Pieces of Us (Confessions of the Heart, #3)(91)

Agony gripped my conscience. Devastating. Sickening.

What was I supposed to do?

I wavered for a second, trying to remain calm, reminding myself that he needed space.

Time.

Could only take that for about two seconds, needing to reach him, to make him understand.

Carefully, I took him by the wrists, my hold light when I pried his fists from his eyes.

Big blue eyes blinked back at me. Swept in sorrow.

“Big Ben.”

His chin quivered. “Was it bbbecause of me? Bbbbecause I’m brrroken? Likkkke Dillon’s dad ddddid?”

I was pelted with a sucker-punch of shame.

“No. God no.”

Fiercely, he shook his head. “It’s my fffault my mmmom is always alone.”

Misery wound.

A blackout.

I could barely remain upright as I knelt in front of him.

On my knees. Begging for forgiveness.

I reached out and gripped him by the face, making sure he was looking at me when I said it. “No, Benjamin. No. You are perfect. You are the most perfect thing I’ve ever done. That and loving your mom.”

Awareness spun between us. A strike of energy. Different than what I shared with Izzy yet somehow the same.

Connected intrinsically.

Moisture clouded my eyes and clogged the words that started rolling off my tongue. “I loved your mom more than anything, Benjamin. More than anything. But I wasn’t a good guy then. I was still hopeless. I thought she was better off without me.”

Protecting her in the only way that I could. I’d known dragging her into my mess was dangerous. I’d had to cut her free.

“Butttt she neeeeeded you,” he whispered through his pain.

More pain that he didn’t deserve.

“I know. I know that now. I just didn’t understand it yet.”

“That means you ddddidn’t love us enough.”

“I didn’t know about you. I didn’t. I didn’t know about you until the first time I saw you. The second I saw you, I knew it. Think my heart recognized you with the way it leapt out of my chest. It’s not an excuse, but I need you to know there wasn’t a day in all those years that I was without your mom that I didn’t think about her. That I wasn’t praying she was happy and living the kind of life I’d always hoped that she would have.”

My head angled, and I filled my gaze with my son, hands splayed across his precious face. “And I have to wonder if all that time I didn’t sense that you were out there, too. Maybe my thoughts could never get that far from her because you both were pulling at my heart.”

Tears blanketed his face. “Then why didn’t you ffffind us?”

“I don’t know the answer to that, other than I was afraid. Afraid of loving someone the way I loved your mom.”

“Do you still llllove her?” His question cracked, broken in his throat.

“So much, Big Ben. I love her so much. And I love you.”

God, I loved him. Loved him so much it physically hurt.

My ribs expanded. Too full. This massive feeling taking over.

“Do you understand? I love you. You are my son, and I am never letting you go.”

A timid smile curved the corner of his mouth. “You won’t llleave us?”

“Never.”

He swiped at the moisture on his face. “It would hhhuurt bad if you lllleft. Wwwwe need you.”

I hugged him to me. Desperately. “I need you, too.”

His little arms wrapped around my neck. “I llllove you, Dadddd. I thinkkk I knnnew it, too.”

I pulled back. “Knew what?”

“That I belonnnged with you.”

I took his hand and pressed it over my thundering heart. “You do belong with me. You are right here. Forever.”

With that crooked, adorable grin, he took my hand and spread it over the thrumming of his little heart. “Forrrevvver.”





Twenty-Eight





Mack





It was strange when you spent your entire adult life feeling like an outsider, on the fringes peering in and wishing for something better when you knew you had no chance of ever attaining it. You got content in your own weird way because you had to accept that was as good as it was going to get.

Then the roof gets blown clean off that conviction. That resolve blown to smithereens.

You’re left splayed wide open. Feeling things you’d never thought you’d get the chance to feel again.

Couldn’t say I was complaining.

Ian lifted his tumbler of scotch into the air where we were all gathered around a booth at the back of a trendy bar downtown where we’d met for dinner and drinks.

Couples’ night.

Me and Izzy.

Jace and Faith.

Ian and Grace.

Well, we had a plus one. Courtney was flying solo, an old friend of both Faith and Izzy’s who wanted to tag along.

“This one goes out to these two love birds right here,” Ian said. “May Izzy never stop blushing every time our boy Mack here smiles at her, and may he never stop looking at her like he wants to eat her. That’s what real relationships are made of.”

My shoulder was slung around both of Izzy’s so I could hold her close, and there was no missing the heat radiating off of her as she buried her face in my chest, her flustered grin pressing right at my heart.