Chapter 104: She’s In Malibu

Chapter 104: She's In Malibu

Andy

My son called me uncle. He called Leo dad.

The two facts sat in my chest like shrapnel I had learned to live with but never learned to ignore.

Callum was perched on my thigh across from Leo, swinging his feet, completely unaware that the man feeding him juice and correcting his manners had spent years wishing I did not exist.

Time had done what time always did. Leo looked older. Fatherly. Less like the boy who used to want to put me through a wall and more like a man who had already done it to himself and come out the other side quieter.

My hands trembled the way they always did now. I shoved them into my pockets and pretended that would be enough.

“How’s Maddie?” I asked. The question came out smaller than I meant it to. “I tried reaching her. I have reason to believe she blocked my number. I couldn’t get through.”

“She’s in Malibu with her boyfriend,” Leo said. “She’ll probably be back by the weekend.”

Boyfriend.

The word went through me clean. She had moved on. She was with someone else. She had still never forgiven me, and I didn’t deserve her to.

“Is there a way I can see her—”

“No. Let her be. You’ve done enough.”

I nodded. “Is she happy? That’s all I want. That’s truly what I wish for her.”

He nodded once. “She’s happy. Happiest I’ve seen her in five years.”

I forced a smile even though my head was already filled with the wrong sounds. Explosions. The rattle of something I still woke up reaching for. I blinked hard and stayed in the restaurant.

“Then that makes me happy,” I said. “That’s all I want.”

Leo watched me over the rim of his water glass. “Why did you want to see me?”

I reached into the bag at my feet and pulled out the box. It was heavier than it looked. I slid it across the table toward him.

“I wanted to give you this.”

He stared at it, then at me. “What’s that?”

The ringing in my ears climbed. I shook my head once, trying to clear it. “It’s everything I should have told you sooner. Things I should have said five years ago—”

“I don’t want to hear it.” His voice was flat. “That was a long time ago.”

“Your father paid me to do it.”

Leo went still.

“He offered me money to frame Ivy. To sleep with her—”

“Cal.” Leo’s voice changed immediately. He pointed toward the little play corner where a few other kids were stacking blocks. “Why don’t you go play over there? Daddy and Uncle have to talk about adult stuff. Okay?”

“Okay, Daddy!”

My son was off my lap in a second, running toward the other children like the world had never been complicated. I looked down at my palm.

The candy he had given me was still there, slightly sticky, slightly warm.

Leo turned back to me, eyes hard. “Are you crazy? Saying things like that in front of him. How stupid are you?”

“I’m sorry.” I bowed my head. “I just didn’t want to di—” I stopped myself before the rest of the sentence could get out. “I didn’t want to leave without telling you the truth.”

“What importance is the truth now?” he asked. “It’s been years. We’ve all moved on. Your truth is irrelevant.”

“We weren’t the ones who killed Estella.”

That got his full attention.

“I knew about the bullying,” I said. “I wasn’t okay with it. Estella was kind. She never hurt anybody. I organized the camping trip. I was also the one who invited her. I wanted the others to see her as a person instead of a target. I wanted them to know her. But I don’t know what happened after that. I don’t know how it happened. All I know is that she was already gone by the time we got there.”

Leo stared at me for a long moment. “Then why didn’t you say so?”

“I did. A million times. I said we didn’t do it. I said we didn’t know anything about how she died. You wouldn’t believe me. At some point it became easier to look guilty than to keep screaming I was innocent.”

He let out a laugh that had nothing to do with humor. “After all this time.”

“I also didn’t sleep with Ivy.”

The words felt like they had been sitting in my throat for five years.

“Those pictures and videos were staged. Your father paid me to do it. He wanted something he could put in front of you. Even if she didn’t want any part of it.” I swallowed.

The army had made me good at watching people. I saw the way Leo’s jaw tightened. The way his breathing changed. The way his eyes widened a fraction before he locked it down.

“And I’m supposed to believe this because?”

“The real footage is in that box. Printouts of the messages. The payments he made.” I had to force the next part out. “And the footage from that night. She was asleep. I couldn’t bring myself to do what he asked. I stopped. That’s the truth. Ugly as it is.”

Leo slid the box closer but didn’t open it. His glare was so sharp it could have cut through my skin.

“Am I supposed to thank you for this? Is she supposed to pretend everything vanished because you didn’t finish what he paid you for?”

“No. That’s not what I meant.” I shook my head. “I don’t want anything magically forgiven. I just don’t want to leave this buried. I want to own what I did. I want to ask forgiveness from the people I wronged. You. Ivy. Maddie. Even if none of you give it.”

He stayed quiet, so I kept going. If I stopped I might not start again.

“I’ve had five years to sit with myself. With every decision I made when I was still that boy who thought wanting something was the same as deserving it. What I did—the deal I took from your father—it wasn’t only the money. I believed that if I tore the two of you apart, Ivy would come back to me. That if I broke you, she would choose me again.”

“But it didn’t work,” Leo said. “You can’t force love, Anderson. You only push people away. I learned that because of you. And I’m grateful I did.”

“I’m sorry.” My eyes stung. “I’m so fucking sorry, Leo. If I could go back—if I could put my hands on a machine and undo it—I would never make those choices again.”

Leo looked at me for a long time. When he spoke, his voice was calmer than I had any right to hear.

“I’m not that person anymore. I had to let go of a lot of things to get this free. If it’s my forgiveness you’re after, you don’t have to chase it. You already have it. I forgave you the first time I held your son. Hating you was never going to survive Callum looking at me with your face. So I forgive you, Anderson.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “I don’t hold it against you. If I did, I couldn’t love Cal the way I do.”

I almost broke down right there like a child. Instead I asked for the only thing I still wanted that wouldn’t cost anyone else.

“Can I hug you? If you don’t—”

He didn’t let me finish. “I thought you’d never ask.”

He stood. The first contact—his hand on my shoulder, then the full weight of an embrace I had not earned—undid me.

I cried into his shirt, ugly and unrestrained, ashamed of the boy I had been and the wreckage he had left behind. Leo didn’t pull away. He just stood there and let me fall apart in a restaurant full of strangers while my son stacked blocks across the room, calling another man Daddy and offering candy to children he had just met.

When I could breathe again, I stepped back and wiped my face with the heel of my hand.

“I’m leaving again in a few weeks,” I said. “Not deployment. Not yet. Just… I can’t stay in one place too long. The noise gets bad.” I flexed my fingers under the table so he wouldn’t see them shake. “I wanted Cal to have a face to attach to the word uncle. That’s all I came for. That, and this.”

I tapped the lid of the box once.

Leo finally opened it. He didn’t dump the contents on the table. He lifted the first envelope, glanced at the top page, and shut it again like the paper itself was hot.

“I’ll look at it,” he said. “Not here.”

“That’s all I wanted.”

Callum came running back with another child’s sticker stuck to his sleeve and launched himself at Leo’s leg.

“Daddy, I made a friend. His name is Max. Max has a truck.”

“That’s great, Cal.” Leo smoothed the boy’s hair with a gentleness that still shocked me. “Say goodbye to Uncle. We’re heading out soon.”

Callum turned and hugged my knees. “Bye, Uncle. Don’t be sad.”

“I’ll try, buddy.”

I watched them walk toward the door. Leo’s hand on Callum’s shoulder. The boy talking the whole way. Two lives I had damaged and somehow not been allowed to destroy completely.

I sat there after they left until the waiter asked if I needed anything else. I said no.

I paid for a table I hadn’t really used. Outside, the California light was too bright. My ears rang. Somewhere under the ringing was the memory of Ivy’s voice at her graduation, telling me to leave, and the knowledge that she had been right.

I had a son who didn’t know my name.

I had a box of proof that might never be opened in front of the woman I had hurt most.

And for the first time in five years, I had something that felt almost like peace—not because I deserved it, but because Leo Teague had decided his love for a little boy mattered more than the wreckage I had made of his life.

I got in my truck, rested my forehead on the steering wheel, and let the shaking run its course.

Then I drove. Not toward Maddie. Not toward Ivy. Just forward, which was the only direction I had left.

I want to be home with my father before I die.