Page 35 of Bad Boy Bakers, Vol. 2

Chapter Nine

By the time Grey made it outside, Jonah was already executing a multi-point turn to get his truck out from where it was trapped in the driveway between his and Rebecca’s vehicles. He jammed his feet into his boots, not bothering to lace them as he bolted for the truck, slapping a hand on the hood.

Jonah scowled and rolled down the window. “I’m not going back in there.”

“I’m not trying to make you. Just give me two minutes to move my Jeep so you don’t rut up the yard.”

Nostrils flaring, Jonah jerked a short nod.

Pausing only long enough to tie his laces, Grey trotted to his SUV and got behind the wheel.

Rebecca’s devastated face flashed in his mind.

He didn’t want to leave right now, but he was trained to handle emergencies in triage fashion.

Jonah was the more volatile situation at this moment, so, for the first time in his life, he was going to see to his son. If Jonah would let him.

Feeling utterly ill-equipped to handle this, he scrubbed a hand down his face and backed out of the driveway, waiting for Jonah to do the same.

When the truck peeled away from the curb with a squeal of tires, Grey followed.

Jonah made no effort to shake him. Grey wasn’t even sure he was aware he was being tailed.

After about ten minutes of seemingly aimless driving, he finally figured out where the kid was going.

The long gravel drive had been partly cleared.

When he broke free of the corridor of trees, it was to see the bare patch of land where Rebecca’s grandmother’s house had once stood.

Nothing remained of the structure or the foundation plantings that had circled it, save the burn pile that had been shoved off to one side to dry out.

Jonah was already out of the truck, pacing, hands laced behind his head, before Grey got his own vehicle parked. It was a good choice of location. If he needed to do some yelling about all this, there didn’t seem to be any neighbors around to bother.

The younger man rounded on him as soon as he slid out of the Jeep. “Why did you follow me?”

Ignoring the hostility in the tone, Grey shut the door. “I wanted to check on you. I know you’re not okay. Can’t say I am either. Since we both got blindsided, it seems like a thing we should talk about.”

“What good is talking going to do?” He could hear the thrum of pain beneath the words and hated it.

Moving over to Jonah’s truck, he dropped the tailgate and sat. “Well, not talking about it hasn’t gotten us anywhere good. So…” With an expectant stare, he gestured to the empty space beside him on the tailgate.

After a long, humming silence, Jonah dropped his arms and stalked over. He didn’t sit. Instead, he braced himself, arms folded, on the side of the truck, looking across the bed. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

Understanding he didn’t want the intimacy of eye contact, Grey shifted and looked out at the night. “I don’t want you to say anything in particular. But I figure there are things you need to say. Maybe all the reasons you’re so pissed off, to start.”

Jonah huffed out a breath. “I spent nearly my entire life believing that my father was basically a piece of shit who walked away from our family. Who didn’t think we were worthy.

And even though we found out last fall that the reason he walked away wasn’t what we thought, it still wasn’t good.

He still wasn’t the kind of man I could respect.

That I could be proud to come from. He sure as fuck wasn’t the father we deserved.

We deserved someone who was fucking there.

Someone who had spine enough to do the right thing.

The hard thing. Someone who’d stand up for other people and not take the coward’s way out.

Because that’s what everyone should fucking do. ”

God, how had he ever doubted that this was his kid?

Grey thought about everything Rebecca had told him about what Jonah had done after Lonnie left. How different would the boy’s life have been if he’d simply manned the fuck up and talked to her all those years ago?

“It’s what I should have done.” The shame of it bowed his head.

“You didn’t know. She made sure of that.”

So much bitterness. He’d have to tread carefully here.

“On one level, that’s true. Objectively, I couldn’t be there for someone I didn’t know existed.

But beyond that—and I know this in the deepest part of my gut—your mother didn’t keep us apart out of some malicious intent.

It wasn’t that she didn’t think I deserved to know about you or you about me.

She was trying to do what she believed was best for everyone involved. ”

“How the fuck was this what was best?”

Grey twisted around to look at him. “Would you have made the best decision when you were eighteen and backed into a corner? I met you at twenty-three, and you were still plenty hot-headed. She was young. We both were.”

Jonah scowled, reluctantly conceding the point. “I get why she didn’t say something then. I don’t agree, but I get it. But she sure as shit should have told me later. After Lonnie left.”

“And how would you have taken that news? Your whole world had just been up-ended. The only father you ever knew had just walked away. What would you have done if you suddenly found out, oh, hey, here’s another one in the wings?

I didn’t know about you. Whether she’d told me or not, how would that have felt to you? ”

The scowl got deeper, and Jonah blew out a breath. “Probably a lot like I feel right now.”

“And how well would you have handled that at eight? You’d already been through something traumatic. I’d have been a stranger. Someone else who could disappear and disappoint you. She was trying to make sure it wouldn’t get any worse.”

He lifted his gaze to Grey’s. “If she’d told you, you would have come.”

It meant something to him that his son knew and believed that without hesitation. “I would have. But somehow, I don’t think you’d have welcomed me. Just like I don’t expect you to welcome me now. Despite the existing relationship we have, you didn’t ask for this.”

His throat worked. “Neither did you.”

That hesitation absolutely killed Grey. “I didn’t. But I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t hoped for it.”

“Really?”

For just a moment, he could see shades of the child Jonah had been, and he ached that he hadn’t been here to carry the load he’d taken on at such a young age.

“I mean, not back then. The idea of having a child with Rebecca never even occurred to me after we split. But after I met you? It was hard not to think about all those what ifs and the life I walked away from.”

Straightening, Jonah finally circled around to the end of the truck, sliding onto the tailgate. “You’re awfully calm about all of this.”

“I’m sure that won’t stay the case once I really have time to think about it, but you don’t need me losing my shit on top of you losing yours.”

“Aren’t you pissed about being lied to?”

“Like everything else with your mom, that’s complicated.

I thought I understood all my regrets for ending things with her.

It’s something I’ve carried a long, long time.

But I’m realizing that all that is only the tip of an iceberg.

And I’m gonna be thinking about that, carrying that, for a good long while.

” Grey twitched his shoulders. “But finding out today that there was even more for me to regret doesn’t suddenly make her guilty and me in the clear. We both screwed it up.”

He looked up at the star-studded sky, searching for the right words that might help salvage Jonah’s relationship with his mother.

“I don’t agree with what she did. But I understand it.

I can only imagine how scared she was, and I truly think she made the best decision she could under the circumstances.

There was certainly never any opportune time to bring it up because when I did come back, I saw her pregnant, with Lonnie’s ring on her finger, and I just couldn’t face her.

Not even for some kind of closure. So I left and stayed the fuck away for thirty years.

That’s on me. I don’t know what would have changed, but that’s on me. ”

With a sigh, he looked back at Jonah. “And then there’s Lonnie.

One of my closest friends, who tried to do the right thing in my stead, so I could go do the thing they both thought I wanted to do.

There’s a debt there that I can’t repay.

I know he fucked up, too. And I’m more sorry for that than I can say, because I know what that did to you.

But that’s all past. You and I both know there aren’t any do-overs. ”

They fell into silence, and Grey wondered if Jonah was feeling the cold. He sure as hell was, but he’d stay out here as long as his son needed.

When Jonah finally spoke again, the anger had bled out of his voice. “A part of me feels robbed of the family we could have had. The relationship we could have had.”

Grey nodded. “I get that. But under the circumstances, we’re lucky.”

“Lucky?”

“Yeah. Despite everything, we aren’t strangers suddenly sprung on each other.

We have a relationship. Maybe it wasn’t the one that either of us would’ve wanted or what we would have had if I’d come back sooner, but we’ve had a friendship and mutual respect for most of the last decade.

We got to know each other independently of all this, and I don’t take the gift of that for granted. ”

“There’s something I don’t understand. From what I gather, you basically carried a torch for Mom all these years. When you met me and realized who I was, who she was to me, found out she was divorced—why didn’t you contact her then?”

He wasn’t gonna quit asking the hard questions. Grey figured he had a lifetime of them to make up for, so he didn’t try to evade.