Page 5 of Long Road Home

I don’t think I can do this. I don’t know if I want to follow you all over who knows where just so you can live your dream. I have dreamstoo,and they’re more than being your groupie.

It was a fight. A silly fight and it wasn’t like we hadn’t had them before, but that one…it was different. I’d still been a dumbass and brushed it off, thinking she was hormonal or scared to leave, scared to stay…that was Destiny. Scared and uncertain. I’d thought it was another fear of hers and we’d get through it. We’d always been able to before.

Two days later, after she stopped returning my calls or texts, I’d gone to Tillie’s to fix it. Except Destiny wasn’t there and Tillie had handed me a note. She broke up and disappeared on me with a fucking note. It was ten years ago, and it still hurt as much as it had that very same day.

Destiny and her son finally reached her SUV. She glanced back at me as she pulled open her door. I didn’t need to see her eyes to know she was glaring at me, but it was the quick flinch when she caught me watching her that sent ice to the back of my neck.

I’d hurt her. I’d said the worst possible thing to her, the one thing I’d always stood by her and defended her for. In a split second, I became like every single other asshole in the town. Something I’d always sworn I’d never do to her.

Ten years later and it still hurt me to hurt her, even if she didn’t feel the same.

“Fucking shit.” I kicked at the grass. Her SUV’s tires squealed out of the space and took off.

I needed a damn drink. Or twelve.

“So how’d it go?”my best friend, Ryan, asked me.

We were on the back deck at my sister’s house, tossing back beers. It didn’t take a genius to figure out I was broody and pissed off as soon as I showed up. I half-expected my sister, Rebecca, orchestrated this dinner tonight because she knew I’d head to Tillie’s funeral even though no one else bothered to.

Not that they had any reason to. Most in attendance hadn’t hidden their dislike of Destiny, some of them didn’t bother to hide it before she even took off. I’d shut them up pretty quick afterward. It was so damn ingrained in me to protect Destiny it still hurt when I remembered her earlier flinch.

“Fucking sucked,” I muttered and tossed back my beer. “She’s here.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.” I grabbed another beer from the cooler near our feet and popped the top. The cool drinks were not settling me down. Maybe more would help. “Has a kid. A boy.”

Barely looked a thing like her, too. I’d stared at that photo more times in the last few hours than I cared to admit. Something that showed he was her son. But he didn’t have a lick of her light coloring or her hazel eyes that would be slightly different colors depending on how bright the sun was or what color she wore.

I’d always loved her in green.

I took another large swallow of my beer. Like I needed to be remembering what color I liked her wearing. Ten years and I hadn’t been able to evaporate her in my brain. Wouldn’t have been able to if I took a power washer to it either.

“No shit?” he said again, his voice rising. “She has a son?”

“Who has a son?” That came from Cooper Hawke, my sister’s fiancé.

“Destiny,” I muttered.

He was the only one who wasn’t around when the epic shitstorm of Destiny and Jordan blew up, but I was sure Rebecca had told him enough.

She never held back around me, anyway, especially when she knew I was helping Tillie.

Damn. Fucking Tillie. I hadn’t been blind to her decline over the years. The way her hands shook more than were steady. The loss of weight on her already small frame and the mellowing of her spunky attitude. We’d run into each other at the grocery store shortly after I came back to town and like a moth to a flame, willing to be burned when it came to anything Matsen-related, I’d showed up at her house the next weekend to see if I could help her with anything.

She’d seen right through my bullshit tactic, knowing it was to get information on Destiny, but she didn’t turn me away. Instead, she pointed her finger to her small shed where she stored her lawnmower. Week after week I returned, sometimes more often. Every time I started to ask about Destiny, she changed the subject.

I figured they didn’t have anything to do with one another.

Until last week when she was on the couch almost asleep and she gripped my hand. Hers, small and frail and cold despite it being August and she was covered in a blanket.

She’d looked at me with that fire in her eyes I’d known so well when I was younger.Forgive her, Jordan. Someday, you’re going to know everything and for me, I’m begging you, for me…forgive her. Find it in that huge heart of yours you have, dig deep, and give that to her. You’re both going to need it.

Whatever the hell that meant. She fell asleep before I could get her to tell me more.

Two days later, she was gone. I’d been too busy at the golf resort and spa I owned to get back to her place and demand more answers.

“How was she?” Cooper asked.

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