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“Okay.”
He smiled against my lips, and whispered, “You’re late.” His deep laugh filled the car as I scrambled to get out of it, and his voice followed me out. “I’ll be here when you get off.”
I paused from shutting the door; an ominous feeling slid through my veins like ice. I turned my head slowly to look back at him, and asked, “Promise?”
“Where else would I be, Charlie Girl?” Deacon shot me a look that seemed to stop everything. Time, sound, my heart.
My breath caught in my throat, and a chill spread over my skin like a lover’s caress. I wanted to experience the feeling again and again.
Awareness came flooding back in with a rush, and I hurried to memorize the set of his eyes and his smile. Because I knew . . . I knew a look like that, I wanted to remember forever.
Chapter Fifteen
Charlie
June 24, 2016
I WATCHED KEITH from across the table at Bonfire, the grill in Thatch, my smile impossibly wide as he recounted his version of what had gone down today—complete with use of the Force, since he was, of course, Darth Vader.
He couldn’t go into the hearing unprotected against the ladybug judge, after all.
And I didn’t care.
I didn’t care if he wanted to be Darth Vader or Iron Man or Captain America or Wolverine. He could be whoever he wanted, fight whatever ladybugs he encountered.
Keith was officially mine.
The judge had barely asked more than a handful of questions, and had only glanced at the proof that I’d actually done all that he’d asked. He’d mostly relied on Grey and Jagger’s word, and had talked to Keith without any of us in the room.
Again, I didn’t care.
I had broken down outside the courthouse, tears of joy unlike anything I’d ever experienced streaming down my face, and hadn’t let go of Keith until Jagger had forced me to stand up and walk to my car.
Even then I’d carried Keith, not willing to let him go yet.
Keith had smiled the cheesiest smile and patted my cheek. “Silly Mommy. You’ve always been my mommy!” he’d said after he’d climbed into his booster seat.
“See?” Grey had asked softly from behind me. “Some papers and a judge’s signature never meant anything to him.”
I didn’t know if anyone would be able to understand the significance of today for me, but that was okay, because it wasn’t for them. It was for Keith and me.
As Jagger and Grey pointed out, I had mostly raised Keith. Something I would always be grateful for. But they still didn’t know what I’d gone through. They didn’t know the extent of what Mom had said to make me give up custody. They didn’t know that my mom had often threatened me with taking Keith and running away.
Jagger had thought he was keeping our mother’s true nature from me.
Grey thought she was keeping how evil our mother was from her children.
I’d thought I was keeping Mom’s sick, twisted mind from Jagger.
She hadn’t ever fooled any of us. She’d just fooled us into believing that each of us was the only one who knew what she really was.
After two years of living in fear for that I would wake up and my son would be gone, and knowing I wouldn’t be able to do anything because he wasn’t mine on paper, and then having a judge tell me that I wasn’t fit to have custody transferred to me, the fear that he could disappear at any time never left.
It didn’t matter that I knew Jagger and Grey would never do something like that to me . . . mothers have irrational thoughts when people try to keep them from their children.
But that was all over now.
Keith made a noise as if his lightsaber was powering down, and took an exaggerated breath. “Safe from the ladybugs.”
