Fix You (44 page)

             
Her dad twitched a half-smile. “He likes your boy.”

             
“Anyone could fake that,” she murmured, looking away. She knew, though, that there was nothing fake about Chris. He did like her boy – which made all of this so much harder.

             
“But he’s not,” Randy persisted. “And your boy likes him.”

             
“Which is another reason why I should cut ties now before Ty gets more attached and is crushed when he eventually gets bored with us and moves on.”

             
“Jess.”

             
She twisted the tablecloth again.

             
He sighed. “Jess, look at me.”

             
She did, reluctantly.

             
“Is that what you think, sweetheart?”

             
“Well it’s the truth.”

             
“No. No, it’s not. Not everyone gets bored. Not the good ones.” He reached all the way across the corner of the table and placed one of his huge hands over both of hers. “Believe it or not, there are guys smart enough to know when they’ve found what they need. Smart enough to know you’re too good for ‘em and who’d spend the rest of their lives loving you and the babies you gave them. Dylan wasn’t one of those guys. But I think…maybe Chris is.

             
“And,” he made a face, “it’s not like…well…there’s already a baby involved.” He took a moment, looking like he’d swallowed something sharp, then sobered, his hand tightening over hers. “A kid needs a dad.
Tyler
needs a dad – a real one. It’s not fair to hope that me or Tam or one of your brothers can step in when Ty needs us to. He needs a role model. He needs to be able to watch a man love his mama the way she needs to be loved, so he’ll know how to treat women when he grows up.”

             
“Dad…”

             
“And you may be tough as nails, sweetheart, but you need someone, too. Actually, I think you need
him
, ‘cause you wouldn’t be this upset if you hated him.”

             
Shaking loose of his hands, she pressed her fingertips to her eyes, but the tears came anyway. She drew rein on them, clamped down hard on her composure, but they were there, and he was seeing them. She hated that. She felt weak and powerless. Darting a sideways look at her dad, she expected judgment – paternal disgust with her predicament – but all she saw was a gentle, stoic compassion. In a sick way, she would have preferred contempt. She didn’t know what to do with understanding: it was too much like what Chris had always offered, and that comparison – between the men in her life – left her missing Chris even more.

             
“God, Dad,” she whispered. “What’ve I done?”

             
He stood and wrapped a strong arm across her shoulders. “Nothing you can’t fix,” he assured.

             
But she wasn’t sure she believed him.

             
“I just want you to be happy, sweetheart,” he said, giving her shoulders a squeeze. “If you really hate him, then by all means, don’t take him back. But if you don’t…I think you should give him a chance to prove himself.”

             
She reached up and laid her hand over his in silent agreement.

             
“And,” he chuckled, “this old dump you bought needs a resident handyman.”

34

             
H
er divorce papers arrived on her front steps via courier service Monday morning. In her slippers and yoga pants, she pored over the tidy legal print and Dylan’s tight signature at the bottom. The terms were clear – they were unbelievable. She had her settlement, her alimony, and more important than either of those, she had Tyler. Sole custody. She sagged against the doorjamb and frightened the courier into thinking she was about to faint. Which was almost true. With a borrowed pen, she bore down on the porch rail and signed her name. With a few pen strokes, she severed “Beaumont” from her name irrevocably; she cut the man she’d loved, she’d married, she’d slept with and bore a child for, out of her life like cancer. How clinical, she thought, to end lives with a little ink. Long moments after the courier’s van had slipped over the top of the drive, she waited for the crush to come…but it didn’t. She felt…nothing. Nothing save relief.

             
Then it was only her, and her rambling empty house, and her baby, and her sister’s cozy family across the drive. And her mistake…which wasn’t really a mistake at all, but something she pressed her hand to in the dark of night and prayed for. Two dozen times she called up Chris’s number on her phone and almost dialed, but stopped short. What did she say to the love she’d scorned? How did she fix that?

             
The answer came late Wednesday night: she wasn’t supposed to. In the renovation of her life, she was the wreck, and he was the fixer. And that was the way it was always going to be.

             
Knocking snatched her out of sleep. Her eyes slammed open in the dark of her bedroom and her breath caught as she listened. The glowing red dials of her bedside clock showed two a.m.; she’d been asleep only an hour. Nausea went rippling through her, unforgiving in the way it curled her empty stomach.

             
“What…?” she asked the shadows.

             
The knocking sounded again: at her backdoor, heavy and insistent. Fear dawned and died in an instant. She knew who it was, who it had to be.

             
Fighting the bile that threatened to come up her throat, she eased upright and swung her legs over the side, found her silk slippers with her toes. She had to look like hell: all pillow-tangled hair and no makeup. But he’d seen her like this before; he’d have to get used to it if he was here to…if he wanted…

             
She didn’t dare let herself hope for so much. With a fast straightening of the long-sleeved tee she slept in, she got to her feet and went down the hall into the kitchen. It was a cloudy night, the shadows thick as pudding, and only the security lamp out in the drive gave her enough light to see her way as she crossed to the backdoor and turned the deadbolt for the wide-shouldered silhouette standing on her back step.

             
She knew it was Chris. The light touched his brow ridge, drew a shadow down the obvious line of his nose, brushed the sharp tips of his dark hair. But for a long moment, he didn’t say anything.

             
It should be me
, she realized.
She
was the one who’d shoved a check and an ultrasound image of his child across a café table.
She
should be the one to set things straight.

             
But he said, “Hi, beautiful,” and tears flooded her eyes.

             
Jess flung her arms around his neck and held tight, her body pressed to his solid, strong one. One of his hands cradled the back of her head and the other spanned the small of her back; he held her and she cried out all the wrenching tears she’d been holding in for so long.

             
“I’m sorry,” she said against the front of his shirt, voice choked with sobs. “I’m so sorry.”

             
His chin settled in her hair. “I wasn’t sure you’d let me in.”

             
Tears rolled over her lashes and she gulped in a deep, shuddering breath. “I-I wasn’t sure you’d come back.”

             
He chuckled; it ruffled her hair. “Like I could stay away from you.”

             
And he held her while the trauma of the past six months left her at last.

**

              “No, don’t get up.”

             
He was sitting in one of her kitchen chairs and she was sideways in his lap, a single lamp glowing from the counter, the neck of his flannel shirt wetter than her puffy face. Jess was calmer; the sobs, and then hiccups, had died away to sniffles, and in the wake of her emotional rip-tide, she felt light-headed and giddy. And maybe a little afraid, if she was honest. And very sure of a few things.

             
“I cried all over you,” she protested, and made another move to stand that he prevented with an arm around her waist.

             
“I don’t care.” He reached to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear, his eyes soft as they moved over her face, his touch careful. “Sit and talk to me.”

             
Self-conscious, she glanced away. “I should at least wash my face or something. I’m a wreck.”

             
“You’re hot as hell.”

             
“I’m not.” She flashed him a serious look. “Okay? I’m a pregnant gross mess. I’m not going to be ‘hot’ all the time. I’m gonna have swollen ankles and stretch marks and I’m getting crow’s feet and –  ”

             
He pressed the tip of her nose like a button and she stopped talking with a sigh. He was grinning. “Yeah, I still don’t do the poetic flowery bullshit thing. But I think you’re hot. And beautiful. And gorgeous…and whatever else you wanna call it. You’re perfect to me.”

             
She thought she couldn’t possibly have tears left, but felt them pressing behind her eyes again.

             
“Except you really gotta work on the way you tell a guy he’s gonna be a dad.”

             
“I know,” she groaned. “I know.” She pressed a hand to the hard swell of his chest – the thump of his pulse clear against her palm – and for the first time, she met his gaze and acknowledged Dylan for what he was: the ghost that had kept her hiding like a frightened little girl. “I haven’t been fair to you,” she said, and her voice started to shake. “And I shouldn’t make excuses…”

             
He cradled the side of her face in one big hand and she lost her battle against her emotions again, tears spilling over.

             
“I threw away ten years on a man who didn’t love me” – her voice caught – “and didn’t want me. He wouldn’t have any more kids and he couldn’t stand to touch me anymore and –  ” She ground her teeth, wanting more than anything not to cry. “I’ve just been so afraid…”

             
“Yeah you have.” He twitched a half-smile that melted her insides. “But I’m not him.”

             
“I know – I know you’re not.” Jess laid her head against his shoulder, felt the rasp of his goatee against her forehead. “I know you’re not,” she repeated. He felt so big and sure and male around her – she’d missed this. She’d craved this. Craved
him
, and the way he was with her.

             
“And I do want you,” he said. “And I do love you. You know that, too.”

             
She murmured a “yes” and wiped at her tear-stained cheeks. “I’m a lot to take on,” she warned. “This house, and Tyler, and my family.”

             
“Then I guess Baghdad was good practice.”

             
“God,” she said, smiling through her tears.

             
His arms folded around her; he toyed with the hair that spilled over her shoulders. “Jessie Mae,” he teased, and proved true the old adage about marrying a man like her father. Then he sobered, his voice heavy with how much he wanted her to believe him. “I can spend every night watching TV with you and your kid. I wanna come home at the end of every day and have dinner at this table with the two of you. I won’t get bored, sweetheart. I promise you that.” She felt his throat work as he swallowed. “I’m not ever gonna be some rich suit-and-tie type like you’re used to. I wanna give you…everything, but that’s not much.”

             
“You’re wrong.” She curled her fingers in his shirtfront. “It’s so much, Chris.”

             
He breathed what might have been a laugh, the hair at her temple stirring. “You think?”

             
She inhaled, pulled in deep the working man smell of him. It didn’t seem possible to have found someone who loved her. Who loved her kid, too. The disbelief was why she’d continued to push him away. “I know,” she said, and meant it all the way down to the tips of her toes.

             
A warm beat of silence passed, filled with his fingers through her hair and his heart beating against her ear. “So,” Chris finally said, “my mattress at home is a real piece of shit. It’s all lumpy and one of the springs is sticking out.”

             
Through her last clinging tears, Jess smiled. “And let me guess: you think you can talk your way into an invitation to sleep over?”

             
“Well,” he shrugged; she could feel it, “if it’s not too much trouble…” and chuckled.