Page 128 of Fierce-Jax

“Thanks, Jax,” she said. “I needed to hear that. My parents have me all over the place. My father is ready to build a wall around my house to not let anyone in. My mother agrees one day and then the next says she’d continue to fight if it was her to see a grandchild she just found out about.”

“You feel guilty,” he said. “Right?”

“I think guilt is part of being a parent,” she said. “I don’t know the right thing to do. I want to honor Alec’s wishes.”

“It’s not like he thought of you or your child when he did what he had,” he said.

She looked at him and frowned and he should have kept that to himself, but he couldn’t.

“You don’t think I haven’t thought of that too?” she asked. “That’s part of the guilt in this. I think I just need to wait for their next step, then go from there.”

“Then that is what you do,” he said. “And put it from your mind. As best as you can.”

“Easier said than done,” she said. “But it’s all I’ve got.”

40

TRYING TO UNDERSTAND

“Ithink you’re making a mistake,” her mother said two weeks later.

“You’ve said that a few times,” Dillion said. “But it’s my decision and I could have come alone, but I didn’t.”

She’d gotten the letter from Martha Cannon a few days after the thirty-day mark just as she’d expected. Not from an attorney, but listing an attorney’s name and stating that she’d like to meet and talk first, and if they didn’t, within three weeks she’d start the legal process.

She’d told Jax about the letter.

She’d passed it on to Trent.

Then she’d reached out to Martha via certified mail to meet this afternoon an hour outside of Durham for lunch.

She’d told no one what she was doing at first.

But she didn’t want everyone pissed at her and realized that it’d be stupid on her part to go alone.

“I would have kicked your ass if you came alone,” her mother said. “You have no idea what you’re walking into. Neither of us does. I’m scared. How come you’re not?”

She looked at her mother next to her in the car. “Do you think I’m not? It’s why we are sitting here and waiting for her to arrive to see if she’s alone or not. My letter said alone, mother to mother.”

“But I’m with you,” her mother argued.

“And you’re a mother. And Gianna’s grandmother. I don’t want Alec’s father here. If he’s with her, we aren’t going in. If it comes back to bite me in the ass for doing this, then so be it.”

“It shouldn’t. If you said only her and he shows up. But again, you didn’t say I was coming.”

“I worded it so that we’d be covered,” she said.

“I’m a mother. Got it.”

“There she is,” she said, pointing to the woman she’d searched for on social media to see what she looked like. “She looks to be alone and we’ve been sitting here for thirty minutes.”

“She’s early. We’ve got fifteen minutes. Are we going to stay here or go in?”

“We are waiting until exactly noon,” she said. “Just in case someone else goes in.”

She’d seen what Alec’s sister, Alison, looked like too on social media. Nothing alike in her eyes. But she figured with the three hours they’d had to drive, they would have come in one car.

Her mother’s foot was shaking the car it was moving so fast. “How can you be so calm?”