And waited.
And when the follow-up call finally came, it wasn’t Ry on the other end.
It was Detective Grant Malone from the Sunnyville police department informing him they’d located his son and arrested Renee Conners for his abduction.
Jake didn’t wait to hear from Ry again, he snagged his wallet and keys, grabbed the diaper bag he kept stocked by the front door, and ran to his truck.
1
FEBRUARY—EIGHT MONTHS LATER
Jake pulled into Ry’s driveway and blew out a hard breath, the tightness that had held his whole body stiff for most of the day easing by the second.
Two hours. Barely two hours away and he couldn’t wait to get inside and hold his boy.
Today had been the longest time Madman had been out of his sight in eight months and Jake wasn’t ashamed to admit the separation probably affected him more than it did Mad.
Since the day Jake had gotten the call from his former best friend and raced like an IndyCar driver to Sunnyville, he had kept his son close—within arm’s reach—at all times. He knew out of the two of them, it wasn’t his twenty-one month old who’d been scarred for life by Mad’s abduction and disappearance.
Jake still wasn’t sure he’d made the right decision. Not moving to Sunnyville, that was the fresh start both of them needed. It was the getting a job part of their move he wasn’t comfortable with.
He’d have to leave Maddox in the care of someone else.
Someone who wasn’t him.
He wasn’t sure he could do it.
There was no denying the sweat and jitters that had come over him when he’d left Mad with Ry and Maz were a bad sign.
Hell, he’d sent eleven text messages in the ninety-three minutes—yes, he’d counted—he’d been gone and would have sent more if interview etiquette allowed.
Luckily for him, Maz seemed to understand his need to know how his son was doing and replied to every message promptly with a new picture of his boy each time.
Those photos showed Maddox having a ball and each image of his happy, smiling boy had put a matching smile on Jake’s face and unknotted a few more of his nerves. He just wasn’t sure they’d unknotted enough for him to go back to work.
His little boy was the light of his life. It was the one thing to come out of the last few years—hell the last decade—worth all the drama and pain he’d gone through thanks to Renee.
God.He closed his eyes as pain lanced his chest.
He hadn’t thought about Mad’s mother in weeks.
The lies, the hurt, the confusion, the fear—the anger—all of it, had begun to fade and Jake had hoped the move to Sunnyville, reconnecting with Ry and rebuilding the friendship Renee had done her best to destroy, would dull the pain she’d inflicted on all of them to a faint ache.
It would never go away. He had resigned himself to the fact he’d forever live with the fear she’d come back and try to take Mad again. Not that she actually wanted the child she’d given birth to. She’d proven that more than once.
No, his boy only had one parent who loved him unconditionally and Jake would do everything he could to make sure his son never doubted he was loved—wanted.
One of those things was moving closer to the only person left alive Jake considered family.
Drawing in a deep breath, he opened his eyes and slipped the key free of the ignition then climbed out of his truck. He used the walk up Ry’s front path to clear his mind of his troubled thoughts. The last thing he wanted to be thinking about when he went inside was the woman who’d done her best to destroy his—and his son’s—life.
Mind clear, he smiled at the thought of seeing his grinning boy and had one foot on the porch when the front door swung open. Except it wasn’t a smiling Mad who greeted him, it was a frowning Maz.
“Hey, Maz. Thanks for—”
“Good. You’re back. Just in time. I thought we’d have to get Alyssa and Jack to come over.”
Jake cocked his head and arched an eyebrow. “Huh?”
