stopping to find my truck in the parking garage seemed like a gross misuse of time.
Me: Do. Not. Move. I’ll be there as soon as I can.
Portland had been a success. Well, I mean, if you could consider ripping my heart out and being miserable while trying to piece together a life that was going to make me even more unhappy a success. Then yeah. Total success.
I’d never been so excited to come home from a business trip in my life. I missed Jack and Lex something fierce, but the lingering unknown hanging over our future put a damper on my mood. The reality was my son was moving across the country, and while I had a few weeks left in Atlanta to spend with Lex, it would also be spent packing up a life I loved.
But that was a pity party for another night.
After grabbing my bag and then finding my truck right where Lex had texted me that she’d left it, I drove to Lauren’s house, hoping to catch up with Jack for a little while before he fell asleep.
I jogged up the sidewalk when I arrived. However many seconds I had with him, I wanted every last one.
“Hey,” I said when she pulled the door open. After everything that had happened, Lauren and I weren’t on the best terms, but I’d managed at least a few civil phone conversations with her over the last week.
“Hey,” she whispered, crossing her arms over her chest like she’d caught a chill and it wasn’t eight hundred degrees and a hundred percent humidity.
I peered over her shoulder into the doorway. “Where’s Jack?”
“He went to bed about an hour ago.”
“What the fuck, Lauren? I told you I wanted to see him before you left in the morning and you put him to bed early? You’ve done some—” I suddenly stopped talking when I caught sight of a ceiling-high stack of boxes next to her couch. Both of which should have been gone by now. “I thought your movers were coming today?”
She smiled tightly. “They were. But then this morning I told Mark we weren’t moving with him, so he canceled them.”
My heart stopped as a blistering shock rolled through my shoulders. “What did you just say?”
She smiled weakly and took a step outside, quietly closing the door behind her. “Do you remember when I told you I was pregnant?”
I narrowed my eyes. Where the hell was she going with this?
“Can we go back a step?” I asked. “What do you mean you told Mark you aren’t moving with him?”
She ignored me. “I’ll never forget when those two little lines turned pink. I was still in college, had drunken sex with my friend, and created a life. That was not at all how I wanted to start a family. But year after year, that’s exactly what you gave me—a true family.” She paused as tears filled her eyes. “We were never in a relationship so to speak, but you have been the best partner I ever could have imagined, and I don’t think I’ve ever properly thanked you for that.” Tears spilled from her blue eyes.
I gave her shoulder a squeeze. “You don’t have to thank me. He’s my son too. It’s my job to be here.”
“For him, sure,” she croaked. “But he wasn’t even alive when you beat the shit out of Doug Goodman when he called me a prude in tenth grade. And he wasn’t with me when you drove three hours in the pouring rain to pick me up when my car broke down a few years back. And he wasn’t there when you lost your mind on my home inspector for not checking my roof before we closed on the house, nor was he there when you had a crew show up the same day to fix it. If I’ve ever needed something, Hudson, you have always been there for me. But, recently, I haven’t been there for you and I’m so sorry for that.”
Utterly stunned, I stared at her. Hope flooded my veins as though I’d been hit by a tidal wave, but I refused to get excited before I had all the facts. “What are you saying? I need you to spell it out for me real clear, Lauren.”
“I’m saying your girlfriend is crazy.”
I nodded because that much I knew.
“Last night, she came over here and read me the Riot Act about how selfish I was being, and as pissed as I was, I laid in bed