Forever Yours

  Sarah walked him to his car, and though he’d told himself he’d let it go, he just couldn’t. “You and him always hold hands like that?” he asked, pulling her to him as he leaned against his car.

  She frowned, caressing his face and kissing him. “Always is a bit of an exaggeration, don’t you think?” She tilted her head. “I haven’t seen him in over two years, but, no, I didn’t even realize I was doing it.” She smiled remorsefully. “I’m sorry if that made you uncomfortable.”

  Uncomfortable was a gross understatement, but as long as she understood it wasn’t something he wanted to be witness to again, he’d let it go with just the one comment for now. He squeezed her hand, lifting his brow. “He’s sleeping in the front room, right?”

  The corner of her lip lifted. “Of course, Angel.”

  Angel shrugged, still too annoyed and feeling too tense to be playful about this. “I dunno. You call him your best friend, and if he were a chick, she’d probably be sleeping in your room, right?” He remembered the few times his sister had friends over and they all slept in the front room. “You’re not sleeping in the front room with him, are you?”

  “No, I’m not,” she said, suddenly looking a little worried. “This isn’t gonna be a problem, right? I don’t just call him my best friend. He is. After you, that is,” she added quickly. “But he is my longtime friend, and you know you have nothing to worry about. I thought we were past this.”

  She rubbed Angel’s arm, pinching her brows as if she suddenly realized just how uncomfortable this unexpected surprise really was for him.

  “I’m cool with it, Sarah,” he said, kissing her forehead, and began to straighten up away from the car. “Just, please, don’t give me reason not to be.”

  “Never,” she said, smiling apprehensively. “You know I wouldn’t.”

  Angel tried smiling a little bigger to make her feel better. “I’m good,” he said, kissing her a little longer than he had earlier. “I promise. Don’t worry about it.”

  He kissed her a few more times before getting in his car and driving away.

  Never? Angel shook his head. She had no idea. He’d be working out long and hard tonight to work off some of the tension he’d built up in the past half hour alone. Angel hadn’t had to think about Sydney too much in the past two years. Their relationship had been a distant one, and even though it still irked him at times, as long as Syd was on the other side of the country where he was attending school most of the year, he could handle it. But just being around her and her longtime friend for a few minutes already had Angel so wound up he didn’t even want to think about tomorrow.

  Chapter 3

  Sarah

  Sydney, Sarah and her mom had been sitting at the kitchen table, chatting for a while. The first chance Sydney got to talk to Sarah alone, when her mom excused herself to take a call, he lowered his voice. “You think we can go somewhere and talk a little more privately?”

  Sarah stopped just as she was about to put another grape in her mouth and looked at him curiously. “Yeah, you mean like outside?”

  He shook his head. “No, like go somewhere else—take a drive or something.” He glanced around as if to make sure her mom wasn’t within hearing distance. “I wouldn’t want to chance your mom hearing.”

  Interesting.

  Sydney had made a mention earlier in front of her mom, when she asked about his girlfriend Carina, that things weren’t the greatest between them right now, but he’d been vague. Sarah wondered now if there was something a little juicier about the story he didn’t want to share in front of her mom. This wasn’t the first time he’d mentioned having issues with Carina. In the past several months, he’d brushed on it but only when Sarah asked. Even then he never really gave her details, which was odd because normally he was an open book with her.

  As selfless as she’d like to think her well-wishes for things working out for him and Carina were, she felt a little guilty that her wishes weren’t entirely altruistic. A part of her knew Angel was still uncomfortable with their relationship. His reaction tonight to Sydney dropping by had been a perfect reminder of that. When her mom sent her the second text on her way home, telling her she might want to have Angel just drop her off, she got the feeling it might have something to do with Sydney, but she never expected for him to actually be there. She regretted her reaction to seeing him the moment she saw that look on Angel’s face. Her holding on to Sydney’s hand the way she had was just stupid. She just honestly hadn’t given it a second thought. And it’d been so long since she’d last seen Sydney that she couldn’t help feeling emotional.

  Sydney having a girlfriend served as a buffer for Angel’s feelings about her friendship with Sydney. It didn’t help a whole lot, obviously, but she knew Angel had been a little more at ease knowing Sydney had a girl he was romantically involved with and not just waiting in the wings for Sarah like she was certain Angel would think if he didn’t.

  “Okay,” she said, stuffing the grape in her mouth and standing up. “Let’s go get ice cream.”

  Glad that her mom was still on the phone—otherwise she might feel bad about not inviting her to come—she grabbed her keys and called out to her mom. “We’re gonna get ice cream, Mom. Text me if you want me to bring you anything.”

  As soon as her mom said okay, they walked out. They’d only been in the car long enough for Sarah to put on her seatbelt and start it when she turned to Sydney with a curious but cautious smile. “Okay, what is it?”

  She thought he might smile back just as playfully; instead, he seemed a little nervous. “Has, uh . . .? Has your mom ever told you more about your dad?”

  This was so not the subject she was expecting. “My dad?” she asked, pulling out of the driveway.

  “Yeah. Is what you’ve told me you know about him still all you know?”

  “You mean basically nothing?” He nodded but waited. “Yes, all I know is what I’ve told you. She dated him in high school, and he moved before she could tell him she was pregnant. When she finally did track him down after I was born, he didn’t even want to see me. He was already in a relationship and wanted nothing to do with either of us.”

  The sting of rejection Sarah had felt, even as a pre-teen when her mom first felt fit to explain it a bit more, was enough that Sarah had never asked about him anymore. It wasn’t worth the pain. She’d never had any desire, even now as an adult, to try and find him.

  Sarah pulled over into an empty school parking lot, needing to look Sydney in the face now. She thought it odd that he’d drive all this way out of the blue just to surprise her. The last time he’d showed up unannounced was when he wanted to talk to her in person because it was a pretty heavy subject.

  “Why?” she asked, turning the car off.

  Sydney smiled sweetly, another bad sign that this was not good. She knew him well enough to know that was his attempt to calm her. Her pulling over and parking was obviously a sign to him that she was getting anxious.

  “My mom got a weird phone call a few weeks ago from a woman fishing for information about you. She wouldn’t tell my mom how she got our number. When my mom first told me, I thought maybe the woman had gotten it from when you used to list our number as a reference that year we applied everywhere for seasonal jobs or maybe from when it was your emergency contact number. My parents are probably the last people on the planet who not only still have a landline but have the same original number they’ve always had.

  “My mom wouldn’t give her any information only that you moved away years ago and didn’t even tell her to what state. It made my mom nervous because she said the lady was really digging, more than just a telemarketer, so . . .” He rolled his eyes with a smirk. “My mom hung up on her.”

  “Did the lady give a name or say why she’s looking for me?” Sarah asked curiously.

  “No, it never got that far, and she never called back. My mom hadn’t even mentioned it to me until I’d been home a few days, and even then I didn’t think she was
much more than a telemarketer too, so I didn’t bother telling you.” He paused as if to think for a moment.

  Sarah waited not so patiently, wondering how this had anything to do with her dad.

  “The other day a man showed up at our door. He said he was your father and he’s trying to find you—has been for years.”

  He paused again when he saw Sarah’s eyes open wide. Her heart spiked, but she wasn’t sure what to think. Sydney didn’t seem excited. It felt as if he were being really careful about this and he hadn’t wanted to say anything in front of her mom. Why?

  “His story was a lot different from the one you’d told me about him, Lynn. According to him, he said he and your mom were together for a while when you were a baby. He said they had a falling out and she left one day without a trace.”

  With her brows pinched now, Sarah took in everything he’d just told her. “How did he track me down to your house?”

  Sydney pressed his lips together, shaking his head. “He said he found the address online, but that didn’t make sense to me because he said it was the only address he’d found for you guys. He didn’t have any of the other places you and your mom lived before you settled in Flagstaff, not even the apartment you lived in there—only my house. At first, like I said, I thought it was my parents’ landline. I figured they did a reverse look up and found it. But the more I thought about it later, I got a different theory. He said he’d given up looking for you until recently when your brother started asking about you.”

  “My brother?” Sarah’s heart thudded.

  Sydney nodded but frowned. “That was his first stumble. He said you have a younger brother he had with someone else after your mom left, but he said his son is twenty-one. I didn’t wanna tip him off and tell him you’re only twenty.”

  Incredibly, Sarah felt a little disappointed. The thought of actually having a sibling out there somewhere excited her a little. Regardless of what her father must be like or that he’d never been interested in her, the possibility that there was a brother out there who was asking about and interested in her had excited her for a fleeting moment.

  “He messed up on something else too. Because he said the trail he’d been on to find you ended at my place, I pretended to know you a long time ago but said I hadn’t heard from you in years. I told him I’d do my best to see what I could do to try and reach someone who might know where you are now, and I asked him to leave me whatever info he had on you. All he had was your first and last name. Your birth date was off by a year, and he said you didn’t have a middle name.”

  Sarah stared at Sydney, perplexed and not sure what to make of all this. She shook her head.

  “Don’t get mad okay, Lynni? But I wasn’t even gonna tell you about it,” he started to say.

  “What? Why wouldn’t you?”

  “Because at the time all these other things popped in my head. Maybe when your mom took the money from her employer it wasn’t the first time she’d done it and someone else was trying to track her down. I didn’t want to worry you, but the more I think about it the more I’m convinced, even with all the wrong facts he had, he is your dad.”

  Sarah’s mouth nearly fell open. “Why? You said yourself he doesn’t even know my birthday or my middle name.”

  Sydney’s lip pulled to the side. “I don’t know why he’d get that all wrong, but even my mom agreed. She says my dad’s been known to forget what year I was born too, and a man forgetting his own kid’s middle name, even one who’s raised them the whole time”—he smirked—“sadly isn’t so unheard of. Since he hasn’t seen or heard anything about you in nearly twenty years, it could just be that he forgot.”

  Sarah wasn’t buying it. “Even if that were true, why would my mom lie to me all these years?”

  “That’s what I’m wondering too.”

  Feeling a little annoyed that Sydney would take this stranger’s words over her own mother’s, Sarah peered at him. “Because she hasn’t been, Sydney. This guy could be anyone. He doesn’t even have—”

  “Listen to me,” Sydney said, quickly holding up a hand. “For days after, I thought the same thing. Then I started remembering things such as when your mom asked if she could use our address to have things delivered because she claimed she didn’t trust the mailboxes at the apartments you guys lived in.”

  “What do you mean claimed?” Sarah snapped at him, suddenly feeling defensive for her mom. “People had things taken from the boxes downstairs all the time.”

  “But the things she had delivered to our house usually came from UPS or FedEx, not the post office.”

  Sarah thought about that for a moment. “If we weren’t home, she didn’t want things left at our door. Those things could be stolen in our building. She probably thought it safer to have them delivered to your house.”

  “I’m thinking she was having things delivered from someone back home. Maybe she was afraid somehow it could get back to your dad, so she didn’t want to risk having the stuff delivered straight to your place.”

  Sarah shook her head. That didn’t make sense. It still meant her mom had lied all this time and that Sarah actually had a father who wanted to know her and her mom had denied not only him but Sarah the chance to get to know each other.

  There was no way.

  “Think about it. If she really wanted to, she could’ve just had the packages delivered to her work. But then she would’ve risked them tracking her down there.”

  “Maybe her work didn’t allow it,” Sarah argued. “Maybe she just thought it would be easier to have them delivered to your house. Any of that makes more sense than her lying to me.”

  “Lynni, until he screwed up about your age and birth date, I was convinced I was talking to your dad.”

  She shook her head stubbornly. “Why? Because he said so?”

  “No.” Sydney frowned. “Because when I first opened the door, the thing that struck me most was his light green eyes and dark lashes. I couldn’t stop looking at them. I felt like I was looking into your eyes the whole time. As dark as your hair is and as light as your mom’s is, I always knew you must’ve gotten your hair color from your dad, and I was right. His brows are even arched just like yours. It was eerie as shit.”

  In all the years she’d known Sydney—even when her mom had left her alone a few times, most notably the New Years she went to Vegas and Sarah was hurt that she wouldn’t be there for her birthday—Sydney had never once spoken badly of her mother. Minutes ago she’d begun to wonder if maybe he secretly harbored feelings of resentment towards her mom all this time and that’s why he was so quick to think the worst of her. But that wasn’t Sydney. He’d never hurt Sarah by making her feel her mother had kept something this huge from her. What he was saying now actually made sense.

  Torn between excitement and feeling hurt that her mom may have lied, Sarah stared out the window aimlessly, unable to argue anymore. “You really think I have a brother?”

  “I don’t know. He might have his age wrong too.” She turned to watch Sydney pull his phone out of his pocket. “He left me his number and email address in case I got a hold of you. He said he and your alleged brother would be waiting anxiously, and my mom said he sounded real genuine. She also agreed that the resemblance was uncanny. You could try emailing him first—get a feel for him before talking to him.” He tapped a few things on his phone screen then stopped and looked up at her. “But you have to promise me, Lynni, that you won’t agree to meet with him or your brother alone.”

  “I promise,” she said, unable to believe after twenty years she might actually be meeting her dad—maybe even a brother she had no idea existed.

  Sydney texted her the information, and then they sat there and theorized some more for a while. They finally left to go get that ice cream with Sarah’s insides a mix of excitement, hurt feelings, and anxiousness. If by chance this was some kind of con, her mom might be hurt that Sarah had ever considered it to be true.

  After talking about it until she wa
s exhausted, she decided her mother deserved the benefit of the doubt and she’d just ask her before doing anything else. But it would have to wait until tomorrow when Sydney was gone. Sarah didn’t want to risk there being some truth to this and her mother having to explain something so personal in front of Sydney.

  By the time she’d set up Sydney on the front room sofa and was getting ready to climb in her bed, she remembered Carina and felt bad that they’d spent the whole night discussing her issues—again. His Carina troubles and asking Sydney about them had been the last thing on her mind. She tiptoed out into the front room in case he’d already fallen asleep. The second she walked in the room he turned to her and smiled. “Can’t sleep?” he asked. “I can’t either.”

  He patted the spot on the sofa adjacent to his waistline. A million years ago, or at least that how long ago it felt, she would’ve thought nothing of it and plopped right down next to him. There was no way now. She leaned against the hallway doorway instead.

  “I meant to ask you,” she said, rethinking having gone out there in her sleep clothes—an oversized T-shirt and undies. Tugging at the bottom of her shirt, she continued, “So things are not so great with you and Carina?”

  Sydney grimaced. “We broke up actually.”

  Sarah’s brows shot up, and her heart actually ached for him. He and Carina had been together as long as she and Angel had. “Really?” She pouted, feeling even worse about not having asked earlier.” What happened?”

  “Long story,” he said, sitting up with a crooked smile.

  “Tell me,” she urged.

  It didn’t feel fair that, as usual, their entire conversation tonight had been mostly about her and her issues. For the past several years—ever since the whole nightmare started with her mom being sent to jail and Sarah having to move out to California then dealing with the trial against her coach and every other new thing that happened to her—it was always the same thing. They’d spend the majority of their conversations discussing her dilemmas, and, like tonight, something as big as Sydney breaking up with his girlfriend of nearly three years had not even been brought up. She felt disgusted with herself.