19. Chapter 19

"Max asked me to get this to you. I can't make you read it, but before you throw it out, I'm going to ask a favor of you."

"You've never asked me for anything," I told Jack.

"I know it, Petal. Wouldn't ask this of you either if I didn't think it was important." I nodded my head for him to go on. He smacked the letter against his hand before holding it out for me to take. Against my better judgement, I took the thing.

"Need you to read it, sweetheart. Things aren't what they seem, and Max wasn't able to explain them sooner, but he wanted you to know just the same."

It did nothing to make me feel better. Jack seemed so far away, lost almost. His eyes held so much sorrow that it added to the misery I felt deep inside. My eyes drifted from him to the folded-up papers I held in my hand. It took a few minutes, after Jack left me alone, to get my hands to stop shaking so that I could open the damn thing. My chest tightened at the sight of his handwriting. It had been so long since we'd exchanged physical letters that it was a bittersweet moment to get another one from him just when it felt like I'd finally lost him for good.

My sweet, sweet Posie,

People are always lecturing about taking things for granted and how life doesn't offer guarantees. I guess I learned that lesson the hard way, and unfortunately, I think it was at your expense too.

I didn't realize how deeply embedded in my heart you were until you told me about that jackass who stole all your firsts and didn't appreciate them.

I was determined, after reading about the asshole, that I'd never allow you to slip through my fingers again. Unfortunately, I came to that epiphany after a drunken night of feeling sorry for myself, thinking how I could have lost any chance with you.

I did something stupid.

So, fucking stupid.

Being drunk should never be an excuse, but I honestly still don't even have a full recollection of how I ended up with Beth that night.

My heart thudded heavily in my chest as I pushed the pages of his letter down into my lap. If I continued to read this letter, after the mention of her, I'd come away with a bigger fracture to my heart. There was no question about that. Hell, I already had a broken heart, but there was no denying hearing what he had to say about meeting up with his soon-to-be wife was going to crush my soul. I didn't know if I was ready for that.

I peered out my window to see Jack sitting on the porch, his hand resting on the empty rocking chair beside him. His lips were moving, which meant he was talking to his wife out there. It was something he rarely did these days. Usually, if he was talking to her, it was because the old man was having a hard damn day. I could relate. Seeing Jack talk to his lost love, as if she was still sitting there beside him, made me pull the letter back out of my lap and straighten the pages.

If Jack had the courage to keep breathing on this earth when the love his life no longer did, then I could finish reading Max's letter to me. It was that simple and that hard. My eyes scanned the first page until I found where I'd left off.

I'd gone out to drown my sorrows and ended up waking in her bed. I'm not telling you this to hurt you. Fuck, I wish I never had to tell you this part, but it led to everything else that snowballed afterward.

I was determined to come home. To come there for you. I swear to you, Posie, all I wanted then was to make you fall as in love with me as I've fallen for you. Plans were in place, and I didn't want to tell you about it until I was sure that everything would work out with the job situation and the timeframe for when I'd be back there.

Two months later, when I was still waiting to hear back from the police department there, I was called into my boss's office.

Beth is his daughter.

She wanted to tell her father and me the news at the same time. She was pregnant and claimed that I was the father.

You have to understand, Posie. Beth had already tanked a couple other police officer's careers before the one night we spent together. Immediately, her father told me I was going to do the right thing or find myself on the losing end of a career going nowhere.

I'm not one to scare easily. I went to the District Attorney, who happens to be a friend of mine. We worked out a way to use my situation to bust my lieutenant for abuse of power. The whole wedding thing was supposed to be a farce. Honestly, I thought I'd been careful and that the baby wasn't even mine. I told her I wouldn't marry her until a test was done to confirm.

I never thought it would come to that. I truly thought there was no way.

Fuck, Posie. Fuck!

It's my baby.

I can't believe I had to write that. That you will eventually read those words. Over the past couple years, when I've pictured having a family, for some reason, it's always you and the farm, and that stupid fucking barn. That's the picture I still had in my head when the test results came back.

I can't leave now.

I can't come home because she won't go. I can't leave my kid behind with someone like her as their mother. Being a conniving bitch isn't enough to prove she wouldn't be a good mom to the courts, so I have to wait.

I'm not marrying her, Posie. There's one first of mine that I want to save for the only woman who deserves it, but I'll understand if she's not there when I'm finally ready. If she needs to move on, then it will kill me, but I'll understand.

This was my fault.

My doing.

My stupidest fucking mistake.

I'm having a kid with the wrong fucking woman, and it feels like I'm drowning, but I can't let my kid ever feel that. You know? No matter who their mother is, they're only ever going to feel loved and wanted by me. I'm so sorry that I screwed it all up. I'm so damn sorry. One day, maybe you can forgive me. You were supposed to be my forever, and I threw it away just like that idiot you dated. If you can't forgive me, then I'll understand that, too.

Yours Always,

Max

I crumpled the pages to my chest and doubled over with the ache of what his letter revealed. The man I'd been in love with since we were teenagers would never be able to come back home for me.

He was having a baby with another woman.

The first tear fell as the shock wore off and the realization settled in.

A baby.

A baby with another woman.

My heart ached worse than when Evan showed me that wedding invitation. Marriages came and went sometimes. That was hard to take but wasn't the end of the world. A baby – that was forever. That meant whatever I'd hoped for us – it was really over. There would never be anything between Max and me. He would always be stuck there with them, even if he didn't marry her. The decisions she made would always keep him chained closer to her.

The worst part was that I understood. Hadn't my father been sucked into a similar situation, after all? What would my life have been like if he hadn't taken such good care of me until he couldn't anymore? I don't think I'd still be alive.

I sat up, carefully folded the letter, and pulled the box out from under my bed that I'd used to keep all of our other correspondences in. I even printed out the emails, so that they could be kept in the box too. I laughed at my reasoning as I laid the letter inside and closed the lid. I'd been keeping them, so that one day I could show our daughters or sons how our love story started. I wanted them to know that they should never settle for less than the person who could pour their heart out to them and listen as they did the same.

What a joke.

We were never going to have those children together now because he was having one with another woman. That meant he'd never come back home, and I couldn't go there and put myself in the middle of things. If he had a chance to work things out with his child's mother, then he needed to do that. I couldn't put myself in the way and potentially keep that child from growing up with both parents around to love them together.

My parents' secrets had come to light for me over the years and I knew the sacrifice my father made for me. My father lost his son because he married the wrong woman. He chose the wrong mother for his children. He lost the love of his life when my mom came back into the picture and made life miserable for him until I came along. I was the trick that he had to pay for. I never knew, never would have known by the way my father treated me.

In that, I respected Max's decision immensely. He was repeating the mistakes of my father's past. The mistakes that kept him tied to a woman he loathed, all to make sure that his daughter didn't suffer the same fate as his son.

My father was my hero for everything he sacrificed for me, but especially for never allowing me to see what a sacrifice it was. Max would be that hero for his own child one day.

At some point, Evan found his way to me. Jack probably sent for him because his grandson was my best friend. I wished, for just a fraction of a moment, that Evan had been the one I'd crushed on all those years ago. He would have been here and wouldn't have taken forever to see me the way his brother had. Our relationship would have gone somewhere from the beginning or ended swiftly. There never would have been this long, dragged-out affair by mail that led to my heart being completely crushed in the end.

"I wonder if this is my karma."

"What karma?"

"I stole away the love of my father's life. That means I stole my father from the woman who loved him, too. They both lost that love because of me. So, this is my karma, right? The world is setting my wrongness right. I'm that woman now. Everything has come full-circle and now I truly know what it must have been like for them when my mom came around and ruined everything, because I'm living it."

"Jesus fucking Christ, Posie." Evan sat down beside me and pulled me into the tight embrace of his arms. "I'm so sorry, sweetheart. You've never done anything to earn the shit you're going through. Your mom is the one who should have paid for what she put your dad through. You're the innocent one in the scenario. I don't believe for one second that the universe is somehow punishing you for her sins."

"It feels like it, though." There was no holding back the tears at that point or way the pain rattled my body with each violent sob.