SHE HAD A GRANDSON? She and Pierce were…
Her gaze flew to the love of her life. He sat straight, his hands on his thighs, immobile. He was looking in her direction but wasn’t blinking.
It was as though he was in a trance.
Recognizing the signs, she watched him.
“What’s up with him?” Daniel asked. The kid was obviously feeling the effects of emotional overload. His voice squeaked. His heel bopped up and down. He was pounding one thumb against his thigh.
What was she going to do?
Her men were falling apart on her. She’d just found out she had a third little guy who was someplace without them, and she had no clue whom to tend to first.
“He suffers from PTSD,” she told Daniel. “He’s having what he calls mind blips. They’re emotionally based. He can feel them coming on and generally gets himself outside, or even just turns around and focuses on something else and…”
They’d never been this bad. Usually it lasted a second at the most.
Pierce blinked. She knew the second he’d focused on her that he was okay. For the moment.
“You ready to go?” he asked her.
Of course she wasn’t. None of them were.
“Let’s all go back to the hotel.” She looked at Daniel. “That is, if you have time?” They were in town until the next day. If she’d won, there would have been after-show taping to do as well as a congratulatory dinner with the judges scheduled for that night.
“I’ve got time.” The young man seemed to have regained his composure almost completely. “I can follow you.”
The fact that Pierce didn’t argue was a testament to the level of his distress.
* * *
“I’M FINE TO DRIVE,” Pierce said when they reached their car. The boy had gone to an employee lot to get his Ford Ranger, white, he’d said, and would be coming around to meet them. He also knew a shortcut to the hotel where they were staying. He’d said that if Pierce wanted, he’d lead the way.
Pierce wanted time alone with Eliza. However that had to happen.
“You’re sure?” Eliza’s concern made him feel like a wimp—and comforted him at the same time.
“Positive.”
She studied him for a long minute, but then nodded and climbed into their rental sedan.
“You scared me back there, Pierce. Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked again as he started the car.
“I’m fine.” Where was the boy?
“Has that ever happened before?”
Not since you’ve been back in my life. “Yes. A couple of times. Before I learned to recognize the warning signs. And learned how to prevent it.”
He hated how telling that statement would be. And then figured it was for the best. “I told you, Eliza. I cannot be a father.” Could it be any clearer?
“Is that what your doctor told you?”
Which one?
Didn’t matter. None of them had said so. Brain blips were treatable. Most particularly when they were emotional-stress-based, as his were. He could walk into burning flames and be cool as a cucumber.
But put him in a room with a kid needing a father…
“Did you hear what he told us?”
Did she think he was deaf as well as soulless?
“We have a grandson, Pierce.”
Was she nuts? Putting him right back in the fray?
“I’d rather not talk about it.”
She nodded. Rubbed the back of his neck.
“I love you.”
He loved her, too. But he wasn’t going to use it to hold her to him.
To prove it, as soon as they got back to the hotel, before Daniel had joined them, he turned to her.
“You and the kid talk. Figure out what it is you need to do. We can talk in a bit. I’m going upstairs to rest.”
“He doesn’t know you’re his father, Pierce.”
Relief flooded him. He was pretty sure she noticed. He nodded. “Good.” And then, “Thank you.”
He kissed her. Clung to her. Said goodbye to something he didn’t deserve.
And went upstairs to call his shrink.
* * *
FEELING BEREFT WITHOUT her husband, Eliza couldn’t have followed him if the world had been crashing down. Their son needed her. Now that she knew that, there was no force that could keep her from him.
She finally got why people sometimes said that having children broke up marriages. How on earth did a woman choose between the man she loved and the child they’d created together? The child she’d borne?
Daniel didn’t seem to share her grief in Pierce’s absence. She suggested that they sit out by the pool. It was seventy degrees, too cool for guests to be swimming. They’d have the place to themselves.
She chose a round umbrella table with a view of the hotel door. She could see the lobby. If Pierce came down looking for her, she’d see him.
Taking her cell phone out of her purse, she laid it on the table beside her.
Precise, thoughtful moves. It was as though she were outside herself. Later, when she was alone, she’d come back together and deal with it all.
Daniel started to speak the second they sat down. “The whole reason I…”
She stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Do your parents know where you are?”
He shook his head. “They never do on weekends. I’m pretty much on my own. I crash at one or the other’s house. They’re fine with it. I’ll be eighteen soon, a legal adult, and…”
“You just turned seventeen, young man,” Eliza told him. She named the date. And threw in the time, too, though she felt a little immature about that.
“Do they know you’ve been in contact with me?” she asked next.
And was relieved when he nodded. “I talked to my dad about the idea when Molly first suggested it. Both he and mom, and the steps, too, for that matter, were adamant that we give him up for adoption. Molly has no family other than Camille and her foster parents, who are already dealing with new families. My dad tried to prepare me for the fact that I was only going to get hurt. He told me the chances of you being willing to take in a child for four years and then give him back were pretty much nil. Talked about you probably having a family of your own now, too. But in the end, he agreed that if I still needed to try, then he would support the decision.”
Eliza liked the man, whoever he was. Mr. Trevino, she supposed. And wondered what he did for a living. What kind of home his wife kept. If he played with his kids.
“So that’s your plan? Yours and Molly’s? To ask me to keep your son for four years?”
He nodded, looking slightly sick.
“What about your mom?” Mentally she tripped over the word. But she made herself say it. She was not Daniel’s mom. She’d given up that right. And couldn’t think about his plan yet. She was having her own mind blip.
“She pretty much thought we were nuts. But she supported my need to find you. To know who you were. She thought it would help me come to terms with giving up my own child for adoption. You know, to help me realize how much better a life I had with them than I would have…”
He stopped. It wasn’t the first time she’d felt the knife-sharp pain of his words.
“Daniel, I want you to be honest with me. This situation…it’s tough. For all of us. But I’m to blame. You are not. You had no say whatsoever in choices that were made for you seventeen years ago. They affected you, those choices. They were all about you. Shaped your whole life. Obviously you’re going to have your own set of feelings associated with them. And we can’t even hope to build a relationship—” she hoped so desperately that that was what they were doing “—if you can’t be honest with me.”
He nodded. “Just sounded kind of cruel, you know, when it came out…”
She told him then. About her and…his father. About being just shy of her sixteenth birthday when she’d gotten pregnant…
“Wow,” he interrupted her. Grinned way too much like the old Pierce would have done. “So, like, you’re only thirty-three and you’re a grandma!” His chuckle died off quickly.
And she continued telling him about the complicated circumstances that had led to his birth. Leaving out one key factor.
The identity of his father. She couldn’t tell him. Not without Pierce’s permission.
And yet…she’d just told him that they had to be honest with each other.
Feeling like her heart was being pulled in half, she waited for his question.
Oddly enough, it didn’t come.
He didn’t want to know who his father was?
Didn’t he want to know that young man who’d left for the army and been coerced by her father never to contact her again, and had done so anyway? Because their love had been calling to him since the day he’d left town?
“So…you and Mr. Westin, do you have any kids?” There was the question. Fifteen minutes later than she’d expected. And coming in a different door.
She wanted so badly for Daniel to know what a great man his father was. She wouldn’t build their relationship on lies.
“Pierce was injured in the Middle East. He’s unable to father children.” She felt like she was walking in a minefield but moved ahead anyway. Trusting that she had it in her to be a good mother.
“So he was in the military, too?”
It took her a second to realize that the “too” referred to his biological father. She’d told him he’d been conceived the night before his father had left to go to the army.
“Yes,” she said. “He’s a cop now, in Charleston.”
He nodded. “I know. Officer Ryan told us when they had us all in for questioning last week. He’s kind of a serious dude, isn’t he?”
“Officer Ryan?”
Daniel shook his head. “I guess he’d be Officer Westin, not Mr., huh?”
Or Dad.
“So…” She didn’t know how much longer she should leave Pierce up there alone. “Tell me about your son.” Did he seriously want her help raising the baby?
Her heart palpitated at the thought. She couldn’t see how a baby would fit anywhere in her life. And knew she’d do whatever it took to make it happen.
“That’s why I did this.” He nodded. “I never even thought about looking you up before all of this.”
His words hurt. But she couldn’t blame him.
Really, in a sense, she was glad. He’d have needed her only if he’d felt the lack of a mother’s love. While he didn’t like being an in-between—which she fully understood—he was a lot more secure and loved than he probably realized.
“And that’s why I don’t get Camille trying to sabotage the whole thing. She knows why meeting you was so important.”
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and started scrolling before turning it to her.
The breath caught in her chest and wouldn’t move. In or out. She could hardly make out the small form in the bassinet with tubes protruding from nearly every part of his body. Her eyes were filling up again.
“Oh my God,” she said. Smiling. And crying, too.
She’d just lost her heart again. In a way she’d never have believed possible. She’d never even met the little one, and she’d give her life up for him.
No matter what.
“It’s a miracle he’s alive,” Daniel was saying, a tone of pride in his voice way beyond his years.
Her baby had his own baby. Was more of a parent, already, in the six weeks his son had been alive, than she and Pierce had ever been.
Daniel had been talking for fifteen minutes straight about Bryant Nathaniel. Talking about physical challenges and the special care the baby was going to need for some time to come, once he was released from the hospital. He knew it all. And spoke with a sense of responsibility that broke Eliza’s heart. And did it good, too. She was so proud of him. But couldn’t take any credit for the young man he was.
“What’s his prognosis?” she asked, alarmed as she listened to the battles being taken on by such a tiny body.
“Perfect, they tell me,” Daniel said. “It’s mostly premie stuff. He wasn’t hurt in the accident.” He broke off.
In the next instant, she could swear she was looking at Pierce. A more modern version of him—as in, the Pierce she knew now. Daniel’s face had twisted, his eyes hardened. Not in meanness. Just…with foreboding.
“Molly didn’t die because of injuries she sustained in the car accident,” he said. “The seat belt caused her to go into early labor. She died giving birth to him.” There was no emotion in his voice now. And out of nowhere, Eliza knew a fear she’d never felt before.
Hopelessness.
“I was there,” he continued. “Mom had taken me to the hospital as soon as she woke me up. Molly wanted me in the delivery room with her. It was touch-and-go, and she was so weak. She was bleeding too much. Then something happened, something about birth fluid going into her body because something had perforated.”
He blamed himself. The fault wasn’t his, but he blamed himself. The truth was clear to Eliza.
And suddenly, in the midst of all the pain, she understood.
Things happened for reasons. Everything, not just some things.
Pierce’s choice to join the army had led to the day he’d faced that young boy. Killing the boy, which he believed at the time would have saved countless lives, had taken a piece of his soul. And now here was his son, with his own piece of soul missing.
Somehow she was supposed to do something with all of this.
She had absolutely no clue what to do. How to do it.
She just knew that she was a wife. And a mother.
And she had to find a way to be both.