The Son I Hid from My Husband

"You let my son live in a place like this?" Keaton Byrne stood in the middle of my rundown rental and asked it like he barely cared about the answer.

Four years ago he finished taking his revenge on my family. I was pregnant when I ran from him, and I had been hiding with my son from one town to the next ever since.

Now he had finally found us. I backed away without thinking, and there was nowhere left to go. Chapter 1 Keaton came with no warning at all.

I got home from work and he was already standing in the room, in a stiff black overcoat and leather gloves, his face exactly the way I remembered it, sharp and cold.

My son, Emmett, sat rigid beside him, scared out of his mind, wanting to cry and not daring to.

The second Emmett saw me he threw himself into my arms, his little body shaking and shaking.

Keaton gave the two of us a flat look and started wandering around the room without a word, as if the four years in between had only been yesterday.

The place was a hundred and thirty square feet, paint peeling off the walls, damp coming up through the floor, no real furniture except a bed and a beatup table and chairs.

It was shabby, but the rent was only four hundred dollars. What I saved went to Emmett's daycare, so that I could go out and work.

I had left in a hurry back then, with nothing on me but a necklace Keaton had given me.

It was a hundredandfiftythousanddollar diamond necklace, and to get cash fast I let it go for ten thousand.

I thought ten thousand would carry me until I was clear of him and had a job. I didn't count on already being pregnant. By the time I found out, I was more than three months along.

I wanted to end it, but I didn't dare walk into a clinic with my real name and my insurance. That leaves a record, and a man with money and people behind him can find a record.

So I gave up on that.

Keaton looked at the leftovers still sitting on the table, then at the worn bedding on the bed, and said, without much interest, "You let my son live in a place like this?" I held Emmett and backed away without thinking.

There were men outside the door, men he had brought, and one of them used to be my family's driver. There was no getting out. "He isn't yours," I told him calmly.

He didn't sit down. He pulled off his gloves, slowly, one finger at a time. "No? Whose is he?" "Jonah Bradshaw's," I said.

Jonah went to high school with me, and he was a good friend of Keaton's.

He was the one who told Keaton everything about me, and then Keaton showed up in my life as exactly the kind of man I liked, and I married him because I couldn't stop myself.

I was the one who let the wolf in the door. But Jonah was dead. He was killed in a car crash while he was helping me get away.

When I said Jonah's name something moved behind Keaton's eyes. So Jonah's death had gotten to him too. He still didn't believe me, because Emmett looked too much like him.

The same eyes, the same brows, the same nose. Only the mouth and the chin were mine. It didn't really matter whether he believed me. I just didn't want him to have an easy minute.

After a quiet moment he said, "I don't care what happened between you and Jonah. I'm taking the boy." "He's my son. You're not getting him." I was not giving Emmett to him.

There was a time I wanted to get rid of this child.

But across three long years I watched him grow up from something tiny, and I listened to him call me Mommy over and over, and in the end I loved him.

Keaton gave a cold laugh. "Can you even feed him?" I looked straight at him. "I couldn't, and I still got him to three and a half. Go.

Whatever my family owed you was paid off a long time ago. We're square." Chapter 2 He didn't say anything else, but his eyes told me he had no intention of letting me go.

I was the only Northrup left, and he wasn't finished with his hate yet.

I can't forget the crazed look on my father's face before he jumped, and I can't forget the despair on my mother's face before the illness took her.

She said, "Cori, there's only you left. How are you going to live?" They protected me too well.

They thought that kind of protection could last a lifetime, and in the end they left me alone in the world anyway.

I reached quietly for my phone to call the police, even though it probably wouldn't help much.

Legally we were still husband and wife, the boy was his by blood, and his team of lawyers could grind me down without breaking a sweat.

But I couldn't just stand there and let him take Emmett. Before I could dial 911 he stood up. "I'm giving you three days. Think it over.

Once you've decided, you can call me any time." On his way past me he turned his head, and his voice dropped. "My advice is, give me the boy sooner rather than later.

It's supposed to snow tomorrow." It's supposed to snow tomorrow. It would be cold. Cold enough to turn this room into an icebox.

It made me think of the first time I went to his rented room. It was a winter like this one, and he was hurt, putting medicine on the wound himself.

His room was cold too, cold enough that my body shook. I said it to him carefully. "It's supposed to snow tomorrow. It's too cold in here. I have an apartment.

Go stay there." "No need. You should go. This isn't a place for a rich girl like you." He turned me down without any warmth at all.

But the girl I was back then thought she was an angel, always trying to save the sad boy who had fallen into the dark.

I had no idea that him getting hurt to save me was arranged, or that the coldness was there to make me want him more. In the end it worked, and I lost everything.

Keaton left with his men, as though he really were giving me time to think it through.

Less than an hour after he was gone, the landlady came. "Miss Northrup, I can't rent to you anymore. You need to be out tomorrow," she said from the doorway. "We had an agreement.

I have four months left." "I'll pay you back double the deposit. Either way, you're leaving tomorrow.

Whoever it is you brought down on this place, I can't afford to cross him." She wasn't giving me an inch. That was how Keaton worked.

He never had to lift a hand himself to leave someone with nowhere to go. "Mommy, are we moving again?" Emmett asked in a small voice.

We had moved several times in three years, because the rent always went up and all I could look for was cheaper. I had only been in this one two months.

I didn't know how to answer him, the same way I didn't know where there was left to move to.

If Keaton could find me here, then from now on, no matter where I went, I would still be inside his reach. But how did he know I was here? I had been so careful.

Cash only, and only work that didn't require filling out a single form, and this place was more than a thousand miles from where we used to live. "Mommy, who was that man?" Emmett asked. "He's… someone I know.

Did he say anything to you while he was here?" Emmett burrowed into my arms. "That man doesn't talk. Mommy, I'm scared." I smoothed down his little head. "Don't be scared.

Mommy's here." The snow started in the middle of the night. So did Emmett's fever. Chapter 3 Keaton turning up out of nowhere had frightened Emmett.

Even in his sleep he held on to me tightly, and the smallest move I made woke him up. "Mommy, don't go." He was only three, and Keaton and I had barely exchanged a dozen words, but he had picked all of it up anyway.

I settled him down, got the fever medicine into him, and coaxed him back to sleep.

I watched the snow under the streetlight outside the window and thought about the first time I ever saw Keaton. It was winter break of my senior year of high school.

Jonah and a few others asked me out. Our families were all comfortable, our college acceptances were already in, there was no pressure on any of us, so I went.

But Jonah took us to a loud club, the kind that lets you in at eighteen, and said we should go a little crazy before we all left the country to study.

If I had never met Keaton, I would have gone to Europe after graduation to study painting. But my life had already been arranged for me by him.

Keaton worked security on the floor of that club. He was three years older than us.

Black clothes, short clean hair, a cool, untamed look in his eyes, leaning in a corner with a cigarette in his teeth. He was nothing like the boys in my life. I'll admit it.

He had me from the first look. But that was as far as it went.

Everything coming off of him frightened me a little, like an animal crouched in the dark, ready to swallow somebody whole. And an hour later I was hopelessly in love with him.

I went to the restroom alone, and a man who reeked of liquor started in on me. I fought and called for help, and nobody would help me.

He dragged me into a dim stairwell and tore my clothes, and just when I had given up hope, Keaton was there.

He put the man down hard with one punch, then pulled off his own jacket and wrapped it around my shaking body. "This isn't a place you should be," he said, frowning.

I followed behind him without a word. He was very tall, and he smelled like tobacco, and I didn't mind it at all. "What… what's your name?" I asked him.

He was quiet for a moment before he answered. "Keaton Byrne." "Thank you. For what you did back there." "Don't thank me. It's my job." The answer kept me at arm's length.

I had meant to buy him a meal to say thank you, and now I didn't dare bring it up.

Jonah came hurrying up around then and took me out of the club, and I forgot to give Keaton his jacket back.

That jacket still had the warmth of his body in it, and for a long time afterward, he was in every dream I had. When I woke out of the dream it was already light.

Emmett's fever had broken, but his cough was bad.

I called out of my shift at the Sagebrush studio and started packing, planning to put us in a motel first and look for a place after that.

The landlady came a little after ten, gentler with me today.

She helped me look after Emmett while she talked. "The way I see it, your husband only leaned on me about that lease because he wants you back. Every married couple fights, honey.

He's handed you a ladder, so come on down off there. Your boy's this big already. What are you still sore about?" "And say the worst happens and there's really no fixing it.

Then let him have the boy. He's the child's own father, he's not going to shortchange his own son.

Besides, you're still young, and finding somebody new with a boy in tow, that's hard." I shook my head. "I can't give him the boy.

If I do, I'll never see him again." "What do you mean, never see him? You're his mother. The law's on your side, hon." She talked about the law. Keaton didn't.

Whatever he took, he never gave back. Chapter 4 My family's company, my father's life, my mother's life. That was how he took all of it.

I was on my knees begging him back then, and none of it moved him. He only looked at me, cold. So I didn't believe he would ever let me see my son again.

His heart was made of stone to begin with. By the time I had everything packed and we came out of the rental it was nearly evening, and the snow was still coming down.

I dragged the suitcase with one hand and held Emmett with the other, and behind us we left two deep lines of footprints. "Miss Cori, where are you two headed?

Let me drive you." A car pulled up beside us. It was Sam, from the studio, who was always doing things to help me out.

I didn't want to be any trouble and was about to say no, but Emmett looked so wilted that I got in. "He's a handsome little guy. Your nephew?" Sam smiled and ruffled Emmett's hair.

Before I could answer, Emmett curled into me and called me Mommy. Sam's smile stalled. "So you're married." All I could do was nod.

I had been keeping the fact that I had a child from the studio, because a woman with a kid doesn't get put on the schedule and doesn't get the work.

Sam drove us to the motel, carried the suitcase into the room for me, and then went back out and brought us dinner and snacks.

I thought about it and asked him for one thing. "Could you keep it to yourself, about my son?

I really need this job right now." Sam nodded. "Don't worry, I won't say anything to anybody. Call me if you need something." "Thank you.

I can handle the rest myself." I was grateful for the offer. I just didn't want to drag anyone else down with me.

It was the cheapest place I could book online, so the room was about what you would expect. Yellowed sheets, graying towels. But it had heat and hot water.

The dinner Sam bought was a real meal, hot, with meat in it and soup, and Emmett ate like he couldn't get enough.

Since the day he was old enough to feed himself, it was the happiest I had ever seen him eat. "Mommy, you eat." Emmett held a piece of meat on the bone up to my mouth.

It was the piece with the most meat on it. Something turned over in me. "You eat it. Mommy likes the soup." He believed me completely and hurried to spoon up some soup for me.

My eyes stung. How was I supposed to hand a little angel like that over to somebody else. I counted the money I had on me.

Twentyone hundred dollars left, and with the hours the studio hadn't paid out yet, a little over thirtyfour hundred. It was nowhere near enough for a custody lawyer.

On a case like that the retainer alone starts at eight thousand, and this case would be against Keaton.

While I was searching for legal aid, the local news was playing on the TV, and it was about Keaton.

He had put serious money into a logistics park here in town, and the mayor had come out in person for the groundbreaking.

In the crowd I also saw Vanessa Duval, who used to be my closest friend. She couldn't take her eyes off Keaton, and there was a happy little curve at the corner of her mouth