Then There Was You: A Single Parent Collection Read online

  Every part of my body is unable to move except my brain. It’s moving faster than the speed of light, wheels churning recklessly. Braking dangerously into a thick cloud of fiery smoke inside of my head threatening to explode. She’s alive.

  “What are we going to do? I mean, fuck, you can’t just walk over there, knock on her door, and say ‘Welcome to the neighborhood’.” I rub my fingers across my lips, wondering the same thing. Except my thoughts are scattered all over the place. Is she married? Does that boy who is clearly mine call someone else Dad? Does he even know about me?

  “What I want to do is go over there, pound on that door, and get answers. What we should do is call Jude and get his ass over here.” For the kid’s sake, I need to do this the right way. Jude is the backbone of our trio. He can hack, find, and deliver anything a person needs with his nerdy way around a computer.

  “Already done. Call it instinct, call it knowing you the way I do.” He shrugs, and a tight smile attempts to tug at the corner of his mouth.

  “Thanks, man,” I mutter softly, take a swig of my beer, and stand. I head into the kitchen for another one when I stop dead in my tracks. The empty beer bottle in my hand slips from my fingers, hitting my boot before rolling to God knows where on my tiled floor.

  “Jesus Christ.” I rest my hands on the island in the middle of my kitchen. My legs are fighting and shaking to hold me up.

  “Shit, he even stands the same way as you,” Tyson whispers from beside me. I glance at him with some goddamn strange feeling inside of me, then look back to the scene outside of the corner bay window, where my breakfast nook is.

  There stands the kid with a different woman this time. His dark-colored hair that’s identical to mine is pulled back into a small ponytail showing his face. He looks like me, but he looks like Cora, too. His smile gives away the fact he is her son. The rest of him is the definition of a mini-me.

  “Fuck me. I have a kid. All this time a child has been walking this earth with my blood running through his veins. What the hell am I going to do, man? How the fuck do I avoid going over there and strangling her until I find out the truth? That kid is mine; and she kept him from me. It wasn’t enough for her to rip my heart out of my chest, stomp on it, and flush the love I thought we had down the sewer. I’ve been in hell over her for fucking ever; and now she’s here in my own goddamn backyard with my kid living and laughing while there are some days I can’t even crack a smile. What kind of seventeen-year-old would plot such a vicious game? Destroy someone who loved her? I don’t fucking get it,” I emphasize with so much anger I hear my voice break.

  “I don’t know, Riddick. I can’t believe the woman you’ve gone on about would fuck you over like that. There has to be an explanation,” he says quietly.

  “She’s had years to come clean if there was. There isn’t a damn thing she could say to convince me otherwise. No, she fucked up. Made me believe she was dead. I’m going to show her I’m very much alive. Fuck this waiting on Jude shit.” Releasing the knuckle-breaking hold on the granite, I tug open the black double-doored fridge and dig out another beer. Twist off the cap and down it in several long gulps. Wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. I don’t want to scare the kid, but screw this shit. I’m not wasting another second of my life without him in it. She can go to hell if she thinks she can stop me.

  “Damn it, Riddick, don’t you dare go out there. You’ll scare that kid half to death if you go stomping over there throwing your weight around and demanding answers to questions you may not be ready to hear. He’s a kid, man. Settle down and sit; use your head, not your heart. Besides, dude, no offense to the way you look, but you don’t look like the man she remembers. You’ll freak her out.” Tyson grips my shoulder in a firm squeeze. Everything he said is right. I would hate to hurt that boy in any way. As far as my appearance goes, I look like some hard ass criminal. A tatted up, big, bulky, drug-dealing meathead.

  “You’re right, but goddamn this is killing me here. It’s just, fuck, I can’t take my eyes off of him. He’s everything she and I dreamed about, and he’s right next door engrossed in setting up a telescope with some woman, Tyson. That should be me helping him set that telescope up, not whoever the hell this woman is. Goddamn it. I need something besides beer,” I grumble, ignoring that look he’s giving me to calm the hell down. Fuck him and the fact he’s right about my appearance. It’s gotten me a hell of a lot of pussy. Except none of them were her. Would she love my stubble grazing across her thighs while my tongue was buried in her pussy? I shake my head over that out-of-the-blue notion and plop down in the wooden chair at the table. Tyson grabs a bottle of Jack out of the cupboard where I store all my booze. I doubt there’s enough in there to numb the pain inside of my chest or the fear that seeps out of all the holes that are puncturing my insides.

  “Take it.” He hands me the entire bottle with the cap already off, just waiting for me. I stare at the dark liquid that should help, yet I know it won’t. Tyson knows it, too, with the amount of whiskey he’s tried to drown his own past in.

  At that precise moment, Jude saunters in with his laptop in hand, his black-framed glasses on, ball cap on backward. Damn geek. “Fuck. I’m sorry, man. This is some crazy shit. We’ll get answers, Riddick.” Jude sets the computer on the table, his hand resting on my shoulder. “First of all, are you sure it’s her?”

  “It’s her. I would know her anywhere. She lives in here and here.” I point to my chest and head. Looking over my shoulder, I glance outside the window one last time to find them both gone. I wonder where Cora is. Is the dark-haired woman the babysitter? Could she be out on a date with her husband? Her boyfriend? She’s a beautiful woman. All tits, ass, and legs. The pouty lips that are real. The face that can bend a man, break him, and fuck him over until he bleeds to death. That’s the kind of woman she is.

  Jude’s tapping away on his computer draws me to what he’s doing. “Anything?” I ask with a lift of my brow. The dependency I need from the burn of the Jack hits me in the gut as I tip the bottle to my mouth, taking a much-needed flaming swig. It stings my throat, coats my mouth, yet doesn’t do a damn thing for the incineration that ignites my soul.

  “She sure the hell isn’t dead. I can confirm that. She graduated high school at Santa Barbara Providence, received her nursing degree at U of C, and works for a couple of doctors over at The Women’s Medical Clinic.” He twists the computer around so I can look. It’s all I can take not to slip out of this chair and crumble to the floor. There she is. Her smile is infectious through every photo I see. At her graduation from high school and college. Photos of her and that woman I saw earlier.

  “Why are there so many photos of her on here? And who’s this couple with her?” I choke out. I’m not going to hide the fact that tears are stinging my eyes when I lay them upon an older couple beside her. The gentleman is holding my son. I haven’t been this emotional since the day I was told she died.

  “Doctors Ron and Sylvia Shepard. It appears they took her in or some shit. Big time obstetricians around here by the sounds of it. There’s no sign of adoption.” He articulates like this is his job instead of the most important information I’ve asked for in my fucking life. I know he doesn’t mean it. It’s me, the way I feel, the way every damn word I hear feels like it could be the one that’s going to light that fuse and burn my fucking heart to a pile of ashes. To let them slip through fingers with ease, flow to the ground just like she did.

  “Hit the back button, then the second link.” I do what he says. My hands are shaking, eyes blurred as I read the newspaper headline claiming the daughters of two local gynecologists to follow in the medical field of their famous parents.

  “Daughter?” I say suspiciously. “What the hell does that even mean? Her parents were murdered. None of this makes any sense, except she’s been this close to me the entire time. It makes me fucking sick to think she went on with her life without giving two fucks about me or the insanity my mind has corrupted itself with. Wonde
ring about the way she died, if she was in pain, if she suffered. The whole goddamn nine yards. Son of a bitch,” I snarl and begin to pound my fist against my chest. “She fucking left me. She took the fuck off and left my ass, making me believe she was dead. Fuck this. I’m going over there. I don’t give a fuck what you two say. I deserve to know.” I abruptly stand, the chair crashing to the floor. I hear them hollering after me to stop. Telling me, it’s a mistake; that I should think about the kid. Well, that’s exactly what I’m doing. Thinking about my kid, my life that this selfish woman stole from both me and him. She is going to pay for this.

  “Cora,” I whisper when I get to the gate at the end of the grass that separates the two property lines. She’s standing approximately twenty feet away from me, her silhouette visible from the light left in the late evening sky. My mouth waters from the sight of her. All that hair in a thick braid that’s flung over her bare shoulder, where her gray t-shirt hangs off of it. Tight jeans are covering up an even tighter ass. Her arms are hugging her slender body as she stares out into the water. My dick hurts from the sight of her. Shit. My heaven, my angel.

  “What happened to make you leave me?” The words fall from my mouth softly, and still she doesn’t hear me as she stands there appearing to be lost in thought.

  She doesn’t know I’m merely ten feet away from her; I don’t know if I should call out her name again or wait her out. I don’t have time to think about it when she turns to the sound of her name being called loudly by a female. I dash like a kid. Hiding in the shadows behind the lone palm tree in my yard, thankful I didn’t chop it down. I almost did for fear it would obstruct my view of the ocean. God, I could wrap my arms around the scaly wood and hug it right now for blocking me from being seen. I was about to make the biggest mistake of my life. Fuck me. “You broke me, Cora. I need to know why?”

  5

  CORA

  Every time those polite words of ‘Hello, Cora. How are you, today?’ would hit my ears, I fake smiled. Pretended I was great, that life was good and I was happy. It was a damn lie. Not that I didn’t have happiness in my life. I did. Every single day in the form of a tiny human who brought me more love than he will ever know. To this day, I know I would have given up if I had lost him, too.

  A child is unaffected through their resilient ways to pay attention to detail, thank God. Otherwise, there would have been no way I would have been able to hide the loneliness my heart felt whenever I would think about his father. Which was daily. Even with Seth, I thought of him. Sad to admit, but it’s true.

  After Ethan and I enter the house, he goes to shower, while I call for pizza. Once it is delivered, I grab a slice, kiss him good night, lock all the doors, and go upstairs to shower. I know he will be fine until Vivian arrives home. She sent a text letting me know the mother and newborn baby she had helped deliver were doing wonderful, and she would be home earlier than she thought. She then notified me to tell me she caved and bought Ethan the telescope he had been begging for; she even paid for them to put it together, being that both of us are incredibly incapable when it comes to putting things together. The motherly part of me wants to lash out, to tell her to stop spoiling him, but my mind is focused elsewhere. I comment with ‘Have fun’, shut my phone off, and pull my head out of my ass. I need to do this, no matter how painful it might be.

  I glance around my massive bedroom until my eyes land on my laptop sitting in the middle of the king-sized bed up against the lavender accent wall. A person could get lost in this massive room on the top level of the three-story house. This and my bathroom are the only two rooms we use up here. The open view of the ocean from the floor-to-ceiling windows is serene and calm. The sliding glass doors that are set in the middle invite me most nights to step out and enjoy the evening breeze, to stare into the black sky, to wish upon a star. There’s a nursery down the hall with an attached bathroom that will be used by neither Vivian nor me, so it’s piled with boxes full of our romance novels. Both Vivian and I could spend hours reading, getting lost in someone else’s fairy tale, only wishing it were us in those books instead of the lucky woman we love yet despise because they always capture the guy. A happily ever after.

  Shutting the door, I sigh then pad my way to the bed. Sit down cross-legged on the cool lavender sheets; the breeze billowing in from the slider I left open earlier. I glance outside then sigh once more when I think about the nights I’ve spent sitting and thinking about Riddick. Hating that I’m here without him, yet loving the fact that Ethan is having the time of his life here.

  I was and still am full of all kinds of mixed emotions. The strongest of them being frightened, but by God, I’m going to do this.

  “No matter if you’re happily married and have a house full of kids, I hope I open this up and find you alive,” I say through the lump that’s been living in my throat for years.

  Grabbing the dark-brown comforter from the floor where I tossed it angrily the other day when my alarm went off, I wrap it around my shoulders. This was Riddick’s favorite color; mine is lavender. Hence, the very reason why my room and adjoining bathroom are drenched in these two colors. Leaning over the side of my bed, I flick the switch on the wall beside my dark wooden nightstand for the gas fireplace on the wall to my left. It energizes to life, bringing the much-needed heat to my cold, clammy skin.

  My shaky hand lifts the black-sleek computer screen. Absolutely frightened about what I might find in this small gadget; to the point that I feel the bile rising, churning the contents of my stomach with every fragile emotion known to mankind. “I’m scared,” I whisper. Even though I know there is no way Jesse could hack into my computer, his yearly reminders still lingers. Once the computer springs to life, my fingers hover over the buttons to type in his name. Shakily. There have been more times over the years than I can count when I tried to gather the nerve to do this. Never getting this far, always chickening out afraid to find his name buried under years in the obituaries. I felt it then, and I’m feeling it now. Vulnerable. Scared and close to taking that giant leap into the world of crumbling back into the depths of hell. For twelve years, I’ve fallen down that bottomless pit a little every day; and once have I hit solid ground.

  “Just do it.” I freeze those emotions, sob out a cry, then type in his full name as I swallow the mass of fear in my throat, close and then quickly reopen my eyes, not prepared at all for the images staring back at me. I shove the laptop off of my lap as if its poisonous venom reached out and bit me. “No. This has to be a lie,” I say. Dazed and confused. Tears are falling down my face, dripping onto my neck, my sweatshirt, my heart. “He’s alive, or at least he was up until a few years ago,” I mutter privately. A photo of a young Riddick in the Redding Paper after boot camp from the Army stares back at me, several photos of him receiving the Medal of Honor for his tours in Afghanistan. “He’s an American Hero.” I press my fingers to my lips to quiet the gasp escaping my mouth; they willingly move to touch his face on the screen. “Oh, Riddick.” I cry.

  I won’t be able to stop the uncontrollable sobs that begin to rack through my body if Ethan runs through my door at that moment. I lay my head back, staring at the leaf-shaped ceiling fan spinning around just like my life. Wafting through this life endlessly. I cry for years of loss, about so many things he could have seen, witnessed, and experienced with us. It’s an unforgivable, misguided conduct of stupidity on my part. How could I have believed them when they said they had him? That they would kill him if I didn’t leave him alone? I believed he was dead. I felt sick. The hatred for myself has now surfaced to an all-time high. I don’t deserve to be called that boy’s mother. I’ve betrayed them both by being weak, by being a scared little girl who should have done this a long time ago. There simply isn’t an excuse for it. “I doubt if he knew, he would think I’m his heaven and angel now. God, Riddick and Ethan, how are either one of you going to forgive me for being the worst kind of person that exists?” I lay there for I don’t know how long with sorrow pouring o
ut of me. Pain slicing my skin with a jagged knife.

  I sit up, suddenly overwhelmed, yanking the laptop back toward me. My fingers are hitting the few links showing his name. There is nothing about him since 2014. Those articles say nothing else about him, are vague about his whereabouts, where he is now, or if he’s even alive, still overseas, or married. Nothing.

  I woke up missing him the day after my brother forced me to leave. I’ve missed him every day since. Surely, God wouldn’t punish me in a cruel way to get my hopes up that the man I still love to this day could be dead from the hands of our country’s enemy. Only the Devil could do that again. My God, is he back there, somewhere else? Is he dead? I refuse to believe it.

  The Devil resides inside of my brother and Cutter. Why can’t revenge be spilled on them for my disappearance? God, every memory begins to flood my head. Ones I’ve buried because they’ve hurt too much. Ones that only surface when his birthday or Christmas come around. I picture his smiling face when he snuck through the woods to my house, the way the blue in his eyes turned as dark as his jeans when he was aroused, feeling his tongue slip across my bottom lip. His big hands as he caressed my skin. We were so young, yet every minute with him I felt alive, admired, and adored.

  I don’t know if I have the strength to do the right thing by tracking down his whereabouts. It’s obvious Jesse knows where I am. I’ve never seen him, but he’s there; he always will be. He has reasons for sending me away, reasons I don’t care about anymore. I simply can’t do it. My son’s life is more important than my happiness.