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  “So is it bad that I can sit here and recite almost every single line to this movie even before it actually starts?” I push away the feared thoughts of being unable to provide for her and decide to worry when I was alone later when she wouldn’t have the chance to witness it.

  “Doesn’t Austin make it worth it?” She lifts the slice of pizza to her lips and takes a big bite, the cheese stringing between her and the crust as she pulls it away.

  “Austin?” I look at her with a puzzled thought. “I thought his name was Sawyer.”

  “Sawyer is the little boy, but his cousin, who in the movie is named Kyle, is really Austin.” I stare at her as she takes another bite. “Now he is cute,” she mumbles around her food.

  “He only has a small role in the movie though.”

  “Yeah,” she turns her head in my direction, “but even a glimpse gives me the chills. He has the most amazing smile.”

  She’s ten, and the idea that she finds any man, even if he’s an actor, this appealing should terrify me. Only it didn’t, because this was normal young girl behavior. It was something I never got the chance to focus on, and seeing her this way so young and happy, it was what I wished for.

  Chapter 3

  Alec

  “How are things on the homefront?” Aric, my brother, asks as his sits down in the chair opposite my own. A fresh tan bronzing his skin from his recent trip to the Bahamas for a magazine shoot I’m sure he was less than half dressed for. “Mandy still giving you shit about being gone so much?”

  “I see that your recent trip has only managed to make you even more eager for gossip.” I look away from his prying eyes and focus on the pile of papers littering my desk. “There is no need to ask where you’ve gotten your information.”

  “You know Mom, always trying to fix the lives of her boys.” He says this with a grin that suggests otherwise. “Or trying to analyze our lives is more like it.” It was true, Alana Reynolds was Miss Fix It, or so she thought. Always trying to make everyone around her happy, especially her boys. It didn’t matter the lengths she had to go to either.

  “So?”

  I look up to find him giving me that stare, the one that showed he had no intention of letting this go. A simple tilt of his head, an arch of his brow, he even had one ankle crossed over his knee as he slouched back in the chair. He was completely comfortable and settled, and suddenly I felt like I was on an episode of Dr. Phil.

  “So what?”

  “Don’t be obtuse, what is Mandy bitching about now?” I should be offended, only I wasn’t blinded to the fact that my family all held the same opinion of Mandy. They all felt she was demanding and immature, but for the sake of my son. “Because if it’s the long hours again you need to tell her she needs to lay off the daily massages, weekly manicures, and those high dollar fucking shoes she thinks she needs.”

  “Is there a reason for your visit?” I ask him, completely ignoring the perfect description he’d just provided of the woman that wanted it all but still wasn’t happy.

  “Yeah.” He lowers his left leg to the floor as he leans over and places his elbows on his legs. “Mom showed up at your place to pick up Caden and said she didn’t answer the door.”

  “Maybe she was in the shower,” I say with a shrug.

  “She waited for over an hour, beat on the door, and when I called her she was still there waiting.”

  “So why didn’t she just call me instead of sending you?” I ask as I search out my cell in my briefcase.

  “She didn’t send me, but so you know, she thinks you’re mad at her for meddling which is most likely why she didn’t call.” My mother did meddle, a lot, but that didn’t make me love her any less. Hell, I knew she meant well. Mandy, on the other hand, despised my mother and thought she was a nosy bitch. She and I had gone head to head many times in regard to my mother, because I didn’t care how mad she got at me, you don’t put down my mom.

  I dial my mother’s number, and when she answers she sounds timid, and I imagine her fearing I was only calling to once again tell her to back off. It was a conversation she and I had shared only a few hours ago when she called to tell me I should put a stop to all the nonsense with Mandy and her spending. I knew it was her idea of showing Mandy just what my hard work provided for her but sometimes I did just need her to back off a bit.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m at the deli across the street from your building.” I could hear the muffled conversations of those around her. “I showed up at your place like I do every Thursday at ten to get Caden and Mandy wouldn’t answer the door. So I decided to wait here for a bit and observe if I see her come or go.”

  “Did you try calling her?”

  “Three times and now it just goes to voicemail.” My mother sounded sad. Thursday afternoons had always been her time with Caden. They would go for a walk, feed the birds in Central Park, or sometimes they’d just go back to my parents’ house and spend some quiet time together. But no matter what they decided to do, it was their time. “I know I can be persistent sometimes.” I close my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose when she speaks again only making me feel worse for the things I said earlier that morning. “I just want you to be happy, Alec, and when I see the two of you together I see everything being one sided. It hurts to see your child settling because he feels he has to when all you ever wanted was him to have true happiness.”

  “I know, Mom,” and I did. The problem was now there was a child involved, my child. I would live a life in a relationship of means versus pure unconditional love if it meant I had my son. For him I would sacrifice anything.

  “I’ll try calling her.” I decide to not rehash the events of my life or my relationship with her. “I’ll take care of it.”

  When I hang up the phone I took a minute to just breathe. Something about this didn’t feel right. Over the last year, even though Mandy and my mother never saw eye to eye, Mandy had never denied my mother time with her grandson.

  Until now.

  I felt like I’d been tackled and the wind from my lungs had been knocked out of me. It was one of those out of body experiences where you felt as if it wasn’t truly happening, it couldn’t be.

  I stood in the doorway of my son’s room, staring ahead at the mess among the floor. Clothes, toys, everything that reminded me of him lay scattered like the pieces of my heart. I felt like I’d been ripped open, my chest burned, and my legs felt weak.

  I reach down and pick up the blue dog that Caden was chewing on that very morning and could still feel the dampness of its ear. Tears pooled in my eyes and my body gives out as I slip to the floor, resting upon my knees.

  They were gone, where I don’t know. All that was left was the small remnants of their existence. A dirty sippy cup lay on the floor, tilted as the liquid still remaining teetered on the verge of spilling over. A damp bath towel lay over the side of the crib, like she’d given our son a bath before disappearing.

  Our room appeared the same, drawers half hanging open, pieces of clothing she must have dropped in her hurry to leave strewn across the end of the bed spilling onto the floor.

  When she didn’t answer I’d decided to leave work and drive across the city. Never did I imagine I’d find them gone. Each call that was made went straight to her voicemail, and since then I’ve filled it with all the questions I’ve had rolling around in my mind.

  I wanted to know why she’d take my son from me. If she wanted to leave me fine, okay, I’d learn to deal with that, but to take Caden from me, it wasn’t only punishing me, it was punishing him, too.

  I went from fear, to anger so quickly. What the hell was she thinking?

  “Alec?” I don’t even turn around to face my brother, I can’t. All I see is my son’s belongings, or what was left of them. I’ve never in my life ever felt such a sense of loss. I’d never felt this kind of pain, and there was nothing that I could do to stop it, nothing could soothe it. Except having Caden here in my arms, where he belonged.
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  “Do you know where she would go?”

  I spin around to face him as I sit upon the floor. Staring up at my brother while his gaze roamed over the same space that just this morning was filled with my son’s things. I lift my hand up, pushing back the hair from my forehead suddenly feeling drained from the emotional rollercoaster I’d gone on. My heart raced, my hands shook. I felt like I was having a panic attack.

  “A friend maybe, or her family?”

  I know my brother was trying to help but with each word he spoke my patience only grew thinner. “Don’t you think that if I knew where the fuck she took my son I’d be going after her by now?” My voice was loud as it echoes throughout the condo. “She fucking took him, Aric, took him like I have no rights. Like I’d just chalk it up to a bad fucking choice, and go about my business like she didn’t just fucking gut me.”

  My chest heaves as I look up at my younger brother, the guy I’ve never turned to before for help. I’d always been the leader, the one that fixed his fuckups, and my shoulders give way as defeat hits me. “You gotta help me find my son.”

  Chapter 4

  Brynn

  “He told me my hair reminded him of the sun.” I arch my brow as I stare back at Katelynn. “Like really, the sun? Who falls for that kind of garbage? The sun,” she says in a mocking tone I’m only assuming is meant to resemble the boy she’d been referring to from her math class. “He stared at me the entire class, and even when I asked him to stop he still did it.”

  “He has a crush,” I say, only gaining a glare from my overly dramatic ten year old sister.

  “He’s a menace.”

  “That’s mean, Kate, he just thinks you’re pretty.” I slowed to a stop near our apartment as I look for an available parking space close to the front. “He was probably nervous, and you made him feel stupid for being all cute.”

  “Cute?” I look over at her to find her shaking her head and covering her face. “He is not being cute, Brynn. Just last weak he told Brianna that her hair looked like milk chocolate, and the Friday before that he told Draya that her eyes looked like emeralds and he wanted to get lost in their beauty.”

  I place my car in park and look back at her just as she rolled her eyes. “He’s an eleven year old boy that thinks he’s a man. All Casanova-like, spilling his cheesy lines to one girl after the next. It’s just, ah,” she throws her arms up in the air in frustration, “so pathetic.”

  “You like him.” Her mouth falls into a frown as her eyes widen. “I do not.”

  “You do,” I fire back, smiling when maybe I shouldn’t have.

  “I change me mind, maybe Parker isn’t the menace.” With another dramatic roll of her eyes she climbs from the car and drags her book-bag on the ground behind her. It would appear my sister had her first crush, and it was so fun watching her get all flustered over it.

  So maybe I shouldn’t have had such a good time with my newfound knowledge. You know, asking her if she wanted to take a walk in the park, insisting we invite the boy along so they have more time to spend together. Or when I made pancakes for dinner and hers ended up being in the shape of a P for Parker. Plus the added touch of syrup in the shape of a heart around it, I was only managing to irritate her more.

  The entire thing was too hard to resist though, I was witnessing Katelynn’s first crush. Nothing had ever been sweeter.

  “How’s your job at Portlands going?” Ms. Hastings, our case handler, asks as she sits at the table across from me looking down at the file in front of her. “It says here that you’ve gone from part time to full time.

  Portlands is like the pit of hell. “It’s going great, and yes, the full time position was offered to me last week.” I wondered if she could sense my hatred for the place. I would never look at pork the same again, as in I will never again touch the stuff. “And with the tips added to my hourly check, things have become much easier. Katelynn and I were actually able to get ourselves a new television, one without the big black line through the center of the screen.”

  This made her smile, but hey, it wasn’t like I paid for the first one. We found it near the side of the road shortly after my mom left us, and it was good enough for two kids that had never had a television before.

  “I’ve also spoken with Katelynn’s counselor, and it seems she’s made high honors this semester.”

  “Yeah,” I say proudly. That girl was gonna do something great with her life, I just knew it. “She’s so smart.”

  “I’ve gotta say, Brynn, that the two of you seem to really be doing much better than I anticipated.”

  “Well, thanks for the vote of confidence.” And to think I was actually starting to like Ms. Pointy Nose.

  “Let me be straight with you.” Here we go, I thought. “You’re young, and yes, I know that mentally you were forced to act much older. I had my doubts that this all would be too much for a young girl to handle. I imagined you’d get a sense of freedom, and you’d find that being tied down by a child isn’t truly what you want. Being forced to work long hours and pays bills, I just never thought you’d be doing as well as you are.”

  “Then you should remember that I’ve been doing all those things for years, way before my mother ran off. Because even though she was around on occasion she never was a mother.” It had always been up to me to find my own way.

  “Sometimes I think you’re only robbing yourself now of the life you could have.”

  “Nothing about what I’m doing for us is robbing me,” I assure her, doing my best to remain calm. “For the first time in eighteen years I feel safe and free. I don’t need anything more than what I already have.”

  “That’s why I advised the courts to grant you full custody of Katelynn.”

  All the anger and irritation I felt for this woman only moments ago fades so fast I feel dizzy. “What?” My voice sounds hoarse and my throat constricts as I fight to get the word out.

  A smile stretches her lips and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen her smile so brightly. “You’ve proven you can provide for your sister and for yourself, not only financially, but emotionally as well. To be able to witness the hard work and determination you have to give her all the things your mother couldn’t or chose not to? It amazes me.”

  “Thank you.” Again my words are nothing more than a whisper as tears fill my eyes. The relief I felt was overwhelming. I’d spent everyday since leaving the DCFS office three months ago in fear that they would show up one day and take Katelynn from me. It was a crippling feeling that caused a daily knot within my stomach.

  “You shouldn’t be thanking me, Brynn, you did this. You proved that the best placement for your sister is with you.”

  Chapter 5

  Alec

  I’ve been faced with a lot of obstacles in my life. While building my empire I made a lot of hard choices. They might not have always been the right ones, but those choices were parts of my growth.

  But through all that, nothing was as hard as watching the woman I thought loved me and my son being held in the arms of another man. I felt more rage and devastation than I had ever felt before. Though it killed me to watch, I did. I waited, lingering in the shadows while they walked along Pier 45. Hand in hand, my son in the middle of the two of them as they waited patiently for his little legs to carry him. The smiles and laughter Mandy and he shared only managed to infuriate me more.

  I wanted to rip the guy’s arms from his body. I wanted to go to them and take my son— walk away and never look back. But again I waited. I needed the perfect moment to get her alone and figure out what in the hell she was thinking when she left with my son. Did she actually think I wouldn’t look for them, that I wouldn’t find them?

  The man took Mandy in his embrace, and in doing so, he held onto my son, now lifted from the ground and securely between them. I felt as if my heart literally cracked in my chest when Caden reached out to touch the man’s cheek. Closing my eyes I could almost feel his little palm pressed against my own cheek, like he’
d offered so many times before. He would always feel the stubble on my jaw and giggle like it tickled him.

  I missed his giggle, that sweet little sound I’d used over and over as my happy place.

  Opening my eyes once more, I find that the man was now turning away leaving Mandy and Caden to watch him. As he rounds the corner my legs begin to move before I can stop them, and I notice the moment she looks up to see me approaching. That moment of panic as her eyes begin to search out her nearest means of escape.

  I had news for her, she wasn’t going anywhere, not until I had some fucking answers. And even then she wasn’t taking my son.

  “Alec,” Mandy says, wrapping her arms around Caden just a little tighter. Though I wanted to take him from her I forced myself to remain calm. The last thing I wanted was for my son to grow frightened.

  “Hey buddy.” I reached out to touch his cheek. When his eyes lock on mine he grows excited almost immediately and begins to reach out for me. “Daddy missed you.” I don’t miss the way Mandy flinches when I say these words.

  “Alec,” she says my name once more, still looking from side to side.

  “What’s wrong? You afraid your new boyfriend might come back?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend.” She takes in a deep breath and I reach out for Caden once more only to have her step back out of my reach. “We don’t need to do this here.”

  “You’re right,” I agree. “Let’s take a drive and go somewhere we can talk.”