I thought this was likely because she lit into him if he did.

Still, I asked, “You don’t?”

“No. She’s not… she’s… Blake… she’s used to getting lied to. She knows when someone’s lyin’. She told me that Dad and me, Grandpop, Uncle Wood, we were the only ones never lied to her. She always believes me. I just gotta let Dad know and I gotta do it so I don’t hafta lie to her.”

I studied him.

Then I nodded. “Okay, honey, I’ll tell your Dad.”

He looked visibly relieved and I instantly wished I’d gotten into a catfight with his mother so I had a chance to get my licks in.

“Thanks, Lauren,” he said quietly.

“Laurie,” I corrected.

“Laurie?”

“What your Dad and my friends call me.”

He smiled a small smile. “Okay. Laurie.”

“All right, baby,” I whispered. “And Jonas?”

“Yeah?”

“Before you leave, I’ll give you my number. You have anything you need, anytime, call me. And if you have anything you need to keep from your Mom but you need your Dad to know and you feel you can’t tell him, you let me know and I’ll tell him for you. We got a deal?”

His smile got a bit bigger. It wasn’t his normal, broad, confident smile but it was better.

“Yeah,” he answered.

“Now, one more chance, you want more cake?”

The smile came back full force.

“Yeah.”

“I rinsed your plate, honey, get me another one.”

I was cutting Jonas’s second slice of cake when Tate came in. Both Jonas and I looked at him and I noted his face wasn’t hard anymore but he didn’t look happy.

“Jonas is having more cake, honey. You want another piece?”

“No, Ace. Thanks,” Tate answered and I lifted my brows to him. His answer was to close his eyes slowly, tilt his chin in a subtle negative then open them and look at Jonas.

I wouldn’t find out what had happened on the deck until after Jonas ate his cake, after Jonas and I finished the dishes and after we watched a movie that was so gory, I spent the vast majority of it with my face in Tate’s chest which Jonas thought was amusing, considering he’d seen that movie a gazillion (his words) times and he thought the gore factor was average (again his words). It was also after Jonas went downstairs to his bedroom (one of the rooms to which I didn’t open the door when Tate first went away but had since seen and cleaned).

When Jonas was off, Tate went straight to the fridge and got a beer. I followed him to the kitchen, his hand came out of the fridge and he lifted up a bottle in silent question. I shook my head. He twisted off the cap, tossed it into the garbage and then led me out to the back patio where we sat in wrought iron chairs. I suspected he took me here because the front deck was just over Jonas’s room and, if he had his windows open, he could hear.

“Well?” I asked when we’d settled.

“She’s off on one,” he told me, taking a pull of his beer.

“What does that mean?”

“Said she was comin’ tomorrow to get him.”

“Why?”

In the dark, I saw his head turned to me. “You.”

“Me?”

“You’re here. She’s got one of her posse spyin’ and they said you’re still here. So she says she doesn’t want him here if you’re here.”

“I’ll go to the hotel,” I offered. “I’ll do it tonight.”

“The f**k you will, babe.”

“Tate –”

“She doesn’t control your life. She doesn’t control my life. And, when my son is with me, she doesn’t control his life.”

He sounded pretty angry, in fact, his voice was vibrating so I said softly, “Okay, honey.”

“You went to the hotel last night, Laurie and one of those bitches saw you with Ned and Betty. She thought you were out.”

Darn, darn and double darn.

How could Neeta have a posse? Who could even like her? And why did I lose it and walk out on Tate?

So stupid.

I stopped mentally kicking myself and asked, “Would she have given him to you if she knew I was still here?”

“Nope,” he replied then took another pull of his beer. “She wasn’t home when I got there anyway. Neither was Jonas. But Blake sure was. She rolled in half an hour late. That whole time I sat in my truck at the curb.”

“Oh Tate,” I whispered.

He shook his head and said, “I called Pop after I hung up on her. He’s gonna see what he can do.”

“What if she comes?”

“Don’t know, don’t care.”

“You can’t have Jonas see a scene like last week.”

He sighed. Then he tilted his head back and took in more beer.

“Jonas and I talked,” I told him and his head turned to me.

“Yeah?”

“He knows about the papers,” I started but stopped when that scary energy started to flash off Tate.

“Christ,” he whispered then repeated, “Christ.” He shook his head. “Can she once act like a goddamned Mom and shield him from shit? He’s f**kin’ ten. We started this shit when he was born and since he could understand words, she told him we were battlin’ every time we were doin’ it. Is it that hard to let him be a kid and let his parents deal with their own shit?”

I thought this was a good question but I didn’t have an answer to it.

“Sympathy?” I guessed.

“Damn straight, Ace. She’s been tryin’ to turn him since I could remember. Hell, she probably talked trash about me when he was in the womb.”

“You weren’t together then?”

“Fuck no,” he answered.

This surprised me. “You weren’t?”

“No, babe,” he answered firmly.

“But, don’t you kind of have to be together to make a baby?”

“Yeah, and you have to be together to trap a man into marrying you.”

I gasped. Tate nodded.

“She pushed the marriage card the minute after she skipped her first period. The bitch has been on the pill since she was fourteen. Not even a scare. Religious about it. All of a sudden, she’s knocked up. All of a sudden, that is, after she’d been naggin’ me about gettin’ hitched.”

“Why didn’t you?” I asked gently.

“Unconscious self-preservation,” he muttered, took a sip of his beer, swallowed and finished, “thank f**k.”