Page 94 of Finding Fate

“Cool! I wanna see it.” He turns around, his eyes big and round. His face is already animated. “Can I go with . . .” He stops drastically and spins. “What’s your name again?”

I want to laugh and cry at the same time. It’s so sad that he has to ask that about his grandparents, but also, you have to love the innocent mind of a child. No filter most of the time. They don’t need it. Everything is good in the world. There is no ugly to a child. And sometimes, I wish we could all view the world that way.

She smiles at him, but you can see the sadness in her eyes. I hate it. So many people have been hurt over this, but even so, I love Maddox too much to wish I’d never met him. I don’t even know what it was exactly that made him stand out to me. One moment I was there with a friend, enjoying the music, and the next I saw him. In that moment I knew I wanted to know him. And deep down, I think I even knew he was meant to be mine. I haven’t second guessed it since.

She takes his hands in hers and looks at him. “Well, that depends,” she says. “There are lots of names for grandmas and grandpas. Mine were Nana and Papa. Your grandfather called his Mawmaw and Pawpaw. Your daddy called his grandparents Meme and Pepaw. There are others too, like Gigi and PopPop, Lolly and Pop. You’re a special grandchild. You want to know why?”

“Why?”

“Because you’re the first, and that means you get to pick our grandparent names, so, what do you want to call us?”

“I get to pick?!” he asks excitedly.

“You sure do.”

“But what if you don’t like it?”

“I will love it, becauseyouchose it. It will make it more special.”

“Okay. I like Gigi and PopPop, because it’s like Pappoús, Pappoúli, and Ya-Ya.”

A tear slips down her cheek. She lets it go instead of brushing it away. “Gigi is perfect. What do you think, Roy? How do you like PopPop?”

Everyone’s eyes go to him as he pulls on his last boot and fixes his jeans over it. He walks over to the cabinet and pulls out an insulated mug, already filling it with coffee. “I think you read my mind. That’s the one I was hoping you’d pick. You ready to go to the shop and look at the equipment?”

He nods excitedly and turns to me with a smile. “Can I go, Mom? With Gigi and PopPop?”

“I think that’s an awesome idea! Me and Daddy can hang out here.”

His mom stands and smiles at me as she takes his hand. “We’ll go get your coat,” she says, leading him out of the kitchen. Micah follows them.

Maddox’s dad screws on the top to his coffee-filled mug and walks toward us, catching me off guard by giving me a sideways hug. “Welcome to the family, sweetheart. I knew it was only a matter of time until he brought you back. He’s always been the most like his grandfather, even when it comes to love. Found it young and never looked back. One of these days, the two of you will have a fiftieth anniversary under your belt too,” he says low into my ear. My lips tremble as I try to hold in the tears. “And leave the past in the past where it belongs. Do you understand? Everything tends to work out exactly like it’s supposed to. We’re not angry. We forgave your dad a long time ago. Parenting has its hiccups like everything else. None of us are perfect.”

“Yes, sir,” I say, no longer able to hold anything in. I hope that I can be like them. They’ve always been role models.

“Good. The rest will smooth out with time.” He walks behind me and slaps Maddox on the shoulder, before squeezing the back of his neck and pulling him in. “Son, I shouldn’t have to say this but I’m going to. She needs to have your last name before another baby is born. Don’t wait around to make it right.”

My cheeks heat with embarrassment when Maddox looks at me with a grin on his face. “Yes, sir.”

He walks to the kitchen door and pulls on a trucker’s hat, before grabbing a jacket off the hook next to it. “If you get hungry go ahead and eat. I’m not in a rush. I’m going to get to know my grandson.”

He walks out the door, leaving the two of us alone. I swipe my fingers under my eyes to try and clean up from where I was crying, before turning to face Maddox. “Do I look like crap?”

He grabs my brown sweater over my belly button and pulls me in, already running his hands underneath it. “When have you ever looked like crap?”

I smile, knowing that tone as he rubs across my bare skin. One thing I can always bank on to make me feel better is Maddox’s sex drive. “You hated my hair when it was black.”

He dips his head in the crook of my neck, already kissing and nibbling along my flesh. My breathing escalates as he comes closer to my ear. “I never said I hated it. I just like your natural color better. I met you as a blonde. But if I recall correctly, my dick worked just fine when I fucked you in the ticket booth the first day I saw you. If you looked like crap to me, I wouldn’t have gotten up. You could have pink hair and I’d still find you hot.”

My heart starts beating faster when his hand dips underneath my bra, kneading my breast that is now sensitive versus when I first found out I was pregnant. “What are you doing?”

“We have the house to ourselves. Like old times.”

“So . . . They’ll come back.”

“Not anytime soon. I know my parents. If they say they’re going to do something, they do it. All those times you stayed the night with me, we never got caught.” His teeth graze over the lobe of my ear and his left hand trails down to my ass, taking a handful. I moan out accidentally. He’s always been able to control me like a puppet.

“But I want them to like me,” I whine, my hands already circling around his waist like I’m going to cave. It’s pathetic. “I’m not planning on going anywhere. At some point we’re going to get caught.”

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