about never knowing how these things are going to turn out—well, I guess I just made your case for the dark side.”

“Not at all,” Seth said, resting his elbows on the counter. “Y’all have been great. And Becca’ll come around. Was she upset about me when you told her?”

I shook my head. “Not
about
you. I think she was kind of intrigued by the idea, actually. It was my keeping it from her all this time that hit her buttons.”

“Why did you?” he asked.

Chapter 19

Why did I? I listened to my breath going in and out. “I don’t know,” I said. “I told myself I was protecting her, but that wasn’t it. I think it was just more of my mother’s voice saying to keep it all quiet.” I looked him in the eye. “I have no good answer for that.”

“Understandable, too,” he said, pausing. “Can I be honest with you?”

“Absolutely.”

Seth averted his gaze, studying his hands. “She’s a rebel. She’s testing boundaries.” He met my eyes. “Shon was like that, too. Me—I was probably an easy kid, but Shon was hard to follow sometimes. He was always bucking the rules.”

“That’s Becca,” I said.

“My parents were kind of sticklers about rules, too,” he said, blinking his gaze down. “And being the one usually watching the showdowns, I always wanted to ask them to back off a little.”

“I thought you said everything was good,” I said, feeling a frown dip my eyebrows.

“No, no, it was,” he said. “Our house was normal—but normal has chaos, too.”

“True.”

“And it seemed like the more my parents cracked down, the more Shon fought back.”

Our eyes met for a long moment. “What happened to him?” I asked.

“He got in some trouble,” Seth said, looking into his glass as though the story was in there. “I tried to help him, but he needed a different kind of help.”

“What kind?”

“Money to pay off debt—at nineteen years old,” Seth added, bitterness entering his voice. “He got mixed up with bad people, and then thought drowning his problems in a bottle would stop it.” He looked at me. “It did.”

“Oh, God,” I whispered.

“So he got behind the wheel after partying one night, and ended up dead,” Seth said, upending his glass and draining the tea.

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

“I was twenty-one,” he said. “Just finishing up college. It’s part of what pushed me to join the police academy.”

“How did your parents handle it?” I asked, unable to imagine losing a child that way.

I’d lost one, too. But I knew he was still breathing. And then the most awful realization hit me. I hadn’t known, not really. I guess my mother did, but I didn’t. Shon’s birth mother—she probably had no idea.

“Like you’d expect,” he said. “It was hard to leave them after that, but they wanted me to go after what I wanted, so I did.”

“Do they—” I stopped and took a sip of my untouched tea, then got up to refill his glass. “Do they know you came to find us?”

“My dad does,” he said. “My mom—she’d probably be okay with it, but I just didn’t want to put that on her yet. At least not till I had something to tell. After Lisa bailed on the wedding and all—she would have just worried.”

I smiled. “She sounds like we’d have a lot in common.”

“You’re very similar, actually,” he said on a chuckle. “Eerily so.”

Becca came into the room, looking somber and clean-faced. “I need a note to get back in school.”

“What was your plan?” I asked.

“Hadn’t thought that far,” she said, nothing in her eyes. Nothing in her expression. She handed me a pen and piece of notebook paper. “Just—please write whatever you’re gonna write.”

She knew me. She knew I’d write something like,
Please let Becca White back in school today, she was stupid and skipped class without my knowledge.

She knew that because it’s exactly what I would have done. As I looked at the trouble in her face and heard Seth’s words, however, I paused.

I looked at the blank page with its rumpled edges, pulled from some dark cave of her backpack, and started writing. When I handed it to her, she snatched it and walked off, but stopped at the doorway as she started reading. She turned back around with a question in her eyes.

“Really?”

“Consider it your freebie,” I said. “With the school, not with me.”

It would be a little while before we were good again. Her gaze darted to Seth and then to the floor, and she nodded and walked away.

“What did you write?” he asked.

“To excuse her for a family emergency and that she’d be back the next day,” I said, wishing I could put my head in my glass. My face felt on fire.