“Doll, I need to tell you why I always disappear.” My words sobered her rampage and she fell silent. “First, I want to tell you I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the past couple of days, and I’m even more sorry for not telling you where I’ve been going for the past couple of years.”

“Are you a drug dealer?” she whispered.

“What?! No. God, Audrey. That’s what you thought?” In the background, I heard Jace hoot with laughter.

“Lane Parker…” Shit, I didn’t like it when she took that tone. “Does Jace know where you go?” Well, that halted Jace’s cackling in a hurry. Good, he was in trouble now too.

“Yes.”

“Tell me,” she growled.

“I have a daughter.”

“What!?” she shouted. “How in the hell? You have a daughter that you’ve only gone to see a handful of times a year? Lane, I will kill you.”

“Audrey, when she was only a baby she was kidnapped from my apartment in New York.”

“Oh my God…” I heard her gasp.

“That was over four years ago,” I added.

“You’ve been looking for her, haven’t you?”

“Yeah, that’s why I moved to California in the first place.”

Her words were mixed with tears and my gut churned. “Let me guess, her name is Kate?”

“Yeah…” I mumbled, knowing that I had once told her my tattoo was a lost love I never wanted to talk about. Which had not been a lie, technically.

“Lane, why?”

“I know you, doll. I know you would have worried just as much as I did every day. That kind of thing eats away at a person. You had enough on your plate already.”

“I still would have wanted—”

I jumped to interrupt. “I know and I love that about you, but it wasn’t your burden to bear.”

“So, why now? Why are you telling me now?”

“I found her.”

“WHAT!?” Then the floodgates were entirely blown away and she was full-on sobbing into the phone. Thankfully, I could hear Jace trying to console her but I wished I could hug her. I knew I didn’t have much more time on the phone with her before Raegan would be done in the bathroom so I attempted to console my best friend from fifteen hundred miles away, reassuring her that everything was okay now.



- SEVEN -

RAEGAN -

It felt incredible to actually be clean. Not the hospital shower with their sterile-smelling soaps kind of clean, but the really and truly fresh kind. And blow-drying my hair! I haven’t done that in years, and I couldn’t believe how light and beautiful it felt. I almost felt spoiled, and then I laughed at myself in the mirror with how ridiculous that sounded.

When I entered the room, Braden and Kate were sitting with their legs crossed at the little dining table. I smiled when I saw how happy they were with their food. We were never given bad food, but it was portioned and all extremely health-conscious. I can’t say that I hated the idea of them growing up eating only lean meats and tons of vegetables and fruits, but they never got the opportunity to splurge—ever.

“Mama, Lane said this is a pancake! I think it’s my favoritest,” Braden said with his mouth full.

“Your most favorite,” I corrected with a smile.

“Mama, look at this! Have you ever had one?” Kate asked enthusiastically.

I laughed, “Yes, it’s called a donut. Did Lane only order sugar?”

“No, we ate eggs, bacon, and bananas already,” Braden informed me.

“You guys are going to get sick, if you don’t slow it down.” I pointed seriously at them and then gave a little smile before making my way to see where Lane had gone off to.

“So, you don’t hate me, doll?” I heard Lane’s deep ask. I halted in my steps, first wondering why I would hate him and second, why he called me doll.

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to call every day, but I’ll do my best,” he continued. I then realized he was on the phone and since his back was facing me, I slipped out before he even knew I had been there. But before I was out of earshot, I heard, “Love you too, doll. Give the baby a kiss for me.”

I heard the phone click back in the receiver and Lane began walking around the room. I didn’t know what to think about that conversation. Did Lane have another family? I mean, when he basically implied he had been with another girl recently, I took it as a fling. Now I realized that may have been presumptuous of me. I guess it had felt like he was flirting with me and usually guys in relationships didn’t do that. I could have been wrong.

I had obviously been out of the game way too long. Hell, even before I was with Braden’s dad, I was probably never really ‘in the game.’ Question was did I even care if he were with someone else or not? I wanted to say no.

Maybe this was just me worrying about how the situation would affect Kate. When I saw Lane and Kate together, I had really hoped that they would be able to spend plenty of one-on-one time together so they could properly bond. It might be harder for Kate to adjust to another baby or a... stepmom. I hated that idea instantly.

With my spine stiffened, I walked back into the room and joined Lane. He was now seated at the table, trying to work a fork with his left hand. He was obviously right-handed, but that hand was currently secured in a sling against his body.

“This sucks,” he grumbled while practically glaring at his left hand, willing it to do as he demanded.

I sat down across from him and frowned, not knowing exactly how I should approach the matter. I was never the type to silently hold my problems inside. Why let something fester when you could just get it off your chest? He looked up at me and immediately realized my mood.

“I... I...” he stuttered. “I’m sorry?” he asked with complete confusion in his tone. I wanted to laugh at his ridiculous deer-in-the-headlights look. Typical male, jumping to an apology that he obviously had no idea what it was for.

“So, how is this going to work? I don’t know why I didn’t think about it before, but I just don’t know how well Kate will adjust. She needs you. Just you. Not a step-mom or a baby. I know that sounds awfully selfish, but I know her... and I know she’s going to need time. Too many people all at once—”

“Whoa, hold on,” he interrupted my ramblings, which were quickly becoming incoherent. I was thankful for his disruption because I didn’t know what else I could add to prove my point. “I’m confused...what... what the hell are we talking about here? Stepmom? Baby? You lost me.”

“Oh, are you going to ask Kate to call her ‘mom’?” I shrank back in my seat with that last word. I was mom.

“What is going on?!” he whisper-shouted, leaning toward me over the table.

I pointed across the room toward the phone. “The girl... that person you were talking to. Doll?” I cringed. “Sorry, I overheard.” I wrung my hands together under the table and felt guilty for eavesdropping.

“Ohhh,” he laughed. “Audrey is not my wife or girlfriend or anything like that, and her baby is definitely not mine. More like a niece.”

“So, Audrey is your sister?” I asked, feeling a bit of relief. For Kate, of course.

“By blood, no. By what matters, yes.”

“But you call her doll?”

“It’s a nickname.” He shrugged and sat back in his seat.

“It’s a pet name,” I informed him.

“Yeah, Jace says the same thing.” When I opened up my mouth to ask who Jace was, he answered my silent question. “Jace is her husband.”

“She has a husband and he lets you call his wife doll?” My mouth must have been wide in shock.

“She was mine first!” he responded defensively.

I raised an eyebrow at him. “Right... and you don’t see how that would make people question it?”

“Outside of Jace, it’s never really been a problem. Look, I met Audrey right after I fled to San Diego to look for Kate. She was just this sad little helpless girl who also happened to be the strongest damn person I had ever met, but she just needed someone to tell her and show her. I, on the other hand, was in so much pain that I couldn’t even remember how to breathe. We helped each other. She’s my best friend.”

I took a deep breath in and out. “That’s actually really nice. I had a best friend like that.”

“Had?” he asked while shoving a spinach omelet into his mouth, practically whole.

“Well, I haven’t exactly seen her in a few years...”

“Shit... I’m an asshole.”

“Don’t worry about it. It wasn’t just… that. Braden’s dad kind of got most of our friends in the break-up.”

“Your friends went with the loser that ditched you with a kid?” He looked at me with extreme confusion.

“I guess I didn’t have the best kind of friends after all.”

“I’d say so,” he mumbled.

“So, you moved to San Diego?” I asked, hoping to change the subject as quickly as possible.

“Yeah, almost immediately after I saw that tape and figured out who Flores was. Ash hated me for not keeping our daughter safe. Hell, I hated me. It hurt to be around one another, and almost a month after you guys disappeared, we knew it was over between us. I think Kate was really the only thing keeping us together anyway. Once she was gone... what was the point?”

“That’s so sad.”

“That’s what happens when you get married just because you got a girl pregnant.” I sighed heavily. “I sound like a total asshole, especially since... she’s not even here anymore.”

“No, I just think you’re being honest,” I said, trying to console him. “At least you didn't ditch her.”

“I loved Ash, but I wasn’t in love with her. Corniest fucking line ever, but I think it’s appropriate.”

I don’t know why but that made me chuckle. It was all so sad, but at the same time he still had this great outlook about himself.

“So, no luck in San Diego,” I stated. It wasn’t a question because obviously he hadn’t found us.

“No luck where it counted, I guess. I did run across Flores a handful of times, but I could never get close enough to pinpoint where he lived.”

“I don’t think it would have mattered. We were on some kind of weird island. With all of his guys, it would have been impossible to access it.” My words must have stunned him because his fork froze midway to his mouth and then he let it clatter to the plate below. I watched as he used one hand to push away from the table and walk out of the room.

“Okay...” I said to myself. That was strange.

Lane quickly returned to the room with determination in his eyes. Under his unrestricted arm, he carried a silver laptop.

“Those two are passed out in there. I think they’re in some kind of food coma,” he chuckled under his breath while placing the laptop on a small, cleared spot of the table.

I watched as he typed away on the computer in front of him. The lines on his forehead creased with purpose. He looked so stern in that moment and I couldn’t help but laugh. His face was filled with such severe emotions that it took him a second to wipe it away as he looked up at me in question.

“So serious,” I grunted, trying to imitate his stern face.

He laughed softly and returned to his typing with less concern etched into his eyes. I stood up and began moving the plates back to the rolling cart. I had taken a few bites of my food, but I just didn’t have a very big appetite. Lane pulled the chair I had been sitting in next to him and patted it, indicating he wanted me to rejoin him.

“Where were you guys?” he questioned.

I looked at his screen and saw that he had pulled up a Google map. Wow, those sure had advanced in the last four years.

“I didn’t exactly have a GPS or anyone around who would tell me where we were. Sorry.” I felt terrible that I couldn’t help, but I didn’t really want to focus on where we had been. My only concern was where we would be going now.

I watched the little map as he zoomed in and out of the area around Tijuana. Something hit me as soon as I saw the leg of land that extended south of the United States.

“Oh! Once we reached land off the island, it took us three hours to drive into San Diego.” I gave him the only piece of information I could remember that could possibly be valuable.

“Shit, that’s extremely helpful, babe.” He immediately began clicking things on the computer, but I remained frozen by that last word. Babe. Nickname or pet name? It had flowed off of his tongue so easily, but his excitement had added a bit of heat to it. Surely, I was overthinking it. Babe.