KYLE

“Fuck, man, we’re sorry.” Rick looked as gutted as I felt as he stood at the door to the pool house.

“Can I stay out here?” I said.

I’d contemplated asking Matty or Trent, but in the end, Laurie persuaded me to come home, and the pool house seemed like a good compromise.

“Of course, whatever you need. Come on, I have a beer with your name on it.”

I followed him inside. Lo came straight over, not speaking as she wrapped her arms around me and hugged me tight. “I’m sorry.”

The backpack in my hand, stuffed with a few clean pairs of boxers and a couple of fresh tees, dropped to the ground as I hugged her back, burying my face into her shoulder. I wanted to scream. To unleash all the anger and disappointment and hurt swirling in my chest. But I swallowed it all down and locked that shit away tight. I’d have to deal with it one day. But today was not that day.

I was too exhausted after coming clean to Laurie.

Shit. My girl was strong. The way she’d laid there and just listened, taking everything I had to tell her and then wrapping her arms around me and promising me we’d figure it out.

Together.

That word had never sounded so good.

I knew I didn’t deserve her loyalty. Hell, given my behavior over the last couple of weeks, I didn’t deserve even an ounce of the love and understanding she’d shown me in the last twenty-four hours.

“Come on,” Lo said. “Let’s sit.” She led me to the couch, pulling me down beside her.

“How’d you find out?”

“Your dad... he called a family meeting.”

“Fuck.” I dragged a hand through my hair. It made sense, I guess. I’d caused a scene—barged into the house and demanded privacy with him. Rebecca had been there. No doubt she had questions. And she was worse than a dog with a bone. No way Dad would be able to keep things from her.

This was all my fault.

“Talk to me,” Lo soothed, squeezing my hand. Rick appeared with a beer and I accepted, giving him a tight nod.

“I... honestly, I don’t know what I’m supposed to say here. Things are...” I took a long pull on the beer, giving myself time to try to formulate my thoughts. “My mom was never real, you know? She was just some myth. For sixteen years it had just been me and Dad.” My glassy stare lifted to Rick’s. “And you guys. You are my family. I know I give your mom shit but she’s as good as my mom. I mean, she raised me.”

“It doesn’t change anything.” His mouth pulled tight.

“Doesn’t it?” I arched my brow. “I thought she abandoned me. That she'd washed her hands of me and never looked back... but she didn’t. She tried... fuck, she tried to make contact, and he stopped her. They stopped her. And now that door is open, I can’t stop the what-ifs. What if she’d come back when I was just a kid? What if they’d never given her that money? Maybe she would have got clean.”

“Or maybe she would have overdosed a lot sooner.”

“Maverick!” Lo levelled him with a harsh glare.

“Sorry,” he grumbled. “That was uncalled for.”

“Nah, it’s fine. You only said what we’re all thinking. What I’ve thought a hundred times already. I can’t change the past. This doesn’t change the past. But the lies, what my dad and grandparents did, it could have changed things.”

Silence settled between the three of us. Heavy with the secrets of my past.

“All these years and you never said anything,” Rick spoke up.

“I didn’t want that shit hanging over my head, man. She chose her fucking addiction over me. Can you imagine how that would have gone down growing up? ‘Hey, Kyle, where’s your mom?’ ‘True story, she thought getting strung out was a better option than sticking around to take care of me.’ Yeah, no thanks.”

“I get it, I do.” He leaned forward, dropping his chin onto his fists. “But you could’ve talked to me.”

“Until she started texting me, I didn’t give her the time of day.” Okay, not entirely true. I thought about her now and then. But it was only in the way people thought about what to have for dinner or what movie to watch at the theatre. A casual pondering.

Now though, now I couldn’t stop thinking about her. She’d forced her way in, stealing my thoughts and planting herself front and center. It was an invasion. A complete mind-takeover.

And I hated her for it.

But that was before Kiera dropped the bombshell about her trying to contact my dad.

Now I didn’t know what to feel. I was emotionally unstable. One minute, I wanted to call her up and arrange to meet her.

My mom.

The next, I wanted to undergo some kind of memory-erasing surgery, so things could go back to the way they were before.

But that was the dream.

And this living nightmare was my reality.

Yay, me.

“Are you going to meet her?” Lo asked. I’d already heard the question once today; when Laurie lay curled into my arm.

“Honestly, I have no fucking idea. Right now, I’d rather pretend none of this is happening and get ass-over-elbow drunk.” I waved my beer in the air before draining the rest of it.

“One more,” Rick said getting up from his chair. “I’ll let you have one more and then I’m cutting you off.”

“Spoilsport. Lo will keep me in a steady supply, right, Cous?”

“Piss off, Kyle. I got drunk once. And it was bad, so bad,” she groaned.

“Three times actually.” I corrected, and she shot me a severe glare.

“Don’t do that. Don’t drag me into this. I’m here for you but I won’t sit around and watch you self-destruct, any more than you already have.” She tacked on the end.

“Party pooper.” I stuck out my tongue when really, I wanted to punch something.

A knock at the door had our heads whipping around and I groaned at the sight of Rebecca standing there.

“I’m going to take a guess and say she isn’t here to see me,” Rick said. “Want me to get rid of her?”

“You’d choose me over your mom?”

He shrugged as if his offer meant nothing.

It meant a lot. But I wasn’t about to tell him that.

“You can let her in.” Rebecca was an innocent party in all this too.

Rick went to the door while Lo scooted closer. “We can stay,” she said, but I shook my head. “Nah, this a conversation we need to have alone. But thanks, I appreciate it. I appreciate everything, Cous.”

“We’re family, it’s what we do.”

“Yeah, it is.”

She patted my arm and got up and went over to Rick and his mom. A few hushed words later, they disappeared out of the pool house and Rebecca hovered over by the door.

“You can come in. I won’t try and throw the lamp at you, I promise.”

“Kyle, I—”

Our eyes collided. The weight of the past hanging over us both.

“Yeah,” I whispered. “Me too.”

Rebecca and I had never had a typical relationship. I liked to yank her chain about everything and she liked to give me a hard time, but it worked. And my dad loved her. I’d watched their relationship stand the test of time. It hadn’t always been a smooth road. But what marriage was? And maybe we didn’t hug or have stepmom/stepson bonding time like some families, but I loved her. She was the only mom I’d ever known.

And from the hurt glittering in her eyes, I knew Dad had broken her too with his lies and secrets.

“I’m so, so sorry.” She dropped into the chair opposite me. “I had no idea, none. If I’d have known I would have done something. There's no way I would have denied you the chance to get to know your mother. I want you to know that, Kyle.”

“I know.” I dragged a hand through my hair and clutched the back of my neck.

“Your father is devastated. He never wanted this. He was only protecting you, protecting us.”

“Dad lied. All these years he lied and you’re what? Taking his side?”

“Gosh, no, honey. I am so angry with him and he knows it. And I told him it’s on him to do whatever he needs to do to fix this. To fix our family. My family. But what’s done is done and now you have some hard decisions to make, and I wanted you to know that whatever you decide, whatever you feel you need to do, I support you.

“We haven’t always been the best parents, I know that. And things haven’t been easy this last year, but I love you all so much and all I want is for you to be happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

“She tried to kill herself, you know.” The words came from nowhere. Or maybe they came from deep in my soul. My conscience.

“I know,” Rebecca’s voice cracked. “Your father has told me everything. I insisted. No more secrets.”

“I can’t help but think what if he hadn’t sent her away? Would she have still ended up on the same path? Would she still have tried to kill herself?”

“Kyle, you can’t blame yourself. People make their own choices.”

“But they paid her go away. She was an addict, and they gave her money to leave. What if they made her addiction worse? What if they took away the one thing she had left?”

Rebecca came over, wrapping her arm around me and meeting my glassy stare. “You can’t live in the past, Kyle. None of us can. We all make mistakes. We’re all guilty of making decisions and justifying them with logic even though we know it’s wrong. Look at me, with Maverick and Macey. I did a terrible thing lying to them. But I did it to protect them. I didn’t want to ruin their relationship with their father. I deserve their hatred and anger. And I’ll have to carry that with me for the rest of my life. But I think, deep down, they know why I did it. Your father wanted to protect you. He didn’t want you to suffer again at the hands of a woman who was too sick to be who you needed her to be. But this is your second chance, honey. Maria has waited for sixteen years to meet her son. And this time, you get to make that decision. You, Kyle. Not your father or your grandparents. You.”

“People will find out,” I choked out. “They’re going to know the truth.”

Nothing stayed a secret for long in Wicked Bay.

“And we’ll deal with it together, as a family. You deserve to know your birth mom, Kyle. And she’s earned the right to know her son, don’t you think? People will always talk, and speculate and judge, but where you came from is nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing. You are a smart and loyal young man, even if you drive me up the wall at times.” She smiled. “It has been a privilege watching you grow up.”

“You’re not going to cry on me, Momma P, are you?” I nudged her shoulder. “I’m not sure I can handle stepmomster tears right now.”

Rebecca rolled her eyes at me, but I caught her sniffle as she swiped them away. “I’m not crying, you’re crying.” She poked her tongue out at me and I burst into laughter. And we sat there, Rebecca Prince and Kyle Stone, laughing away our tears.

And it was exactly what I needed. To hear it was my choice. To know she stood by me no matter what.

To know that just because I had a real mom now, she would always love me as her own.