Love Inspired January 2014(298)

                Not that it’d be that easy.

                “Fine. You want it?” Cody picked up the photo, ripped it in half and tossed the pieces at them. “Take it. I don’t want it. Don’t want either of you.”

                The door slammed behind him, and something unleashed deep inside Emma, cracking open and revealing even more shattered pieces. Her son was done with her. Because of Max.

                Her peace from the night before disappeared completely into a dark abyss of hopelessness. “This is your fault.” She poked her finger hard against Max’s chest. “You did this! You kept that picture. You passed down all of this anger and rebellion. It’s you!”

                “It takes two people to make a child, Emma.” Max gripped her forearms and held her away from him. “You’re the one that left, that never even gave me a chance to be involved!”

                “How could I? I came back, Max. I came back!” She struggled in his grip, all logic and reasoning fleeing her senses as she surrendered herself to the pent-up emotion she’d restrained for far too long. “I saw you making that deal.” The words hissed from her lips, words she’d been longing to fling at him for thirteen years.

                “What deal?” Confusion and pain seeped from his expression, despite his voice rising even louder than hers. But instead of anger, it was laced with panic. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

                “The drugs, Max. You said you would quit. That I was enough.” Her voice shook with unshed sobs and she struggled to get the words out through the tears. “I saw you taking that deal. At the park. Near our spot.”

                Clarity bled through Max’s eyes, and he released Emma’s arms abruptly. “I flushed those.”

                She staggered backward. “What?”

                He stabbed his fingers through his hair. “I flushed them. I did the deal, yeah. I was weak. I missed you and wanted a distraction. But the second he left, I remembered my promise to you and that meant more to me than a temporary fix. I never did a hit after the last one you knew about, Emma. I flushed them.”

                He’d flushed them.

                And he’d changed.

                Yet she’d ran.

                Despair began a slow assault, pummeling her heart. She reached toward Max, but it was like stretching toward the past—impossible to grasp.

                “I didn’t know.” The words sounded impossibly weak, and the biggest understatement anyone had ever spoken.

                The grief in his eyes would linger in her memory for the rest of her days. “You didn’t let me tell you.”

                The back door burst open, and Luke ran in, hair mussed and jacket flapping open. “Cody and Jarvis are gone.”

                “Gone? What do you mean?” Max strode past Luke to the porch, scanning both directions. “He was just here.”

                “There was a mix up. We split up the group for the trail ride, and Tim and I both thought Cody was with the other group. We didn’t get far before realizing we didn’t have Cody or Jarvis with us. They’re not in the dorms, either, or the rec room.” Luke’s eyes filled with worry. “I think they ran away.”





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