About Time (Broken Vows #4)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Charlie Present- Age 53

Time is this elusive thing we can’t quite figure out how to deal with.Fuck, we can’t even figure out how we want to use it most of the time. We try to save it, waste it, hell even kill it, but if you ask just about anyone they’ll still swear not to have enough of it. We don’t know how much of it we may have, but still, past a certain age, most people have a sense that they’re running out of it.

For me, the hardest part isn’t the concept but the reality staring me in the face. The evidence of it is easier to see. It’s in the gray peppering through my dark brown hair and the lines that pop up around my eyes when I smile. It’s watching the two babies I once cradled in my arms run around in the backyard.

There’s no denying the passage of time, only the speed of it. There have been times when every minute felt like an eternity, those were the moments I spent alone. Then there’s every minute since I managed to convince Hattie to give me another chance. Those moments are flying past faster than I’d like.

“I hate to tell you that laser vision doesn’t exist.” I jump a little when Griffin comes up behind me without warning.

“What the fuck are you going on about? Laser vision? What drugs did you take this morning?” I ask my best friend of over forty years. Griffin has the patience of a toddler hopped up on Pixie Stix.

His kids run across the lawn to join my girls in playing on the fancy playground equipment he and I built between our two houses. Liam, Griffin’s oldest son, lives with his wife and kids on the opposite side of Griffin and Wren. All of our kids are very close in age, and we all get along great…now.

There was a time, a bit over a decade ago, when that was far from the case. Griffin was hiding his obsession for his daughter-in-law, his son was hiding the fact he was cheating on her, and I was hiding everything.

A rubber bouncy ball hits the side of my head, and I finally turn to give him the attention he’s demanding. “You’re fifty-two years old, will you quit acting like a child.”

“My kids have been up since the ass crack of dawn. I’ve had an entire pot of coffee. And you’re a suck ass uncle to my boys if you don’t know about the different powers of superheroes,” he says, pulling me out of my thoughts.

“Maybe if you didn’t impregnate your wife like you were responsible for repopulating the earth you’d have the luxury of sleeping in,” I toss back.

He shrugs. This back and forth is our usual, although we normally save it for the garage when we’re at work. “Sleeping in is overrated if I can’t knock Wren up anymore.”

“Do I need to remind you that you’re fifty-two?” I ask.

“And? My wife is thirty-three, what’s your point?” he asks, and unfortunately for Wren, I think he means it. He’s even got their new baby, Elisa, strapped to his chest, and he’s already planning another one.

“You’re having a vasectomy. Five kids are enough,” Wren shouts, and I see her off on the side of her house messing with one of her flower beds.

“Liam doesn’t count, he’s an adult and not your child,” he yells back.

“Yeah, just my ex-husband and now my stepson,” she says like we don’t already know.

I had front-row seats to that particular disaster. Although, parts of it worked in my favor.

I shake off the thought and watch one of the neighbors go out of their way to avoid the sidewalk in front of our homes. I overheard one of the ladies refer to our cul-de-sac as incest circle . I’d have argued with them, but with Wren calling Griffin daddy every time the kids are in bed and the jokes about being her ex-husband’s stepmom, I don’t really have much to work with.

“We’re never going to make friends with the neighbors,” I grumble.

“Thank fuck. Those old ladies are irritating,” he bitches.

“Those ladies are our age, asshole,” I point out.

He rolls his eyes. “On the outside. Those women are ancient on the inside. That’s what counts.”

I need to change the subject before he manages to bring this back to him needing to have more kids. I swear his breeding kink is out of control. Speaking of breeding kinks that makes me wonder about our missing family member.

“When is the kid supposed to get here?” I ask Griffin.

He grumbles. I know what is coming next. He’s going to chastise me for calling Scott “the kid” but he is only twenty-one. Of course, with a kid of his own on the way, I guess I need to find something else to start calling him. He’s too nice to call him an asshole, and besides that’s Griffin’s name. I’m sure I’ll come up with something. We need street names when the dad gang gets going.

Griffin gives me the side eye. “Don’t call him the kid. He’s an adult with a kid on the way, and our friend.”

Yep, called it. I keep that to myself though, because I’m not sure he’s had that much coffee, and while I like messing with him, even I know when to back off. We might not have matured past our twenties, but we can’t recover from kicking each other’s asses like we could back then. Makes settling arguments a lot more time-consuming.

He narrows his eyes. “You’re thinking about that idiotic dad gang crap again, aren’t you?”

“First, it isn’t idiotic. Second, you can’t convince me those sweater-set moms at school drop-off aren’t pushing Adderall on the other moms. And lastly, our wives are constantly conspiring against us, so we need to stand together.” These are solid points. I don’t understand why the others don’t see it my way.

“Well, that was a bunch of words. To answer the only normal question you asked, Scott and Harlow fly in early this afternoon. I promised Wren we’d shut down the garage early and barbecue.”

I shake my head. “See, more evidence of how they conspire against us.”

“Fuck off. She asked me in the middle of giving me head. I would have promised her anything to get her mouth back on my dick. Just be glad I didn’t agree to pink uniforms at the garage,” he grumbles.

I exhale forcefully. “I’m never going to live that shit down, am I? My wife is a fucking nurse Griffin. Was I supposed to tell her we wouldn’t support Breast Cancer Awareness Month? Tits are pretty fucking important.”

Griffin rolls his eyes. This is not the first time we’ve had this argument. He will point out that I should have signed us up to take pledges or at least have advertised that we were supporting Breast Cancer Awareness Month. In turn, I will fake outrage and insist that he has no vision. It’ll end in a draw because we’re equally matched in our stubbornness.

To sidestep this entire exchange happening again, I change the subject. “What still needs to be done for the barbecue today? It needs to be perfect if we’re going to convince the kid to move back here.”

“Once again, stop calling him a kid, and second why would he move back to this tiny college town when he’s got a fancy job in Seattle?” Griffin grumbles, taking my bait.

“Because we’re amazing and Seattle is too big,” I counter. I know he agrees with me, but admitting it would break the rules of our arguments. Well rule really, never agree or admit you’re wrong.

It’s not surprising when Griffin ignores me and continues to get ready for the barbecue. After a few minutes, he hands me a platter of raw steaks and burgers. “Maybe you can make yourself useful by running the grill.”

The sun is sinking under the horizon not long after we’ve finished dinner. Everyone gathers around the fire, except for the kids who were starting to fall asleep at the table once dinner wound down. They got so excited waiting for Scott’s visit that they burned themselves out early. A few minutes of wrestling with him after he arrived, combined with eating their weight in hotdogs and they didn’t stand a chance of lasting past sunset.

Knowing that we want to catch up with Scott, the wives, including Harlow, get all the kids into our respective houses. I had helped Donovan wire up all the properties with state-of-the- art cameras when Griff and I finally convinced him and his wife Bess to build a house on the empty lot next to Liam and Claudia. Now we can watch the kids from our smartphones while we hang out in our communal backyard.

I’m not surprised when they don’t come back right away. They like to ditch us and drink wine in Wren’s kitchen. It gives them a chance to talk about us, which is healthy because we can be a lot. Well, maybe not Scott and Donovan, but Griff and I are a handful. Don’t even get me started on Liam. Sure, he’s been on his best behavior for the last decade, but I don’t think we’ll ever be able to forget the events that brought all of us to this point in the first place. As horrible as it was at the time, if he hadn’t cheated on Wren the dominoes might not have fallen in a way for Hattie and I to be where we are now.

Scott kicks my foot getting my attention. “You are either really fascinated by fire, or you’re thinking very deeply about something.”

“I was just thinking about the past and how we ended up here together,” I say.

Liam winces. “I’m not sure I want to take a walk down memory lane. Some demons should be left in the past.”

Scott frowns. “The hard part about joining this group is that the rest of you all know each other’s history. Everyone knows how Harlow and I got together, but I know hardly anything about how all of this—” he gestures to our little cul-de-sac, “came to be. I know the basics of how you and Wren got together, Griff, but how did Charlie end up married to Wren’s aunt? Does that make him your uncle?”

Liam groans. “Dammit, there’s no way around talking about how big of a fuckup I used to be. See, Scott—” He leans forward with his elbows on his knees. “You know that I was married to Wren for five years. You may also know that my alcoholism was the main reason we got divorced.”

One thing about me is I laugh at the most inappropriate times, like right now, but I think I do a good job covering it with a cough. Not good enough though, because everyone turns to look at me. “Sorry, I think the kid knows she dumped you because you were cheating on her. Your daughter is practically the same age as your sister, Parker.”

“Stop calling Scott ‘the kid’,” Griffin grumbles automatically.

“That’s the part you had a problem with?” Liam asks.

Griff just shrugs. “We both caught you banging her best friend in that ridiculous sports car on your anniversary. The alcohol might have made you ambivalent about your vows, but she knew you were a drunk, what she didn’t know is that you were a cheater.”

Liam hangs his head. “I thought we all moved past this. I’ve done the work in getting sober. I still go to meetings, and I made my amends years ago. What more can I do after over ten years? Hell, the party you guys threw for me when I got my six-month chip is when Charlie and Hattie first got together.”

Griffin and Liam have a great relationship most of the time. They’ve come a long way from the early days when they refused to see or talk to each other. Still, any time someone brings up how Griffin and Wren got together both Hale men get irritable. It’s understandable, but I’m not willing to let their grumpy asses ruin a family dinner when everyone is actually here.

That’s not the only thing eating at me. I’ve been keeping a secret for over twenty years. It’s not like it’s been eating at me, at least not until Scott said that we all know each other’s history. Except that’s not completely true, because they only think they know how Hattie and I got together. For the most part, I’m a really open person, except when it comes to my wife.

Griffin and Liam start quietly bickering, a sure sign that tensions between them are rising. Scott, being the caretaker he is, diverts their attention. Scott focuses his attention on me. “I knew you had game, Charlie, but you picked up Hattie at Liam’s six-month celebration? That’s pretty ballsy. And you’ve been together for all this time? I’m impressed.”

“Says the kid who stole his coach’s wife.” I roll my eyes. “But, actually, that isn’t when we first got together.”

“Actually, that’s when he proposed,” Liam chimes in.

Griffin appears lost in thought for a second, then he narrows his eyes and glares at me. “So when you helped me figure out where Wren had taken off to when we were fighting and you happened to know where Hattie lived, you told me you knew her friends who stayed in touch with her. Is that when you started pursuing her?”

I make a face. “Not really, and I didn’t need her friends to tell me where she was. I’ve always known where she was from the moment she left Harriston. At least, I knew she was in Florida, public records gave me her address.”

“And why would you be following a woman you barely knew?” Griffin pushes.

I take a deep breath. “Well, you know I was friends with Wren’s dad, Martin. I even got pretty close to her mom, Elisa.”

“I know you were on a community softball team with him, and had a hero worship thing for him back in high school. He was two years ahead of us,” Griffin replies.

“Martin and I got very close after graduation. They didn’t have a lot of family after Elisa’s mom passed away. Their dad took off when Elisa was a teenager, so there was no one to take in her younger sister. Hattie took Martin’s last name, and they raised her with Wren,” I explain to Scott.

“Hattie is only nine years older than Wren. Please tell me you didn’t babysit her for Martin and Elisa,” Griffin demands.

“I didn’t babysit Hattie or Wren. I don’t have a daddy kink like you,” I tease him. In a more serious tone, I continue, “Nothing happened between us until she was nineteen. She had a crush on me, but I didn’t even really register her presence until she was in college.”

Griffin groans. “She was nineteen? Charlie?—”

“I was twenty when Low and I started dating, remember?” Scott intrudes, once again playing peacemaker.

“You were almost twenty-one,” Griffin replies to him.

“Before you judge me, why don’t you listen to the whole story,” I say. I’m trying to remind myself that Griffin and I have been friends since elementary school. And since we’ve been friends for that long I know that Griffin can be a possessive asshole. He doesn’t share well, and that includes me having friends he doesn’t hang out with.

It’s long past time I pull the veil off my past. I’m not ashamed of my relationship, so I should stop hiding how it began, even if the truth doesn’t always paint me in the best light.