Chapter 11

Bella’s dad wasn’t as big of a prick as I would have expected. He seemed surprisingly chill about her bailing on her wedding at the absolute last possible minute. He had to have lost a fuckton of money, but he hadn’t even mentioned that.

Maybe he had so much it didn’t matter.

Maybe his daughter mattered more than money.

If that were the case, then I respected him despite his air of arrogance. Hell, if I had that much money, I’d be arrogant too.

Some people might argue that I was anyway, and I didn’t have jack shit.

After Bella’s father left she wrinkled her nose. “Sorry about that.”

I shrugged. “No big deal. He seemed cool about everything.”

“So…I threw my phone into the woods last night. I think I should go look for it.” She bit her fingernail and looked at me, expression sheepish.

That seemed out of character for her, but it had been a hell of a day. “Why don’t you finish your burger first? Then I can call your phone and we can see if we find it.”

She nodded and followed me into the house. “Do you think I’m being irrational for being annoyed about Bradley buying me a house? I mean, am I crazy?”

I was pretty sure if someone bought me a house and handed it to me I’d be cool with that. But I could see her point. “I think that seems like a romantic gesture in theory, but that yes, maybe you would want to be a part of that decision. It seems like couples should choose a house together.”

Bella yanked her chair out and sat down hard, picking up her burger. She made a face. “It’s cold now.”

“I’d throw it back on the grill but it will just dry out. Let me make you a new one.” I handed her Camp. Then realized how readily I did that. Like we were a couple. A family. Bella was a woman born to be a mother. Her father had said that straight out and I agreed with him.

It was terrifying.

Because I liked it.

She gave a vague Bella kind of polite protest. “No, that’s okay, silly, I don’t need a new burger. I can eat this one. Even if it is cold.”

That made me snort. She wanted nothing more than for me to grill a fresh burger, it was obvious on her face. “I’ll grill you a new one.”

She was feeding Camp a tiny piece of her hamburger bun. I really needed to get this kid on vegetables. Between Bella and my sister he was going to be a carboholic. It was like they were living vicariously through his baby metabolism.

Bella gave me a smile, my son on her lap, that made my gut clench. “Thank you. You’re the best.”

“You’re welcome, beautiful.”

I grilled that burger patty and I knew I was in way over my head. We were playing house. That’s not what this was supposed to be. I had met her the week before and been both attracted to her and annoyed by her and had wanted to have sex with her. Now it went way beyond complicated.

I was fucking grilling her lunch.

My son was on her lap.

Times like these I wished I were closer to my twin brother. This was the kind of thing I should be able to talk through with him. He would commiserate, make fun of me. We’d laugh. But I had ruined that relationship and I wasn’t sure we would ever get it back.

“Here you go, princess.” I placed the fresh burger in front of Bella.

“Thank you,” she murmured, but she looked pensive. “Do you think it’s okay to have secrets?”

Oh man, did I ever. “Give me some context here. That’s kind of an open-ended question.”

“So, like the house thing. That’s a huge secret. And cheating. That seems like a no-brainer. But even small stuff shouldn’t be a secret. Because isn’t a secret just a lie?”

“No. Not at all.” I had never lied to my sister about her father. I just didn’t tell her because it would hurt her. “I have a huge secret and I will never reveal it because it’s not going to be good for anyone if I do.”

“You won’t even tell me?” She pouted, then bit into her burger.

I laughed. “No. I will not tell you. Ask me anything else, I’ll be truthful, but if I have a secret, I have a reason for it, and it’s not because I’m a dick doing something awful. It’s because sometimes you have to keep your damn mouth shut.”

Obviously she didn’t like my answer. “I don’t think a couple should keep secrets from each other.”

That would be alarm bells going off. Was she thinking we were a couple? That was not good. At all. I mean I fucking liked her. A lot. But this was just…whatever it was.

“I don’t know what to tell you.” I suddenly felt like Cain. I wanted a drink. A large one.

“Okay, so tell me this. Why did you and Ali break up?”

This wasn’t even fun anymore. “We were never together. I liked her in high school, and so when I had the opportunity I had sex with her. She lied and told me she and Cain were broken up already.”

Her jaw dropped. “Wait, what? She was with Cain?”

Now it was my turn to be surprised. “You didn’t know? I thought everyone knew. Yes, Ali and Cain were together for like two years. She told me they were broken up. They weren’t. So I mean, technically, Camp could be Cain’s, but we’ll never know. Because, you know, we have the same DNA.”

Bella was looking at me like I had grown two heads. Or maybe even three. “Are you serious?” Her voice had risen three octaves.

I nodded. “As a heart attack, baby.”

She covered Camp’s ears with her hands. “Why would you have sex with your brother’s girlfriend?” she whispered urgently.

“I told you. Ali said they were broken up.”

“For how long? So what, they broke up on like Tuesday and you banged her on Wednesday?”

I really didn’t like having my sins thrown at me like this. It was fucking uncomfortable. Mostly because I knew she was right. So I got defensive. “Yeah. Something like that. What? She threw herself at me. I didn’t pursue her. It was one time. Then I found out the truth and I felt like shit about it and here we are.”

I stared Bella down. There wasn’t anything I could do about the past. I couldn’t really justify my behavior. It had been a dick move to jump on my brother’s ex and I had regretted it every day since then. But it was complicated because I couldn’t regret Camp.

“That’s really horrible,” she said.

“I never said I was a saint.” I stood up and took Camp from her. My son didn’t belong on her lap. I set him down on the carpet in the living room and gave him my phone after pulling up a baby game app he loved. This had been stupid to bring him here. This was my day with him, our guy time, and now I was just annoyed that I was being lectured.

Because I felt guilty. Guilty people get defensive, and that was most definitely me.

“Yeah, but that’s kind of a big deal, Christian. That is not a little thing like you were both out and were flirting with the same girl.”

This had all gotten too real. Too much. I didn’t need her judging me. I had already judged myself. “You are a runaway bride,” I said. “I don’t think you have a whole lot of room to be criticizing me.”

Her face went white and she set her burger back down on her plate. “That is not the same.”

“Passing judgment is. You don’t like it any more than I do.”

---

I swallowed hard, fiddling with my horseshoe necklace. I honestly didn’t even know what to say. I had convinced myself that Christian was Mr. Nice Guy. And here I was looking at him and he was telling me he’d had sex with his brother’s girlfriend. Did it really matter that they had been broken up? I mean, it did. Because nothing was worse than willingly cheating with Ali on Cain. But it still was lousy.

Not the worst thing anyone could do, but not the nicest. It didn’t sound like he thought Cain and Ali had broken up for very long. Days, maybe. And he wasn’t really apologizing for it.

“So if you’re willing to tell me that, I can’t even imagine what your biggest secret is.” I stood up, feeling like I needed fresh air. The cabin was stuffy. I wasn’t sure if I should appreciate his honesty or despise his behavior.

“Keep imagining, because I’m not telling you. But it’s not about me, I will tell you that.”

“You can’t keep secrets from people,” I insisted. “It’s not cool.”

When he just stared at me I grabbed a French fry, shoved it into my mouth, picked up my burger, and stomped outside. I was going to find my phone.

He followed me. “Where are you going?”

“I’m looking for my phone so I can call my father for a ride.” I was just as gullible and naïve with Christian as I had been with Bradley.

“Why?”

His voice was so calm it was infuriating. “Because I’m breaking up with you,” I hurled at Christian, frustrated and hurt. I was annoyed with myself for taking Christian at face value. For spinning a fantasy. And it stupidly hurt that he wouldn’t acknowledge I had a right to be upset.

He scoffed and ran his fingers through his hair, glancing back into the house clearly to check on Camp. “You can’t break up with me.”

“I just did.” I stared down at the fire pit, my stomach clenching.

“You can’t break up with me because we’re not together, Bella. We’re not a couple. We’re two people fucking each other.”

Furious, because he was right, I hurled my hamburger into the fire pit. It was so juvenile and I knew that, but I couldn’t help myself. It wasn’t fair that I liked him. It wasn’t fair that Bradley had cheated on me and that my wedding had been ruined. “I meant breaking it off. I don’t want to see you anymore. Or ever again.”

“Why?” he asked me, still in the damn doorway.

I annoyed myself because I had stormed off and he couldn’t follow me because he couldn’t leave Camp alone in the cabin. So now we were having this conversation ten feet apart. If I walked back up to him I would look even more ridiculous.

“Because everything we’re doing is just a bad idea. Can you please call my phone? I’m going to look for it.”

Part of me wanted him to argue with me. To attempt to talk me into staying with him another night.

“Let me get Camp and then let’s talk about this, okay? You seem upset.”

Duh. “Of course I’m upset! My fiancé was cheating on me with at least two women and you just basically told me that you are almost no better than him.”

“What Bradley did is not the same as what I did with Ali. But you know what? I don’t need to justify my behavior to you. We’re not dating. You asked me for sex. I gave it to you.”

Ouch. I was stunned. It was the truth, but wow, that was just so matter-of-fact.

That was it. I was out of there. I wasn’t even going to wait for him to call my phone. I needed to walk before I picked my burger out of the ashes of the fire pit and hurled it in his face. He made me sound like I had been begging him for dick.

I mean, I had been. I just didn’t need that pointed out with such brutal honesty. Especially considering he had just admitted he was all into secrets. So he could keep other secrets, but with me he was just balls-out truthful, hey, you are a pathetic loser who begged me for sex?

What. Ever.

Blindly tromping through the brush, I tried to remember what direction I had thrown it the night before. I thought about how Christian had come out and comforted me and I’d thought he was such a nice guy. Tears burned in my eyes. God. I was basically the definition of gullible.

Wandering around I couldn’t see anything that resembled my phone.

Christian came into the yard with Camp, his phone to his ear, obviously calling my phone. Or maybe the psych ward. I was well aware I sounded a little nuts, but I couldn’t help it. Nothing about anything was going according to my life plan.

I stopped at the edge of the woods, having an epiphany.

Other people dictated almost every decision I had ever made.

My parents, in particular my father.

My college boyfriend.

Bradley.

Even now I was letting Christian dictate where I was and what I was doing. I was playing house with him at his cabin, and begging him to stay with me. Because I didn’t want to be alone.

The only thing I had ever done in my life that was truly independent was to decide to get my degree in psychology and social work, against my parents’ advice. Otherwise I let social mores and the strong personality of other people sway me. If I did exactly what I wanted I would have never hesitated to dump Bradley the second I found out he was cheating.

I also would not have agreed to those floral arrangements for the tables my mother had insisted on, but that was neither here nor there.

I wouldn’t be begging Christian for sex.

Abandoning the search for my phone, which seemed futile, I turned and said to Christian with as much dignity as I could muster, “Can I borrow your phone?”

“Sure.” He handed it to me like he was vaguely afraid of me.

“I want to call an Uber.” I swiped over his screen until I found the app and ordered myself a car. “It shows it’s a twenty-minute wait.” That was the downside of being in a small town. I could call my father, but I didn’t want him to bail me out either. I considered calling Sophie, but she had no ability to be stealthy. It wasn’t in her nature, and my mother would end up in the car with her, and that would be horrible. I would rather walk than talk to my mother right now.

“If you need to be somewhere I can drive you.”

“No, thank you.” I forced myself to look him in the eye. “I appreciate what you’ve done for me, but I think it’s time for me to leave.”

If I had been holding on to any sliver of hope that he would try to talk me out of it, he took that away without hesitation.

“If that’s what you want.”

Yeah, that was a man who was busted up over my departure. Not. He looked like…nothing. Not pissed off. Not emotionally devastated. Just nothing. Disinterested. Like I hadn’t sucked his dick while he was driving and he hadn’t been the first man to give me three orgasms inside of an hour.

We were fucking. That’s what he had told me and he was right. I was nothing to him.

And he needed to be nothing to me.

So without a word I just went into the cabin and gathered up my stuff, cramming my purse and my wedding shoes into my overnight bag. I carefully draped my wedding gown over my elbow and went back outside. I reached out and touched Camp’s cheek, my heart squeezing a little. He really was a cute kid. “Bye, Campy. I’m glad we got to hang out.”

He gave me a drooly smile and a wave. “Bye.”

It was like a knife to the heart. I glanced at Christian over Camp’s soft blond hair. “Bye, Christian,” I whispered. “Thanks.”

He just nodded.

I started walking down the driveway.

“What are you doing?” he asked, astonished. “You can wait here.”

“I’d rather walk.” Before I changed my mind and relapsed into pathetic again.

So I trudged down the gravel drive, carrying a twenty-thousand-dollar wedding dress and my bag. What a cliché from hell.

It occurred to me I had left my underwear there, but he could just toss them when he cleaned up the caboose for his or his brother’s next sex partner.

He’d probably forget me in about three days.

Dragging all my shit and no small amount of bitterness, I sniffled and got to the road.

Then I sat down on a giant rock and waited.

---

I wasn’t even sure what the hell had just happened. I watched Bella walking slowly down the driveway, hauling her giant wedding dress with her. Yes, she had refused my ride. But no, I was not going to let her walk. There was no way. She could stop being stubborn for five miles and let me take her home.

But by the time I found my keys and strapped Camp into his car seat, we pulled down the drive and watched her climbing into a car, hauling her dress in with her, chin up. She was beautiful and dignified.

And I was an idiot.

I wanted to swear profusely, but Camp was at an age where he was starting to acquire language. The kid only knew a couple of dozen words. It would be just my luck if he started dropping F-bombs. So I swore inside my own head.

Sure, I had known this was the end of the road with Bella. But I had wanted to end it on good terms. I wanted this to be a good memory for her. Not another disappointment on top of her shitty week.

Watching the car carry her back toward town, I drummed my thumbs on my steering wheel, not sure what to do. But there was nothing I could do. I looked at Camp in my rearview mirror. “Well, buddy, it’s you and me. What should we do today?”

“Mama,” Camp said, pointing out the window.

Great. That wasn’t the most painful thing in the universe to hear my son using a word that had no actual meaning to him because he had no mother. Wanting to punch something, I said, “Let’s go find Grandma, how’s that sound?”

“Gamma,” he said.

Good enough for me. “Okay, we’re going to go back to the cabin to clean up, then we’ll pick up Grandma and go to the park.”

Part of me never wanted to deal with painful things. That was the Jordan way. Ignore and move on. But that didn’t seem to be doing me any good, despite what I had claimed to Bella. Saying I was fine about my childhood, about Ali, about Cain, was not the full truth. Maybe now that Cain was in rehab and shit was going to come on and be talked about in our family I needed to be honest with my mother.

An hour later I had Camp in a bucket swing and was pushing him. My mother was in front of him making faces as he came toward her with each swing. He was giving happy squeals and chuckles. After a few minutes I said, “Mom, can I talk to you?”

She gave me a startled look. “Sure, honey. What’s up?” She waved to Camp and came back around so she was standing next to me.

“I think I did something really stupid.”

“If you mean giving a rich girl who left her fiancé at the altar a place to stay, I know that, Christian. Everyone in town knows that.” She didn’t look particularly concerned.

“You don’t think that’s dumb?”

“I think you thought you were helping a friend. Which you were.”

That made me seem a lot more selfless than I actually was. “It was more than that and you know it. Charlie gave me an earful. And Bella’s father showed up at the camp looking for her. Things got…awkward.”

“Lord, sweetheart. Life is awkward. I would have thought you’d know that by now.”

I grunted, giving Camp another push. “You heard from Cain?”

“No. I imagine it will be another week or so before I do. He’s detoxing right now and I understand it’s very unpleasant.”

“I’m sorry, you know,” I said. We had never really talked about any of this. Ali. Cain. Camp. “I know I have a part in Cain’s drinking problem.” That was my biggest regret in life to date.

She nodded. “I know you are. When we make mistakes the true sign of our character is how we handle them going forward.”

I had to say something. My parents’ messed-up relationship had fucked with my head and I needed to get over it and move beyond it. “Like you with Charlie?” I asked quietly.

My mother shot me a startled look. “What do you mean?”

“I know Dad isn’t her father. I heard you and him arguing about it when I was around twelve years old.”

Her face drained of all color. “Oh my God, Christian, I had no idea. Does Charlie know?”

“No. That’s not my place to tell her. I know it would just upset her.”

She nodded and swallowed. “Thank you.” Her eyes were troubled. “I don’t know if keeping it a secret is the right thing or not anymore. I worried when she was little that your father would spill it when he was drinking or angry, but he didn’t, and then it seemed too late. And I don’t know…unimportant. Your father was never a particularly great father, so what difference did it make?”

My mother was looking at me like she wanted my reassurance. “Mom, I’m not judging you, trust me. Frankly, I never understood why you didn’t just divorce Dad. You think I know what I’m going to say to Camp about his conception? That’s going to be the worst conversation in my life after the day Ali told me she was pregnant. But the thing is, I wouldn’t want a life without Camp, and I know you love Charlie just the same as us boys, maybe more, because you got your daughter finally. So don’t think this changes anything for me. I just needed to let you know that I know because I feel like it’s a secret that has been pressing on me. And I’ve kept my guard up around women because I’m afraid to fall in love.”

God, had I really just said that out loud? My throat tightened.

She reached out and squeezed my arm. “Why on earth are you afraid to fall in love?”

“Because all I’ve ever seen is you being hurt by loving Dad. And then Charlie’s biological father. You gave yourself and they just hurt you.”

Without warning she laughed. I hadn’t expected her to find anything about this conversation amusing. “Oh, honey, no one has hurt me. I knew exactly what I was getting into with your father. If I was miserable I would have left him two decades ago. But I’ve never been miserable with him, even though he is selfish to the extreme. I can’t explain it—there’s just something about him. I still look at him and get the shivers.”

That was the world’s greatest mystery. “Mom, that’s weird. It just is.”

She shrugged. “It is what it is. And yes, I had a one-night stand while your father was in prison. It was impulsive and I’ve never really regretted it because it gave me Charlie. Your father forgave me, you know. He didn’t have much leg to stand on, what with him spending about half of our marriage behind bars.”

I wasn’t sure how to feel about this conversation. “You’re still in love with my father? Is that what you’re actually saying?”

“Of course.” She eyed me, pushing her hair back.

My mother had never given in to conventions that said a woman in her fifties should chop her hair. She still had long hair that she dyed to a soft black. I had never given much thought to it, but she was attractive. There had to be plenty of guys over the years who had expressed interest in her.

Interesting she had never moved on to someone else.

“Now stop making excuses for why you can’t fall in love and date a nice girl.”

That annoyed me. “It’s not that easy! I have a son, and not every woman wants to take that on, and I am not going to parade women in and out of his life.”

“Who says you have to parade anyone? Single parents date all the time and keep their private life separate from their kids.”

I didn’t really want to talk about me. “I don’t want to date.”

“Not even your little runaway bride?” She gave me an amused look that indicated she knew better.

“Nope. That was just sex.”

My mother snorted. “Christian, you can lie to yourself but not to your mother. No one picks up a woman at the church on her wedding day just for a booty call. You’re a bartender in a tourist town. It would not be hard to pick up a girl to go home with. That is not what is going on here.”

“You’re wrong,” I insisted.

But I thought about sitting out around the fire, Bella perched on my lap, her head resting on my shoulders as the stars shone overhead, and I knew my mother was right.

I was lying to myself.