“You love him,” Neesa said in a singsong voice.
Sylvie swatted her cousin on the arm. “I do not. I like him, at least, I thought I liked him. But I don’t love him. People don’t fall in love this fast.”
Neesa clucked her tongue again. “You have love written all over you right now. That’s why you’re so bundled up in all these emotional knots, and why you’re so upset. You screwed up. You’re human. That’s what you need to tell him.”
Sylvie moved back against the couch and shook her head. “Oh no, Neesa, I think we’re too far gone for that. He’s leaving town. I’d be surprised if he wasn’t gone already. You weren’t here. What we said to each other was nasty. It’s not something that you can just forgive and forget. Like I said, there was talk about lawyers and courts and everything. He even tried to pay me off with a $10,000 check.”
Neesa’s eyes widened. “He gave you $10,000? Did you take it?”
Sylvie pointed at the shreds of paper on the floor near the door. “What do you think?”
“Can we tape it back together?”
“I don’t think a bank would take a taped-up check.”
Neesa sighed. “$10,000 would have made a nice little nest egg for you and the boys. You could have paid off a bunch of the debt from the shop and cut back your hours to be able to spend a lot more time with them.”
“That’s not what he was giving me the money for, Neesa. That money was for the boys, and he can put it in a trust fund just as easily as he can give it to me. I don’t need his help, and I don’t want it. Heath Collins can take his fat checks and go fly a kite.”
Neesa watched her with a frown. “I don’t think a judge would see it that way. If support gets ordered, you’ll have to take it.”
“Do me a favor and don’t talk about judges tonight.”
“You’re a proud woman, Sylvie Jones. I really hope that doesn’t come back to bite you in the butt someday.”
Sylvie looked forlornly at her cousin and friend. “I’m pretty sure it already has.”
Chapter Thirty
HEATH STOOD AND STARED OUT the massive windows that lined one wall of his Seattle office. He looked at the skyline which, at one time in his life, had brought him a sense of comfort. He had stood in the same spot and known he was on the top of the food chain. Now, he felt beaten, driven down to the bottom of the pecking order … and he’d been the one doing all the pecking.
He’d made a mistake with Sylvie, a huge one. And he couldn’t fix it or get past it. He’d seriously screwed up everything.
As soon as he returned to Seattle, he set his mergers and acquisitions team to work finding the next big company to acquire. Although everybody else was ready for a rest after the last acquisition, work was the only place where Heath could forget for a period of time about what happened in Zeke’s Bend.
In the end, he did just what he said he would. He got his lawyers involved, but it was only to try to make Sylvie take his money. It turned out, that had been his greatest mistake.
Prior to first contact with the lawyers, Sylvie had grudgingly emailed him a few pictures of Quentyn and Jadyn. He had looked forward to those with greater anticipation than he’d admit to any living soul.
After the first call from his lawyer, though, the emails had stopped. He tried texting her and calling her, but he never heard back.
After a week of silence, his lawyer told Heath that he received a call from one Zachary Jones, attorney at law, from Zeke’s Bend. He was apparently acting on Sylvie’s behalf. Zachary informed them that Sylvie was submitting a motion to stop Heath from contacting her directly in any way. She wanted no contact from him at all.
This had infuriated Heath, but later, he thought he probably deserved it. Bringing lawyers into the situation for any reason after what they’d said to one another the last time they were together … big mistake.
He missed Sylvie with a passion that made him ache sometimes. But he still couldn’t get past her knowing who he was before the twins were born, and not contacting him.
He kept obsessing over missing out on the children’s births. He’d gone online to see if he could have proven his paternity before the births (yes, he could have, and it would have been non-invasive).
So he could have been present at their birth, but because of Sylvie’s lies, he wasn’t.
He hadn’t been there to help Sylvie through labor, to see the boys take their first breaths and hear their first cries. He hadn’t gotten to count twenty tiny toes and twenty tiny fingers. He hadn’t gotten clapped on the back and congratulated when he handed out cigars …
He needed to quit thinking about it. Since when did he live in the past, in what might have been?
Heath sighed, knowing that he wasn’t going to get anything productive done that afternoon. He changed into his workout clothes and headed downstairs to the on-site gym. He spent the next hour doing everything he could to exhaust his body to the point that his mind would stop obsessing over his and Sylvie’s mistakes.
He zeroed in on the number of the incline and the minutes left as he ran on the treadmill. He focused on every weight and every repetition as he moved through the circuit of the strength-training machines. He narrowed his span of attention to just the absolute present moment.
It was the only way he knew how to forget about the fact that he had a family in Zeke’s Bend that didn’t want him.
He didn’t know how it happened, but somehow along the way, Sylvie, Quentyn, and Jadyn had taken up residence inside his heart. Whenever he tried to label what they were to him, he could only come up with one word: family.
It hurt to be separated from them. He didn’t know how he could make it right, and he believed Sylvie would never forgive him.
As he was taking a shower to get cleaned up, he recalled a conversation he’d had with Momma Jones a week ago. For some reason, as he was strategizing how to get Sylvie to talk to him again, he thought Momma Jones could be an ally. After all, he had heard her battling with Sylvie when he first arrived in town, trying to make Sylvie talk to Alan about being part of the children’s lives. Perhaps, now that she’d had a chance to cool down after that disaster of a dinner, she might feel that he should be in the children’s lives, same as she previously felt about Alan.
He considered calling Phae or Neesa, but he was certain they wouldn’t appreciate him putting them in the middle. Besides, no matter how wrong they might think Sylvie was, they’d always take her side, no matter what. Heath wished he had friends like that.
It had taken him several days before he’d called Sachet, wanting to have all the angles worked out in his head ahead of time. In the end, the discussion had taken an unexpected turn.
“Mrs. Ford, it’s Heath Collins,” he said hesitantly when she answered the phone.
“Heath Cartwright or Collins? It’s hard to keep up with all these last names,” Sachet said. He knew right then that she was going to be difficult.
“It’s Collins. It’s always been Collins.”
“All right then, Mr. Collins. What can I do for you? Make it quick. I’ve got a pie that needs to come out of the oven in a few minutes.”
“I was hoping you might be willing to say something on my behalf to Sylvie. Let her know that I have the best of intentions when it comes to the twins, and I want to do everything I can for them.”
“I don’t get involved in my daughter’s affairs,” Sachet said. “Not anymore.”
He remembered the set down Sylvie had delivered at the dinner, telling her mother to stay out of her life. “I understand, and I can appreciate that. Sylvie is a great mother, and I would never do anything like try to take the boys away from her. I know she’s afraid of that, so I wanted you to hear it from me personally. At the very least, I want to be able to help out financially and make sure that Sylvie never has to worry about money.”
Her voice raised an octave. “Financially, you say?”
“Indeed. I actually tried to write her a check before I left town
, but she refused to accept it. I heard a couple of rumors that Sylvie might be struggling with her bills, and I don’t want her to feel like she can’t provide everything she wants for the boys. I can make sure she can give them anything she wants and it’s the least I can do for her. For them. They’re my kids, too.”
Sachet was quiet for a few moments. Heath wondered if she had hung up. Then her voice came back full strength on the line.
“I tell you what, Mr. Collins. I do think that my daughter works too hard. It pains me to see that she’s not able to spend as much time as she’d like with my grandbabies. So I do think you having some financial stake in their upbringing would be a good idea.”
Heath almost whooped in delight and relief. “Then you’ll speak to her for me?”
“I’ll figure out a way.”
Heath was so afraid to ask the next question, but since he had already had some success, he thought he might as well barrel onward. “You know, it would be a great thing if we could figure out some way for me to be actively involved in the boys’ lives, as well. I know that I’m in Seattle and you all are in Zeke’s Bend, but I would be willing to fly down there, at least, every other weekend to spend time with them. More, if we could make the timing work. I wouldn’t impose, of course. But it would be great if I got to spend some time with them.”