Searching for Neverland (36 page)

My head was swimming with answers he wasn’t offering.

Seeing the look on my face, he quickly said, “No, they’re not my kids. I don’t have any kids. They’re Jeremy and Carlie’s kids – Caleb and Savannah.”

“Oh. Why are you getting custody of Caleb and Savannah?”

He drew in a long, calming breath. “I’m their godfather, and I pretty much raised Savannah from the time she was born until she was two. And I visit them whenever I’m in Atlanta. They’re like a second family to me.”

Yeah, I knew that.

“Josh, I don’t understand. Why are you getting temporary custody?”

He shook his head a few times. “Carlie is sick. She has depression, and she needs help. It’s pretty bad. See, Caleb had started calling me a lot more over the past few months, because Carlie has been getting progressively worse, and I didn’t realize to what extent, because every time I talked to her, she’d assure me she
was
fine and
that
Caleb was overreacting.”

“That was why you went up there three weeks ago, wasn’t it?”

He nodded. “Yeah, Caleb called me in panic because Carlie wouldn’t get out of bed. He said she’d been in bed for two days, and he didn’t know what to do. But by the time I got there, she was completely fine. She told me she’d just been sick, but I wasn’t sure I believed her, so I stayed for a few days. When she didn’t show any signs of going back into her depression, I left
thinking everything was fine. But it wasn’t. I got that call last weekend when we were at dinner. It was from Jeremy’s sister, Melissa. She said Carlie was in the hospital. She’d tried to kill herself by taking prescription medication. Caleb found her and called 911, and the paramedics got to her in time, but she need
s
some serious help.”

Jesus.

“So you’re taking the kids?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Melissa has three kids of her own, and her husband got laid off last month, so they can’t afford to take them. Carlie was raised in foster care, so she doesn’t have any family, and Jeremy’s mom lives in Oahu, and there’s no way I’m uprooting the kids to live in Hawaii for a month. I told Mel I’d take them.”

“Is that legal?”

He nodded. “Yeah, Carlie signed some papers that will allow me to take them for up to two months, but she’s only going into in-patient treatment for thirty days, and then she’ll see a therapist as a continuation of her treatment, but she’ll do it in an out-patient program, and she can have the kids back then.”

Wow, that was more than I ever expected to hear.

“Where is Carlie now?” I asked.

“She’s in a facility here where she can get the help she needs. Melissa and I thought it would be best for the kids to at least be in the same city as their mom, so it made more sense to bring everyone here since it’s the summer, they’re not in school, and I can’t exactly leave the bar.”

“So you were with Melissa today?” I deduced, feeling strangely relieved that the one thing I’d been so worried about wasn’t actually the thing I needed to be concerned about. This situation was so much bigger than Josh cheating on me.

He nodded. “Yeah, we all flew in this morning, and M
el took the kids while I got Carlie
checked in, and then I met them at The Cheesecake Factory for lunch. That’s when Casey saw me. Mel’s always been a little on the eclectic side, but she’s a great mom. She’s with the kids now in a hotel, and she’s flying home tomorrow, so I want to get everything settled. I’m going to look for an apartment and–”

I held up my hand to stop him. “No.”

“What?”

“No, Josh that’s stupid.”

“I’m not following.”

I sighed, not sure what I was getting myself into since I knew zip about raising kids. I just knew how to play with them, and even then the only kid I knew was my brother.

“Hear me out, okay, but we have three bedrooms here. There’s plenty of room now that Allison has moved out.”

Josh blinked a few times, as if trying to piece together what I was saying.

“Just have them move in here,” I offered, trying to be clearer as to not elicit confusion. “It’s only temporary, right?”

He nodded. “Right. Carlie should be in treatment for a month, six weeks tops
,
depending on the progress she makes.”

“Then, it’s settled. They’ll move in here, and you won’t have to worry about finding an apartment that’ll be too big for you to live in alone after a month, and I won’t be all sad because you moved out.”

He shook his head a few times. “I can’t put this on you, Tay. It’s a huge responsibility. Caleb and Savannah are good kids, but they’ve just been through something really traumatic, and you don’t even really like kids.”

I threw my hands up, frustrated that everyone assumed that. “It’s not that I don’t like kids,” I said through gritted teeth. “I just don’t know many of them, and they sort of freak me out, but once I get to know them it’s fine. It’ll be fine, Josh.”

I needed him to hear the conviction in my voice. I wasn’t going to settle for a different solution. Aside from the fact that I didn’t want Josh to move out, I also knew he wouldn’t be able to tackle instant fatherhood on his own, and I didn’t want to leave him adrift when he was going through something so huge. I knew how important Carlie was to him, and I wanted to support him through this, no matter how much it took me out of my comfort zone. It was what you did for someone you loved.

“Are you sure?”

I knew he wasn’t convinced I could do this with him. The hesitation in his tone was apparent.

I sighed. “Let me meet them tomorrow, and if they hate me, you can move out and do your thing with them, but if it all goes well, I think we make arrangements for them to stay with us.

He nodded slowly, and it looked like he was thinking things over. “It’s a lot to put on us,” he cautioned. “Are you sure you want to take
a
risk like this?”

I knew what he meant. We were just starting out as a couple. Something like this could totally derail us, but I liked to think that we were stronger than that.

I took his hands in mine. “Josh, because I love you, I want to take this risk with you. I want to stand by you and support you and be the person you can count on. And I honestly think that at the end of this, we’re going to be fine. It’ll be like having a month long sleepover. It might even be fun.”

He laughed. “You have no idea what you’re signing up for, and shit, neither do I, but I love you for trying to make it sound so appealing.”

He leaned forward and kissed me, and the passion he felt for me had never been clearer. His kiss said everything he couldn’t put into words.

“I love you, Taylor,” he said, as he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me against his chest. He sighed in defeat or exhaustion or a little of both. “This has been one of the longest weeks of my life, and I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you what was going on.”

I squeezed him back. “I wish you would have let me in, Josh. You tried to shoulder this all yourself, and you probably don’t want to admit it, but you were in a little bit over your head.”

He leaned his chin on the top of my head. “I was way in over my head, but Tay, this was my thing. I didn’t want to get you involved. I didn’t want to put this on you. Jeremy and Carlie were my friends, and I felt like I had to handle things on my own.”

Oh sweet Josh, that’s because you’ve never had a girlfriend you were serious about before.

I pulled back and looked at him. “You told me last week
end
that you wanted in for the long haul, that you wanted a commitment, and I think you even mentioned something about being with me
for
the rest of your life. With that being said, keep in mind that I want the same things. And that also might mean some bumps in the road, but being in a relationship also means that I’m here to hold your hand through it all and you’re here to hold mine.”

Josh leaned his head against my forehead. “I’m not sure I could love you any more right now. Thank you.”

“You care to show me that love?” I asked, grinning wickedly at him and knowing taking his mind off of everything he’d been dealing with was probably the best idea. And after everything I’d been feeling over the past few hours, I sort of just needed to feel close to him.

He smirked at me. “You mean physically?”

I nodded. “I figure we should get the wild sex out of our systems before we have to keep quiet, have quickies, and restrict our sex
to
late at night once everyone is asleep.”

Oh good Lord, what had I agreed to.

“We’re not going to be able to sleep in anymore either,” Josh said then, and it was as if that fact had just hit him.

I shook my head. “Nope, we’re not. And we’ll also have to quit getting wasted, because it’s probably not appropriate to do that with kids around, nor will it be fun to have a wicked hangover when you can’t sleep it off.”

Josh’s eyes went wide, and it was as if he was just now contemplating what he’d agreed to.

“It’s only for a month. It’ll be fine. It’s not like we’re committing to the next eighteen years or anything.”

Josh nodded. “You’re right. We’ll just have to adjust and figure out a new way of doing things. It’ll be fine.”

“It’ll be great,” I said, smiling before I kissed him.

Chapter 21

I laid my head on Josh’s bare chest, as he ran his fingers rhythmically up and down my arm. I’d let him make love to me in the wake of the first big test our budding relationship was going to face, and although we’d both flown out of the moment and forgotten the fear and uncertainty, it was like you could tell what would happen the next day was hovering over us like a fog.

“Tell me about Jeremy and Carlie,” I murmured, not sure if it would help him to talk about his best friends, but if nothing else, I wanted to know about them.

I looked up at
Josh, and he was smiling. “Jeremy was an idiot, but I loved him, because he was so fucking passionate about everything. He was the guy who talked me into going surfing in the middle of the night, who convinced me to take off with him for three days when we met these two girls in Holland our sophomore year of college, and the guy who talked me into getting a tattoo with him one night when we were drunk. He lived life to its fullest all the time.”

I moved my hand to trace the nautical star on his left bicep.

He shook his head. “Not that one. I got that one voluntarily my freshman year of college.”

Then he rotated, so I could see the large
tattoo
between his shoulder blades.

I fingered the intricate
design
, tracing the lines of the pattern.

“It’s the Celtic symbol for brotherhood. Jer wanted to get it, and he talked me into doing it with him, telling me I was the brother he’d never had.”

I s
mirked at him
. “You guys got matching tattoos?”

He rolled back over, leaned his head on his hand and looked at me. “Yeah
.
We were cheesy like that, but it was all
Jeremy. He brought it out in me, he made me stop thinking so much, and he made life fun
.”

“When did he meet Carlie?”

“He met Carlie our junior year of college and convinced her to marry him one weekend when we were all in Atlantic City. They’d only been dating for three months, but he was absolutely nuts over her. He asked her to marry him on their first date, and then he just kept asking until she gave in, and only after he tattooed her name on his forearm. I think she figured if he was willing to ink himself for her, he was a keeper. So she tattooed
his name
on her lower back and they got married the next day. She was an awesome chick, and she kept Jer’s crazy ass in line.”

“He had a lot of tattoos, didn’t he?”

I’d seen a picture of Jeremy in Josh’s room, and from what I could tell, he was covered in them.

Josh nodded. “At last count, I think he had thirty-five of them, not counting the filler stuff on his arm. He wanted both sleeves done, but he only got one fully completed before he died.”

The look in his eyes and the distant smile on his face told me Josh was a million miles away.

“You miss him, don’t you?”

He nodded. “Every day. Every fucking day.”

“I can’t even begin to imagine what that would be like. To even think about losing Allison.” I shook my head at the thought. It was unfathomable.

“I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. There is no more helpless of a feeling than when you lose someone close to you and you never had a prayer to prevent it
, or even say goodbye
.”

“What happened?”

He took a deep breath. “Pre-Carlie, Jeremy was a pretty reckless son-of-a-bitch, and he always had this feeling that he was going to die young. It was why he lived his life to the fullest, and now I almost wonder if he wasn’t psychic. He toned down the craziness after he married Carlie and even more after Caleb was born, because he suddenly had two people who counted on him and loved him, but he never gave up his motorcycle. Not that he was reckless when he rode, but he liked speed and getting out on the open road. We both did, but he especially loved taking his bike out on the back roads early in the morning and riding until he got tired, but one morning he didn’t come home.”