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Joven.
He responded almost immediately. On my way.
I climbed into my car and had my driver take me home. I’d already loosened my tie at the family dinner, but now I yanked it off and undressed. I climbed in the shower for a cold blast of water, not liking the feel of walking a fog. When I got out, I slipped on sweats and t-shirt. I might as well be comfortable if I was going to get shit faced.
A few minutes later, there was a knock on my door. “It’s open,” I called as I opened the doors to the terrace.
“You’re not planning to jump, are you?” Ash said, carrying a blue box that held a bottle of sipping tequila.
“No.” I turned to him. “Remember when you showed up at Dad’s ready to punch him?”
“Like it was yesterday. Sometimes I still want to punch him.” Ash went to my bar, pulling out glasses.
“Was that when you found out about Hannah?”
“Yep. Feels like shit, don’t it?” He poured us each two fingers of tequila in old fashioned glasses.
“It’s worse than shit.” I wasn’t sure I wanted to pour my heart out to my brother, and yet he was the only one who might understand enough to tell me what to do. Not about Morgan; That ship had sailed. But with this pain in my chest. And how to move forward, since I’d be a father who resented his child’s mother.
Ash handed me a glass. “It’s definitely not a feeling I’d ever want again.” We walked out onto the terrace. I felt like I needed the space to breath.
“How’d you do it? You lost five years, man. How did you forgive that?”
He sighed as he swirled his drink in his glass. “At first it was hard. I didn’t think I would, to be honest. I felt like I’d known Beth. I’d totally given my heart to her. So, when I found out, I felt like I’d been duped. Or that I couldn’t trust my heart.”
I nodded. That was it exactly.
I sat on one of the patio chairs and Ash took the other chair across from me. “The problem I had was that Hannah didn’t know me. I didn’t want to scare her by making her spend time with me. I had to get to know her in a way that was safe for her. That meant I needed Beth to be there. The more I was with her, the more I saw what we could be. I came to understand her reasoning, even if I didn’t agree with it. And I could see she was sorry and regretted it.”
I scoffed. “I didn’t get an apology.”
“What?” Ash’s expression showed surprise.
“I got the reasoning, but not a single apology.”
“That doesn’t sound like Morgan.”
I shrugged, taking a long swig of the tequila. “Turns out she’s not what we thought.”
His head seesawed side to side.
“You don’t believe me?”
“I believe you that she didn’t apologize, but I imagine she’s sorry. She’s probably also ashamed and upset, and wasn’t able to articulate her regret.”
I leaned my head back on the chair. “You have more faith in her than I do.”
“Did you love her?”
“Yes. Fuck.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “The first time I told her was when I was saying how she broke my heart.”
“So, she could have thought you didn’t care before.”
My head snapped up. “No. I’d told her I wanted more. She was the one that was resistant to a relationship. Now I know it was to keep me from knowing my child. Christ, she even let me believe it belonged to someone else.”
Ash winced. We drank in silence for a few minutes.
“I don’t know your relationship, Kade, but I do know that I wasn’t completely blameless in my situation. That doesn’t get Beth off the hook, but sometimes the reasons people do things are based on false assumptions.”
“Maybe.” I had no clue what he was getting at, except that Morgan said she thought I was avoiding relationships because I couldn’t trust women. As it turned out, that was a correct assumption. “She said she heard me saying I wouldn’t ever marry and have kids like you guys because I couldn’t be sure if a woman wanted my money or me.”
“See? She thought you’d think she trapped you.”
“In the end, she proved my point.”
“Why? Did she ask for money?”
I shook my head. “She didn’t have to. I arranged for her mother to get necessary medical care. And she proved my point that I can’t trust women. Or trust myself to pick a good one.”
He watched me with pity. I hated that.
“You know what really tipped the decision for me to take Beth back?” he asked.
“What?”
“I had to decide if I could live without her. Yes, I’d see her because I’m Hannah’s dad, but she wouldn’t be with me. I didn’t think I could do that. I especially didn’t like thinking that eventually she might find another man. Beth is a good woman who made a bad decision.”
