Page 35 of Long Road Home

I was glad I could give him that, even if it was my fault he hadn’t always had it. He’d brought up moving past that, though, and finding something good in the future so I didn’t apologize.

Words weren’t going to help. Actions were.

I gave one last glance to my boy, still scowling and ripping weeds out of mulch, tossing them into a nearby bucket like a championship game was on the line and shoved off the counter.

“The pizza’s cold and now it’s almost lunchtime. I should warm it up.”

“You doing okay?” Jordan asked and his question was asked so brusquely, his voice so rough, my body jolted and turned to peer at him over my shoulder.

“What?”

“With that guy. You okay?”

I was more upset with using Paul for as long as I did, instead of letting him go like Allison said I should have. Seemed I had a talent for being a complete bitch to men.

I’d do better with that.

“I’m okay. Good news is, he’s better off, so once he realizes that, he’ll be fine, too.”

Jordan’s lips went tight and lost color, and he opened his mouth and snapped it closed. It was probably to agree with me, but in an effort to stop being a dick, he fought it back.

I’d bought that, too. So without him responding, I turned to the oven, turned it on and tried to ignore the heat of Jordan’s stare I felt on me every time I moved.

I hated I liked it so much. Mostly, I desperately wanted to find some way to wash away all the anger he had buried inside him when it came to me.

That would never happen. Now, I had to make the best of what we had, but that wouldn’t be so hard because the best we had was Toby.

And my kid freaking rocked.

Eleven

Jordan

A divot rippedthrough the air, and my curses followed it. “Fuck!”

“Easy, killer,” Ryan said, tapping his golf ball onto a tee close to me. “You keep tearing up your own driving range and it’s going to cost a fortune to fix.”

“Shut up, Ry.” I scooped another ball toward my own tee with my five-iron.

“We going to talk about the elephant on the range? Or we going to pretend you’re not strung tight over Destiny being back?”

Currently, I wanted to drink a bottle of really old, really good whiskey and pretend the last ten days of my life hadn’t been turned upside down. Ever since Destiny returned, I’d spent almost every day over at her place. I went to work, thought about Toby. I worked out and thought about Toby. I went to Tillie’s after I was done with work and spent time with Toby. Sometimes Destiny joined us. Sometimes she left to run errands or made herself scarce in order to give us time alone.

But at night, when I went to sleep, I wasn’t thinking about Toby. Thoughts of Destiny infiltrated my brain, making sleep not only difficult but worse once I hit dreamland. My body seemed to have forgotten how much my brain and my heart hated her, because my body? It was thinking of all sorts of scenarios where Destiny wasn’t the evil witch who’d kept my son from me for a decade. Nope, at night, in my dreams and frequently first thing in the morning, my dick very much likedallthat we were seeing in Destiny these days.

It wasn’t just screwing with my head and my ability to work…it was messing with my golf game. Which really pissed me off.

“Back off, Ryan,” Shawn said, lining up his own shot behind me. “Focus on hitting your own damn ball.”

“Please,” Ryan said. “Like he didn’t demand we haul our asses out to the range this early in the morning for practice. Man’s got shit on his mind.”

“Didn’t know you were suddenly a therapist,” I mumbled and loosened the grip on my golf club. I knew exactly why I kept slicing the damn ball and tearing up the turf. My fucking shoulders were too damn tight and this relaxing morning at the range with Ryan and Shawn was turning into a shitshow.

Ryan turned and rested his weight on his driver. “I’m a servant of the community, Mr. Marx. And that service comes in a variety of forms.”

Good Lord. He’d always been a dumbass. “You’re a moron.”

“I’m a guy who gets it on the regular from his wife and you sir, are all twisted up over a woman who you’re pissed at but still want to bang into the next decade.”

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