My Unexpected Forever (22 page)

"Y
ou’ve
come back early, why?” Mr. Powell hands me a cup of coffee. I was only in Los Angeles for a few days, but the temperature difference is enough that I’m cold, even though I love Beaumont in the winter.

“I missed the girls.” That is what I’m going with. He doesn’t need to know the sordid details of what happened with Harrison and me. Truth is, I’m not sure how to explain it. All I know is my heart is breaking all over again, but I have vowed to myself that I’m not going to let it affect me. I need to be strong for the girls. This bump… or whatever you want to call it, will pass.

“They missed you, especially Elle.”

“Not Peyton?”

Mr. Powell leans forward and sets his cup on the table. “Peyton is hurting, Katie, and she’ll do whatever she can to make you suffer for it. She spent most of her time in Mason’s room and when I’d check on her, she’d ask me to tell her a story. I spent a glorious day remembering my son with his daughter.”

I wipe at my face. Listening to Mr. Powell talk about Mason and Peyton makes me ache to see Mason just one more time. To tell him how I feel and how much we love him.

“Elle talks about Harrison a lot,” he adds.

My heart stops at the sound of his name. It’s been two days and he hasn’t called. I half expected him to show up this morning to mow my lawn, but I guess I severed that relationship when I told him to leave.

“Does that bother you?”

Mr. Powell shakes his head. “I thought it would, but she speaks so highly of him that I’m proud you’ve found someone to help fill the void that Mason has left.”

I’m left silenced. I don’t know how to respond. I sip my coffee, thinking about how I can change the subject. I can’t tell him that I’ve ended things with Harrison. I just can’t.

“I think you and the girls should move in here.”

“What?” I choke out.

“This is too much house for me. It’s a four-bedroom home and I can’t maintain it. I don’t want to sell it either, so the only logical thing if for you and the girls to move in and when you take the next step with Harrison, he and his son will fit nicely in here. This house needs a family, not an old man.”

His words throw me. I never thought he’d be accepting of another man the way he is and to suggest that we live together, blows me away.

“I don’t know what to say.”

He smiles although it doesn’t reach his eyes. “You say yes.”

“Where will you go?”

Mr. Powell rubs his hands down the legs of his pants. “I was thinking of travelling some or I could live at your place.”

“We’re really pregnant!”

“Very,” I say showing him the picture.

“Why does the baby have two heads?” I shake my head. Sometimes he’s the poster child for dumb football players, I swear.

“Twins,” I say quietly. We can’t afford one baby, let alone two.

“I made two babies?”

I roll my eyes. “Yes, Mason, your super human sperm created not one, but two babies that have taken over space in my body.”

Mason fist pumps. I don’t think he understands the magnitude of what’s happening here.

“You know two babies means double everything.”

“I know, I can count.”

“Of course you can.” I sit down on the couch and cradle my head. I don’t know how we’re going to make it. We live in a two-bedroom apartment with Josie and Noah, there’s no way we can add two more of everything there. “We have to move.”

Mason sits down next to me and pulls me to him. “I talked to my dad the other day. He and mom suggested we move into the house until we can save for a down payment on our own place. He says that we can take what we’d spend in rent and put it away.”

“Is that what you want to do?” The thought of living with the Powells doesn’t exactly appeal to me, but living with them is better than living with my parents.

Mason shrugs. “I don’t know, think about it. Mom would be there to help with the babies and you know she wants to.”

I nestle into the side of his neck. His thumb is moving back and forth along my abdomen. “We’ll never have alone time.”

Mason adjusts and pulls me into his lap. “Seriously? I’m fairly sure you and I have had a lot of alone time in that house. For all we know, these guys were created there.” He pulls up my shirt and kisses my stomach.

“If you think we should move to your parent’s home, then I’m okay with it.”

“I do. Just think about how much fun Mason Junior and Mason Junior Junior will have there.”

“Oh my god, Mason, we are not naming our children that.” I punch him lightly in the shoulder.

He pulls me into a hug. I cling to him as if it’s last time I’ll hug him like this.

“You know the girls spent their first Christmas here.”

“And others,” he adds.

“After Mason died, I realized I wasn’t going to be able to make the house payments by myself and Liam helped. He told me that I can’t lose the house that holds all of their memories of Mason, but this is where we brought them home too.”

“You’ll move in?”

I smile widely. “We’d be honored.”

I
sit in my car and stare at his house. It’s dark and his car isn’t in the driveway. I suppose I’m thankful he’s not home, because getting caught lurking in the shadows is something I definitely don’t want to happen. I don’t know what I’m doing out here. What I thought I’d find.

I feel as if I’ve deceived Mr. Powell. I should’ve told him that Harrison and I are no longer together, but I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. They sound easy in my head, but I’m not capable of saying them out loud because that would make this all too real and I’m not sure I can handle that right now.

My thoughts run away as I ponder all the things he could be doing now. Is he at the bar dancing with some woman that he doesn’t plan on knowing the name of? Does he hate me for leading him on? That’s how I feel right now. I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Looking for any excuse to kick him out of my life and that’s what I’ve done.

“Mommy, what are we doing?” I look in my rear view mirror at Elle and close my eyes to erase the thoughts of Harrison.

“Nothing, mommy just had to stop and think for a minute,” I say as I put the car in drive and make my way over to Liam and Josie’s to pick up Peyton.

I open the door to Liam and Josie’s house and am met with just the sound of the television. Usually this house is loud and boisterous, especially when the kids are all here. Elle runs past me into the living room and shrieks.

“What are you doing?”

“Coloring,” I hear Peyton respond. My heart stops and my stomach falls. I close my eyes and pray that she hasn’t done too much damage to Josie’s living room wall.

My steps are tentative. I’m afraid of what I’m going to find when I walk into the room. Both girls are laughing as I enter. Harrison catches my eye briefly before he turns away. My mouth drops in shock. Peyton is sitting on Harrison’s lap with a marker in her hand and Elle is sitting next to him.

I walk around the front of them to get a better look. Both my girls are coloring on Harrison, filling in his tattoos, bringing them more to life than they already are. “What are you doing?” I ask in shock, repeating Elle’s earlier question.

Peyton sighs. “Coloring.”

“I see that, but why?”

“Because Harrison is a real life coloring book.” Harrison laughs along with Peyton. Her laughter is music to my ears. He’s found a way to make her laugh, and I can’t even thank him.

I look at Harrison, who isn’t looking at me. I just want to see his green orbs so I know that this is okay, but he’s focusing on the girls. He’s ignoring me, and rightly so after what I’ve done.

I stand back and watch Peyton interact with Harrison. He moves when she asks him to and even holds the markers for her. I don’t know what happened while I was gone, but something changed for them. I’m not sure how I feel about it now that he’s not going to be around, but I know I like that she’s responding to someone other than just Liam.

Harrison looks relaxed and he’s clearly enjoying himself, pointing out places that have been missed. I try not to stare, but can’t help it. He has both my girls wrapped around his finger like he was meant to be in their lives.

“What did you do to your hand?”

For the first time since I’ve been here, he looks at me. His lips are in a thin line. I recoil and shrink back into myself. I have to look away for fear I’d start crying under his gaze. He doesn’t answer, but goes back to paying attention to the girls.

“Are you going to answer me?” I ask again. I know my tone is demanding, but I can’t help it.

“Don’t do this in front of the girls,” he says quietly. Both of them look at me, confused. I don’t know if he’s trying to placate me or what, but it’s not working. Peyton glares at me before she goes back to coloring. “I’ll be right back,” he says to them. They groan and huff, but let him get up. I watch as he leaves the room, knowing I should follow, but I can’t make my legs and feet cooperate.

Both girls are staring at me, wondering what just happened. I have no idea how I’m going to tell them that Harrison won’t be around anymore. I finally relent and go look for him. I square my shoulders when I find him at the kitchen sink. He stands with his back toward me. I want to reach out and touch him. Trace my fingers over the newest ink placed on his arms by my daughters, but I can’t. I have to let go and move on. We aren’t right for each other.

“Harrison,” I say, alerting him to my presence. I see his back visibly stiffen and wonder how he went from being comfortable to this awkward stance so quickly. Is it that easy to just shut off emotions?

He sets his glass down hard. I jump at the sound of it hitting the counter top. He leans forward, even farther away from me. “What do you want, Katelyn?”

I want to yell out that he’s the one I want, but I can’t. I won’t be something he keeps on the side. I need to be everything to him. I need to matter.

“What happened to your hand?” I ask again, more for curiosity than anything. He holds up his casted hand, one that has been colored with gold and silver markers and twists it in the air. He doesn’t turn around to address me and that bothers me.

“I hit a wall and broke it in two places. Anything else you want to know about me?”

“N… no,” my voice is quiet as the word gets stuck. He pushes away from the counter and walks to me, stopping when we are shoulder to shoulder. There’s no eye contact. There’s no touching.

“All you had to do was trust me.”

He walks away without looking back, without waiting for me to catch up. He talks about trust, but I can’t, not with what I’ve been told. Not with what I’ve seen. Photos don’t lie, do they?

I walk back into the living room, but stop at the entry and watch Harrison interact with the twins. They’re being their usual selves by acting like monkeys and he doesn’t even care. He’s not fazed by them in the least. He tickles them and their laughter is music to my ears. He’s bringing it out of them in droves.

Why can’t life be as simple as laughter?

I
t’s
been three weeks since shit hit the fan and my life imploded. Twenty-one days since a malicious lie ripped out my heart out and destroyed my chance at happiness. I can’t even count the hours, because there are too many. All I know is that I hate the emptiness I feel each day when I wake up, and the loneliness that threatens to consume me at night. There hasn’t been a moment that I haven’t thought about revenge. I’ve waited for Alicia to call or show up, but she hasn’t, and today I’ll see her in court. I really want to ask her why. Why go through the trouble of destroying my life if she wasn’t planning on showing up like she told Katelyn and Josie she was?

Liam is determined to beat Sam at her own game. He wants her far away from him before the wedding. I don’t blame him. She’s dangerous. We should’ve seen the signs a long time ago, but we were young and stupid, and she made being in a band easy. Liam hired a private investigator and turned over all the evidence he uncovered himself. Within a week, we had enough to go to a judge and ask for help. So now we’re sitting here, waiting.

Waiting is the hard part. It makes me anxious. I stare down each woman that walks into the courthouse, wondering if it’s Alicia. Aside from the doctored images she produced with her face, I haven’t seen her in eight years. The way Josie described her doesn’t fit the picture I have of her from that fateful night. I’ve hidden the photos of us in my room for when Quinn asks about her. I want to be able to show him that yes, we were smiling at one time in our lives. I’m not sure how, or even if I’ll ever tell him about that night. I’d like him to make his own decisions about his mother, and not be forced by what she did to me. I wouldn’t be able to tell him anyway, other than what she told me. Remembering that night is like staring off into space – nothing’s there.

I’ll be asking a family judge to issue a no contact order against Alicia. She hasn’t done any physical harm to Quinn or me, so a restraining order is out of the question, but as his primary legal guardian, I can ask that she’s not allowed to contact him until he turns eighteen. My lawyer seems to think that we shouldn’t have any problems obtaining this. She’s hasn’t shown any interest in Quinn, just me as of late, so there’s no need for her to be near him until he’s old enough to make that decision on his own.

Liam is next to me, his leg bouncing up and down. He’s nervous, I know. We’ve underestimated Sam and it’s done a lot of damage to the band and our personal lives. We’ve filed a restraining order against Sam and Moreno Entertainment. It’s a long shot, we know, but our private investigator uncovered a lot that we didn’t know, and this is our only recourse. We talked about filing a lawsuit, but our attorney advised us to try this avenue first in the hope that Mr. Moreno would put a leash on his daughter.

My name gets called, as does Alicia’s. I look around, but don’t see anyone walking toward the clerk standing at the door.

“I’ll be waiting here,” Liam says before I step away. How we ended up with hearing times an hour apart is mind blowing. I thought for sure it would be months before I’d get in front of a judge, not weeks.

I walk into the judge’s chamber, followed by my lawyer. He hasn’t changed much over the years; he’s still pudgy and just as bald. We sit on one side of the table and wait.

“Is she going to show up?”

“She was served and if she doesn’t, he’ll sign the order.”

“I want to see her,” I say abruptly. I have no idea why I said that, but it’s true. I want to look at her and try to figure out what makes her tick.

We stand when the judge comes into his chamber. The bailiff tells us that we can sit.

“Where’s Ms. Tucker?”

“Not here, Your Honor,” my lawyer says.

The judge looks at his watch and writes something down.

“Are you the father of Quinn James?”

“I am,” I say proudly.

“It says here, Mr. James, that you’re seeking a no contact order against Ms. Tucker.”

“That’s correct.”

“And Ms. Tucker isn’t here to dispute this?”

“No, Your Honor, she was served and awarded a public defender, according to my records,” my lawyer adds.

“Very well,” he says as he scribbles on his paper. “Motion granted. Ms. Tucker is to have no contact with the child in question until he reaches the age of eighteen.” The judge gets up and leaves; and like that, we’re done.

I walk out of the office with my lawyer and shake his hand. I tell him that I hope I never see him again and he laughs. I can’t imagine ever needing him, unless Alicia requests the order be lifted. I would hope that if that was to ever happen, the judge would see through her bullshit.

I nod at Liam from across the room and he motions for me to look to my left. There stands Sam with her dad and their lawyer. Her father is prattling on about something, but she’s not interested, she’s glaring at Liam. I shake my head and walk into her line of sight and stand so she can’t see him anymore.

“Alicia didn’t show. One ho down another to go.”

Liam laughs, but tries to hide it. I know the bitch is standing behind me throwing daggers, but I don’t give a shit. Honestly, I’m surprised she even showed up, considering her clone didn’t.

“Are you happy?” Liam asks. I nod. I am, even though I wanted to see her, to speak to her, I’m happy that for the next ten years, she can’t do anything to Quinn. She can come after me all she wants, but not my boy.

JD walks in just as our lawyer tells us we can enter the courtroom. We pass by Mr. Moreno, who doesn’t smile at us. Not that I’d expect him to, but it would be nice for him to show some recognition. We made him a lot of money, and he thought he’d reward us by pawning us off on his daughter because she had a serious hard-on for Liam. Sam was the beginning of what could’ve been a huge downfall for us.

The three of us sit down, with our lawyer on the edge. We don’t watch as the Morenos enter and take their seats. We can hear Sam and her exaggerated huffing and puffing to know enough.

We stand as instructed by the bailiff and wait for the judge to sit. We have a woman judge, and I wonder if this will play into our favor.

“Good afternoon,” she starts. “I’ve been over the files that were submitted at my request.” She folds her hands and looks at us. “I’ve asked for special consideration with this case because of the complexity. I’ve never seen a file so thick for something like a restraining order.” The judge shuffles a few papers around.

“Mr. Page, do you feel that you and your family are in danger from Ms. Moreno?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Mr. James, I ask the same question to you.”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Mr. Davis, and you?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Mr. Moreno, are you aware of what your daughter has been doing for the past ten years?”

I think we hold our breath waiting for his answer. All three of us lean forward and watch him as he settles in front of the microphone. “No. Surely, if I knew I would’ve put a stop to it.”

The judge doesn’t respond, but moves more papers around. “It says here in an email from yourself to Sam Moreno and I quote “
it’s best to keep the clingy girlfriend away from Liam. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him
” end quote. Do you remember writing this?”

“No, Your Honor.”

“Messrs. Page, James and Davis, you’ve instructed your lawyer to ask for a restraining order, but he took it one step further and attached what you’d call a civil suit. It says here that you’re looking for restitution from lost wages from your tour, is that correct?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” our lawyer answers. I wasn’t aware we were asking for money, and by the look of it, neither was Liam.

“Ms. Moreno, it saddens me that you would keep a child from his parent. That, to me, is probably the lowest thing you can do. The years of abuse these men have suffered at your hands, ending with their recent tour, is deplorable. You should be ashamed of yourself, but I have a feeling you’re not. I hereby grant a full restraining order, which means Ms. Moreno, you and your heirs are not allowed to communicate in any way, shape or form with the members of the band and their families and employees. You are also not allowed within one thousand feet of them. You are also ordered to pay two hundred thousand dollars in lost earnings.”

The judge slams down her gavel as we sit there stunned. We just wanted the restraining order so we can move on with our lives peacefully. We didn’t expect this at all. We stand as the judge exits. Liam shakes our lawyer’s hand, as do JD and I. We follow him out of the courtroom, elated with our victory.

“I’ve got to head off,” JD says. “See you guys in a couple of days.” I don’t bother telling him that Quinn and I will be moving back to L.A.

“What the fuck just happened?” Liam asks.

“That, my friend, was a judge who can’t stand the Morenos. When I found out we drew her, I modified my request. I took a gamble.”

“That was crazy,” I say, running my hand through my hair.

“Let’s get out here,” Liam says as he motions for the door. I couldn’t agree more. I want to get back to Beaumont and finalize everything. The movers are coming the day after the wedding, and I need to start packing. Quinn will go back to being homeschooled by my mom. There will be no more calls from the principal telling me he’s gotten into a fight.

There’s a commotion behind us. We turn in time to see the courtroom doors fly open and Sam storm out. She looks like Elvira on a rainy day. Her make-up is running down her face. She points at Liam and storms toward him. I grab his arm and pull him outside. We don’t need to listen to what she has to say.

“YOU!”

We both stop.

“Liam, why would you do this?”

“You don’t need to answer her,” I say.

She moves in front of us. Tears run down her face. If I had an ounce of respect for her, I’d care, but I don’t.

“You loved me once, Liam, why did you do this? I just lost everything in there.”

Liam sighs and moves away from her. “I never loved you, Sam. You were a plaything, something to pass my time. You were a mistake, and something that I regret every day of my life. You took my son away from me. You took Josie away from me, and for that, I hate you. I lost ten years with my family because of you and your father.”

I tap Liam on the shoulder and point to the car waiting for us. Sam grabs Liam’s arm and pulls him to her. He stumbles. I reach for his hand, keeping him upright.

“You’re mine, Liam.”

Liam rips his arm from her. “Go home Sam, you’re not wanted here.”

“You can’t leave me, Liam. You love me.”

“No I don’t,” he says through gritted teeth. “I never loved you, Sam. Listen to me. You’re nothing to me.”

“Take that back,” she says quietly.

“Hey, can we get a little help over here,” I holler for the police officer standing a few feet away from us. He comes over and Sam lets go of Liam. “We have a restraining order against her,” I add. We watch as he pulls out his handcuffs. Sam steps away, shaking her head. The officer steps forward, but isn’t fast enough for Sam. She runs down the steps and he chases her, yelling at her to stop.

Sam heads to our car and slips into the driver’s seat and pulls away from the curb. The driver is shouting, waving his arms back and forth. The police officer is screaming for back up. In a matter of minutes police cars are flying down the road, chasing Sam.

“I think this will make the evening news.” I laugh, although I don’t mean to, but it seems fitting that this would end up making the front pages.

Liam shakes his head. “What’s her problem?”

I put my arm around his shoulders. “I hate to tell you this, but she’s nuts and you just made it worse.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Anytime.” We don’t get very far before we have to give a statement. The officer who chased after Sam keeps scratching his head. It baffles me that he couldn’t detain her. Barney Fife could’ve done a better job.

“Come on, let’s go home.” Liam says, as he signals for a taxi.

He steps away and heads for the yellow and black-checkered car. The word
home
hits hard, but I know my decision is the right one. I can’t stand by and watch her fall in love with someone that isn’t me. It hurts that we aren’t together over something that was a lie.

We have a flight back to Beaumont tonight. When we land, the ball will start rolling. I have to finish up my project with the kids and help Liam find Josie a present. My Christmas shopping is done. All that’s left are goodbyes.