Page 26 of Finding Fate

“I don’t know! He took him from me the day he was born! I tried to hold onto him. I tried to tell him no. I begged him to let me keep him. Told him I’d never try to contact you again if he’d just let me keep our son. Nothing worked. It was a private adoption. He wouldn’t let me meet the family. He told me nothing about them so I couldn’t look. I wasn’t even supposed to hold him after I gave birth. That was the deal for him to let me carry him to term instead of the abortion he wanted me to have in the beginning, but I couldn’t help myself. I wanted him. He was mine. I felt him move while I was pregnant. I pushed him out of me. He was the only thing I had left of you. When I wouldn’t hand him over, he told me he was going to use him against you to file charges if I didn’t let him go. He knew I would do anything to protect you. We weren’t wrong. We loved each other. They took him out of my room and wouldn’t let him come back. A nursery tech is the one that snuck me the picture of him. I did it to keep you out of jail.”

Tears are pouring down my face. “I would have gladly gone to jail if it came down to giving up our son. You should have fucking called.” I run my hand through my hair, pulling at it. I’m so mad I could explode. My chest is aching. I feel like I’m dying. “Is that even fucking legal? How does he not have to have me terminate my rights to give him away?”

She’s crying harder than I’ve ever seen her cry. Gabby doesn’t just cry. She’s not a whiny bitch. “I don’t know. I was fourteen and fifteen years old. He had all the power. I had to homeschool the entire time I was pregnant. A doctor made house calls during my pregnancy unless it was something I absolutely had to go in for. I wasn’t allowed to sit in the lobby. I had to hide the entire pregnancy like I was ashamed of him and couldn’t go back to school until the evidence was gone. He made me sign everything I had to sign. He has his own attorney. All I know is that he said the biological father abandoned me. The day I graduated high school I cut my ties with him as much as I could. I don’t use his money. I don’t live with him. I gave up college. A career. Anything he bought me, or liked about me, like my hair.”

I grab my jeans from last night and pull them on, not bothering to fasten them. “Of all the things we’ve been through I can’t believe you would keep that from me. I would have gotten a job. I would have taken care of him. You even if your dad kicked you out. I would have done the jail time and then came and found you. You were my entire world, Gabby.”

“Maddox.” She steps toward me. “He was monitoring my calls and texts.”

“You should have found a way.” I move past her. “I need some fucking air.”

I grab the door and walk out, slamming it behind me, because I feel like I’m holding on by a thread.

Sixteen

Riggan

Istand behind Sayler at the island, my hands on her belly while she makes me a sandwich for work. “I can do that. You don’t have to,” I say against her hair.

“I know, but I like doing it.”

Presley walks out of the laundry room with a basket of towels when Maddox comes storming through the house in a pair of jeans, shirtless, his face redder than it was last night when he was seconds from blowing his top, only this time it’s soaking wet. “Maddox, are you okay?”

I follow Presley’s line of vision to his hand, catching a glimpse of a photo in his hand with a baby on it. He grabs his keys off the bar where they’re laying. “Fine. I’ve just got a bullet with someone’s name on it.”

Seconds later the door slams, and suddenly I remember I’m not the only one that carries. “Fuck.” I make a move toward the door. Gabby comes running in, her face identical to his. I point at Sayler. “Your ass better not set foot toward that door. None of you.”

I grab the door and run outside as Maddox cranks his truck, catching the truck door before it shuts. He throws his Raptor in reverse, trying to shove me out, but I jump in the cab and throw my back against his chest. He puts his foot on the gas, sending us backward. I glance in the rearview mirror and my heart stops at the sight of Gabby standing in the middle of the driveway, directly in the path of his tailgate. “Gabby!”

Gabby

I stand in the direct path of his truck, taking a deep breath as the tires spin and it starts quickly rolling backward. I’m counting on him to stop. He would never hurt me. But worst-case scenario, if he runs over me, better me than him. If he does, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself, which will keep him out of jail. Riggan shouts my name.

The truck slams on breaks and rocks an inch from my body from the sudden stop. I briefly close my eyes, a little thankful today wasn’t my time to go. The engine goes dead and Riggan hops down, the keys in his hand, taking a few steps back before he’s able to stop himself.

Maddox gets out and takes a step toward me, his chest heaving. “Gabrielle Katerina Thanos, I’m going to whoop your ass, you crazy bitch.” I smile. It’s a rare occurrence to hear my full name roll off his tongue. I haven’t heard it in a while. When I meet people now I tell them my last name is Holland—my mother’s maiden name—just to separate myself from my dad even more. It took me forever to teach him how to pronounce my last name right. He’s got a little too much backwoods country to roll his tongue that way.

I shrug, tears still slowly running from my eyes. “Figured I deserve it.”

His shoulders drop, and he just stands there for a second, staring at me in nothing but jeans on the driveway as he breathes, his face wet and his hair a mess. What a damn view. My heart gripped onto him and won’t let go. “No, you don’t.”

He finally starts walking toward me, stopping so close I could touch him with a sway. “It’s okay to hate me. For a long time, I hated me too.”

He blows out, puffing his cheeks out from so much air, trying to stop crying and failing. “I love you so goddamn much hating you is impossible. I just needed a breather. It’s a lot to take in, you know. Someone else is raising our kid when I would have gladly done it. I wasn’t bred to be a quitter. Maybe the timing was off, but I’ll never believe this is wrong. He was created because I loved you and you loved me and we couldn’t stand the thought of being apart.”

I place my hand on his cheek, unable to hold back with the way he looks. It hurts to see him like this, because I know we would’ve been a happy family, never regretting a thing. “But you’re right. You were fifteen. What could you have done? The truth is, had I gone to jail, I’m not sure it would have turned out differently. Maybe my parents would have gotten him until you could legally make your own decisions, or maybe you would have ran away, but then what? What would his life look like? You would have been a teenage mother. What if he had ended up in the system over the fight? God. How do you know they didn’t change his name?”

“Because it was the only thing my fatherdidgive me. He said it was part of the adoption agreement, legally, somehow. He gave me his word.” More tears fall. “He’s the biggest prick on the planet, but he doesn’t lie. I made sure he had a part of you, so that if he ever comes to find us, he’ll know we loved him. Even though I couldn’t keep him, I wanted him. For what it’s worth, I sometimes wish I had been knocked out for the whole thing, because then I wouldn’t know what I was missing.” I shrug, my lips quivering. “But I held him, even after my dad told me not to because I’d get attached. I was holding our love in my arms. He was beautiful. He looked at me, gripping onto my finger, and then I just let him go. At least you don’t have to live with that.”

He tilts his head, his eyes so watery and constantly releasing new tears, just like mine. “Gab, fuck.” He picks me up, letting me wrap my arms and legs around him tight, already kissing me so that I don’t have to worry about him turning away. “I hate your dad.”

“Welcome to the club. But a part of me still loves him too. It’s a miserable place to exist. He’s my dad, and at the end of the day, I really believe in some warped way I don’t pretend to understand, he thinks he did what was best for him. The biggest question is, can you still love me?”

He finally smiles a little. It’s like a rainbow after a flood. “I can’t stop. I’m getting an attorney, Gabby. In good conscience, I can’t just exist in a world knowing I have a son somewhere. You can support me or not. At the very least I want to see where he is and who’s raising him. Worst comes to worst for me—he has a good life and I don’t have the heart to rip him out of it. If that’s the case, I’ll love him enough to let him go. I just want what’s best for him. But you—you’re the one thing I can’t cut loose, regardless of how hard I try.”

I smile through my tears. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

Seventeen