Keenan
With a soft snore, Ryleigh turned onto her stomach in Keenan’s bed, hugging her pillow tight. He’d been watching her for what felt like hours while he couldn’t sleep a wink.
Since Tommy’s fight and suspension last month, things had finally settled down at school. Mainly, because Bree got involved and confronted her colleague that he’d better step in and finally make an effort to stop the bullying in his class once and for all.
He hated to admit it, but after Tommy finally fought back that one time and knocked that kid’s tooth out, it seemed like Tommy wasn’t targeted anymore.
Tommy sparred with Ryleigh every week, and his son was coming out of his shell again. Over the past weeks, the bond between Ryleigh and Tommy became unbreakable. Because Tommy had finally opened up to them about his mother, Keenan had told Donovan he wanted to hold off reading Evangeline’s file.
After his suspension at school, Tommy had been his priority, not finding his ex who would probably bring another world of trouble with her.
Lying awake at night, he mulled over the reasons Evangeline could have had for leaving his son heartbroken. Over the last weeks it became clear Tommy needed answers for some kind of closure. And Keenan had to pave the way so his son could deal with their mutual demons.
“If you don’t stop sighing, I’m putting you in a headlock.”
He placed a hand upon his chest, startled by her voice in the middle of the night.
“I thought you were asleep?”
“What’s on your mind, Keen? Can I help you?”
“I’ve been thinking about ways to help Tommy, but it all boils down to getting answers from his mother.”
Even though he’d already shared snippets about what happened with Evangeline, he would never feel comfortable to talk about her with Ryleigh.
“You know you can talk to me, right?”
He knew he had to open up to her. If the tables were turned he would have wanted to know about Ryleigh’s ex. Not in every detail, but he’d liked to know where her head was at.
“I… I’ll start at the beginning.”
“That would be great,” she said with the hint of a smile.
“As you know, I grew up quite similar to you. There were a lot of people and fuss at home. Evangeline and I wanted to have a place for ourselves and because I started working for my dad at a young age, I could rent a one-bedroom apartment.”
She hummed against his chest and placed her leg over his while she curled up to him.
“We were nineteen and playing house, really.” He blinked the memory of their crummy apartment away.
“Things were great between us for a year. I was glad to have more alone time, and Evangeline was glad she got away from home. Her parents were fighting all the time and after she moved out, Evangeline’s parents got a divorce and tried to put her in the middle of their fights.”
“She had broken all contact with both her parents by the time we tried to have a baby. It’s what we both wanted, and I guess we’d been too young to realize what a baby would entail for a young couple.”
It all started out so far so good, but he knew he was getting to the point where she had broken his heart. And Tommy’s. His hand on top of her back became clammy, and he wiped it next to her on the bedding.
“Sorry, sweaty palms.”
“It’s okay,” she whispered in the dark. He’d intentionally left the light out for this conversation; he didn’t want to see her pity him.
“Tommy was born when we were twenty-two, almost twenty-three. We were ecstatic and so was the rest of my family. I thought everything was good between us. Right until Tommy was three years old, and she left us. I swear I didn’t see any of this coming. I had no idea she wasn’t happy with us… No idea at all.”
“It must have broken your heart...” she whispered.
“Yeah.”
He closed his eyes and said, “I loved her, Ry. And she left us. She just left her son and never looked back.”
A tear fell from his cheek upon her fingers that rested on his chest, and she wiped it away. He cried, remembering the pain his ex had caused his son. She sniffed her own tears away, affected by his words.