Trailer Park Heart

“More, huh?” he chuckled.

“More,” I confirmed. “I need more.”

“So greedy.” But his kisses told me he approved. A second finger joined his first and I knew it wouldn’t take much for him to do that all over again. And I couldn’t help but look forward to it. To the way he would make my body sing and react and explode again and again.

That was the moment my mom decided to come home. Like a hurricane, she crashed through the front door, forcing Levi and I to jump apart. His hand disengaging from my pants at the same time I grasped blindly for my sweatshirt.

My face flamed red, spreading quickly over my entire body as my mom surveyed the situation on the couch and the rolling credits for Star Wars behind us.

“Where’s Max?” she asked, barely acknowledging Levi on the other end of the couch. His hands were rubbing nervously over his thighs.

Quickly pulling on my sweatshirt, I mumbled, “Sleeping, geez. Don’t you knock?”

“Don’t you learn?” she grunted. “He’s going to knock you up again if you’re not careful.”

Her words boomeranged around the room exploding against my wall of silence. I’d never told her who Max’s dad was. I didn’t even know she had suspicions. And I really didn’t know she’d gotten it wrong.

I felt Levi’s entire body stiffen and still. His head turned, and his stare bore a hole into the side of my head.

“Mom,” I protested weakly, barely able to put sound behind my words. “Levi isn’t…”

Levi’s angry voice cut through my feeble attempt to rectify the situation. “Again?”

I couldn’t find the courage to look at him. My insides wobbled with fear. “Not again,” I whispered.

“Not me again, you mean.”

“Levi…”

He pushed off the couch and stormed through my living room. It only took him five steps before he reached the door and wrenched it open.

“Fuck,” I winced as it slammed behind him, shaking the thin walls and windows.

Out of habit I looked toward Max’s room and waited for his woken-up-cry-of-protest. It never came.

“It’s not him?” my mom pondered in the kitchen as if none of what just happened surprised her. I supposed dealing with strippers all night and the men that traveled from all over the county to watch them did that to a person though. Jaded them. “I could have sworn it was him,” she went on. “Max looks just like him.”

I gaped at her, my mouth coming unhinged. Levi’s truck door ripped open and it was enough to move me into action. I launched myself out the door after him.

He drove a big ass truck, like most of the men in my part of the world. He’d cranked the engine by the time I jumped on the sideboard, my fingers curling around his window frame.

He jerked at the sudden sight of me, but I couldn’t feel bad when I had so much to say.

The window rolled down and his growled, “What?” would have sent a lesser woman running.

Or just a normal, rational thinking person. But I was none of those things. Not only did I have some explaining to do on my mom’s behalf, but I had my son to protect. And that was the most motivating factor of all.

I wouldn’t let Max become town gossip—any more than he already had been. I wouldn’t let Levi storm back into town spouting off nonsense he didn’t fully understand because he was mad.

Max deserved more.

And so did Levi, to be honest.

It was time to come clean. And hope that the fallout didn’t crush me in the process.

“Can we talk?” I asked humbly. “Please?”

His jaw ticked as he ground his teeth together. “I suspected,” he said as way of an answer. “The first time I saw Max I knew he was familiar. His smile. His eyes. I just… I couldn’t bring myself to admit it out loud.”

“Please let me explain,” I whispered, not denying any of it.

He tilted his head toward the passenger seat. I ran around the front before he could drive away. It wasn’t the easiest climb into the cab, especially with bare feet, but I made it inside before he’d peeled away.

It was drastically warmer inside. I hadn’t realized how cold it was outside until I was sitting beneath the blast of his vents. They did nothing to heat the air between us though. We’d been on fire only minutes ago and now we were the makings of an iceberg, the hidden mountain between us growing bigger and bigger by the second.

He stared straight ahead, his hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles turned white. “You’re here to talk, Ruby. So, talk.”

Only now that I was in here, I was finding it hard to form the right words. There were so many things to say, so many explanations to give. I had no idea where to start. Finally, after another steadying breath, I admitted, “I’ve never told anyone. Not even Coco.”

“Not even your mom,” he added snarkily.

“Especially not my mom,” I snapped. “She wouldn’t have ever seen Max as a grandson then. He would have been a meal ticket… a paycheck. If she’d ever known who his father was, she would have exploited him to the very last cent.”

“That’s why you kept it a secret? You were protecting my family?” His voice dipped and twisted, turning his questions into sarcasm instead of honest curiosity.

“To protect him, Levi.” I closed my eyes and forced the next few words out. “And myself.”

“You’re going to have to do a better job of explaining yourself. My patience is running thin and you’re not making any sense.”

He was right. And that killed me to admit. It gutted me to even consider that I had been wrong, that I had messed up. But, I owed him the truth at least. It wasn’t up to me what he did with it, but he deserved to know. I would handle the consequences later.

“Logan.” The name filled the car like the ghost of the man himself. It hovered in the air, sucking up all the oxygen and casting this sparking, fizzing thing between Levi and me in a harsh, poisonous light. “Max’s dad is Logan.”

“How do you know?” Levi grated out. He knew Max was Logan’s. He’d already said he’d seen the similarities the first time he met my son. So, I saw his question for what it was—absolute confirmation. He wanted the details. He wanted all the reasons to hate me.

“It was graduation night,” I explained. Levi went still again, his muscles turning to stone, his mouth pressed into a tight frown, his eyes forward, on the double wide I’d called home my entire life. “He was my first,” I breathed out. “And my last for a very long time.”

“After I kissed you?” Levi asked in a quiet voice.

I didn’t want to answer this question, not after everything that had happened that night, not after everything that had happened since he’d come back to town.

“You had a girlfriend,” I defended weakly. “I thought… I assumed you were messing with me. And I had a crush on Logan. I’d had a crush on him for so long I was convinced I was in love with him. He was… he was an easy guy to fall for.”

“Unlike me,” Levi bit out, a harsh laugh following.

“You had a girlfriend,” I repeated. “We were at her party.”

“I broke up with her that night!” he exploded back. “I left you for a minute, to end it with her. When I went back you weren’t there, but I didn’t think you… I didn’t think you would… I tried to call you all summer. Goddamn it, Ruby.”