Long Road Home Read online

  She took off out of the school as Jenni crumpled to the floor with a scream, her friends freaking out over the blood, but I’d only had eyes on Destiny.

  She’d just punched the biggest bitch in school and I had to learn more.

  Two years later, we’d made plans for our future. We were headed to the University of Kansas where I had a full-ride baseball scholarship. We were going to stay together. Get married right after college. I’d never been more certain of my path, despite the fighting it took, sticking up for her constantly even with my own family who never gave her a decent chance.

  Then, she’d shown up at my house, weeks after graduation, and without a single hint of sadness in her eyes she’d looked directly into my eyes and hurt me just as bad as she had Jenni, except she used her words and not her fists.

  I don’t think I can do this. I don’t know if I want to follow you all over who knows where just so you can live your dream. I have dreams too, and they’re more than being your groupie.

  It was a fight. A silly fight and it wasn’t like we hadn’t had them before, but that one…it was different. I’d still been a dumbass and brushed it off, thinking she was hormonal or scared to leave, scared to stay…that was Destiny. Scared and uncertain. I’d thought it was another fear of hers and we’d get through it. We’d always been able to before.

  Two days later, after she stopped returning my calls or texts, I’d gone to Tillie’s to fix it. Except Destiny wasn’t there and Tillie had handed me a note. She broke up and disappeared on me with a fucking note. It was ten years ago, and it still hurt as much as it had that very same day.

  Destiny and her son finally reached her SUV. She glanced back at me as she pulled open her door. I didn’t need to see her eyes to know she was glaring at me, but it was the quick flinch when she caught me watching her that sent ice to the back of my neck.

  I’d hurt her. I’d said the worst possible thing to her, the one thing I’d always stood by her and defended her for. In a split second, I became like every single other asshole in the town. Something I’d always sworn I’d never do to her.

  Ten years later and it still hurt me to hurt her, even if she didn’t feel the same.

  “Fucking shit.” I kicked at the grass. Her SUV’s tires squealed out of the space and took off.

  I needed a damn drink. Or twelve.

  * * *

  “So how’d it go?” my best friend, Ryan, asked me.

  We were on the back deck at my sister’s house, tossing back beers. It didn’t take a genius to figure out I was broody and pissed off as soon as I showed up. I half-expected my sister, Rebecca, orchestrated this dinner tonight because she knew I’d head to Tillie’s funeral even though no one else bothered to.

  Not that they had any reason to. Most in attendance hadn’t hidden their dislike of Destiny, some of them didn’t bother to hide it before she even took off. I’d shut them up pretty quick afterward. It was so damn ingrained in me to protect Destiny it still hurt when I remembered her earlier flinch.

  “Fucking sucked,” I muttered and tossed back my beer. “She’s here.”

  “No shit?”

  “No shit.” I grabbed another beer from the cooler near our feet and popped the top. The cool drinks were not settling me down. Maybe more would help. “Has a kid. A boy.”

  Barely looked a thing like her, too. I’d stared at that photo more times in the last few hours than I cared to admit. Something that showed he was her son. But he didn’t have a lick of her light coloring or her hazel eyes that would be slightly different colors depending on how bright the sun was or what color she wore.

  I’d always loved her in green.

  I took another large swallow of my beer. Like I needed to be remembering what color I liked her wearing. Ten years and I hadn’t been able to evaporate her in my brain. Wouldn’t have been able to if I took a power washer to it either.

  “No shit?” he said again, his voice rising. “She has a son?”

  “Who has a son?” That came from Cooper Hawke, my sister’s fiancé.

  “Destiny,” I muttered.

  He was the only one who wasn’t around when the epic shitstorm of Destiny and Jordan blew up, but I was sure Rebecca had told him enough.

  She never held back around me, anyway, especially when she knew I was helping Tillie.

  Damn. Fucking Tillie. I hadn’t been blind to her decline over the years. The way her hands shook more than were steady. The loss of weight on her already small frame and the mellowing of her spunky attitude. We’d run into each other at the grocery store shortly after I came back to town and like a moth to a flame, willing to be burned when it came to anything Matsen-related, I’d showed up at her house the next weekend to see if I could help her with anything.

  She’d seen right through my bullshit tactic, knowing it was to get information on Destiny, but she didn’t turn me away. Instead, she pointed her finger to her small shed where she stored her lawnmower. Week after week I returned, sometimes more often. Every time I started to ask about Destiny, she changed the subject.

  I figured they didn’t have anything to do with one another.

  Until last week when she was on the couch almost asleep and she gripped my hand. Hers, small and frail and cold despite it being August and she was covered in a blanket.

  She’d looked at me with that fire in her eyes I’d known so well when I was younger. Forgive her, Jordan. Someday, you’re going to know everything and for me, I’m begging you, for me…forgive her. Find it in that huge heart of yours you have, dig deep, and give that to her. You’re both going to need it.

  Whatever the hell that meant. She fell asleep before I could get her to tell me more.

  Two days later, she was gone. I’d been too busy at the golf resort and spa I owned to get back to her place and demand more answers.

  “How was she?” Cooper asked.

  How was she? Just as beautiful as I remembered, if not more so. She carried herself with grace, head held high despite the whispers she obviously heard.

  She had never caved to them in all the years I’d known her, at least until the end. Something was different about her though, too. She’d grown stronger, more certain of herself and who she was. It was clear not only in her composure but how quickly she put me in my place.

  That confidence was something I’d always wanted to give her.

  “I was a dick to her.”

  “No shit?”

  “Swear to fucking God Ryan, you don’t find more words in your vocabulary to use, I’m going to beat the shit out of you.”

  He laughed and slapped my shoulder. “Oh come on. Give me a minute to process this. She married?”

  “Is who married?” Rebecca asked. She sauntered up to us on her back deck and slid her arm around Cooper’s waist.

  “Fuck.” I groaned and dropped my head into my hand.

  Ryan found all his words. “Destiny showed up at the funeral with a kid.”

  “Don’t.” I shoved the palm of my hand in Rebecca’s direction and didn’t look up. “Don’t start, Rebecca.”

  My sister erupted like a volcano when any mention of that part of my life was brought up.

  “She…” she sputtered. “Well, is she?”

  “Is she what?” I asked. I closed my eyes. I needed a nap. For weeks.

  “Married?”

  “No ring on her finger.” I’d checked. More than once or twice. As soon as I saw that little boy grab her hand and hold on tight, I’d focused all my attention on her hands and there was nothing. Not even the hint of a wedding band tan line.

  “Oh shit,” Ryan said, laughing. “You feel like a dick for being an ass to her, don’t you?”

  Yes. Of course I did.

  “Fucking hell,” I groaned. “Shut up.”

  He didn’t. “And you’re thinking of going to apologize to her, aren’t you?”

  I drained my beer in two large swallows. Did I buy some mini-size bottles? They were going down too fast.

&
nbsp; “No.” Yes. Of course I was.

  “Bullshit.” He knew me too well.

  “So what about the kid? How old?”

  That came from Cooper, and since I knew he didn’t hate the woman I’d loved, I lifted my head at the same time I reached for my phone. “I have no idea. A boy, though. Took a picture of him.”

  “Why in the hell would you do that?” Rebecca asked, grabbing the phone out of my hand.

  “What’s going on out here?” Kelly, Ryan’s wife, asked.

  “Jesus.” I slammed my hands to my face and scrubbed them down. “I came here for a few drinks and some quiet, is that too much to ask?”

  “Around this group?” Kelly asked, grinning like the crazy woman she was. “Of course it is. What are you looking at?” She turned to Rebecca and her eyes went crazy wide.

  “What?” I didn’t have porn on my photo. No dick pics. Nothing that could make Kelly and Rebecca look like they’d seen a ghost. I shoved out of the chair. “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” Rebecca said and handed back my phone. Her hand shook, and she’d gone pale. “Nothing. Cute kid.”

  She grabbed Cooper’s hand and yanked him toward their house with Kelly following. Last summer, a tornado had destroyed the original farmhouse Rebecca and I grew up in. Cooper, richer than rich, rebuilt what most in town considered a mansion. An all brick one and a half story house with almost four thousand square feet of gorgeous home. They’d moved in last December and were getting married in a couple of months.

  I stood from the chair. The screen door they ran through slammed closed. I turned back to Ryan. “What the hell was that about?”

  “Women.” Ryan shrugged and slung back a drink. “Who the fuck knows?”

  Three

  Destiny

  * * *

  I knew I shouldn’t have come here. How was I supposed to know that was going to happen? I couldn’t. There was no way. Now not only did everyone in this damn town still hate me and think the worst of me—Jordan, too, and he didn’t even know the half of it—but now Toby hated me.

  At least that’s what he screamed at me as soon as we got back to Tillie’s two hours ago. He cried the entire way back and it didn’t take a genius to know what he was thinking. A thousand excuses and reasons to give him raced through my brain, but they all jumbled and tangled in my throat.

  As soon as we got inside, he ran to the room he was staying in and slammed the door.

  With frustration and anger and guilt building inside of me, instead of wandering aimlessly around her small house like I’d done last night, taking in all the pictures she hung on her walls, noting that not a single thing had changed in a decade, I got to work.

  I had to get her house packed up.

  I had to get things stored. Things I wanted to save and ship back to our home in a suburb of Houston. On Monday, I had a meeting with the lawyer in charge of Tillie’s estate and then I was meeting with a realtor to get the house listed. I had to get everything cleaned, the house decluttered and staged to sell quickly.

  In the meantime, I planned on holing up in the house except for a brief trip to the grocery store to stock up on food for the next few days. Then, Toby and I were getting the hell out of this godforsaken place.

  As I opened the first box, I jumped at the sound of Toby’s music blaring so loudly upstairs the walls shook, in danger of knocking down pictures all over the place.

  One included my prom picture. Jordan was in a tux, white shirt, dark red vest that had matched my dress and deep red corsage on my wrist. We stood side by side, and his hand was settled low on my hip. I couldn’t believe Tillie still had that photo hanging and Toby had seen it.

  As soon as he saw it last night, he slammed to a halt on the stairs. Pointed to it. Turned to me and asked, “Who’s that?”

  “Some guy I used to know,” I’d muttered, body already shaking with fear of what I’d say if he asked another question.

  He’d stared at me for a beat, then two, and went to his room.

  Hearing the name Jordan today, seeing that very same man in flesh and bone, a man who I’d obviously known years ago, a man who was responsible for my son’s middle name—yeah, my kid wasn’t an idiot.

  “Freaking Cheerios,” I muttered and went to the pictures hanging on the walls. They were shaking from the bass of Toby’s music. Might as well pack them before they crashed to the floor.

  I’d give him time to settle. We’d eat. After, I’d tell him everything I could.

  Then, I’d ask him what he wanted once he had all the information. He was old enough to have some say.

  “Only you, Destiny. Only you would get yourself into this dumbass, stupid and horrific situation.”

  My phone rang on the coffee table, but I ignored it. There were only two people who would call me. My boss and friend, Allison, who ran the graphic design firm where we’d become friends years ago, or Paul. We dated for three years and I had only recently broken up with him.

  Shortly before Tillie died, she called me and told me she knew my heart wasn’t with him. To let him go. That life was too short to live safely and not fully in love with the man you had at your side. I’d argued with her, but I hadn’t been able to get it out of my mind.

  Then, everything made sense once she was gone. She’d been wrapping up loose ends, knowing the end was coming for her and she’d never hinted at it. The truth of what she’d said, why she said it, and what I was doing hit me within days after I got the call from Pastor Emmerson letting me know she was gone.

  Only I would be so selfish as to hang on to a guy I knew I wouldn’t marry. It wasn’t because I didn’t love him. I did. He was strong and stable. He loved Toby. Hell, he’d coached his basketball team one year. He was a major fixture in our life and I wanted to keep him.

  I just didn’t love him enough to marry him, and I could never tell him the reason was because when I dreamed of my wedding, it was never him I envisioned walking toward.

  He was such a good guy, that even after he found out about Tillie’s death, he’d called and asked to come with us, to be there for me. To be there for Toby. I hadn’t been blind to the pain and disappointment in his eyes when I told him no thank you.

  God freaking damn it. I was rotten.

  Everything Jordan had said to me was true.

  I had grown up and turned into my mother, minus the drug addiction and child abandonment. But I certainly had her selfishness and self-destructive patterns nailed to a T.

  * * *

  I’d finished boxing up the photos and chicken parmesan was baking in the oven. All of the pictures were going into storage except a small handful of my favorite photos of Tillie and me when I was younger, and the prom picture I couldn’t bring myself to toss into the trash.

  I wrapped a serving platter in newspaper and stuffed that into the bottom of a new box, figuring I should pack up the kitchen since I was in there anyway.

  Three years ago, I had all new appliances delivered to Tillie for her Christmas present. I’d been thoughtful, choosing mid-line, white appliances instead of the high-end stainless steel ones I’d wanted her to have. When it came to Tillie, I wanted her to have the best. Yet I knew she’d think that was frivolous and unnecessary.

  When it came to Tillie though, nothing was frivolous. I owed her everything. I owed her my life considering she took me in and raised me after my mom abandoned me in our dilapidated apartment, strapped into a car seat with nothing more than a small package of diapers and enough formula to last for one more feeding.

  If I could have updated the mustard-colored Formica countertops circa 1975 with granite or marble, I would have done that for her too, but she’d insisted what she had worked for her. I’d pushed my luck with the appliances, so I held back.

  That was going to be her Christmas present this year.

  I sniffed away the emotions brought by that thought and pressed my palms into the countertop. She taught me all about baking and cooking in that very same spot, and as I closed
my eyes, memories of me as a little girl, coming home with my hair pulled out of my braids and tears running down my cheeks assaulted me.

  “It’s stupid. Girls are stupid.”

  “Tell me all about it. But don’t say stupid. Name-calling isn’t nice.”

  I sniffed again, flinching as Grandma rubbed alcohol on my skinned knees. Girls were stupid. At least the ones I knew were. Grandma Tillie wasn’t so bad, though. “My name is stupid, too.”

  She blew on my knees and like always, the sting burned worse before it got better. “Your mama gave you that name because she knew you were destined for great things, girl. Take hold of that and live it.”

  “The girls say their mamas say I’m destined to end up like Mama. That’s why she gave me that, so everyone would always know I’m gonna be like her.”

  “You ain’t ever going to be like your mama, sweetheart.” Her cool hands pressed to my cheeks. “Your mama had problems she couldn’t beat, and it’s too bad because she’s missing out. But I was there the day you were born and when she named you. She looked at you and kissed your forehead and she had said, ‘I want my girl to be everything I’m not. That’s her destiny.’ So you see, she loved you more than anything.”

  “Then why’d she leave?”

  Like always when I asked about Mama, Grandma’s lips thinned. “Some problems take strength and your mama never thought she had it. But you do, sweetheart. You’ve got all the strength inside of you to live like she wanted. No matter how hard it is, you don’t ever give up, okay?”

  A loud knock on my front door, loud enough to rattle the windows, jolted me out of that memory and I spun, hurrying to the front door.

  Upstairs, Toby’s music still blared even though I’d given him a twenty-minute warning on dinner.

  Without looking, I gripped my hand on the knob and right as another pound hit the front door, I yanked it open.