Jordan

A divot ripped through the air, and my curses followed it. “Fuck!”

“Easy, killer,” Ryan said, tapping his golf ball onto a tee close to me. “You keep tearing up your own driving range and it’s going to cost a fortune to fix.”

“Shut up, Ry.” I scooped another ball toward my own tee with my five-iron.

“We going to talk about the elephant on the range? Or we going to pretend you’re not strung tight over Destiny being back?”

Currently, I wanted to drink a bottle of really old, really good whiskey and pretend the last ten days of my life hadn’t been turned upside down. Ever since Destiny returned, I’d spent almost every day over at her place. I went to work, thought about Toby. I worked out and thought about Toby. I went to Tillie’s after I was done with work and spent time with Toby. Sometimes Destiny joined us. Sometimes she left to run errands or made herself scarce in order to give us time alone.

But at night, when I went to sleep, I wasn’t thinking about Toby. Thoughts of Destiny infiltrated my brain, making sleep not only difficult but worse once I hit dreamland. My body seemed to have forgotten how much my brain and my heart hated her, because my body? It was thinking of all sorts of scenarios where Destiny wasn’t the evil witch who’d kept my son from me for a decade. Nope, at night, in my dreams and frequently first thing in the morning, my dick very much liked all that we were seeing in Destiny these days.

It wasn’t just screwing with my head and my ability to work…it was messing with my golf game. Which really pissed me off.

“Back off, Ryan,” Shawn said, lining up his own shot behind me. “Focus on hitting your own damn ball.”

“Please,” Ryan said. “Like he didn’t demand we haul our asses out to the range this early in the morning for practice. Man’s got shit on his mind.”

“Didn’t know you were suddenly a therapist,” I mumbled and loosened the grip on my golf club. I knew exactly why I kept slicing the damn ball and tearing up the turf. My fucking shoulders were too damn tight and this relaxing morning at the range with Ryan and Shawn was turning into a shitshow.

Ryan turned and rested his weight on his driver. “I’m a servant of the community, Mr. Marx. And that service comes in a variety of forms.”

Good Lord. He’d always been a dumbass. “You’re a moron.”

“I’m a guy who gets it on the regular from his wife and you sir, are all twisted up over a woman who you’re pissed at but still want to bang into the next decade.”

He lifted his club and swirled it in a circle. “And no, I’m not a psychic. I’m smarter than you give me credit for. You’re wearing your lust for her all over your face.”

He had to shut up.

Behind me, Shawn’s club hit his own golf ball and it flew into the air with that beautiful hissing sound of a perfect shot.

“Nice shot,” I said, my eyes down the range. It flew over three hundred yards and landed perfectly in the center of the range area.

“Thanks,” Shawn said, teeing up another ball. “You know he’s right though. The question is more about what are you going to do about it?” He didn’t lift his eyes as he spoke. He teed up his ball and swung another perfect shot. Damn him for being so calm while I was a big ol’ tight ball of built-up sexual frustration.

“She’s a bitch. And I still hate her,” I mumbled. I swung, slammed my club against the ball and it hooked far to the left. “Goddamn it!”

“Which also means you want in her pants.”

I lifted my club like a baseball bat and pulled back, aiming right at Ryan’s head. “Knock it off.”

He lifted his hands, laughing. “Oh come on. You’re pissed. We all get it. You get to be pissed. But you’re not fooling us either. Just lay it all out there.”

I should have gone to the batting cage to work out my stress. Or a boxing gym. I should have gone to the city for the weekend and found a woman I could use to slake that need to get rid of all the built-up rage.

I lowered my iron and hit it against the grass. “Yeah. I’m pissed at her. I’m pissed that I get to see Toby for a few hours a day, maybe, and I have no idea when they’re leaving. I’m pissed she has all the control in the situation and fine…if you want to hear it…I’m even more fucking pissed I still find her attractive. How can that even fucking be after everything she’s done? I should hate her. That would be easy and make sense. What doesn’t…is all of this other shit I’m feeling.”

“So fuck her.” Ryan shrugged and swung, barely even lining up his shot and it still went farther and straighter than any of mine all morning.

“That’s the worst idea ever,” I said. “Not only because it would make everything worse between us, but because it’s not about us, it’s about Toby. And what if he gets hurt?”

“I’m going with Jordan on this one,” Shawn said.

I looked at him over my shoulder. “Thank you.”

“Although if you still want her, wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to try to go after her, either. The question is whether you can get past all the other bullshit.”

“Bullshit?” I felt my brows slide up my forehead. “Hiding my son for ten years is bullshit?”

“No. But also, yeah…sort of. I get you’re mad. But you have a kid. A son who, from what you’ve said, sounds pretty damn cool. You figure out a way to get past why she did everything, then maybe you can finally get what you’ve always wanted.”

There was a massive problem with being friends with guys who had known you almost your whole life. Granted, Shawn didn’t move to Carlton until high school, but I’d still been friends with him when Destiny and I dated. Which meant he knew every single thing about me and made it impossible to hide the fact that for years, he knew everything I wanted was Destiny and a family with her.

“It’s not possible,” I muttered. “Let’s drop it and get through these buckets before I have to get to work. “

“When are you seeing her again?” Shawn asked. He removed his baseball hat from his head and swiped his light brown hair off his forehead before resettling his cap.

“Tonight,” I grumbled. I forced my left hand to relax on my grip. Rolled my shoulders to loosen them. “She and Toby are coming to my place for dinner.”

“Not just Toby?” Based on the tone in his voice, he was most definitely grinning at me.

No…not just Toby. I wanted Destiny to see my home. I wanted her to see what I’d made for myself. Why? So she’d be proud of me? So she’d trust me with Toby? To show off what she could have had if she would have trusted me?

It was probably all of those…but mostly, if I was willing to be honest with myself or my friends, it was because I wanted her in my home.

It was that simple.

“Shut up, Shawn.”

I swung the club as he and Ryan both laughed. And wouldn’t you know it? The damn ball went straight down the range, landing perfectly three hundred yards out. Right where I wanted it.

But everything Shawn said couldn’t be that simple, could it? There was no way to get over what she’d done. There was no way Destiny and I could ever be what I’d once dreamed we could be. We were too different.

There was too much between us, and most of it was from her lies and her fear.

I was willing to be the bigger person and act like I could push it to the side for Toby’s sake. But forgive her? Was it in any way possible?

I had no fucking clue, and the answer wasn’t going to be found on the driving range. It was going to be found by spending time with Destiny, seeing if there was any chance in hell we could piece back together any resemblance of a relationship years after she’d ripped it to shreds.