Losing Him (Mitchell Family #8)(31)

Jacob cried for the first half hour that we were driving home. I felt horrible, taking him away from his mother like that. My anger had gotten the best of me. Before I knew what I was doing, Jacob and I were already on the road. My son had been dealing with this shit for too long. He needed a stable environment with no fighting. Had I not walked to check on them, I don’t know what would have happened in front of him. It could have been so much worse.

Looking back, I should have let her tell me what they were talking about. Obviously Heather had done something and put Ty’s wife in danger. I got that much out of the conversation. At this point, it didn’t even matter if I ever found out. I was done with it all.

Heather could take that f*cking wedding dress and find someone else, because I was taking myself out of that equation.

About two hours into the ride, Jacob asked if we could stop. I found a fast-food place that was still open and we went inside so that he could use the bathroom. After he was finished, I got him something to snack on and we headed back to the car. “Daddy, can we go back to Mommy now?”

I looked down at him. “Jacob, I know you don’t understand it right now, but you’re mom and I just can’t work things out. We tried, buddy. I swear we did.”

“But, I just want to see Mommy. She was so sad. I don’t want her to be sad. We should have helped her feel better. You should have hugged her.”

I patted him on the shoulder. “Mommy will be okay. We can call her when we get home. Is that okay?”

He shrugged and his bottom lip stuck out more than normal. I felt bad for him. “I don’t like you!”

I was shocked that he’d said that to me. “Why?”

“Because Mommy needs us and you left her. You are a big fat meanie head! She said she was sorry and you don’t care. I want to go back!” He started screaming at the top of his lungs. “I want Mommy! I want Mommy!”

I didn’t know what to do. He’d never acted that way around me. People were starting to look at me, like I had kidnapped him. In a desperate attempt to get him to shut up, I crouched down and held up my hands. “Jacob, stop it! Stop it right now!”

A tear was falling down his cheek. Seeing him hurt was breaking my heart. I thought about Heather, begging for me to listen. I thought about how hard her life had been and how she’d been running from it for years. I thought about really living my life without her.

Then it hit me like a ton of bricks.

I had overreacted and held a grudge over something that happened years ago. Sure, she had kept it from me, but that was her right. After what she’d already told me, I could see that she’d done it because it hurt her so much. It had been the worst time in her life.

What kind of man had I become? Did I really let hate rip apart a family? I sat down on the curb next to my son and ran my hands over my face. “Buddy, I don’t know what to do. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so mean to Mommy. She just made me so mad.”

“When I get mad at my friends, Mommy tells me to forgive them. She says that everybody makes mistakes. Timmy Wallace stole my carpet square at reading time for a whole week. I told him we couldn’t be friends anymore, but Mommy told me to forgive him.” He sat there acting so mature, like he had all the answers in life.

I rubbed his head. “I love you, Jacob. Even if you don’t love me. Daddy just needs time to think about things. I’m not trying to make you mad at me.”

“I do love you, Daddy, but I love Mommy, too. She nice and people are mean to her all the time. I don’t want her to cry anymore. Can’t we just go back? Please take me back so I can hug her?” I’d never seen my child so serious before.

I thought long and hard about the situation that I was in. Things were so messed up. I had my parents on my back all the time about doing the right thing, but I wasn’t sure what the right thing to do was.

Obviously, when she’d met me for the first time, she was running. Even though she should have told me who she was, I got why she thought she couldn’t. Then we jumped into a relationship, and I guess there was just no way for her to come clean. One thing I never doubted was her love for me. After all that we’d been through, I was starting to feel like an ass for pushing her away. She needed me and I kept walking away. It was ridiculous that she was still around, waiting for me, when I honestly wanted nothing to do with her.

It wasn’t my fault that I hated liars. From all of the secrets that had been kept from me, it wasn’t my fault. I’d come to learn that my whole childhood had been based on lies. My parents weren’t the people that made me. My father was a criminal, who may or may not have killed my mother. Heather being involved in all that was too much to handle.

Maybe I went off the deep end.

The woman that I fell in love with, the one that was running, wasn’t a bad person. She’d been thrown around by someone that used her for years. Now, she was doing the same thing with me. She was waiting for me, still hoping that I would come around.

I felt sorry for her. Heather loved people that weren’t capable of loving her back. I wasn’t like those *s. I was in love with Heather. She was a caring and devoted person, who stood by what she wanted. She stayed true to her feelings, no matter how much pain she went through. Her strength was her gift and she didn’t even know it. It was both a good and a bad thing.

I had to stop being compulsive and hardheaded. There was a choice that needed to be made and I couldn’t just keep walking out when things got tough. It was affecting my son and I didn’t want him involved. He was too precious to both of us to be dragged into it all. I looked at his sad eyes. “I’ll tell you what. How about we get a room at a hotel for the night and in the morning we can head back to Mommy. I promise that I’ll listen to whatever she has to say. How does that sound?”