Love, Exes, and Ohs (Cactus Creek #4)(46)

Surprise filtered over his expression. “You guys spend the holidays together?”

“I head over there for Thanksgiving lunch, and Christmas morning. You knew that. I told you I was spending both days at my friend’s house up north last year.”

He nodded. “Right. I just didn’t connect the two. This is honestly the most open adoption I’ve ever heard of.”

Smiling, she started a fresh pot of coffee. “It’s actually not that uncommon. When the caseworker first told me about open and closed adoptions, I thought no adoptive mother would ever want an open adoption. But Darcy did. She was insistent, adamant, really. She told me stories of cases she’d read where birth parents would just stop visiting and writing the children they’d given up for adoption even after they’d promised they’d do so for the rest of their lives. The children were crushed. Darcy told me that if we were going to have an open adoption, she expected me to follow through.”

The look of respect on Isaac’s face was probably the same one she was wearing. “It was probably right at that moment that Darcy became Blake’s mom in my eyes. I’d told the caseworker right after the interview was over that I was going to pick Darcy. She’d had me interview the others still, all two-parent families she highly recommended, but I’d made my decision.”

“You made a good one,” said Isaac quietly as she poured him a mug. “Blake’s a great kid.”

“Yes he is.” She raised her eyes up to his. “Giving him up was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”

Isaac came over to drag her against his chest. “I know, baby.”

“Do you think he thinks I didn’t want him? That his father didn’t want him?”

“No. I don’t think Darcy would’ve ever allowed him to think that.”

Xoey nodded. No, definitely not. “Darcy was able to give him a life I couldn’t back then.”

“Which makes what you did one of the strongest, most loving things a mother can do for her child. It’s what she’s doing by choosing you to take care of him now.”

“Do you think I’ll make a good mom for him, Isaac?”

“I think you’re already a great mom to him, Xo, just like you’ve been since he was born.”





CHAPTER NINETEEN


ISAAC HAD JUST GOTTEN through throwing a bunch of Xoey’s clothes into a duffle bag for her to wear this week—and a miniscule handful of other items of clothing he’d found which he was throwing on her bed for her to wear for him on a rainy day—when he came across something in her closet that just plain burned his fingers.

It was a Chicago Bears jersey.

He shuddered.

Grinning, he contemplated hiding it or otherwise pranking her with it somehow, just a little bit, when something about the jersey made him freeze.

He knew that jersey.

With their heated Packers vs. Bears rivalry that had resulted in many a wager and endless smack talk since almost the day they’d met, Xoey’s owning a Bears jersey wasn’t what had him rooted to the spot in shock.

It was the fact that it was a Walter Payton jersey with signatures from the entire 1985 Super Bowl winning team that had him bowled over.

Examining it with a fine-toothed comb, he was a hundred percent sure it was authentic.

Moreover, he was a hundred percent sure it was his dad’s jersey.

The one Isaac had thought he’d misplaced in the move out of his buddies’ house back when he’d quit his job at the investment banking firm.

His eyes cataloged each and every signature, matching them up to his memories exactly. Each signature was the equivalent of the jersey’s fingerprints, each placement differing on each jersey. Each signature placed exactly where he remembered them. How could he forget? His dad used to tell him and Cody stories of every single one of these greats, pointing out each signature while he regaled the career highlights of each legend that had taken the time to sign their name.

This was definitely his jersey.

But how?

A thousand thoughts and feelings hit him then, all at once. Shards of memories, came flooding back in bits and pieces, now with more answers than questions.

That night.

That girl.

The night he still found himself replaying as best he could in his mind’s eye, the same way he had for the last nine years. Just to catch another glimpse of her face, her eyes, her hair.

Her.

In hindsight, now he saw it—all the details he’d been blind to before because he hadn’t known to be looking for them.

The short chin-length bob that had been chunked and highlighted with a kaleidoscope of shades from red, to brown, to blonde, had masked her original hair color. But not at the base of her scalp.

He’d kissed his way up her spine that night and remembered now that she’d turned and looked at him over her shoulder, flipping most of her hair to the side, so he could see the fringe of dark nearly espresso-brown locks that had been untouched by the highlights.

Her eyes, which for years, he’d remembered to be a striking sea green, now paled in comparison to the true rich, doe-like brown shade that had been hidden under color contacts.

It was Xoey.

She was the girl he’d spent almost a decade not being able to stop thinking about.

Which meant he was the guy she’d spent almost a decade simultaneously hating and being hung up on.