“What do you mean? You guys haven’t talked yet?” Miles and Eve were probably the closest, and I know he’s hurting the most out of the three of them right now. Jake is being protective of me like Travis is with Max, but Miles took it personally when she left. She was one of his best friends, and we did a lot together since we were all so close in age.
“No, I couldn’t process it last night and left. I spent half the night walking the beach before I crashed on the couch. When I woke up, I saw Ryland’s eyes and knew right away she was my daughter. We didn’t want to get into it with her in the room, so we are waiting until we can be alone.”
“I think this is a good time for Ryland to get to know her uncles. Why don’t you two go have that talk.” Jake looks at me, and I can tell he’s worried about what this will do to me. I don’t even know the answer to that myself.
Eve lifts her head from my chest and sniffles. “I really am sorry. It killed me to leave Max that way.”
Travis sighs, and I see some of the anger fade away. “I’m not sure why you did it, but I do know how much you loved Max, so I’m really hoping there is a good explanation for all of this.”
“LoveMax,” she corrects him. “I still do. I never stopped. I never stopped loving any of you.” She glances at Travis and Jake before looking at Miles. He quickly looks away, giving none of his emotions away.
“Yeah, well, you have a funny way of showing your love for someone. I can’t wait to hear what this good reason is.” Miles walks away and joins Sophia in the living room.
“He’s hurting Eve. We all are. It’s going to take some time,” Jake gives her a small smile before following Miles.
“Can you make sure Ryland gets a muffin? I promised her a muffin for breakfast,” I say to Travis. “I’ll have my phone on me if she needs us for anything.”
“Don’t worry about her. She’s going to be well taken care of.” Travis looks at Eve and hesitates before speaking. “No matter how hard it is, Ryder deserves to know everything. Even if the truth hurts him and it’s not what he wants to hear, just be honest with him. He deserves to know.”
“I know,” she nods. “I’m telling him everything.” Travis studies her before running his hand roughly over his stubble and walking away. She looks at Ryland, giggling with my family, and another tear slides down her face. “She’s missed so much,” she whispers.
“We all have.” I swallow down the hurt as I watch my daughter open up to my brothers. They are all gathered around her on the rug, and a huge grin appears on Miles’s face when she scoots back into him and sits on his lap. He runs his hands over his soft curls before wiping away a tear that escaped.
“I can’t watch anymore,” she whispers and walks quickly to the back deck before running across the pool area and down thestairs to the beach. I hurry to catch up with her as she drops to her knees in the sand and breaks down, sobbing.
Unable to deny her anything even after all this time, I pull her to me and hold her as she gets it all out. When she first appeared on my doorstep, all I wanted to do was haul her into my arms and lose myself in her, but all the hurt and anger came crashing down on me.
When I noticed she had a child, I was consumed with envy and jealousy. I assumed she had left to be with someone else and when it didn’t work out, she came crawling back to me for help. I’ve never felt so out of control with the thought of her having a child with another man. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. It took me hours of walking the beach before I felt in control again. I spent the rest of the night just watching the two of them sleep before my body was too exhausted to feel anything. I crashed on the couch, and the next thing I knew, I was waking up to beautiful grey eyes staring back at me. Eyes I knew with every fiber of my being were mine.
“I thought I was doing the right thing, but if I did, why does it hurt so much? What if my dad was lying, and I just believed him? I should have fought harder.” She rambles into my chest, and I try to make sense of it all. When she finally calms down, I pull back and look at her. She hiccups and swipes away the last of the tears.
“I need you to tell me what happened so I can try to understand.” This not knowing is killing me, and I’ve gone through every scenario in my head. None of it makes sense.
She hugs her knees to her chest and stares out at the ocean before looking back at me. “I found out I was pregnant the day I left. I was so excited to tell you. Even though it wasn’t planned and we were still so young, I knew how excited you would be. I was going to make your favorite meal and tell you when you got home from work.”
This was not what I was expecting. “Iwouldhave been excited. We talked all the time about having kids and how much we wanted them.”
“I was getting ready to go to the store for dinner ingredients when my parents showed up. They had been calling me for the past month, but I was dodging their call and texts. The minute they rejected you and us being together, I didn’t want anything to do with them.” I nod my head because we talked about how toxic they were to her life, and we agreed she was better off without them.
“My parents told me they were on their way to the airport because my dad had to move for work in Seattle, and they wanted me to come with them. I told them no, of course, that I wasn’t going anywhere with them. Then my mom found the pregnancy test on the counter, and they learned I was pregnant. They went crazy and started yelling about how we would never be able to take care of a child, and I was too young to even know how to raise one. That no grandchild of theirs was going to be raised in a place like ours.”
My hands fist at my sides. “And you listened to them?” I stare at her in disbelief.
“No, of course not. I knew what they were saying was just them trying to control the situation. They hated that they had no more control over me. But then,” she stills and bites her lip. I resist the urge to release it as my gaze goes back up to her eyes.
“What did they say, Eve? Tell me.” I feel my heart racing, and my gut is saying this is something that’s going to break me.
“My dad told me that if I didn’t go with them, they would make sure your business never happened. He would stop the loans, the clients…everything. He would have seen to it that you never got anyone to do business with you,” she says softly.
“You left because of my fucking job?” I stand up and pace the beach, unable to sit still as anger flows through my body. “Aftereverything we shared and felt for one another, you believed that I would want my job over you? Over our baby?”
“No,” she says, quickly getting up. “I knew you would choose me, and I told him that. I told him his threats were useless because IknewRyder. I knew that what we had meant more to you than your job. We would have figured something else out and would have been happy because we were together. He went a step further, though, when he realized his threat wouldn’t work.”
I run my hand furiously through my hair before looking back at her. “Tell me,” I say through clenched teeth, my jaw throbbing from the pressure.
“He told me that everyone I loved would be affected if I didn’t leave with them. He told me how Travis was a single dad and just starting his tattoo business with Jake and how hard it would be to take care of Max if the business suddenly got taken from him. Miles was just starting to tour with his band which he worked so hard for, and Savi had her heart set on college. He would have done everything in his power to see them all fail. I couldn’t let him do that to them because of me.”
“Fuck!” I yell. The anger I feel towards her parents engulfs me. They took away everything that mattered to me…to us. I take a deep breath of the salty air to try and calm down. “Where is he? Did he decide he did enough damage and just let the threat go? Why now?”
