Worth Fighting For

She stopped and stared at him, her dark eyes like spotlights on his grimy little soul. “I know this is hard for you, Jonah—”

He laughed and tugged her into motion. “No, it’s not hard at all,” he clarified. “It’s not hard because I have no expectations, Mom.” He knew this was going to hurt, but she’d clearly gone slightly delusional since coming here over the winter. Maybe it was grief and stress over Aunt Sheila’s battles, but his mom wasn’t thinking clearly. “I have no attachment to these men.” When he saw her shaking her head, he spun her to face him. He took off his glasses so she could see how serious he was. “These men don’t mean anything to me. And they are never going to. I don’t want anything from them, or need anything from them.”

She searched his eyes and he let her. This was his truth. “You are what matters to me,” he told her and she smiled. But it was one of her sad smiles.

“Oh, honey.” She sighed, cupping his cheek. “You’re what matters to me, too. That’s why I want you here. Why I want you to stay.”

“Mom—”

“Look,” she interrupted. “Everyone in there was having a real hard time not asking you about that article in the Times last week.”

“You saw it?”

“Of course I did. It was the New York Times. Everyone saw it.”

Of course. Everyone. Even out here. The lovely Daphne had already proven that. Thinking of her watching him through the windshield of his Jeep, her eyes so damning, made his skin tight.

He bristled in reaction to the unbidden thought of her. It had been a long time since his thoughts had been so caught up in a woman. Especially to one who so clearly hated him and who he was never going to see again.

“Why don’t you just tell them,” Mom suggested. “Explain—”

“There’s nothing to explain,” he said, walking again, trying to shake the remembered sensation of Daphne’s eyes judging him.

“Jonah—”

“There is nothing to explain,” he repeated, enunciating clearly so she’d get the idea that the conversation was over.

“Well, if you won’t stay for me,” she said, “if you won’t stay in order to get to know your own father—”

He rolled his eyes at her and she smacked his arm. “I am your mother, Jonah. You will not roll your eyes at me.”

“Sorry, Mom,” he said, truly abashed.

“Like I was saying, if you won’t stay for me, or to get to know these truly wonderful men—these kind and generous and complicated men who are your family—at least stay until that Dirty Developer thing blows over.”

Ah, his mom. So smart.

He sighed. “If you are asking me, I will stay.”

“I know, but I get tired of asking.”

“You never ask,” he cried, laughing. “I have more money than I know what to do with and you refuse a penny. I try to take you on trips. I tried to buy you that new car—”

“My car is fine.”

“Your car is a mess!”

“I don’t need your money, or your trips or cars.”

“Clearly.”

“I need you. Here. For two weeks.”

He felt himself strain and push against that promise he’d made. He’d never guessed, being so young and so suddenly on top of the world, that his mother would ever ask for something he didn’t want to give. The one thing, actually, that he didn’t want to give her.

“Were you unhappy?” he asked, blurting out the question that had been churning in his brain since he saw her smile at Max and Gabe. “All those years with me…did you wish we were with them?”

Tears filled her eyes, turning them to black pools. He was sorry that he made her cry. He was always sorry for that. But it hurt to think that he was second best all these years.

“I wanted to be with you,” she said fiercely. “Wherever you were that’s where I wanted to be.”

He smiled at her. He knew a hedge when he heard one. A half-truth. She’d asked him once if he wanted to know his father and he’d said no. Absolutely no.

At the time his six-year-old brain thought it might mean sharing his mother. And he hated that.

His thirty-year-old brain wasn’t all that different. But he did recognize what he did to her when he’d told her no. The wall he’d built. He made it impossible to try to have both—her husband and sons all together.

Of course those letters Patrick had written telling Iris he didn’t want her, those letters put up quite a wall, too. Jonah didn’t like the idea of her here chasing after the man who’d rejected her. Hurt her so much. There was far too much potential for more pain for his mother here.

“Mom, why do you want this so bad?” he asked. “The guy told you no.”

“And then he said yes.” Iris shrugged. “We both made mistakes.”

It was a terrible answer, in Jonah’s book. Patrick changing his mind about having Iris come back didn’t erase the thirty years that his mom missed the man.

She’d pretended she didn’t, but Jonah wasn’t blind.

And it made him very nervous. Mom was walking toward a freight train of pain and he needed to pull her out of the way.

“If I don’t stay, if I say no, will you go back home?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Will you come to New York for a visit?” he asked.

And his mom, who knew him so well, shook her head again. “I want to get to know these men,” she said. “I’ll stay for a while.”

There was a buzzing in the back of his head, a sense of impending doom.

“Mom,” he whispered, wishing so badly she didn’t feel anything for Patrick.

“I know,” she said, holding up her hand. “But I wouldn’t change it if I could.”

He would, he thought. He’d change everything about the damn situation if he could.

Well, crap. He was going to have to stay. Maybe he could derail the freight train.

Daphne’s green eyes were there in his head and he slid his sunglasses back on. Perhaps he would be seeing her again.