Committed Passion Read Online Free Page A

holding mine and his quiet voice describing everything for me.
    I shook off my nerves and offered a friendly smile when I greeted Rianna. She must be nervous too, meeting all of us at once and without Jonah beside her. Although she was polite and welcoming, I heard tension in the bride-to-be’s voice. Intuition told me it might be about something other than meeting new people.
    After Jonah arrived and we’d all said hello, J.D. suggested Travis show us the yard, which Jonah quickly agreed to. Once outdoors, I said to J.D., “Maybe we should go over and see your dad right now. Rianna seems a little on edge. We should give them some time alone to talk.”
    “Yeah. Something’s going on,” he agreed. “And I’d just as soon get this visit over with.”
    “Like eating cabbage,” Micah joked. “It tastes like shit and you know it’s going to stink later, but supposedly it’s good for you.”
     “Language,” Gina reminded him. “There’s a kid here.”
    “Right. I meant tastes like crap.”
    Micah always made me smile, and I’d never forgotten that if it weren’t for him coming to me to talk about J.D., I might have let the man I love slip away. I was eternally grateful for that little speech. I believed Micah was a good match for Gina. When they weren’t pecking at each other, they seemed to be in perfect sync.
    Travis led us around the yard, pointing out the most important features: his swing and sandbox. I knelt beside the box and let smooth, cool sand sift between my fingers.
    “Wanna dig?” Travis asked.
    “He’s offering you a shovel,” J.D. said, so I held out my hand and felt the plastic handle and the little boy’s warm fingers.  I dug while Travis invented a story about his dump truck and Gina described the flower beds for me.
    “Gorgeous spring flowers. The daffodils are fading, but there are tulips and hyacinths blooming. Smell them?”
    I did, sweet and strong like lilies or an old lady wearing too much perfume.
    I listened to Travis’s high-pitched voice babbling and thought about how little experience I’d had with children. No siblings or younger cousins, and I’d never babysat. How would I raise a child of my own when I couldn’t even see to discipline the kid? How could I care for an infant or know if it was crawling toward danger? A moment of complete panic seized me, the beginning of an anxiety attack such as I hadn’t experienced since I’d first gone blind.
    I gripped the little shovel so hard my knuckles must have gone white while I struggled to keep my breathing slow and even. I refused to lose control. Everyone would want to know what was the matter, and I’d blurt the truth. This simply wasn’t the right time to tell my news, especially when I didn’t know how J.D. was going to react.
    By the time Micah coaxed a reluctant Travis to return to the house, I’d gotten my heart rate under control and the other symptoms had faded.
    We entered the apple-pie-scented house to a murmur of voices that abruptly fell silent.
    “Hey,” J.D. said. “We thought we’d give you guys some time together while we go over to see Dad.”
    “That’d be good.” I recognized Jonah’s voice, similar to J.D.’s but abrupt and authoritative. I had yet to talk with the man and had only heard stories about his bossy ways from J.D. and Micah. Jonah had been forced to take care of the family from a young age, and I understood how he might not know how to interact with his brothers as adults. I could cut him a lot of slack for that.
    “He’s deteriorated from last time you saw him,” Rianna warned. “It might be a bit of a shock.”
    After the long drive from Illinois, I would rather have taken a nap than meet Mr. Wyatt, the man who’d abandoned his sons. But I wanted to support J.D. during this visit, so I took one of the energy drinks from our travel cooler and sipped that.
    During the drive to the nursing home, I sat quietly, holding J.D.’s hand, while the others talked about Jesse