Just a Kiss: The Bradfords, Book 5 (3 page)

“Good.” At least he was taking it seriously. Kevin would deal with the reality of what was going on, what all of this meant, later. Right now, he needed to know what was happening with his family.

“I have to go with her, Kevin. I don’t want this to break up our marriage. I didn’t let it ten years ago and I don’t want it to now.”

Kevin was glad to hear that. At the same time he was disappointed. The man he’d known for the past thirty-two years was not the kind of guy to turn his back on a little boy who needed him. Especially one he really should be completely responsible for.

“What about Drew?” Kevin asked.

“I have the perfect solution.” Steve managed a small smile.

“I can’t wait to hear it.” Kevin knew
perfect
might well mean something different to Steve than it would to Kevin. Or Heather. Or Drew.

“I want you to take care of him.”

Kevin blinked at him. “What do you mean?”

“Drew needs someone to stay with while Heather serves her time.”

“Her time?” Kevin repeated sharply. “How much time? For what?”

“DUI. It’s her third offense and the judge is fed up. She’s volunteered to go into rehab but it’s a three-month program followed by three months in jail.”

“Six months?” Kevin said. “You want Drew to stay with me for
six months
?”

“If you don’t do it, he’ll go to foster care. She doesn’t have any family.”

“What about
you
?” Kevin demanded. “He’s
your
son.”

Steve looked pained. “I can’t. Your mom won’t do it. She’ll never forgive me if I choose him over her.”

“Maybe you should have thought of that when you had sex with another woman,” Kevin snapped. He paced away from his father, shoving his hand through his hair.

“I should have thought of a lot of things,” Steve said quietly. “It was a mistake. A huge mistake. It was…wrong on every level. But I want to be with your mom. And she wants to be with me. And she doesn’t want anything to do with Drew.”

Kevin faced him again. “None of this is that little boy’s fault.”

“Of course it’s not.” Steve sighed. “It’s temporary, Kevin. It’s a few months. If it was bigger than that, permanent, I’d fight harder, but…it’s not like Heather and I were ever in love or anything. She doesn’t want to be with me. She doesn’t want me in Drew’s life. We decided that a long time ago. I help financially because she needs that, but she made it clear in the beginning that I wasn’t going to be a father to him.”

“She sure seems like she wants you to be in his life now,” Kevin said, thinking back to the waiting room.

“She’s desperate. She has no other options. I can guarantee she ran through every other possibility before she came to me.”

“The restaurant was really the first you’d heard from her?”

Steve had the decency to look embarrassed. “She called a couple of times. But I didn’t know what to say. Or do.”

“So you ignored it and hoped it would go away?” Unbelievable. Kevin shook his head. He couldn’t quite wrap his head around how his parents—his
parents
—were acting.

“No, I was trying to come up with options. I didn’t know the timeline.”

“The timeline?”

“She goes to jail on Monday.”

Of course she did.

Kevin sighed. “And you think the best option is for him to stay with me?”

Steve nodded. “I do. Hang on, hear me out,” he said when Kevin started to argue that the idea was ridiculous. “Look at you. You take care of people all the time—the Center and Dooley’s dad and Katherine and the others.”

The Center was the Bradford Youth Center, a place for at risk teens, founded by his friends’ father. Kevin and the rest of his friends spent several hours a week there. Then there was Doug Sr., Dooley’s dad. He’d had a stroke several years ago and needed help with general, day to day things. Kevin filled in when others couldn’t be there, but he also genuinely liked hanging out with Dooley and his family, so often showed up even if his help wasn’t needed. And Katherine was one of three older ladies who Kevin, Sam, Mac and Dooley took care of by helping with the general upkeep of their homes and cars, allowing them to stay independent but safe.

He couldn’t argue that his life seemed filled with people who needed him.

But that didn’t mean that adding a ten-year-old boy to his routine was a good idea.

“I don’t even know Drew, though,” he protested. What kid wanted to move in with a total stranger for six months? “Doesn’t she have any friends?”

“Sure, if he needed a place for a couple of days,” Steve said, sliding off the bed and pacing toward him. “This is six months. This is something
family
does.”

“He’s
your
family,” Kevin said.

“He’s
your
little brother. Like it or not.”

Kevin felt like someone had kicked him in the chest with a steel-toed shoe.

His dad was right. Drew was his brother.

He’d never had a brother. Had never been the big brother to anyone.

“Yeah, but…” The protest was weak, but he felt like he had to make it. “What about Jill?” Kevin asked of his sister.

“Jill’s too far away. We can’t just ship the kid off,” Steve said. “And
you’re
a terrific choice,” Steve said. “You’re successful, stable, caring, responsible. You’d be a great role model for a kid Drew’s age.” Clearly Steve had spent
a lot
of time thinking about this and preparing his speech. “And you can teach him about God.”

The steel-toed shoe kicked him again. His father never wanted to talk about God with Kevin. He’d tried over and over since he’d become a Christian.

“What?”

“I’ve been watching you,” Steve said, pacing back to the bed but facing Kevin without sitting down. “You’re a new guy since you started believing and going to church and everything.”

He was, of course. He’d given up women, partying, swearing…the works.

“I’m so proud of the man you’ve become,” Steve said. “I can’t give Drew much—or really anything—but
you
can. And I can give him
to
you. That is probably the best thing I can do for him.”

Kevin stared at his father. That steel-toed shoe kept coming. His chest felt bruised and tight. He couldn’t let air in or out adequately and he felt a little dizzy. He slumped into the blue plastic chair by the door.

“I know I’m not much of a churchgoer,” Steve went on.

Kevin almost snorted at that. His mother and father had last been inside a church when Aunt Kathy died. Six years ago. And the service had taken under an hour.

“And I’m not sure what exactly I believe. But,” Steve continued, “I believe there’s
something
to all that church stuff. I’ve always been proud of you, always loved you, but since you’ve been doing all this Jesus stuff you’ve become, well…” Steve looked a little embarrassed, “… the best man I know.”

Kevin concentrated on breathing. He was half shocked, half panicked at this point.

The last time his father had said he was proud of him had been after they’d won against Florida in the National Championship game his senior year at the University of Nebraska. Up to that point, every other time had been about sports too.

Now his dad was proud of him for something else. And the something else was big. Kevin’s decision to embrace Christianity hadn’t been easy but it had been, and still was, the most important decision he’d ever made. To have his dad recognize that
and
be proud of it was…something.

But he was far from perfect.

“What about Heather? What does she say? Have you even talked to her?”

He nodded. “The cops showed up to question all of us and said she wouldn’t talk to them until she talked to me so they brought her in. I told her about you. She agreed.”

“She hasn’t seen me since high school.”

Steve shrugged. “She doesn’t have a lot of choices.”

“That’s kind of crappy, don’t you think? She’s going to turn her son over to me because she doesn’t have a lot of choices?”

Steve’s expression hardened. “Look, she should have thought of that before she drove drunk. If he was going to foster care, she wouldn’t know those people either. She’s lucky the judge gave her a few days to try to get things arranged for him.”

Kevin couldn’t really argue with that. She’d made some bad choices and these were the consequences. But Drew was still an innocent victim.

He scrubbed a hand over his tired eyes. He knew about guardianships and custody issues because of the things he’d seen in the ER. Abuse cases, neglect, parents killed in accidents leaving children behind, all kinds of messes. This was temporary. And this was his brother.

Kevin felt a sudden warmth fill his chest.

Like a switch had been turned on that said
yes
.

Yes?

Yes to what, exactly?

Drew needed someone. Drew needed
him
. A little boy he’d never met, never even
heard
of, needed him.

Stepping in to help with little notice and no more motive than someone needing help wasn’t uncommon for Kevin. Still, this felt different. This was a lot more personal.

Yes
.

It was all he could think.

His dad was essentially telling him that he believed in him, believed he could do this. His dad had always believed he could make the tackle, hit the home run, score the points, stop the play, but he’d never believed Kevin could do anything else. At least not that he’d ever said. Now he was telling him he could do something big, something really important.

His faith had actually made an impression on someone he cared about. Wow.

The Christianity thing shouldn’t be new after eight years but it felt new. He mostly felt like he wasn’t getting it quite right.

Now, though, it was part of the reason his dad was trusting him to help with the biggest mess his family had ever been in.

That had to mean something.

“Okay, I’ll take Drew.”

“You’ll move back to Grover, right?” Steve asked. “You can stay in our house. Heather lives in a dumpy house with two other girls.”

Kevin frowned. “Grover? No, I…”

“He’s in school, Kev. You have to keep him there, keep his routine as normal as possible. He’ll need to be with his friends.”

Kevin tried to quickly wrap his mind around the fact that his father seemed genuinely concerned about the boy. “You’re acting very fatherly,” he commented.

Steve blew out a long breath. “I feel like shit about all of this. This whole situation sucks. I knew it in the back of my mind, but I could ignore it. That doesn’t make me a good guy, I know, but I didn’t let myself spend a lot of time thinking about everything. Now that it’s right here in my face I want to be sure I do what I can.”

“He needs a father, Dad,” Kevin said quietly. “He needs a house and school and stuff too, but he needs a father.”

Steve looked seriously pained. “I know. I… How can I do that to your mother?”

Kevin didn’t know. He certainly didn’t want his parents to break up, but what about the ten-year-old in the other room? Didn’t he matter?

Kevin could only hope that his mom would come around, would see that Drew wasn’t a threat, but for now it seemed the only person who could really
do
anything for Drew was him.

“Fine. I’ll figure it out.”

“I’m paying for everything,” Steve interjected. “Stay in the house, I’ll pay the bills online. Put groceries and gas on our accounts in town.”

Kevin couldn’t help but smile at his father’s earnestness. “I’m not worried about the money, Dad.” His NFL career had been short but he’d invested and saved and had no financial worries.

“And I’ll pay for your rent while you’re out of your apartment.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Kevin said.

“Kevin?”

They both turned toward Danika as she poked her head into the room. “Yeah?”

“I need to talk to you.”

“Okay.” He turned to his dad. “We’ll talk more.”

Steve nodded. “Thanks, son.” The look of relief on his face was real.

“Sure thing.”

Sure thing. He’d take over as a fill-in father to a ten-year-old he’d met ten minutes ago. He’d turn his whole life upside down and inside out because the kid had two parents who had made a series of the worst decisions ever.

At least he wouldn’t have to figure out what ten-year-old boys were into—he hung out with Dooley, who was really an overgrown kid. Dooley and Drew were probably on exactly the same wavelength.

“What’s up?” Kevin asked Dani as soon as the door shut behind him.

“There’s a caseworker with the state here,” Dani said, heading for the break room. She was walking a little different now that her pregnant belly was more obvious. “It’s pretty routine when a kid’s involved in a scene like tonight, especially when someone ends up in the ER. But Heather told her that you were taking over as Drew’s guardian?”

“I am,” Kevin said. “I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m his best option.”