His to Take (Wicked Lovers #9)(138)
Author: Shayla Black

What if he’d died in Iowa? What would his legacy have been? Would his father have met him at the pearly gates, shaking his head in disappointment?

Fuck, he hated this much self-examination.

But the tough questions just wouldn’t stop rolling through his head. What had Bailey been feeling when she’d awakened in the hospital to find him absent? Had she been saddened, crushed, or simply resigned? More than a vague shame filled him.

With a curse, he flung himself off the bed and paced to the bathroom. As he flipped on the light, he braced his hands on the bathroom counter and hung his head. He had to find another job. Maybe then he could bury himself, feel nothing . . . and die young and forgotten. Crap, wasn’t that a cheerful thought?

Or, a voice in his head whispered, he could stop having this righteous freak-out, figure out how to put on his big-boy britches, and find Bailey. He could apologize and figure out how to deal with the fact that death was a part of living. Maybe.

Wasn’t that heavy shit?

He looked up at himself in the mirror. Bags sagged around his eyes. Crow’s feet he hadn’t noticed before creased his skin. He had a permanent wrinkle between his dark brows where he frowned. Hell, he even spotted a little gray at his temples. His own mortality didn’t bug him, just the passing of time. One day he’d look up and, if he still roamed the earth, everyone he loved would be gone, if not literally, then figuratively. His mother was aging. What if he wasted the years he had left with her? His sisters had their own lives.

And Bailey . . . He couldn’t expect her to pine for him while he figured out how to get over himself. If it took him another decade to snap out of it, she’d be married, a mom, settled and happy—all without him.

Joaquin stood right in front of the fork in the road. He had to pick a path and take it now. Tomorrow might be too late.

Swallowing his nerves, he flipped on the shower and stripped down. The spray felt good, but he didn’t linger. He had a lot of thinking and driving to do. He also had more than a few phone calls to make.

In twenty minutes, he headed out the door and drove east on Interstate 10, enjoying the cloudless blue seventy-degree day. He didn’t relish three hours of being trapped with his own thoughts, but he figured he needed it. Two phone calls distracted him a bit. Stone made him laugh and gave him the information he needed. As soon as Joaquin hung up, he was right back to realizing just how hugely he’d overreacted yesterday. And how badly he’d screwed up.

Just before he reached his destination, he stopped at a grocery store and picked up some flowers. He had no idea if the gesture would mean anything . . . but Joaquin figured it would at least show that he was trying.

His GPS led him to the right house, and all too soon, he was knocking on the unfamiliar door. Nice place. Good neighborhood. Well kept. Pretty flowers.

Shit, he was really fucking nervous.

He expected his mother to answer the door. That wasn’t who he saw.

“Caleb. Hi.” Okay, that sounded stupid. But how else was he supposed to greet his stepfather, whom he barely knew?

“Hi.” The older man stood, bracing one beefy arm on the door frame and staring at him as if he was as welcome as a salesman. “What do you want?”

“To talk to my mother.” Joaquin didn’t expect this to go easy, but how else could he possibly figure out how to get past the hurdle of his father’s death if he didn’t—gulp—talk to someone who’d been there and suffered more?

“You might have called first,” Caleb drawled.

And give Carlotta Muñoz Edgington a reason to dodge him the way he’d done her for so many years? “Sorry. I just . . . I kind of need to see her.”

Caleb stared at him with those intense blue eyes. Now he knew where Hunter and Logan got their macho. Joaquin resisted the urge to fidget.

“I’ll see if she’s free. But before I let you in my house, I want you to understand, I’m doing this for her. She misses you. But after the way you’ve behaved as long as I’ve known your mother, I’ve got no respect for that.”

Join the club. He looked down, shuffled his tennis shoes against the brick stoop. “I want to make it up to her. I’ve got to start somewhere.”

“You turned your back on your family and left them in the hands of a neglectful, controlling, verbally abusive prick.”

Joaquin gnashed his teeth. “I always hated Gordon. I tried to talk Mamá out of marrying him. She wouldn’t listen.”

“She wanted to provide for you kids in a way she couldn’t alone.”

Joaquin had known that. Watching her ex-husband eat away at her self-confidence and autonomy until he turned eighteen and left the house had just about killed him.