Page 1 of Playing With Temptation

CHAPTER ONE

I was not fleeing.

I was not fleeing.

Life would be better in Georgia. Lucas would make friends—he was smart and outgoing, and wouldn’t have any problems. Ten was the perfect age. He’d make new friends before the dreaded middle school started. So it had to be now. Before the cliques started, friend circles formed, and it would be tougher to break in.

I was not fleeing.

Lucas would have his grandma close. We’d have Sunday dinners—make traditions. I’d get to see my mom more than twice a year.

This was good.

This was the way it should’ve been. I should’ve done this a long time ago, right around the time Lucas’s dad noped out of being a dad. When he told me it was him or the baby, and if I chose the baby, he would have no part of parenthood or support, and if I wanted the baby, I didn’t get to keep him.

No question, no hesitation, I chose the baby.

Exit Mark. Enter Lucas.

I was not fleeing.

I was going home.

I was giving my son a better life.

A backyard—something he’d never had.

“Thirty-minute warning,” I told Lucas as I drove through Jesup.

Bittersweet memories flooded as I glanced in my rearview mirror to make sure Lucas heard me.

The very first high school football game my mom let me go to had been right here in Jesup—Liberty County Panthers against Wayne County Yellow Jackets. Game one of the junior varsity season. It was the one and only JV game Jase Turner had played in before he’d been moved up to varsity, and I’d have to wait another year until I was in high school to watch him play again.

My first crush.

My first love.

My first kiss.

My first everything.

“Dude, Mom, I’m right in the middle of an epic battle,” Lucas protested.

“Dude, Son, you’re already three hours over your limit.”

The last thing someone would accuse me of is being a strict parent. It wasn’t like my kid was feral; I had rules, just not very many of them. And since the majority of the time Lucas followed those to the letter, I was lax on everything else. Except screen time. He had one hour a day on his tablet. No phone. And after dinner and homework he was allowed to watch TV until bedtime on the weekdays. However, on the weekends, the TV stayed off.

Music was a different story; he could have the radio on or listen to my vinyl whenever he wanted. This meant my kid had exceptional taste in music. He was like me—no favorite genre, it was all about the lyrics.

“Do you think Gigi made her world’s best carrot cake?”

“I think your Gigi knows you’re a growing boy and is excited to see you so, yes, she made you a welcome home carrot cake, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a pan of lasagna in the oven.”

Mark might not have been happy to learn I was pregnant, but once my mother had gotten over the shock that her twenty-five-year-old unmarried daughter was pregnant, she’d been ecstatic to become a grandmother.

Her shock had nothing to do with disappointment or failed expectations or judgment. It was simply shock that her daughter who had once upon a time ruthlessly planned, made a pros-and-cons list before any big decision, and overthought pretty much everything, had seen a plus sign on a test and made an instant decision. No list, no planning, no analyzing every possible outcome.

Since then, motherhood had broken me of over-planning my life.