It was three in the morning when my attorney, Mark Leman, led me out of the police station.
The sky was dark, not even a star visible among the hovering clouds.
But, at the same time, the reality was so bright it was blinding.
“Porter!” my dad yelled, his long legs eating the distance between us, relief crinkling the corners of his green eyes.
Tanner was right behind him, a similar expression contorting his face.
“Where’s Hannah?” I asked.
“At home with your mom,” Dad answered, pulling me in for a brief hug.
The tiniest fraction of relief washed over me. At least they couldn’t take her away from me. Though I had a feeling they were still going to try.
“Give me the latest?” Dad demanded.
Mark sighed. “I’m going to be frank with you, Tommy. This is just the beginning. As I told Porter, the police have nothing to hold him on, but the investigation will continue over the next few days, if not weeks. He needs to cooperate to the best of his ability.”
Dad gripped the back of his neck. “Jesus Christ. Of course he will.”
I didn’t have much of a choice. Cooperate or lose my son forever.
And, even if I did cooperate, the latter wasn’t off the table. An idea that felt like acid to my soul.
I was beyond exhausted, and my head was pounding. The intermittent surges of adrenaline my body had been feeding me all night had ravaged me.
“Where’s Travis? When can we take him home?” Dad asked.
Now, wasn’t that the million-dollar question?
My shoulders sagged in defeat.
Mark looked at me, but when I found myself unable to reply, he answered for me. “Temporarily, Travis has been placed in the care of his biological parents.”
“No fucking way!” Tanner boomed. “He doesn’t even know them.”
Strangely enough, despite the fact that we’d been dating for over a month, I was starting to feel like I didn’t know Charlotte, either.
I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood. “Charlotte asked for an order of protection to prevent me from having any contact with Travis.”
“What?” Dad and Tanner gasped in unison, their shock echoing my own.
Charlotte, more than anyone else, knew exactly what my children meant to me. I had no words to adequately explain the pain of that betrayal. It seemed to be a common thread in my life when it came to women.
“Holy hell,” Tanner breathed, gripping the back of his neck.
Mark chimed in. “There will be a custody hearing next week to decide something long term. I’ll be honest. We don’t have much ground to work with, but we’re preparing to make a case that, given his health issues, it’s in Travis’s best interest to remain with the only father he’s ever known—at least part-time.”
“Part-time?” Dad snarled.
Those two syllables feeling like a one-two knockout punch. Though, when faced with the horrifying possibility of not having him at all, part-time was the only hope I had to hold on to.
“I’m afraid so,” Mark said. “And, after talking to the family’s counsel, it doesn’t sound like the child’s parents are going to be open to this arrangement.”
“Holy shit. Are you okay?” Tanner asked, reaching out to cup my shoulder.
No. I wasn’t okay in any fashion. My blood was boiling, and my soul was crushed. Half of my life had been ripped away from me.
Emotion clogged my throat. “No. I’m never going to be okay with this. That’s my son. And people just expect me to let him go because Catherine was a madwoman. That doesn’t fucking change the fact that he’s mine. He will always be mine.”
Before I had the chance to break down completely, Tanner caught the back of my neck and stepped in front of me.
His gaze intense and his words promising. “We’ll get him back.”
“How?” I begged. “Please, God. Just tell me how?”
Tanner’s face paled. “I don’t know yet. But I swear I’ll get him back for you. We’re the Reese brothers, remember? We’ll find a way.”
“I can’t even think anymore.” Shaking my head, I cut my gaze to the ground. “I need a timeout. I need all of this to stop for a few minutes so I can figure this out.”
Charlotte’s voice suddenly infiltrated my mind. “I need it to stop, Porter.”
I’d only thought I understood her before that day.
But I had no clue the hell she was living through.
And, if I was being honest with myself, a part of my heart was happy for her that she’d found her son.
But why did it have to be my son?
“Come on, Porter. I’ll drive you home,” Dad said.
“I got him,” Tanner countered. “You go ahead. Mom’s gonna be a wreck. We’ll run by my place and grab some clothes, and I’ll stay with him tonight.”
I nodded absently.
A few minutes later, I found my ass in Tanner’s Mercedes, the pitch-black night sky bearing down on me with the weight of a thousand lifetimes.
“When we get to my place, you want to fight the pond?” he asked, his eyes on the road.
“No,” I replied, digging the phone from my back pocket. The police had confiscated it from me when they’d brought me in.
“You hungry?”
“No.”
“What about a drink? You want to get sloshed?”
Pressing the power button on my phone, I kept my head down as I answered, “I could drink the entirety of Russia’s vodka supply and it wouldn’t numb me enough to handle this shit right now.”
The light on my phone illuminated the car, and the image on my home screen gutted me. It was a picture of Travis and Hannah. He was smiling directly at the camera, happy and carefree, but she was sitting beside him, gazing up at him like he held the keys to the universe.
My lungs caught fire as I stared at that picture, my hand gripping the phone impossibly tight, as if I could bring that moment to life.
When my phone finished booting up, a million notifications popped up on my screen, blocking Travis’s sweet face. Hannah’s was still visible off to the side, but I could no longer see her smile. The symbolism wasn’t lost on me.
Among the messages was a stream of texts from my mom, probably from when they had first hauled me away. Then some from my dad, one from Tanner, and a handful from the manager at The Porterhouse asking questions about the restaurant, oblivious to the rollercoaster through hell I was currently trapped on.
I scrolled through all of them.
Or almost all of them.
My body turned to stone when I saw her name.
Charlotte: Hey dad I’m with Charlotte she said she will take care of me until you can come get me. I love you. See you soon.
My hand flew out to the side, gripping Tanner’s arm. “Stop the car!”
“What?” Tanner asked, jerking his head in my direction.
“Stop the car!” I yelled, hope exploding in my veins. “She’s going to give him back.”
“What?” he repeated incredulously.
My hands shook, and a huge, manic smile pulled at my lips. “Oh God, she’s going to give him back.” I pressed on her name and lifted my phone to my ear.
“What the hell are you talking about?” my brother asked.
The ringing of the phone droned in my ear as I explained, “She let Travis text me. Said she’d take care of him until I could get there to pick him up.”
When her voicemail picked up, I hit end and then immediately hit send again. It started ringing all over again.
“Porter, stop,” Tanner whispered, pulling off to the side of the road.
Her voicemail picked up again, and this time, I decided to leave a message.
“Hey, sweetheart. I just got Travis’s text.”
“Porter. Stop,” Tanner urged, trying to grab my phone.
Leaning away, I smacked his hand. “God, baby. What a fucking day.” I blew out a hard breath. “I’m on my way now. Tell Travis I love him. Actually…Christ, I love both of you.” I paused and lowered my voice. “Stay out of the darkness until I get there, Charlotte. I swear on my life I had no idea he was your son. I promise we’ll figure this out.” I hit end and dropped the phone into my lap, a renewed faith blazing inside me. “All right. Let’s go. She lives up north, near the hospital. I’ll tell you how to get there.”
Tanner didn’t put the car into drive. He sat there, staring at the steering wheel. “She’s not just going to give him back to you.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? Yes. She is. Here—read the text.” I lifted my phone in his direction.
But, when he turned to look at me, his painful gaze was aimed over it. “You heard Mark. They filed an order with the court to keep you away from him.”
“So she changed her mind,” I argued. “She let him text me, Tanner. That means something.”
His jaw was hard as he shook his head. “Yeah. It does. But it could mean a lot of things. Maybe she had a weak moment. Maybe Travis jacked her phone and sent it behind her back. There could be a million different maybes about why she did it. But the only thing I know for sure is that she’s not giving him back.”
The bitterness of anger lit my tongue. “You don’t know shit!”
He didn’t raise his voice as he said, “I know that she just found her kid after ten years of him being gone. Rita told me she’s been living in a haze since he went missing. And, now, she finally got that back.” He shrugged. “I’m sorry, but I refuse to believe she’s just going to hand him over to you.”
He was wrong.
So fucking wrong that rage consumed me.
Fisting the front of his shirt, I yanked him toward me. “Yes, she will!”
He caught my wrists and squeezed painfully. “I hate it as much as you do, Porter. And I will fight to the ends of the earth to keep him in our family. But that is what we are going to have to do. Fight. If you go over there now, screw this up, and end up in jail, where does that leave your chances of getting even part-time custody?”
I gave him a hard shake. “I won’t screw this up! She’s giving him back.”
“Why? Think about it, Porter. Why would she give you her son?”
My body coiled tight, twisting the pain and anguish into a violent fury. “Because she has to!” A sob tore from my throat, and I gasped for air. “Because she fucking has to.” My voice broke. “I can’t live like this. What if he needs me in the middle of the night? What if the call comes for a transplant and I’m not there? I swore to him that I’d take care of him after Catherine died.” My shoulders shook uncontrollably. “Tanner, I gave him my word. She has to give him back. There’s no other option.” I shoved off his chest, righting myself in my seat before slamming my fist into the dashboard. “Just fucking take me to her. I can make her understand. I know I can.”
His eyebrows pinched together. “And what if she doesn’t?”
“Then we’ll play it your way and fight it out in the courtroom. But, tonight, I need to see her and get a read on where her head is at. And I need to see him so I can assure him that everything is going to be okay. He’s probably fucking terrified.”
He sighed and dropped his head back against the headrest. “It’s a bad idea, Porter.”
“Maybe. But it’s all I got.”
“But it’s not!” he implored, rolling his head so he was once again facing me. “Mark is the best. If anyone can make a court see why Travis needs you, it’s him. You break this protection order and you can kiss that goodbye. You have a shot to stay a part of his life.”
“I don’t want to be a part of his life. I want to be there every fucking day.”
“You show up to her place tonight, try to force her to hear you out, you’re going to lose him forever. And Christ, Porter? What about Hannah? She needs you at home, not warming a jail cell.”
I cringed, my heart breaking at the idea of telling Hannah. “Fuck,” I groaned, fisting the top of my hair. “I know. But I can’t just go home and wait this out. I have to do something.”
“We are going to do something. We’re going to do so many goddamn somethings these people won’t know what hit them. But not like this. You need to play it safe. No calls. No texts. No visits.”
I groaned. “I can’t.”
“You have to. First thing in the morning, I’ll go on the offense with this and set up a legal team to work on Travis. Meanwhile, you play defense. Keep talking to the police and giving them everything you have on Catherine until we can clear your name.”
I dropped my head back against the headrest and stared at the dark sky. “Do you think I have any chance of getting him back?”
“Yeah. I do. Because we’re not going to stop until that happens. I’ll call Rita, see if she can take me over there to see him. I’ll make sure he knows we love him and put his mind at ease. Okay?”
The knots in my stomach twisted tighter, but I had no choice but to agree. “Yeah. Okay.”