Full Disclosure (Homefront: The Sheridans Book 2) (24 page)

~ KIM ~

My fingers drum nervously against my
steering wheel as I sit at the stoplight. I keep telling myself that Ryan’s
cancellation tonight has nothing to do with the load I dropped on him this
week, but I can’t help feeling insecure right now.

That was enough drama for an entire
lifetime, and I’d plopped it on his lap a few weeks into a relationship.

It was too much, too soon—even
though Cass and Allie are defiantly telling me otherwise.

He probably needs a little more time and
space to filter through it. I can’t blame him. He only asked to postpone our
date. Not cancel it indefinitely.

So I’ll just slow things down. Let
him
slow things down.

I hit the doorbell to the school and give
a wave to the camera before I’m buzzed in. Walking down the long corridor to
the room where Connor’s aftercare class is, I try to boost my spirits, taking
in the jack-o-lanterns cut out from construction paper that pepper the walls.

The holiday season is almost here, and
there’s finally a bit of a chill in the air. Before I know it, Connor will be
begging me to put up a tree—our first tree in our own house. I smile
wistfully, wondering whether I should buy an artificial or a real tree.

I’ve never had a real tree, and the scent
of pine during this season always used to fill me with a sense of longing,
having always had a fake one growing up.

Real it is, then.

For a brief moment, I feel a surge of
optimism, thinking about Connor’s and my first Christmas together in our home,
imagining the possibility of Ryan still being in our lives then. I step into
the classroom and spot him sitting next to Hannah doing a word find together.

“Hi, Mom!” he greets me.

“Hi, honey. Hi, Hannah,” I say. “I didn’t
know you’d be in aftercare today. Are your grandparents going to pick you up
later?”

“Yeah. Grandpa has a doctor appointment. And
Dad’s in New York with Amelia. But Grandma promised she’d be here by six to
pick me up.”

I stare at her momentarily. Amelia? “Oh,
okay,” I nearly cough, forcing the words out of my mouth despite the questions
that are collecting in the depths of my throat. “Well, if something comes up
and your grandma can’t pick you up, you be sure to have the school call me,
okay?”

“Okay. Thanks! Bye, Connor!” she calls
out as Connor darts to the wall where his jacket is hanging and pulls his
backpack from his cubby.

“Bye, Hannah!”

I manage a smile as I wave to Ryan’s
daughter. But I feel like the wind has been knocked out of me.

“I thought Grandma was going to pick me
up tonight,” Connor says as we walk out of the school. “I thought I was staying
at her house tonight.”

“Plans changed, Connor. You’re stuck with
me tonight. Is that okay?”

Connor grumbles something inaudible. I
should ask him to repeat himself more clearly, but I can’t. I’m too distracted
by questions that are spiraling through my brain.

Who the hell is Amelia and why did Ryan
cancel last-minute so that he could be with her in New York?

“I really wanted to go to Grandma’s. I
haven’t been there in two weeks,” he whines as I snap his car seat buckles.

“Well, I’ll make sure you go there
sometime soon then, Champ. Maybe tomorrow,” I add, the words feeling more like
a question right now since I have to wonder if I’ll even want to see Ryan
tomorrow after he’s cancelled our plans tonight for some woman named Amelia.

“But Grandma promised that we could make
cookies.”

Moments like these are when being a
parent sucks. I want to yell at him to take his complaint to Ryan, not me. Or
better yet, complain to
Amelia
. But I’m a mom. And he’s just a kid. So I
clamp my mouth shut, even as the name seems to awaken a memory tucked away in a
corner of my brain.

Amelia.

Aimee
. Aimee Peters. The names are pretty close. Could they be
one and the same?

“Mom, she promised—” he starts to
repeat.

“Connor, I’ve had a really rough day. I
just need you to be quiet now, okay?” I snap at him.

He falls silent as I commanded. But he’s
four, and I know it won’t last. And I feel the fuse of my temper is so short
right now.

Ryan’s with Aimee. In New York. It makes
perfect sense.

Of course
as soon as I dump my truckload of drama
on him, he’d rush off to some other woman who probably doesn’t have nearly the
baggage that I do. I can’t even blame him.

But to lie to me about it?

Why not just tell me up front?

My mind drifts, wondering, worrying that
I confided in the wrong person. His word can’t be that great if he sneaks off
to New York to be with some other woman at the first sign of trouble.

But I don’t know this. Amelia could be
anyone. A work colleague. A college friend. A shrink—because God knows I
gave him sufficient cause to need a shrink after unloading on him Wednesday.

My mind drifts and I don’t notice the
light changing. A car honks behind me.

“Oh, fu—” I stop myself,
remembering Connor in the back seat. I came only a hair away from flipping off
that SUV behind me with my kid in the car.

I need to pull it together.

I pull off to the side of the road. “So
you really were looking forward to Grandma and Grandpa tonight?”

“Yeah,” he mumbles.

I nod to myself, pulling my phone out of
my purse. An evening alone might be a very good thing right now.

***

Dropping Connor off at his grandparents
was probably a good decision. I needed some time to myself, to cry, to beat the
pillows on my bed. To feel completely, utterly sorry for myself.

An hour into my sob fest, I’m not even
sure what I’m crying about anymore, though. With Connor at my side nearly every
hour of the day when I’m not at work, I hadn’t really had the time to process
all that had happened on Wednesday. For that matter, I can’t remember really
having much of a chance to cry over what happened to me so many years ago. I
was thrust into motherhood so young, so damn alone, and living some kind of a
lie.

I’m not ready for this—this thing I
have with Ryan. This thing that’s got me impossibly vulnerable and scared to
death.

I need to break it off, I decide, sipping
the last of my half-glass of boxed Chardonnay. I’d get raging drunk right now
if I could, God knows. But I’m still a mom, and I’m on call in case an
emergency arises with Connor at my parents’ house.

Another sob wrenches from me, echoing in
my empty townhome. I resist the urge to call Allie. She and Logan are having
dinner at a place they were thinking about for their wedding reception. I’m not
exactly comfortable breaking up that party.

And Cass? Lord, it’s a Friday night in
New York City. She’s probably out tonight, and I’m certain, getting a hell of a
lot luckier in the man department than I am right now.

Setting my glass down in the sink, I give
myself a nod. I need to break it off with Ryan. Right now. Before my son gets
any more attached to him. Before
I
get any more attached to him.

Because the truth of it—which I see
so much more clearly after three whopping ounces of cheap wine—is that
Ryan Sheridan and I aren’t meant to be together. It doesn’t matter if he’s
wining and dining Aimee Peters right now. It doesn’t matter if Amelia turns out
to be some distant cousin or college friend. It doesn’t matter because a single
mom like me doesn’t belong in the Sheridans’ gilded world. Not with the
mistakes I’ve made.

I expel a moan of dread when I think of
all the gossip at the water cooler next week.
Poor Kim couldn’t even keep
him around a week before he headed right back into the arms of a wealthy,
gorgeous New York socialite
. I never should have let Ryan hold my hand at
that damn festival. In a small town, that was a huge mistake.

Of course, I could quit. I could take
Allie’s offer of working at the shelter. I’d still run into the gossips at the
grocery store, but at least I wouldn’t be facing it from nine to five.

But I can’t take a risk like that. I need
to accept my lot in life. I’m a single mom, knocked up by some rat bastard. I’ve
got no college degree. I’m lucky to have a good job with benefits. What the
hell makes me think I deserve any better than that?

A chill slices through me as I stand in
the middle of my kitchen floor, staring at the counter.

Shit. I can hear Cass’s voice in my ear,
just as though we’re walking across the field of the Buckeye Festival again. “You’re
punishing yourself,” she’s telling me again. “Punishing yourself because you
think it’s your fault.”

I’m not punishing myself, Cass
, I tell the voice in my head.
I know
it wasn’t my fault. I know he raped me. I’ve known for three years now.

But it is my fault, Cass. It is my fault.

I feel the air escape me in a sob as the
memory streams into my consciousness—of me, sitting at my parents’ computer
three years ago, typing in a string of innocent letters into a search engine
and seeing something that would haunt me every day since.

I
am
punishing myself. But not because
I made that date. Not because I took that drink. Not because I got pregnant.

It’s something else completely.

I stare at myself in the mirror. Truth is
like an artichoke—layers and layers and layers before you get to the
heart of it.

I might have poured my heart out to my
friends last week, confided in Ryan on Wednesday, but I’m not facing what I
really blame myself for. Because I
don’t
think I deserve a good man, a
fulfilling job, or a life of reaching for the brass ring.

How long do I punish myself for what I
did—or more specifically, what I didn’t do—before I let myself be
happy again?

I reach for my phone on the counter and text
Allie. “Where does Ryan keep his plane?”

***

The cool late October breeze blows in
through my open window as I sit in my car in the parking lot of our local
airfield. There are only eight cars in the parking lot with me, and that’s
including mine and Ryan’s SUV, making this the smallest airport I’ve ever seen.
I suppose in our area there simply aren’t that many private aircraft owners.

I remember clearly that he said he’d be
back around midnight, though I’m mentally preparing myself to be out here a lot
longer than that. After all, plans change. Look at what happened to my Friday
night date with him. I should have just texted him—told him I wanted to
meet with him—but the idea of him distracted by a text from me while he’s
flying thousands of feet above the earth just didn’t seem like a good idea.

I sigh, my eyes lifting to the clear sky,
absorbing the innate magic of every stunning star that shines down on me right
now.

Then I see it—a light in the sky,
low and bright, its size growing as it approaches the runway.

It might not be him. It could be anyone. But
somehow, I know, with my nerves prickling and senses heightening the same way
they always do when he nears.

Panic bubbles up inside of me, and I
touch the keys that are still in my ignition briefly, considering that I could
just leave right now and talk to him tomorrow like any sane person would. But
before I’m able to talk myself out of it, I open my car door, committed. Determined.

I walk toward what looks like a private hangar
where the plane is taxiing. If it’s not Ryan, I’ll certainly have some
explaining to do. The plane comes to a halt, and my heart lodges firmly in my
throat as my footsteps seem to echo in the hangar, each footfall bringing me
closer to him.

What do I say to him? What am I here for?
Validation, perhaps—needing to know whom this Amelia woman is so that I
can conclude whether I’ve entrusted my secrets to the right man.

But there’s something else, something far
more desperate. The weight I’ve felt on my shoulders the past few years is
pressing down harder on me tonight than ever before, and I need to share my
load with someone—someone I love with an intensity that is just powerful
enough to give me courage now.

At least, I hope so.

In the distance, I see him climb out of
the plane, his tall, broad form making my breath catch just like always.

“Ryan!” I call out to him across the
empty hangar as I approach. He turns and looks at me, a smile sweeping across
his face. It’s not the smile of a man who just came from a date with another
woman.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, his long
strides lessening the space between us.

“I just—” A word interrupts
me—not one that is spoken, but one that is read in thick blue script
along the side of his aircraft.

Amelia
.

I stare at the scrolling letters across
the side of his plane.