Chapter 19

Chapter

Nineteen

March 22nd

3:24 P.M.

Damn.

She still hadn"t replied to a single one of his messages.

Should Panther be surprised that Elle didn"t want to answer his messages given the way he'd asked her to leave without even talking to her about it first?

Probably not.

Was he?

Yeah. Honestly he was.

He'd thought …

Shame bubbled inside him as he thought about how he'd handled things. In the moment, he had believed he could ask Elle and Ruthie to leave, sort out this thing with Marcia and figure out if the best thing for Andy was for his parents to attempt to try making a relationship work, then go back to Elle after he knew what he was going to do. In the meantime, leaving her and her traumatized daughter hanging while he got himself and his life sorted out.

What kind of idiot was he that he thought she would still be there waiting for him if and when he decided he wanted her?

Talk about selfish.

It would have been thoughtless and careless enough to have done what he had if both Elle and Ruthie weren"t recovering from a horrific ordeal, but to know they were, and that they needed him and he'd walked away … that had guilt eating non stop in his gut.

"I don't want to see her," Andy growled behind him as his son stomped into the kitchen.

Over the last few days, the sweet little boy he'd always known had morphed into an angry child who argued over everything and wasn't shy about making his feelings known. Not that Panther wanted Andy to lie to him, he just thought that he owed it to his son to give the boy a chance to get to know his mother. Thing was, he'd expected Andy to have stopped resisting this by now and started to forge some sort of bond with Marcia. With Elle, he'd bonded with her instantly, but when it came to his own mother the boy seemed to want to have nothing to do with her.

"Nonetheless, she's going to be here in a couple of minutes, and the two of you are spending the afternoon together. She wants to cook you dinner so I'll be back before bedtime," he told his son as he turned to face the angry child.

"You're leaving me alone with her?" Andy asked incredulously.

The last few days Panther had stayed while Marcia visited with Andy, but Andy refused to engage, and he'd wondered if he wasn't there then maybe the two of them would be able to start bonding.

"She's a stranger," Andy growled.

There was no bother pointing out that Elle had been a stranger and Andy had had no problem at all being left alone with her. No bother pointing out that Panther had had no problem leaving his son alone with her although the thought of leaving his son alone with the boy's own mother left him anxious and unsettled either.

"Mrs. Pfeffer will be here," he assured his son. He wasn't trying to be the bad guy, given his own past he just couldn't not try to see if things with Marcia could be salvaged. But he wasn't going to leave his child alone with someone the boy wasn't comfortable with. Andy loved Mrs. Pfeffer and the woman would make sure that he was okay while he was spending time with the mother he didn"t know and didn"t seem to want to get to know.

Ten minutes later, Panther was walking out his front door leaving a nervous Marcia, a confused Mrs. Pfeffer, and an angry Andy inside, and trying to figure out what he was going to do for the next few hours. Part of him wanted to get in his vehicle and drive to Elle's place, check for himself how the two of them were doing even though Sparrow had assured him that they were hanging in there several times already over the last few days.

It wasn't a good idea, he knew that. What would he say to them? Sorry I kicked you out when I promised I would always be there for you, but this was something I had to do?

That wasn't going to help anyone. Not his girls, not himself, not his son.

His girls.

Still how he thought of Elle and Ruthie. Dragging his fingers down his face, Panther sighed. None of this was turning out the way he wanted it to, and he was no longer sure he was doing the best thing for anyone.

In fact, he was starting to feel like he had done the wrong thing for everyone.

Whatever plans he was deciding on were halted as he walked down the porch steps and found his team standing there waiting for him.

Not a single one of them looked happy.

Join the club.

These last few days had been amongst the most miserable of his life. He missed Elle and Ruthie with an ache, like a part of himself had been amputated and lost to him, possibly forever. If his friends were just here to make him feel worse about the situation then he wasn't in the mood.

"What do you want?" he muttered as he stalked past them and out into the woods where just a week ago his son and Ruthie had been running around playing and having fun.

"To understand," Rock said gently. "Trust me, I"m the king of messing up a good thing, so there's no judgment here. Not from any of us. But we've never seen you more miserable."

"Honestly, you weren"t this miserable when Marcia left you a single dad of a baby, bro," Trick added.

"You were happy with Elle," Tank said. "You and Andy both. Happiest we've ever seen the two of you."

"You think I don't know that?" he roared out his frustration.

"Then why did you ask her to leave?" Scorpion asked. "I"m going to be a father now so I can get that you have to think of Andy and his needs above everyone and everything else. But you could have seen whether your ex was serious about wanting a relationship with her son without kicking Elle and Ruthie out."

"No I couldn't," he insisted. They just didn"t get it. You only got one childhood, and every child wanted their parents to be together. How could he not give Andy a chance at the happy childhood with both parents together every kid wanted and still call himself a good father? If he didn"t do this, he'd be proving he was every bit as selfish and self-centered as his own parents had been.

"None of us get why," Trick said.

"You don't have to get it," he muttered. No one needed to understand his choices, he didn"t owe anyone an explanation. Anyone except Elle and he hadn"t done that. If this didn"t work out with Marcia—and there was a huge part of him that didn"t want it to—then how could he expect her to ever trust him again? It was like he'd set her on the backburner and just expected her to be there waiting if and when he returned.

There was no doubt about it, he had ruined the best thing to ever happen to both him and his son. Elle was everything that Marcia wasn't, everything he wanted his son to have in a mother.

"My parents split when I was six. I hated it, begged them to stay together but they told me they didn"t love each other and were divorcing. Mom remarried first, I was eight. Guy she married was divorced with sole custody of his three kids, kids she was excited to step up and mother. Dad remarried two years later, the woman was a widow with two kids of her own, and my dad fell head over heels for all three of them. Two families, neither of which I ever felt like I belonged in. I was the only one being bounced about between homes, the only one always on the outside."

The worst thing a child could ever feel was unwanted, and that was exactly how his parents had made him feel.

They loved their step kids more than they loved him, Panther had always been positive of that. Back then as a child and now as an adult.

"Both of them had another two kids each with their new partners. That was a lot of kids in each home. I was the one who wasn't always there, so I was the one who slept on the pull out bed in the study at my mom's, and had a tiny room in the attic at my dad's. Family vacations were expensive so they took them when I was with the other parent because that was one less kid to pay for. I hated it, hated them, hated my step-siblings and half-siblings who had the family I wanted. I wished on every birthday candle, asked in every letter to Santa, and begged and pleaded with God, to give me my family back so I could be wanted again. How can I put my son through that same kind of life? Shuttled about between two homes, never feeling like he belonged?"

Axe stepped forward and met his gaze directly. "You"re looking at it all wrong. You"re trying to invent problems that aren"t there. Trust me, there is only one thing in life that's truly important, and that's keeping the people you love close because you never know when you could lose them forever."

If there was anyone who knew about losing loved ones it was Axe. Even now as his wife slept in his home she wasn't truly with him. Beth might never get her memories back, and Axe would have to live the rest of his life having his wife nearby but not having her close.

His friends weren"t wrong when they said this was the happiest they'd seen Andy. Under Elle's love and attention, his already happy, intelligent child was blossoming.

Was a family really all about DNA?

Wasn't it about love?

Elle had filled their home with love, support, attention, care, and understanding. She had been acting like Andy's mother. If he and Marcia weren"t together, and Marcia proved she could be a stable influence in their son's life and they wound up sharing custody, then who said Andy had to feel left out? Panther knew for a fact that he and Elle would never make Andy feel like he wasn't wanted, like he was an extra in the family. They would shower the boy with love and attention when he was with them. Andy would have his own space, he would always be included in family vacations, and they would both make sure he knew that it was his home and not just a house he stayed in sometimes.

With Elle he could have given Andy the stable home he himself had lacked as a child, and instead, he'd ripped it all away from his son.

Turned out Panther was worse than his parents had been, he wasn't just selfish but a coward as well. He'd let his own fears from the past ruin the best thing to have ever happened to his son.

March 25th

9:21 A.M.

Why was this happening to her?

Hadn"t she been through enough?

Elle's thoughts were quickly plummeting from shock to downright despondency.

Of all the things she thought would ever happen to her again this one had to be right down at the bottom of the barrel.

This was … impossible.

After her husband had walked out on her when Ruthie was just a baby, the last thing she ever wanted to do was put a child through knowing a parent didn"t want them. It wasn't the raising that child on her own—hard though that was—that made her get herself on the pill immediately, it was that her child would grow up feeling the same way she had. Unwanted. A burden.

So … this … this had to be impossible.

The pill made it impossible.

It wasn't true.

A false positive.

Had to be.

Nothing else would make sense.

Only …

Elle lifted the hand that wasn't clutching the pregnancy test and brushed a fingertip over the mostly healed cut on her cheek. The cut she'd gotten when she attacked Jimmy, stopping him from killing her daughter. At the hospital, after cleaning the wound and using butterfly bandages to close it, she'd been given a shot of antibiotics.

Antibiotics could mess with the pill's effectiveness.

Not that it was one hundred percent effective anyway.

It wasn't that she was opposed to the idea of having more kids, and she knew Ruthie would be over the moon about becoming a big sister, but she didn"t want it like this.

Alone again.

Unwanted.

Not good enough.

No matter how hard she tried, she always seemed to fail. Failed as a daughter by not becoming what her parents wanted. Failed as a wife even though she knew she had been the best wife she could be. Failed as a mother bringing someone unsafe into her daughter's life and almost getting her killed. Failed as a girlfriend to Rafe who tossed her away without even talking through where he was coming from and his fears and concerns.

Failed.

Always a failure.

Now she had another little person she was going to fail because, once again, she wasn't going to be able to give this baby the happy home she'd always dreamed of giving any children she would have.

Rafe had already made his choice and it wasn't her and Ruthie. Why would she think that would change now that she was pregnant with his baby?

Did she think he would abandon the child?

Absolutely not. Elle knew without a shadow of a doubt that once he knew she was pregnant—and she would never hide that from him no matter how much he had hurt her and her daughter—that he would step up and be there for their child.

Problem was, she didn"t want him to want to be with her because she was having his baby, for once in her life she wanted someone to appreciate her enough to want to be with her. Not put up with her because as parents you had a legal obligation to provide for your child. Not put up with her because she cooked and cleaned and paid the bills. Not even put up with her because she was their mom.

But want her for her.

Want her because living without her was like living with a piece of yourself missing.

The ringing of her phone had her head snapping up. She was still in the bathroom, right where she'd been for the last hour or so, ever since she realized she was late and that she better take a pregnancy test in case it wasn't just exhaustion and anxiety messing with her periods. Thankfully, Ruthie was in front of the TV, having a Disney movie marathon and hadn"t come looking for her.

Now, she picked up the phone and answered only because it was Sparrow's name on the screen. She had grown closer with the other woman over the last few days. Actually Sparrow had become a godsend. The woman checked in on her several times throughout the day and had even brought her kids over to play with Ruthie a few times and sat and kept Elle company even though she knew she wasn't very good company right now.

"Hey, Elle, how are my favorite author and her mini doing today?" Sparrow asked when Elle answered.

Usually she would shoot back that Sparrow didn"t read much so she absolutely wasn't her favorite author, but today different words blurted out of her mouth without any conscious thought or decision on her part. "I"m pregnant."

Silence came down the line.

It lasted so long that Elle actually checked to make sure the call hadn"t been disconnected.

It hadn"t.

"Okay," Sparrow said, drawing the word out. "Not what I expected you to say. At all. Safe to say I"m not usually shocked into silence but you managed to do it. Should I say congratulations?"

That Sparrow asked that question made Elle really think about the answer.

For the last hour, she'd just been bemoaning her bad luck in life, with men in general, and how badly timed this was. Her fears that Rafe might actually come back to her because of the pregnancy and she would never know if he wanted her or just their child had also dominated her mind.

Now she shoved that all away and shut off her mind, allowing her heart to take over.

Was she happy about having another baby?

Everything else aside the answer was … yes.

A small smile curled her lips up. "Yeah, you should say congratulations."

"Then big congrats, sister. I"m super thrilled for you," Sparrow enthused. "I almost hate to ask because I can actually hear the smile in your voice, but have you still been hearing from Panther?"

Texts had continued to come in from Rafe, growing in frequency over the last few days. While she sensed his regret over what had happened, and his desperation to talk to her, she wasn't ready for that. The texts might have gone unanswered, but she had read them over and over again.

I miss you.

I"m sorry.

I don't want to lose you.

I thought I was doing the right thing.

What was she supposed to say to that?

Understanding his desire to do what he felt was best for his child was something that as a mother she could understand. But as a woman, it hurt to be kicked to the curb for an ex.

"Yeah, he texts all the time, but … I can"t make myself answer," Elle admitted.

"It's scary, isn't it? Feeling like you"re competing with someone else, that you aren"t enough," Sparrow said softly. While Sparrow was all confidence and capability, Elle knew a little about how she and her husband had gotten together. Friends first, it wasn't until a random helicopter crash caused by someone targeting Sparrow's family had thrown the two together. Not over his wife's death, Ethan had fought the attraction between him and Sparrow almost until it was too late and he'd already lost her.

"It's terrifying," she agreed. After what she'd just been through with Ruthie, Elle would have thought she could conquer any fear, because nothing was scarier than having your child taken. But she was so tired of fighting just to get through each day. All she wanted was peace.

"Can I tell you something I haven't told anyone else?"

"Of course."

"Sometimes I still feel like I"m not good enough for Ethan. I know he loves me, but Sierra was his great love, and if she hadn"t died they'd still be together. It can be hard not to feel like second best," Sparrow whispered, her voice raw with pain.

"Oh, Sparrow, that might be true, but Ethan loves you. With everything he has to give. I"ve seen the way he looks at you, he was lucky to have two great loves of his life. He wouldn't be able to stand losing you, it would destroy him. You, Connor, and Charlotte are his entire world," Elle said, her heart aching for the woman who still battled her doubts even while knowing she was loved.

"I know that in my head. I never doubt Ethan's love for me, I just worry that he'll compare me to Sierra and find me lacking. It's stupid, I know that, again my head is totally down for the facts, but my heart … sometimes the doubts get the best of me."

"In Rafe's texts, he keeps telling me he thought he was doing the right thing. I know his parents divorced when he was young and he always felt on the outside. I believe he thinks giving Andy both parents together will make his son happy, and give him what Rafe never had. But I know that DNA doesn't equal happiness. I had both parents together and I grew up miserable. It's about love, and … I was falling in love with him."

"Things are different now," Sparrow reminded her. "Panther has another child to think about."

"That's the problem. I don't want him with me for the baby, I want him with me for me. I'll always wonder if he wishes he had given Marcia a second chance for Andy's sake. I don't want that for me, for Ruthie, for Andy, or for this baby. Even if he did want us all, I don't know if I can get past the hurt of being kicked out of his house, a place he knew was where my daughter felt safe, like we were nothing. I"m angry, I"m scared, I"m hurt, and now I have two children depending on me to make the right decisions only I have no idea what they are. I"m so tired, Sparrow, and the pressure is too much. For months I"ve been living on adrenalin alone and I"m tapped out. I just don't think I have the strength to figure this all out."