Mason’s mom.
“Confession?” she asked.
He nodded, smiled at the reference to the game they used to play when they were about to reveal something they didn’t want to or wanted to correct a lie.
“I work at a bar at night so I can spend the days with Mason. I don’t feel like I’ve really slept in—well, if you count the pregnancy—almost two and a half years.”
The look of shock on his face had her thinking sharing was a bad idea.
“I know I’m not using my degree,” she said quickly, “but I will. As soon as Mason’s old enough to go to school, I plan to get an office job. And then we’ll have more of a normal life. I didn’t want to miss it—miss this stage. I wanted to be there to see him take his first steps, hear him say his first words.”
And, yes, to watch over him and make sure he wasn’t showing any signs of the disease Bethany had died from. She’d never say that part out loud, but it was just as true.
“Of course, I’m also afraid that I’m doing everything wrong. Maybe I should get a normal job now with regular hours. I worry about being tired all the time. How can I possibly be a great mother on the days I can barely keep my eyes open?”
Dawson’s silence was just about the worst thing right now as they got inside the car and then pulled out of the parking lot without him responding.
His mother’s words echoed in Melanie’s head over and over again until her brain hurt. Leave my son alone. Let him have a life. Don’t trap him with a child that would only make him live every day in fear.
Well, guess what? The secret was out in the open. The ball was in Dawson’s court. He knew he had a son. And now he was as trapped as her parents had been.
“You’re a good mother,” Dawson said, and the note of reverence in his voice took her back.
“How do you know?”
“The way you look at him. The way you want to protect him. Back on the porch you were ready to shoot me. Me.”
“In my defense, I didn’t know who you were at the time,” she said.
“Exactly my point. You didn’t so much as flinch. You’d do whatever it took to keep him safe. You couldn’t possibly be a bad mother. But we’re not even close to done talking.”
She held up a hand as she suppressed a yawn. Yeah, it was a stall tactic. What could she say to him?
Melanie remembered every moment of his sorrow after losing his sister.
Once the baby was born, her emotions had been on a perpetual roller coaster. Should she tell him? Did he have a right to know? Would it break him if the worst case came true? She’d been too exhausted and too emotional to make a rational decision, even though she told herself a thousand times she’d figure out a way to reach out to Dawson. Every time she seriously considered it, an image of him after he lost his sister, the overwhelming sadness had her reconsidering.
Coming back to Mason Ridge had been a colossal mistake. What if Dawson got it in his head that he needed to “do the right thing” and propose? She’d have to refuse. Visions of shared custody and an empty holiday table every other Christmas flooded her and tears instantly welled in her eyes. She was being silly, selfish. She knew that.
A few spilled over, but she’d be damned if she let Dawson see her cry. How many times had she heard her own mother crying herself to sleep at night?
Melanie had no plans to go there. Ever.
* * *
“WHERE ARE YOU taking us?” Melanie asked Dawson, his brain still trying to process everything that had just happened.
“Somewhere safe.” A place where they could take care of the baby and talk. Dawson was owed answers. He would ask more questions, but he honestly didn’t know where to start. Finding out he had a kid was more than a shock and he was trying to wrap his mind around how he felt about the news. Most men had nine months to gear up for parenthood. He’d had the bomb dropped in his lap about an hour ago. Not to mention the fact that he’d missed the first entire year and a half of his son’s life.
Anger. Now, there was an emotion. Dawson was all too familiar with that reaction to the world. He’d be all over it now if he thought raging would do any good. It wouldn’t. One thing Dawson had learned from youth was that no good had ever come out of losing his temper. He had more experience to back that statement than he wanted to admit.
Fear was another emotion ripping through him. What if his son had the same genetic trait Bethany had? What if Mason developed Alexander disease? A ripple of anger burned through Dawson.
Distrust topped his list, as well. People lied all the time. Dawson was ridiculous enough to believe that he and Melanie had a special relationship. If it had been, she wouldn’t have been able to harbor a secret of that magnitude.
The pair had been inseparable as kids. She’d been the only one he could trust when his five-year-old sister had been diagnosed with a terminal illness. His parents had mentally checked out afterward. Not Melanie. She’d been there for him every step of the way.
Sadness and rage had filled the ten-year-old Dawson. He’d been angry at the world for taking away his baby, and she’d been called his baby from the day she was born for how protective of her he’d been.
There’d been endless doctor visits and the agony of watching his baby wither away until she’d closed her eyes for the last time.
Dawson had withdrawn from his friends that year and retreated inside himself into a dark place. Then, out of nowhere, Melanie had shown up. She’d just sat on his stairs every day after school until her parents called her in for supper, never once knocking. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months. Curiosity eventually got the best of Dawson and he opened the door and asked her what she wanted.
“Nothing,” she’d said.
He’d closed the door and gone back into his room, stewing over why anyone would sit there every day on his property if she didn’t have a good reason.
The next day they had the same conversation. After a week, he told her to leave.
She’d looked at him with the same eyes she had now, shivering, and gave him a flat “No.”
When he asked why she wouldn’t leave, she’d replied, “Free country.”
That day, he’d sat down next to her. “You sure are stubborn.”
“I know,” was all she’d said. Then she’d pulled out a stack of basketball trading cards from her coat pocket— collecting had been his passion—and asked him what he’d give for a Topps Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 1976/1977 edition.
Dawson, who hadn’t looked at his cards in almost a year, started negotiating for the forty dollar prize. As he did, the heavy burden he’d been carrying since losing his baby lost some of its grip. That had also been the first night he didn’t cry himself to sleep.
It had taken a little time after that, but he’d eventually regained his bearings. He’d rejoined his friends, the rest of the world, and had shared everything with Melanie since then. He and Melanie had been inseparable until hormones and the demands of his high school girlfriend had split them apart.
Of all the people in the world, Dawson had believed that no matter how much time and space came between them, Melanie would always have his back.
Until now. Until this. Until her betrayal.
Never in his wildest thoughts would he have guessed she would do this to him—denying him his child burned him like a stray bolt of lightning, fast and deep. Hiding his son from him was the worst betrayal. She’d broken every thread of trust that had existed between them in a way that couldn’t be repaired.
Dawson forced his thoughts back to the present as he exited the highway. He’d pulled a few evasive maneuvers to ensure