Home sweet home.
“You good?” Jesse asked, coming to stand next to me.
“Yeah. It’s all good.” It wasn’t. Not even fucking close.
“It’s gotta be hard though, right?”
I shrugged one shoulder. “Where you headed?” I asked, noting the helmet in his hand. Jesse had always preferred two wheels to four.
“Meeting up with Tanner and Mason. We’re gonna kick back and have a few beers, shoot some pool. You wanna come?”
They were his friends from high school. I didn’t really know them. When I’d left for boot camp, Jesse was only thirteen. By the time I came home, he had sponsorships for motocross and was on the road a lot.
“Nah. I’m good. Thanks.”
“Sure.”
He started walking toward his motorcycle then turned around. “I never thought it was right what Brody did. But I wasn’t around much, so I don’t know exactly what went down.”
“It’s in the past. Can’t change it now.”
“Guess not. Don’t get the wrong idea. I don’t hate Brody. I think he’s a good guy. Just not the right guy for Lila.”
Not sure that I was the right guy for Lila anymore either but I didn’t mention that.
“We all love Noah.”
“He seems like a good kid.”
“Yeah, he’s cool. For what it’s worth, I think you and Brody should talk it out. We’re still family. That’s never gonna change.”
I looked out at the road as a jacked-up truck drove past, music blasting. “Where do they live?” As if I was actually considering ‘talking it out.’
“They?” Jesse’s brow furrowed. “You mean Lila and Noah?”
“They don’t live with Brody?”
“You thought they were together?”
“They’re not?” I asked in surprise.
Jesse laughed and shook his head. “Holy shit. I love you, bro, but sometimes you’re an idiot.”
I scowled at him. He held up both hands. “Hey. I would have told you anything you wanted to know but you never asked.”!
Would I have come back sooner if I knew this? I wasn’t so sure. Just because Lila didn’t live with Brody didn’t change the fact that they had a kid together.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Lila
Noah fell asleep on the drive home. I pushed his sweaty hair off his forehead and unclipped his seat belt. Dirt and grass were ground into the knees of his jeans and a ketchup stain decorated his blue T-shirt. His eyelids fluttered but he didn’t wake up.
I gathered him into my arms and lifted him out of his seat. He was small but when he was asleep, he was heavy. Closing the car door with my hip, I hiked him up as Brody pulled into the driveway and climbed out of his truck.
“What are you doing here?” I asked when he met me by my car.
“I’ve got him.” Without bothering to answer my question, he took Noah out of my arms. I beeped the locks on my car and followed him to the front door of my two-bedroom cottage nestled in a grove of cypress trees. Jesse called it a Hobbit house. But it was cozy and the perfect size for me and Noah.
Brody stepped aside and I unlocked the door and pushed it wide open to give him space.
“You want him in bed?” he asked as we crossed the living room.
I nodded and followed him down the hallway then ducked into the bathroom and ran a washcloth under warm soapy water.
In Noah’s bedroom, Brody was undressing him on his red racecar bed that Kate and Patrick had bought for him. His room was decorated in red, white and navy, his toys corralled in canvas totes on a low shelving unit that spanned one wall. I opened the oak dresser and grabbed a pair of SpongeBob SquarePants pajamas. His favorite cartoon.
He was half-awake now, his eyelids so heavy he could barely keep them open but that didn’t stop him from trying.
“Hi Daddy,” Noah mumbled.
“Hey buddy. We need to get you out of this T-shirt.” Noah sat up and held his arms in the air, letting Brody take off the T-shirt. He was down to his underwear now.
“I need to pee,” he said as I wiped his face with the warm soapy washcloth. “Really really bad.”
“Hurry,” I said. He scrambled off the bed and ran to the bathroom. Noah had this habit of waiting until the last minute.
“Uh oh,” I heard from the bathroom. “I missed.”
Brody laughed. I sighed. I swear Noah missed the bowl more often than not. I was always cleaning pee off the floor. Off the seat. Sometimes when he was showing off, it even sprayed the wall.
It took me another fifteen minutes to finally get Noah to settle down. Fast asleep now, tucked under his navy comforter with white stars, I made sure the nightlight was on and closed his door softly before I joined Brody in the living room.
I paused in the doorway as he set a framed photo back on the bookshelves that spanned the opposite wall. It was a photo of the three of us—me, Brody, and Jude when we were kids. We were sitting on the McCallister’s back porch eating popsicles. We weren’t looking at the camera and the photo caught us mid-laugh. We looked so happy. So carefree. The boys were probably telling those stupid pickle jokes they’d found so funny that summer. I was sitting in the middle, and I guess that was how it had always been.
Now I’d driven a wedge between them and I had no idea how or if we could ever come back from this.
Brody turned to face me, his back to the shelves that heaved with well-loved books and memories—framed photos and knick-knacks and the pottery bowls and vases my mom and I made the summer she was getting chemo. I crossed the hardwood floor and sat on the worn leather sofa, tucking my legs under me.
“How’s your horse?”
He turned his hand over and studied the dried blood on the palm. “Got himself tangled up in barbed wire on the neighbor’s property. Had to fix the fence. Those horses have thirty acres
