Page 3 of Right the Wrongs (Broken Vows #5)

Chapter Two

Griffin - Past

My truck growls as I push it to the limits, as I lead foot my way across town.

My hands would be shaking if I weren’t white knuckling the steering wheel.

It only takes me a couple of seconds to guess the likely state I’m going to find my son in, considering his car is in the front yard with the driver’s door open.

The interior lights are off, which means the battery is probably dead. He had been driving a beautiful Mustang until I found out he’d manipulated Wren into spending the insurance money she got after both of her parents died in a car accident when she was seventeen.

As if pushing her to spend the money her parents intended to use to take care of her wasn’t bad enough, he also ran up a bunch of other debts in her name that she didn’t know about.

Selling the car was a small step to digging her out of the hole my selfish son had put her in, but it was a move in the right direction.

Apparently, my son only cared about that hunk of metal because, since I pushed Wren to sell it, he’s fallen further and further into his addictions.

For a moment, I had hope that he was coming around, but it appears that, as with most things concerning my son, I was wrong.

A tightness squeezes my chest, and for a second, I think I might be having a heart attack.

It’s not the first time it’s happened, and I’ve found myself googling what a panic attack feels like.

Death, apparently, because for the few seconds anxiety grabs hold of me, I feel like I might actually be kicking the proverbial bucket.

I can’t tell Wren about it, because she would get the wrong idea.

I’m thrilled that we’re having a baby. I never thought I’d get a second chance to have a whole family.

While some people dream about making a lot of money and all of the material things that wealth can bring, I only ever wanted to have a family of my own.

I wanted to create for my kids what I didn’t have growing up.

Sure, my parents were still married, but only because they were too apathetic to get a divorce.

They accepted their poverty early on and escaped with alcohol.

I was just there, an accident they had just resigned themselves to dealing with.

I’m ashamed to say that Liam didn’t get the life I had wanted to give him.

His mother cut and ran when he was two years old.

I didn’t escape with women, booze, or drugs, but I clearly wasn’t enough to give him a foundation to lead a successful life.

That is precisely what is causing my body to test drive a heart attack, because what if I will never be enough? What if I go on and ruin another child?

I know Wren isn’t Melinda. She isn’t going to walk out one day and leave her child behind.

I don’t have the tiniest doubt that she is going to be an amazing mother.

It’s me I’m worried about. She’s already had enough heartbreak in her twenty-four years.

First losing her parents, then being, well, abused is the only word for how my son treated her.

Not that I can give her back the five years she lost being married to Liam, but I can spend every day of the rest of my life trying to make it up to her.

I’m afraid I’m going to have even more to make up to her if Mr. Palmer was telling the truth and Audrey really did drop off the baby with Liam.

I don’t even trust him to take care of himself, much less a newborn.

But how do I ask my pregnant wife to help me look after the baby born from the affair between her ex-husband and former best friend?

If I don’t step up, what will happen to little Natalie?

No matter what the circumstances surrounding her birth, she’s innocent, and she’s still my granddaughter.

The front door isn’t locked, so I let myself in.

As soon as I open the door, I’m assaulted by a horrible stench.

It’s a mixture of vomit, piss, shit, and cheap beer.

Just inside the living room, I find a red-faced baby waving her arms and legs around in a fit of anger, but she’s obviously cried herself hoarse by this point and is barely making a sound.

Her diaper is leaking all over her. She’s soiled and in desperate need of a bath to keep from getting an infected rash.

However, she is not the only source of the foul smell. Liam is lying in the hallway in a puddle of his own vomit, and he’s also pissed himself. Thankfully, his chest is still rising and falling, which means he’s going to live long enough for me to kill him.

I kick him in the thigh. He groans, but doesn’t wake up. More than fed up with his shit, I fill a pot with water. It’s one of the few things that is actually clean in this place, probably because my useless son has completely forgotten how to make food.

I toss the water on his head. He sputters and starts to wake up.

Finally, after a couple of false starts, he sits up and shakes the water off his face.

Bits of vomit fling out of his hair and plop onto the walls and floor.

All the research I’ve been doing to stay calm when dealing with a stressful situation almost leads me to take a slow, deep breath in through my nose, but the stench in here is threatening even my iron stomach.

“Dad?” Liam slurs.

“Wake the fuck up,” I growl.

“What crawled up your ass?” Liam mumbles to himself as he tries and fails to stand.

I pinch the bridge of my nose as a reminder not to breathe in right now.

Pointing back to the living room, I clench my jaw using all the self-control I have not to shout at him and say, “Your baby is sitting in a dirty diaper, probably for hours. She’s cried so much she’s lost her voice.

Do you even give a shit that your child is suffering because her father is such a miserable drunk that he’d rather lie in a puddle of his own puke and piss than be man enough to step up and take care of her? ”

At least he doesn’t try to argue with me. He flops against the wall and hangs his head down. “Natalie is here? Honest to God, Dad, I didn’t know. I went out last night with a couple of the guys from school and overdid it a little. Audrey must have snuck her in when I was sleeping it off.”

I shake my head. “Sleeping it off implies that you went to bed.” I hold my arms out wide.

“You’re in the fucking hallway. When is it going to be enough?

Natalie could have died, or she could have sat here for a few more hours until someone bothered to miss you and found her sitting in her own shit not far from the dead body of her father.

If you’d passed out on your back or face down, you could have choked on your own vomit. That’s all it would have taken.”

I’m pacing now. “I saw your car in the yard. The door is open, so the battery is probably dead. I’m guessing that your brilliant ass decided to drive home shit faced. You were clearly bad enough that you didn’t even park the fucking car. What if you’d killed someone?”

If it were possible for a person to shrink, my son was doing so in front of my eyes.

Not that I have hope that a single word I’m saying will sink into his dense skull.

Still, there’s something cathartic about unleashing all of the fears I’ve been holding in where he is concerned.

That tight band across my chest loosens slightly.

It’s not gone. There’s still the voice whispering far back in my mind that I’m the one who broke Liam, and I’ll only do it again to my new baby.

I don’t have the time to listen to that right now, and I certainly am not going to be a little bitch and run off on my wife and child.

I won’t be like Liam or my parents and hide inside a bottle either.

Life happens whether you face it or not. I’d much rather brave the storms, because if you hide, you’ll miss the sunny days too. As I pick up the baby carrier, I realize that I’m heading straight into the eye of a massive storm.

“I’m at the hospital with Natalie,” I shout into the phone.

Calling Charlie seemed like my only choice.

He might have busted my balls when Wren and I first got together, but he’s never not had my back.

The only thing I didn’t think about was how loud it is at the shop and that I’d have to shout into the phone to try and have any hope of him hearing me over the constant noise of machines while he and our younger mechanic, Julio, work on cars.

Business has been booming. That’s why we’re expanding to another location.

Right now, there’s enough work at the Harriston shop, even as small as the town is, for four mechanics to be working full time.

They were already at a disadvantage when I left to open the Centralia garage, but with Liam disappearing on benders, there’s far too much for the remaining two mechanics.

If I ask Charlie to drop everything and meet me down here, he absolutely would.

Then he would go back and work late into the night to make sure that the car he’s working on still gets done when he promised it would be.

I know a lot of people write him off as a carefree playboy, but he’s actually one of the most solid guys I know.

He would have my back, just as he has since we were kids, and not say one word about the plans he had that he’s now going to have to cancel because he stayed by my side. That’s what makes him my best friend, but if I were to ask him to do that, I would not be acting like his.

The sound on the other end of the phone quiets down. “I stepped outside.”

I can hear him exhale, which means he used my call as an excuse for a smoke break. I open my mouth to lecture him for probably the billionth time, but decide to pick my battles. There will be a next time for that fight.

“Did you say that you’re at the hospital? Why?” he asks.