“The Heart of a Wildflower”
2012 Copyright All Rights Reserved
Chapter 19
For both Zeb and Elizabeth, the world seemed to stop for the next several moments in that small Southern Diner. All time ceased to exist.
Zeb was transfixed by the little boy that looked so much like himself when he was that age. He had no doubt that this was his son.
Elizabeth pressed her hand to her mouth, and for the first time she glanced between father and son, noticing the same similarities. Since Brandon’s visit to the hospital she knew that they shared the same eyes, the same hair color … but this- seeing them together now… it was undeniable.
The little boy was the spitting image of his father.
Nicole’s burning gaze was filled with so much hatred as she stared at Elizabeth. She had her man. He hadn’t even been back in town for a full week and she had already sunk her claws into him.
Not for long though. She didn’t raise the tramps brat for nothing. As soon as Zeb figured out that she was the one who had his son, Nicole knew that she would have him eating out of her hands. She just had to play her cards right.
She didn’t say a word, just let her glare do the talking.
“That’s him, isn’t it? That’s our son?” Zeb finally asked unable to hide the awe in his voice. He stood up from the table and took a step so that he was standing beside of Elizabeth.
She closed her eyes and sighed. She couldn’t lie to him; no she wouldn’t lie to him. He deserved better than that.
He deserved to know the truth. “Yes,” she replied in a pain filled whisper, “that’s him. That’s our… your son, I mean. His name is Brandon.” She forced herself to correct her verbal mistake. She refused to let herself believe that he was her son because in all truth, he wasn’t. She gave up her right to be his mother a long time ago. Nicole was his mother now. No matter how much she may regret it today, she was the one that signed away her rights all those years ago.
“This is incredible,” Zeb remarked, unable to pull his gaze away from Brandon. “The resemblance, I mean. He looks just like I did when I was his age.”
Elizabeth watched Zeb rub his eyes and blink several times as if he couldn’t believe what he was truly seeing in front of him. Despite her own inner turmoil, she couldn’t stop the small smile at the light that lit up his face. It was obvious that with just one look that Zeb had already fallen head over heels in love with his son.
The picture that Zeb made was too much for her to handle. Elizabeth swallowed hard and wrenched her gaze away. This was killing her. He would have made a wonderful father. But by signing away her rights, she took that chance away from him.
She felt a hand touch her shoulder and jumped. Zeb stood tall beside her and was frowning.
“What exactly do you mean by your son, Elizabeth? You gave birth to him, you are his mother.”
She started to shake her head. She didn’t want to get into this right now. She was not his mother, not anymore.
Tears burned behind her eyes yet again and she forced them not to fall. She had certainly reached her emotional quota for the month when it came down to breakdowns and tears.
She picked up a napkin off the table and started to tear it apart into little pieces. It kept her mind off the tears and helped her focus more on her words. “It means exactly what I said, Zeb. He is your son. I signed my rights away years ago.” Her voice trailed off in a softer tone, a tone that bared all of her insecurities. “ I won’t let myself forget that.”
Zeb stared at her, looking for the right words to say when a child like yelp caught his attention. They both turned back towards the door just in time to see Nicole drag Brandon roughly by his shirt collar towards an empty table in the corner.
Elizabeth gasped and turned her head. She hated this. How could anyone be so cruel?
The sound of Zeb slamming both of his fists down on the table caused her to jump in her seat.
“Damn it!” he cursed and she flinched. This was her fault and now Zeb knew it. He would blame her for allowing their son to end up in the hands of that woman. And she couldn’t blame him. He wasn’t here to say that he wanted to keep their son; she made the decision for him. Now a little boy was paying for her thoughtless mistake.
“Zeb, I’m so sorry,” she started to apologize and the white hot fury in his eyes cut her off.
“What the hell is Nicole doing with our son?” he asked through gritted teeth.
She was suddenly taken aback. He didn’t look at her with accusing eyes. Instead, he was glaring in Nicole’s direction.
Yes, she could tell that he was pissed off but she got the feeling that his barely restrained anger wasn’t directed at her.
Elizabeth didn't answer him immediately. Since the hospital visit that was a question that she had asked herself. When the silence started to get the best of her, she slowly lifted her head and pinched the bridge of her nose out of sheer irritation over her sense of helplessness that engulfed her. She then told him the only answer she had been able to come up with. “Well, I guess she would be the one that adopted him.”
His fist pounded the table a second time and she couldn’t stop her knee jerk reaction of jumping in her seat. She was at a total loss for words. What the hell could she say? She didn’t like it either but there was nothing she could do about it. Elizabeth closed her eyes wishing for the first time in a really long time that her life could have turned out differently. So many decisions made have led to this cluster fuck that she now calls her life.
When she finally opened her eyes she saw Zeb watching her again. His eyes seemed so much softer. He reached out and grabbed her hand. For just a minute she let herself revel in the heat of that simple touch. It felt so nice, so comfortable and so perfectly right.
“Look Lizzie, I’m the one that is sorry,” he told her and she could hear a hint of sadness ringing his words. He glanced back at the pair sitting on the other side of the room and she saw a deep longing resonating in his eyes; a longing for something that he couldn’t have. “I can’t stop myself from thinking that maybe if I had just called you or told you how I really felt then maybe things with us would have been different. I thought I was doing right by you by giving you your independence. My silence led you to believe that I didn’t care and I won’t ever be able to forgive myself for that.”
Elizabeth listened to him speak while watching Nicole chatting away rather loudly on her phone while Brandon sat in front of her quietly with his face turned to the table.
Zeb squeezed her hand. “I didn’t mean to take my anger out on you, baby. It’s just that something’s not right about any of this. What are the odds that Nicole, an old flame that I dumped more than once, would end up adopting our child? There were times that I even called her a stalker.”
That little bit of information caught Elizabeth off guard. She knew that Nicole had a thing for Zeb because he told her. She even witnessed her desperate attempts to gain his attention at the airport six years ago and then again the other night at the honky-tonk. But stalker?
“What do you mean when you say stalker?” she asked him curiously.
Zeb’s thumb started to trace lazy circles on the back of her hand, igniting a path of delicious tingles that heated her blood as well as a few other sensitive places.
He sighed. “You only know the half of it, Lizzie.” Zeb rearranged himself in his seat and looked like he was preparing himself to tell her something that she wasn’t sure she really wanted to hear.
“Well,” she replied, hoping she sounded braver than she felt. “Why not tell me the all of it?”
Zeb used his free hand and ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. It hadn’t grown out much and stood up in messy disarray. “It’s a long story that starts back when we were in high school…” he started and then suddenly stopped.
At first she thought that might be the end of it so she made a show of looking up pointedly at the clock before turning back to Zeb. She patted the hand that was covering her own in a way that she hoped conveyed trust and comfort. “That’s okay; we’re both here and it looks like we have plenty of time.”
A masculine grunt escaped his lips. “You would think that. I think that you’re just looking for another excuse so you can try and get rid of me.”
“And I think you are trying to change the subject,” she shot back at him. She had a feeling that this was something that she needed to hear and she wouldn’t let him hide from her now.
He knew exactly what she was doing. He shuffled his feet against the floor and muttered a curse strangled curse under his breath.
“Dammit, Lizzie! You have been trying to find a reason to not be with me since we first reconnected at the garage. I told you that I was done with that shit. I am here until I can convince you to be my wife and that’s the end of it.”
She watched his steady gaze and saw the determination clearly in his eyes. Okay, maybe he really was scared that if he told her what happened with Nicole, she wouldn’t want him anymore. Yesterday she probably would have agreed with him; today- today was different. She felt like this was something she needed to know so she could understand the man sitting before her.
“Alright,” she conceded. “Maybe you have a point about me hunting for reasons to get you out of my life.”
He groaned and she immediately tugged on his hand. “Hold up and hear me out. I’m not done yet. Maybe, I wasn’t ready to face my feelings. When you left, you hurt me Zeb, a lot. I know that wasn’t your intention but that is what happened. It took me a long time to get over than hurt. Now, well now I think I’m ready to face those feelings.”
She stared down at the table. This was so not the conversation that she wanted to be having right now but it was the words that he needed to hear.
Trying to be strong, she plowed on. The more she thought about it, the more she needed to know. “I also think you may be onto something with Nicole and this stalker issue. Don’t you think that it’s more than a little weird that
Nicole, of all the people in the world ended up with our child?”
Zed nodded which is what she hoped he would do and she pushed again. “So, please explain it to me. Tell me what happened. Who is this woman? I promise that I won’t hold anything against you. I just want the truth.”
At first she didn’t think he would tell her anything. He just stoically sat there looking at her, but yet not really seeing her. It was almost as if he was seeing through her. “Fine,” he finally whispered and sat back in his seat.
“It started at the beginning of our senior year of high school. We were at the bowling alley when we first hooked up is probably the best way to put it. We’d both had too much to drink and she offered and I wasn’t one to turn a piece of ass away.” He paused momentarily to see if Elizabeth looked disgusted with him. For the last week he had been telling her how much he loved her and the last thing he wanted was for her to have any doubt about his intentions.
She smiled, knowing what he was doing. “That was six years ago,” she told him. “ It’s not a big deal with me. From what I could remember you actually hooked up with a lot of people that year.”
She waited for him to continue. When he remained speechless she prodded him, “and…”
With those words he visibly relaxed and continued with his story. “It started with a few texts and then a few calls. At first I sort of liked the attention but it was a one night stand. Then she started showing up everywhere I went. I told her time after time that she had been fun but that night was nothing more than a simple roll in the hay. She cursed me and said that it was something more. I changed my phone number and every time I saw her, I went the other way. Towards the end of the year I thought she finally got the message when I didn’t see her anymore. But then she showed up at the airport begging for me to take her back. You only saw half of the scene before you took off running.” This time he squeezed her hand and smiled as she remembered her obvious wrong interpretation of the situation.
“I told her no way and pushed her away from me after she tried to kiss me. Nicole caused a huge scene right there in the middle of the airport and claimed that she was pregnant with my child. Even at the time I knew that was impossible because it had been seven months since we had been together and she was not sporting a baby bump. If she was pregnant at the time then I knew it wasn’t mine. As the security guards carried her away she swore then that I would marry her someday; and I turned my back to her, regretting that one night that I gave in and had sex with her. I continued to get letters from her while I was overseas but I never once opened any of them.
Every last one was used as kindling for my fires. And now-” He took a breath, shrugged his shoulders and looked exhausted all at the same time, “Well, you saw for yourself what she did at the bar. She has no intentions of giving me up. I can’t help but wonder if she somehow found a way to get her hands on our child with hopes of trapping me.”
Zeb dropped his head while Elizabeth absorbed all of this information. He had a good point, a really good point.
She had even asked herself that same question but just figured that fate had a hand in how it all played out and she tried not to dwell on the why of it. Nicole was Brandon’s adoptive mother no matter how many times she asked herself that same question.
But now that they were openly talking about it she realized that didn’t make any sense. How did Nicole, of all people, manage to adopt a healthy newborn male? Out of all the desperate couples in the world, she was a single girl, one who would have only just turned eighteen. She could barely take care of herself, much less a baby. This made absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Zeb shifted in his seat uncomfortably. “Something is wrong with this the whole scenario. The pieces of the puzzle just don’t fit.” He drummed his fingers against the table. “And I guarantee you one thing. I intend to get to the bottom of it very soon.”
He lifted the back of her hand to his lips and placed a tender kiss there. Again, she felt the heat thicken the blood in her veins. When he lifted his head she saw the conviction in his expression. Zeb would figure out what happened. The heat from the kiss on her hand lingered and goose bumps prickled along her spine. For the life of her, she couldn’t look away from him.
She wasn’t even sure she wanted to look away from him.
The waitress cleared her throat, interrupting their moment to take our orders. Zeb easily ordered for them both, and throughout the rest of the meal their conversation turned away from Nicole and focused on more remedial topics. Although they both avoided the most pressing subject at hand, Brandon was always in their minds. They both stole glances of their son from time to time and at the same time actively ignored Nicole, knowing that it was their attention that she wanted most.
Elizabeth couldn’t stop imagining a time that Zeb, Brandon and she could be sitting at his very table enjoying a lazy dinner as a family. The scene played over and over in her head.
While they waited for the waitress to return with Zeb’s change he leaned over the table and brushed his hand lightly over her cheek. “You are so beautiful when you smile like that, sweetheart.”
Her grin widened, if that was even possible. Hearing him tell her that she was beautiful did something to her insides. Before she could respond his head dipped and his mouth feathered against her lips so tenderly.
“Excuse me,” the waitress interrupted again. Zeb leaned back and she blushed. “Here’s your change.”
“Thank you ma’am.” Zeb accepted the change and stood up, walking around the table to stand beside Elizabeth. He offered her his hand and she grabbed hold of it without hesitation. He pulled her up, and at the same time she looked back and realized that Brandon and Nicole were both now gone.
She couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed that she didn’t see them leave and her shoulders slumped a little lower.
Zeb tucked her into his side and bent down so that he would whisper in her ear. “Don’t give up. I will find a way to get him back. I will put our family back together again, very soon.”
She put on her brave face and nodded. He could try but she knew that it would be no use. She signed the papers making it all very legal.
But even as he said the words she couldn’t help the small flower of hope that began to bloom in the back of her mind. Did she dare feel? For the first time in a very long time she wanted to feel hope. Hope for something more- something that she thought would always be just out of her reach.
A family.