Page 36 of Mistaken Identity
The last time mine had one in it had been three years ago.
And the ache in my chest was still so huge it hurt to breathe.
Audric rounded the truck and opened the door, gesturing for the car seat.
Instead of getting her into it, I handed her off to him.
“That one looks way fancier than the one I had for Damon,” I murmured quietly.
He took her, locked her in, and closed the door before saying, “I just need to make a quick stop at the pharmacy.”
I rounded the hood of his truck and got in, sighing when my ass hit the seat.
“Ahhh,” I said tiredly. “Your seats are like clouds.”
“Had to get a new vehicle when…”
When Laney had died and taken their old vehicle.
I nodded.
“Didn’t want anything like the old one. I’m not saying it’s what killed them, but I’ll never have a small car again. Maybe if they’d been in this, they all would’ve been alive right now,” he murmured quietly.
Laney and Apollo’s son, Tavi, had been stuck in rush hour traffic on I-30 in the middle of Dallas when a senator’s son driving a million miles an hour had lost control and launched himself over the divider wall separating his side from Laney’s.
Laney and Tavi had been killed on impact—though Laney had been given enough life saving measures to help save the baby—as had three other people in three separate vehicles.
Laney had been driving Audric’s old car, a 1998 Camaro that he refused to get rid of because he loved it so much.
“Audric,” I said. “There were several other vehicles in that same wreck. One of which I know was a truck like this.”
“That man survived, though,” he pointed out.
He had.
But…
“Audric, it wasn’t your fault.”
“It kind of was,” he admitted as he put the truck in drive and headed around the side of the building to pull into the drive-through line for the pharmacy. “I was the one who asked her to go get me some supplies.”
“Laney literally did that all the time, Audric. She was your right-hand woman.”
Audric looked slightly sick. “She wanted to go back to work, but I wouldn’t let her. What would be the point when she had a kid on the way?”
I remembered this fight, actually.
Laney had come over, spitting mad, angry that Audric hadn’t wanted her to go back to work.
She’d wanted Audric to watch the baby.
But, as I’d gently pointed out to Laney, that was pretty fucking selfish of her to ask of him.
“Like I told Laney,” I said softly, letting the memory go. “That wasn’t fair of her to ask you. If you’d let her go back to work like she wanted, she’d have been off for six weeks immediately after. Then she’d have left the baby for you to deal with at six weeks old. And let’s be completely honest here. We all knew what she was asking of you was bullshit. She never would’ve gotten you to act like a father if she was still here.”
He didn’t say anything.
“I saw it, you know.”
