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And it made her chest ache.
Everyone at Gage and Tayler’s had someone to love, except for her. Once again, Ayesha Savea was the odd man out.
The moans grew louder.
The ache in her chest ballooned.
Enough tears ran from her eyes to fill a swimming pool, and the more she tried to hold them in, the more they fell. Eventually, she had to bury her face in her pillow because her cries transformed into loud gagging and coughing hiccups.
Right now, there was no reason to cry, no reason to hurt. Yet tonight, missing Curtis hit her harder than it had since the months following his death; the months she’d dream of him walking through the door, only for her to wake up and realize he was never coming back.
There was nowhere to go to catch a glimpse of him. There was no hope of getting jealous over seeing him with someone else. Even if it had been solely to tear her off his body, she would have taken his ire, his annoyance, and even his disgust to be able to hold him again, one last time.
Before she could no longer muffle the cries—and the last thing she wanted was to wake the boys or for someone to hear her and come searching—she left the bed and searched until she found Josiah’s Bluetooth headphones. Then, after linking them to her phone, she climbed back under the covers and closed her eyes.
Glenn Lewis’ “Fall Again” poured from the headphones, and it wasn’t what she wanted to hear. It was the last thing she wanted to hear.
Still, she let it play.
CHAPTER14
Over the course of the last several months, if Joel wasn’t on assignment, he was in Maui. If he wasn’t in Maui, he was on assignment or preparing for one.
Something happened between him and Sydney back during the Malibu get-together, but Ayesha didn’t ask either of them. She and Joel only discussed Sydney when he brought it up, and she never pried for more than he was willing, and ready, to share at any given moment.
But Joel wasn’t here today, and today was a day she could have used a friend.
“So, because of these behavioral issues, Theo won’t be able to continue here.”
Ayesha held her chin firm.
Theo sat on her lap, fingers in his mouth, staring at his former teacher, Mary Kauai, like once they left, he’d return to remind her what happened to snitches.
There weren’t endless options for childcare in Maui, and this was the fourth place that now said her son couldn’t step back inside one of their classrooms.
At home, he didn’t bite, scratch, or scream, but it was like the minute she dropped him off, he turned into a different child.
Having a careerandbeing a single mother was starting to look as impossible as Curtis’ family told her it would be. And while she didn’t have to work because of Curtis’ payout and life insurance, sitting at home would turn her hair gray before she turned thirty. Plus, she loved what she did for a living.
“Does he not get any discipline at home?” Mary asked.
Ayesha cocked her head to the side. “Do you think that’s your place to ask? You told me that another kid provoked him, and he defended himself.”
“He gets provoked because he’s tiny.”
“He’s tiny because he’s not even two yet.”
The older woman scanned her slowly, a grimace on her golden-brown face. “You know he’s like this because there’s no father in the home.”
Ayesha stood so fast, she barely had time to move Theo to her hip. “He doesn’t have a father in the home because his father is dead.”
“Oh? Then why did his great-grandmother tell me that his real father is some man they saw you leaving a hotel with? A man with a Spanish accent?”
She nearly bit, scratched, and screamed at the woman herself. Hawai’i wasn’t small, and the islands that made up the nation should have been spread out far enough that news didn’t travel at warp speed.
Yes, she’d booked a hotel with a man with a Spanish accent. Yes, she’d slept with that man in that hotel. But that was months after Theo was born. How could a man she’d slept with after Theo was born be his father?
“And Curtis was a massive man,” Mary continued, the grimace stuck to her face. “So why is Theo so ‘tiny’ if he’s Curtis’ son?”
