Total pages in book: 198
Estimated words: 186242 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 931(@200wpm)___ 745(@250wpm)___ 621(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186242 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 931(@200wpm)___ 745(@250wpm)___ 621(@300wpm)
The face he made said he hadn’t been expecting that question.
I tried to rush on. “Because you had Amos so . . . unconventionally. So young. You were what? Twenty-six when your friend and his wife asked you to be a donor? Or did you just want to be a dad then?”
Realization dawned on him, and he didn’t have to think about it. “We were twenty, I think, when Billy got into a bad mountain biking accident. He had trauma to his . . .”
“Testicles?” I offered.
He nodded. “Billy’s wife is older than us by eight or nine years—yeah, that face was the same one everyone made back then. It took Johnny a while to get over his friend and his big sister getting together. But, that’s why they were insistent on having a baby then, if they could. I stayed over at his house a lot growing up . . . because I didn’t want to be home,” he explained matter-of-factly. “To answer your question, I didn’t see myself ever getting married. There’s a lot of things I can commit to, but most people will disappoint you.”
I heard that. But I knew not everyone was like that.
Rhodes’s eyes swept over my face as he kept talking. “Besides one girlfriend in high school who dumped me after two years, and a few women I dated but not seriously, I haven’t been in a long-term relationship. I had to choose between focusing on my career or trying to get to know someone, and I chose my career instead. At least until Amos came along, and he became the only thing more important than that.”
More important than his career. It took everything in me not to sniff.
“I always liked kids. I thought I’d be a good dad someday, and when they asked, I thought that might be my one shot at having a real family in case I never met anyone. My only chance at knowing I could be a better parent than mine were. That I could be what I wished they had been.” Rhodes shrugged, but it was a heavy one that pulled at my heart.
So I said the only thing that I could think of. “I understand.” Because I did.
Since my mom, all I had ever wanted was stability. To be loved. To love. I needed an outlet. And unlike him, at least in one way, I’d looked in the wrong place. Held on for the wrong reasons.
There were some things in life that you had to prove to yourself. I had come here for that exact reason. I got it.
Rhodes shifted in front of me and asked, out of nowhere, “Did your ex cheat on you?”
It didn’t feel like a punch to the face this time. This question. When I’d spent a week with an old roadie of Kaden’s when I’d gone through Utah, he had asked me the same thing . . . and it had felt exactly like it. Mostly, I think, because some part of me wished it had been that simple. That easy to explain. Kaden had had women throwing themselves at him forever, and that would have surprised no one.
Luckily, I’d been born with what my uncle called more self-esteem than a group of people combined, but my aunt said that I’d just been so confident in how he felt about me. That I knew better. That Kaden knew better than to cheat on me because he had loved me—in his own easy way. I had never been jealous even when I’d had to stand at the sidelines and people touched his butt and his arm and put spectacular boobs in his face.
I wished, at more than one point, that he had cheated on me. Because I could’ve excused the end of our relationship more easily. People understood adultery and its impact on most relationships.
But that wasn’t what happened.
“No, he didn’t. We took a break once, and I know he kissed someone, but that was it.”
More like his mom had come up with a stupid-ass idea that he’d tried to sell me on. Mom thinks it would be a good idea to be seen with someone else. Out. There’s been posts about me, you know . . . being into guys. She thinks I should go out with someone—just as friends! I would never do that to you. For publicity, beautiful. That’s all.
That’s all.
Instead, that had been the first piece of my heart he’d broken. One thing led to another, me asking if he would be fine if I pretended to go out with someone, him getting red-faced and saying it was different. Blah, blah, blah, I didn’t care anymore. And it had ended with me saying he could do whatever the hell he wanted, but I wasn’t going to stick around. He kept insisting it wasn’t going to be like that, but at the end of the day . . .