Of course, he did this when we were inside the station, which was full. It looked like everyone was on duty.
“Aww,” Axel said. “How sweet. Father and son bonding time.”
I couldn’t help the blush that worked up my neck. All the guys razzed me for a second but mostly went back to what they were doing. I headed toward the desk I shared with Carlos, who usually worked nights.
“Madd,” Dad said.
“Yeah?”
“In all seriousness, come over for dinner and tell your mother before she finds out another way. It’ll break her heart, you know that.”
I sighed. “Yeah, okay.”
My feeling of claustrophobia increased. I didn’t even have time to process this whole thing before most of the town knew. Now I had to worry about my mom finding out.
All I wanted was to become a lawyer. I’d originally planned to go to a school a few towns over, in the city. Not too far from home.
But I’d been feeling so crowded, the letter in my bedside table started to look more and more attractive. A school in California, which I’d applied to on a whim, had accepted me. A very prestigious school with an amazing law program.
The more I considered it and the more this town tried to suffocate me, the better it looked. Nobody knew about the Cali school. Talk about Mom freaking out. If she found out I was considering going to a school several states over and thousands of miles away, the shit would really hit the fan.
I decided to keep it to myself for a while longer. I still had several weeks before the deadline for either school to accept or reject their admittance. I had to figure out if I could physically handle the California school. Was there even anywhere I could get away and shift? If not, the possibility of going out there went to nil. I had to be able to shift.
Artemis growled. He wanted me to find Bethany, claim her, and go to school here. Which was probably the smartest thing, considering I was a damn dragon shifter.
But still. I wasn’t throwing out that acceptance letter yet.
3
Bethany
Invoice day was never fun. Thursdays were my office day. I balanced the books for the week, projected numbers for the next week and month, and followed up on miscellaneous office work and emails. It had been a productive day, though I still had a couple of hours before going to get Tiffany at my mom’s. I hoped to finish up a proposal for Kara on a small remodel on one of my rental houses that we hadn’t done much to when we flipped it. I had ideas for making it another Airbnb.
My phone rang, and I knew from the tone who it was. My shoulders sank and my heart pounded. I didn’t know why I was surprised to see the number. A week barely went by without a phone call or sometimes two, and it had been nearly twice as long as normal since the last call. I sucked in a deep breath and tried to calm my twisted gut. “Hello?”
The drunk voice made me duck my head and put my hands over my eyes. “What reason did you have to turn him down? If you two hadn’t argued...”
“It’s done, Walter. It’s over. There’s no use going over and over what happened,” I said.
The night I got the news was the worst of my entire life. As much as I loved them, it had been even worse than hearing my grandparents had died in a fire. Kyle had been my best friend in the world and the father of my only child. As soon as he’d found out I was pregnant, he’d proposed.
And I’d turned him down. For weeks we’d argued. He wanted us to become a couple, but I argued that the baby wasn’t enough reason to take our relationship somewhere it had never been before. And as much as I loved him, and as happy as I was that we were having a baby together, the one night of sex hadn’t changed my feelings for him. He was still my best friend and nothing more.
We’d had a particularly bad argument the night he died. He’d left my house and had been speeding on the steep, winding mountain roads. He’d lost control of his car and careened off a cliff.
His parents blamed me. They couldn’t move past that initial deep hole of grief, not even for Tiffany. They’d come to the hospital the day she was born, and his mother had said she looked just like Kyle did at birth, broken down in tears, then handed Tiffany back to me and ran from the room.
After that, I never heard a word from them. Not for holidays or birthdays.
Until about a year ago, the phone calls started. And they were always the same. Kyle’s dad, after having one too many, called and reminded me that I was the reason his son was dead. It was my fault.
If only I’d been willing to provide Kyle’s daughter a proper home by marrying Kyle, he never would’ve been angry, never would’ve driven like that.
The worst part about the phone calls was that Walter was right. I blamed myself just as harshly as he blamed me. But the difference was that I never could’ve ignored Tiffany. She was the light of my life and would’ve been the light of Kyle’s. And could’ve been the light of his parents’ lives if they could’ve seen past their pain.
I tried to tune Walter out, but words kept stabbing through my brain. Selfish, irresponsible, dead! Tears welled in my eyes. I dashed them away and sucked in a shaky breath.
“It should’ve been you!”
The line went dead. I wasn’t sure why I took the calls. Guilt, probably. Guilt and grief. A therapist would have probably had a lot to say about it, but it was
