Have Mercy

de N. E. Henderson

Eighteen years ago, my high-school sweetheart vanished after the last bell. No goodbye. No reason. Just gone. I did the stupidest thing a eighteen-year-old could do—I punished the only person left to hurt: her best friend, or so I thought I did. Months later, the girl I loved came back with a story I refused to believe and by then I was on my way to becoming someone else husband and father to a child that wasn't hers. Fast-forward: my band made it big, my marriage is ending, and my seventeen-year-old son is trapped in the crossfire. Then I see her again. One argument becomes a kiss I swore I’d never take. One touch says eighteen years didn’t erase a thing. She swears there’s been no one else since me. And then I meet her son. He looks like me. He’s seventeen. He’s best friends with my boy. The problem is the same secrets that tore us apart once are still haunting us. Hearts were broken. Futures were rewritten. This time, I’m not walking away without the whole truth—or the girl I never stopped loving.