Rule Breakers (Off Limits #2) - Nicky James Page 0,39
over the years, I’d wondered why she’d been so adamant about raising Edison ourselves when he could have had a better life with an adopted family. In the same breath, allowing my thoughts to wander down that road caused panic. Imagining Edison growing up elsewhere, not part of my life, was horrifying.
I shook my head as I spared one last glance at my ex-wife’s house and joined Edison in the car.
We’d forged a tentative bond when it came to Shianne. Otherwise, we didn’t get along. I could never figure out why we couldn’t maintain that connection. Adjusting the heat vents and cranking the knob to the max, I asked, “Are you warm enough?”
“Yeah. Thanks for coming.”
I squeezed his thigh. “Anytime. Want me to take you back to Den’s?”
Edison shifted, the vinyl seat squeaking with the motion. He kept his gaze averted to the clock on the dash, the illuminated glow casting light across a small portion of his face, making him look paler than usual.
“I thought you wanted to talk.” He paused, bit his lip, released it, then squirmed again. “About last weekend.”
The car grew sweltering in a flash. I resisted the urge to turn the heat down, knowing it was the conversation and not the temperature making me sweat. I had suggested it, so I couldn’t back out. “Yeah. But if you’re not up for it, we can always—”
“I wanna talk about it.”
A pause. This was it. I didn’t know what we’d discuss, but the fact we were going to discuss it at all seemed monumental.
“Okay. Home then?”
Edison nodded.
The drive back to the city was slow going. I turned the radio to Edison’s favorite station—some new-age crap I heard at work all the time—so we wouldn’t have to engage in conversation before we were ready. It also gave me time to think.
It had been close to a week, and I wasn’t any more prepared to face what had happened the previous Friday than I’d been the morning after. My insides were still knotted over the whole thing, a tangled mess of confusion I hadn’t been able to unwind.
My white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel had less to do with the treacherous road conditions than it had to do with the talk that was coming.
I pulled into the driveway a half hour later. Ordinarily, due to some parental notion that I shouldn’t promote drinking even with my twenty-year-old kid, I rarely offered Edison alcohol. The impending conversation made me reconsider.
While Edison hopped up onto the counter—his favorite place to sit, despite the endless times I’d told him not to—I dug beers from the fridge.
“Do you want one?” I offered him a bottle.
He stared at it like it was a trick, and I might pull it away again if he reached out a hand.
“I think we both might need it, don’t you?”
He took the beer but didn’t open it. He stared at the bottle and traced a finger over the label. “Was she always an addict?”
The question took me by surprise. I’d been geared to discuss other things, not his mother. Settling into a seat at the kitchen table, I opened my beer and said, “No. She was a bit of a Goody Two-shoes when I met her. She didn’t start popping pills until years after we married. She used to have ambition. After you were born, she had every intention of returning to college to get a degree. She never did. She didn’t work until you went to school, but the jobs never lasted. She got used to being at home. It spiraled, Edison. We were toxic together. I worked as many hours as I could to pay our bills, and she found vices for when I was home because we couldn’t stand each other. Pills. Alcohol. She tried plenty of other stuff too.”
He nodded but didn’t look up from his examination of the bottle. Eventually, he popped the cap and took a drink. “Do you really think of me as just some little kid?”
And in a flash, we were right back to talking about Friday night. He would give me whiplash at this rate.
“Honestly? Yeah. Sometimes.”
He didn’t bite back with some automatic, defensive retort as he normally might. Instead, he nodded, still keeping his gaze averted. “Because I don’t show any interest in my future, right? Because I fought about college and taking police foundations and the military?”
“I want you to have a better life than I’ve had. I don’t want to see you making the same mistakes as