But she wasn’t just some problem he could buy off.
Their situation had no easy solution.
Certainly not one that houses and cars and money in the bank could fix.
She looked up at the house, her mind heavy, her heart even more so.
It was stunning, she thought grudgingly. Far better for Wade than the tip she’d called home for the last few years. Disloyalty to Horace reared its head. Her dad had helped her however he could, but running the bar was expensive. His financial means were limited.
Besides, Annabeth’s book advance would go a long way to building her own future. Without Horace, and without Kirk. And it was hers. All hers. Her blood, sweat, sleepless nights and tears.
Her life had finally been getting back on track, but now, she didn’t know which way was up.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she scooped it out of her pocket.
“Hey, Em,” she smiled, thrilled to hear from her friend.
“Hi. I just wanted to check the timing for tomorrow night.”
“Tomorrow night?” Annabeth asked, snapping the head off a long reed of grass.
“The Harvest Festival?” Emma prompted, askance that anyone could forget an event of such unparalleled success.
“Oh, right!” She laughed, shaking her head. “I’d just lost track of dates. Don’t worry, I’m still set. Cassandra’s minding Wade.”
“Great. I’ll pick you up around six?”
“Sure, sounds good,” she said with a smile. “How’s A.J?”
The silence crackled with barely concealed excitement. “Oh, he’s sooo good.”
Annabeth laughed. “I’ll bet.”
“See you tomorrow,” Emma said with a smile.
Annabeth disconnected the call, wishing she could summon half as much happiness into her voice. But it was thoroughly pleasing to see Emma so happy. She’d always had an eye for hopeless men, in the past. If a man was emotionally volatile, aggressive, jobless, friendless and penniless, Emma had a nose for them. For the first time in their long friendship, Emma was in love with a man who deserved her. A.J was kind, handsome, successful, caring, and he doted on Emma. It was a perfect match.
“Mama, you gotta come see my room,” Wade called, waving his small hand excitedly in the air.
With a frustrated oath, Annabeth pushed to her feet and made her way back to the house.
“You told him?” She accused Kirk sotto voce as she approached them.
His expression was unrepentant. “I thought you might back out.”
“No,” she said, a false smile pinned to her face. “I don’t say I’ll do something and then change my mind. That’s more your style.”
His eyes flashed with warning. “Come inside. Make Wade happy.”
She followed behind him, a truculent mask on her features. How did he always manage to make her feel childish and silly? She flicked her hair over her shoulder, wishing things were easier between them. But they never would be again. Too much water had flown beneath their bridge.
“I know what makes my son happy,” she whispered, as she pushed past him into the house. She stopped dead in her tracks, and turned a slow circle on the spot. The house was incomparably beautiful.
She stopped, her eyes landing on Kirk.
“Do you like it?”
She swallowed, and shrugged. “I’ve hardly seen it.” She’d seen enough. The wide, blonde floorboards, polished to a sheen, the buttery walls, the high ceilings, the view from every window.
“Then come and have a proper look,” he urged, putting his hand in the small of her back and propelling her forward. Wade had run off again, up the stairs and along the landing. “His bedroom,” Kirk said quietly.
“You shouldn’t have told him, Kirk. You can’t make unilateral decisions like this.”
His brow creased. “The decision had already been made.”
“Yes,” she hissed, rubbing her fingers against her temples. “Between us. But there’s things like timing to consider.”
“Oh?”
“Yes,” she walked ahead of him, absentmindedly brushing a finger along the pristine white dado rail. “You can’t just spring something like this on a four year old.”
“Hey, mama! You gotta check this out!” An excited cry from high up above. When she looked towards him, the smugness on Kirk’s face made her simmering blood reach boiling point.
“He seems just fine, to me.”
“You’re trying to buy his affection, and I don’t like it.”
Kirk grabbed her hand, pulling her to a stop. “Hey,” he urged quietly, using his other hand to angle her chin, so that she had no option but to meet his wounded stare. “That’s not what this is about.”
“Oh, no?” She sucked in a deep breath, as the full power of his touch made her body quiver. Her feelings were reverberating all over the place. She felt lost and confused, and desperately hungry, and so, so tired all of a sudden.
“No. I want to help you. Does that make me some kind of monster?”
“I don’t think you’re a monster,” she whispered, biting down on her lower lip. “I think you want to assuage your guilt, by buying me things. That maybe if you buy us a car, and a house, and put ridiculous sums of money in the bank, it won’t matter that you dumped me without a backwards glance. That you stranded a twenty year old pregnant and alone.”
He dipped his head, wishing he could argue with her words. “Yes,” he agreed, his voice thick with feeling. “You’re right. But it’s not because I want to assuage my guilt. I am guilty, of all that. Wanting to atone is not the same as trying to erase. I can’t undo the past, Annabeth, but do you really find it strange that I want to build a better future?”
She fluttered down her eyelids, her lashes were just dark fans against her pale cheeks. “There’s no future for you and me, Kirk. I accepted that a long time ago.”
“But the other night…”
“Was just sex,” she whispered, shrugging away from him. “It shouldn’t have happened. Where you and I are concerned, those feelings just don’t seem to go away, though. But it can’t happen again. It’s too important to Wade that we get this right. He’s more important than a fun roll down memory lane.”
Kirk nodded slowly. Though her words were anathema to him, he acknowledged the sense of what she said. For now.
“But the house, and the car?”
“Unnecessarily generous,” she said crisply. “But I don’t want to argue with you about it anymore.”
He let out a sigh of relief. “I just want the best for Wade, and you, Annabeth. I don’t like to think of you struggling.”
For some reason, his statement fanned her temper. “And without you, we were struggling?”
He lifted his eyes heavenward, praying for patience. “Any single parent would struggle. You’re working in a bar, you’re exhausted, you’re living in a house that looks about ready to fall apart in the next storm we get. Yeah, I think you’re struggling, and there’s no shame in admitting it, and asking for help.”
Her snort was enraged. “You’re so fricking patronizing,” she fumed, pushing her finger into his chest as she spoke. “I’ll have you know, I have a book deal that will go a long way to setting Wade and me up. Without your help. What do you say to that?”
He wasn’t often surprised, but his jaw practically hit the polished hardwood floors now. He recovered quickly.“I’m thrilled for you, Annabeth.”
She crossed her arms again. “But you didn’t think I had any future other than The Whistlestop?”
“There’s nothing wrong with working in The Whistlestop,” he said in a raised whisper. “Don’t put words in my mouth. I was simply thinking it mightn’t pay that well.”
“None of that is your concern. I told you that Wade and I manage fine, and I meant it.”
“This is a ridiculous argument,” he snapped, impatiently thrusting his thumbs through his belt loops. “Book deal or no, I’m going to help with the financial costs of raising Wade. Starting right now.”
“Fine.” She muttered. “Just don’t go around thinking you’ve saved me from a swamp of poverty. We were doing just fine without you in our lives, Kirk Robinson, and we’d be doing fine still, if you hadn’t shoved your big head back where it’s not wanted.”
He groaned, shaking his head from side to side. But ridiculously, he smiled. “You’re so Goddamned independent, Beth. I’d forgotten that about you. I’d forgotten how much I love sparring with you.”
“Maybe that’s the problem, Kirk. I never did like our fights.”
“No?”
“No.” She tilted her head, angling her face so that she could watch a shrimp trawler coming in for the day. Under her sea-blue gaze, they emptied the nets onto the boxes on the net. Such a large haul for a rickety old boat.
“I’m going to go see what Wade’s doing,” she said quietly, without looking back at Kirk. She couldn’t. As she walked through the house he’d bought her, it hit her how completely perfect it was for her. How thoroughly beautiful, and comfortable. How much she should love the idea of living in that home. Only she didn’t. Because she would be there without Kirk, and that prospect loomed before her now like an enormous, terrifying, future.