“It means I disappoint everyone in life. They don’t respect me because there’s something wrong with me. My parents opted out of life rather than sticking around to be a part of mine. My husband cheated on me, then took his own life. My best friend, well, who knows what all she did. You’re wrong though, Cody. I saw it all. I just didn’t know how to deal with it. Granted, I didn’t see what was going on with Steven until that phone call to you. After that I refused to sleep with him, just to see what would happen. He didn’t care though. It never even came up and then I realized the only time he’d slept with me in months was when I’d initiated it. I knew. I wasn’t ready to deal with it just yet, but somewhere inside I knew.”
“There’s not a damn thing wrong with you, Chris. All the people in your life have been idiots, and you’re just unlucky with the ones you have around you. I see better things in your future now though.”
“Thanks,” I told him as I went back to staring into the trees. Part of me seriously considered packing a bag and heading into the forest, never to emerge again. People had been a huge let down for me over the years. Maybe the forest and its inhabitants would prove to be far better company.
My phone dinged in my pocket, pulling me from my thoughts. I glanced down at the simple message.
Grant: Do you still want your job? If so, we expect you back by Monday morning.
Well, hell. My job had finally become fed up with my disappearing act. I had informed them that there was a family emergency, a death to be exact, and they had been kind enough to give me some time off to grieve and get affairs in order. Okay, so I lied a little bit and told them I was next of kin and had to sort Lindsay’s life out – what remained behind anyway. It was a lie, and I felt guilty as hell for telling it, but it also saved me. I would have been a complete wreck if I’d had to stay in Savannah, in that apartment, with all the memories and the rest of the guilt I felt.
“I wished for her to be gone,” I admitted out loud to Cody.
“Wished for who?” He stopped and realized who I had been talking about. “Not for nothing sweetheart, but I wished her gone a lot when I used to hang out with you guys.” He winked at me, letting me know he was purposefully teasing.
“I wished her gone and then she was.”
“You can’t think your wish made it happen?” It was a statement as much as it was a question.
“I don’t know anything anymore, Cody. I’m so spun up about everything.” I explained about the paintings and Jay when I’d first arrived.
“Did you ever think maybe it’s true?”
“Maybe what’s true?”
“Remember, when I told you how Steve said he’d never felt anything like it before. The chemistry he had with the other woman?” I both loved and hated the fact that he wasn’t sugar coating anything for me anymore.
“Yeah, and?”
“Well, think about how you felt when this cemetery guy was around. He was unforgettable to you. Sparks flew when he touched you. Rainbows grew from a unicorn’s ass…” I slapped him to get him to stop elaborating.
“Shut up!” I laughed. “Yeah, I’ll admit, I have an incredibly strange and very worrisome reaction to the man. It doesn’t mean anything though. It can’t. Not anymore.”
“Why?”
“Why?” I questioned right back. “Um, because he was with Lindsay. They made a baby together. They were going to have a baby together until I wished for her to be gone. Even if there was something there, and we could get over that huge hurdle, do you think any man would want the woman who wished the mother of his baby away before he could meet that baby?”
“Honey, if it were me, I’d be throwing a fucking parade in your honor.”
“Cody!” I hissed. “You can’t speak that way of the dead,” I reprimanded.
“What? Honestly? Fuck that, Chris. She was a piece of shit human being. I hated her.”
“Tell me how you really felt.”
“Fine, but you asked for it. I think she was the one.”
“The one, what?” I asked apprehensively, almost afraid of what he might say.
“I think she may have been the one who seduced Steve.”
Cody stared at me. I stared back; eyes unblinking for a few minutes. Then I laughed. “There’s no way,” I managed to get out. “We were always together,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, and they were together more, weren’t they?”
That stopped me cold. “What do you mean?”
“Didn’t they ever tell you how they used to hang out when you were in class? Hell, I think Lindsay purposely made sure her schedule was the opposite of yours.”
“No. They wouldn’t! That’s crazy!” I thought about it for a minute and then the most logical part of Steven’s situation kicked in. “You forgot; Lindsay was never pregnant.”
“That you know of,” he told me. “What if she got rid of it when he died?”
I blanched at that. Lindsay had gotten sick about two weeks after Steven’s death. I normally would have cared for her, but she said her mom could handle it, because I wasn’t in any shape to do so. Cody must have noticed the change in me, because he immediately changed tack.
“You know what? Forget that. It would be impossible, right? Besides, they had plenty of time to sneak around when you were out. They wouldn’t have needed to meet up at hotels and stuff. It’s just me being mean, because I always hated that girl. That’s no reason for me to put shitty thoughts in your head.”
“What if you’re right?” I asked.
“What if I am?” He asked, quieter. “They’re both gone now so it doesn’t really matter.”
“I guess.” I didn’t admit to him that I had been sitting on the insurance settlement all this time, holding it for a child who may not have existed, or a pregnancy that had been terminated. If it had been Lindsay, then she never did have a child by him.
“I’m going to give you a little time out here to yourself,” Cody told me as he rose from where he’d been perched on the wooden rocking chair. He clutched onto my shoulder for a moment, gave it a squeeze, and then did as he said. He left me there to contemplate my life.
It couldn’t have been Lindsay. That was the only thing I seemed capable of contemplating. That one line ran through my head on repeat. There’s no way it could have been her. That would have meant that my husband and my best friend had both betrayed me. It would have meant that Lindsay was the reason Steven was no longer here. She knew I had been tormented for years by the fact that some lovechild of my husbands would pop out of the woodwork. There was no way. Life couldn’t be that cruel, could it?
The air had cooled significantly, and I could have sworn it smelled like snow was in the air. Don’t ask me what that smell is, it was just fresh, crisp, clean air that felt as though it was in turmoil. The gray sky overhead seemed to be commiserating with my mood, so maybe I wasn’t far off. I was about to head inside when headlights shone from down the long, winding driveway that led to Cody’s cabin.
I waited there until the truck parked, thinking it must be someone here to see Cody. Instead, a familiar looking man hopped out of the truck and came striding over to me. “Cody’s inside,” I called out to him. “Give me just a minute, and I’ll go get him.”
“I’m not here for Cody,” he told me as stepped into the pool of light at the end of the porch. “I’m here to see you.”
“I don’t even know you,” I whispered, but there was something about the man that was captivating me. “Do I know you?” I questioned out loud.
“We haven’t had the pleasure of meeting in person yet, but you know my brother.”
“Your brother?” I asked before it dawned on me why he looked so familiar. “Jay?” I choked out. “Why on earth would he send his brother here?”
The man before me just smiled. “I’m Declan Donavan, sweetheart. My brother didn’t necessarily send me here. I came because I was curious, and I need to protect my brother.”
“Protect your brother?” To say I was stunned would have b
een inaccurate. “Protect him from what? Me?”
“I don’t know you, but I know my brother has been…” he tipped his head down and ran his hands through his shaggy brown hair that looked a couple months past needing a good haircut. “Hell, I don’t even know how to describe it. He’s been infatuated with you for a long time.”
“He has?”
“Since you guys saw each other at the cemetery before he took off to go on tour with a rock band.”
I smiled at that. “That seems so out of character for the man I saw that day.”
Declan smiled at me. “It does. It was, or I guess it would have been. Things in life change a person though. J-Bird has had a lot dumped in his lap. Some of it, he wanted to be able to tell you about face to face, if you’ll let him.”
I furrowed my brows as I stared at the man who looked so much like Jay. This man’s features were a bit sharper and angled than the man I’d been painting for years. His eyes were a more vibrant blue as well. It was as if pain had leached the color from Jay’s eyes, whereas his brother’s still held something special that gave them that peculiar shine. Oddly enough, I preferred the nearly gray-blue, stormy eyes that Jay had to the vibrant shade of his brother. That probably said a lot about me. I felt more comfortable with the dark than the light. I’d always been that way.
“What on earth could he have to say to me?”
“For starters, he’s been pretty worried about you. He’s checked in to see if you’ve come back home, but you haven’t. He actually put the club on locating you because he was worried you might hurt yourself after what you said to my wife.”
“Your wife? I don’t know you or your wife.”
Declan smiled at me again. “You spoke to her briefly at Lindsay’s funeral, just before you took off.”
“Oh,” I murmured. I’d told her it was all my fault that I had wished it to happen, and so it did. For the first time since the truck pulled up the road, I finally thought that maybe I should be fearful of the man standing just off the porch. I backed up a step, getting ready to lock myself inside, but the man took a step back and threw his hands into the air instead.
“I’m not here to harm you. I just came to see for myself that you were safe and doing okay.”
“Well, you found me, I’m safe, and I’m doing just fine.”
“Christina, my brother wanted to be the one to tell you this, but I think it might be the only way you’ll trust that we mean you no harm.” He sighed and glanced around at the ever-darkening woods around him. “She lied.”
“Who lied?” I tried to think about whether his wife had spoken to me. I seem to recall she had, but I honestly couldn’t be sure.
“Lindsay.”
“Lindsay lied about what?”
“She lied about being pregnant. According to her mother, she couldn’t get pregnant because of an accident that happened a few years back.”
“Accident? She wasn’t in an accident.”
Declan shrugged his muscular shoulders up and down again. “I can’t say what’s true or not other than to tell you the autopsy showed she was not pregnant.”
“She lied to your brother?” I asked stupidly. “Why would she do that?”
“I’m guessing because she knew he was about to leave her. They were growing distant. He’d just had a talk with me the day she claimed to be pregnant. Before he went home and got that news, he had told me he wasn’t going to stay with her, that he never should have gotten that involved with her in the first place because there were no feelings between them beyond a light friendship.”
“Oh.”
“My theory is she knew, especially when he told her they needed to talk. Then she pulled out the pregnancy card to stall the inevitable. That’s my theory though. I guess we’ll never know why she did it now.”
“Would you like to come sit?” I asked, finally.
“I’m good with standing. Took me five hours driving to get here.” He glanced around again. “From what I saw before it started getting dark, this is a beautiful place. I might need to bring my wife out here for some down time and inspiration.”
“Inspiration?”
“She’s an artist.” He chuckled. “Mostly, she’s a tattoo artist, but she dabbles in many different mediums these days.” I felt the pride in his voice with each word he spoke.
“There are a bunch of waterfalls around here. I was just up at Elk Falls a couple days ago. Your wife would probably love the visuals. Depending on what she prefers, it would be gorgeous on a snowy day or sometime in the spring.”
“I’ll have to remember that.” He stood there as we just existed in the moment. “Are you going back?”
“Well, according to my boss, I have to be back by Monday or lose my job.” He nodded but waited to see if I was going to listen to my boss or start over. “I have to go back. I have too many memories in my apartment to just discard the life that’s packed away there. Besides, I’m going to run out of money soon if I don’t get back to the land of nine-to-five.”
That wasn’t strictly true, all things considered. I still had plenty of money tucked away, thanks to Steven’s planning. Even if there was never a kid that came forward to claim part of that money, I wasn’t sure if I could use it. Especially now, knowing that the betrayal might have been so much worse.
“Well, I guess I better get going,” Declan started to say before I cut him off.
“Declan, why did he hunt me down just to send you?”
“He doesn’t know you’ve been located yet.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I wanted to see what we were dealing with. My little brother has been through a lot over the past few years. Some of it was self-inflicted, stupid, egotistical male induced crap that he needed to learn from. The rest seems like one tragedy after another. I needed to see for myself if I should tell him we found you, or if we should pretend that we never did.”
“And what have you decided?”
He winked at me. “I guess we’ll both see come Monday,” he told me as he turned and headed back to the truck, he had arrived in.”
“Is he doing okay?” I finally asked.
“He’s worried about you but doing well enough when he stops letting the guilt eat at him.” The grin on his face told me that was what he had been waiting to hear. I guess he just wanted to know that I was worried over his brother too. I wonder if he knew about our odd bond. I guess he did, since he knew who I was already. The more appropriate question was more than likely, what did he think of our strange connection? In the big scheme of things, it didn’t really matter what Declan Donavan thought. What mattered was where our circumstances left Jay and me. I still didn’t know.
Chapter 19
Off the Rails
J-Bird
The rain was coming down harder now and there was no ambient lighting thanks to the cloud cover. The dark and foreboding feeling permeated my bones as I felt the tap on my shoulder. I turned my head enough to see that Lindsay was tapping my shoulder and pointing for me to pull over. Why the fuck she thought I would pull over in this mess was beyond me. We needed to get somewhere there was shelter to wait out the storm. Either that, or ride it out, and get our asses home. I wanted to remind her that this was her idea. She demanded we go home because she couldn’t stand the thought that she felt I was perfect for her best friend, and I had no doubt she knew I didn’t want her any longer. I was just sticking things out for the sake of our child. None of that mattered any longer.
I turned and there was a flash of reflected light from headlights in the eyes of a deer. I swerved, barely missing the damn thing only to fishtail on the wet road and slam the back tire into something else. Her hands no longer on my body was the first thing that registered before I rode the bike down to the ground and slid into the ditch that was quickly filling with water. I couldn’t move. Frozen. The water continued to rise as I watched my bike sink below the surface. The headlight flickered and went out. Darkness encroached, the feeling of dre
ad swam in my veins, and then there was a flicker of light from over by the tree. A woman’s form stood; her hands wrapped around that of a small child. “You did this!” Her finger pointed in my direction. “You ruin everything. You will pay!” The water was steadily rising, and I still couldn’t move. I was paralyzed as I watched the ghostly form move closer. The child at her feet began to disappear with each step she took. “You did this! You are responsible!” Lindsay’s voice shook with anger as she accused me. “You are a curse on others!” She shouted and when I looked again, it was no longer her face. The water had finally filled in all around me and above me. I was going to drown, but the face I saw through the water I was immersed in was Ever’s. She was the one telling me I was a curse.
I woke in a cold sweat. It had been two weeks since the accident and the same dream had plagued me every night. It started out with me pulling Christina out of her apartment and putting her on my bike instead of Lindsay. Then the crash, and Lindsay accusing me, only to have Ever curse me. Jesus. I swiped away a bead of sweat before it could drop into my eyes.
I was swimming in my own hell, full of guilt, and unable to forgive myself for that ride. All the while, I was thankful as fuck the truth had come out. The nightly visit of that dream could haunt me forever, but at least I knew I wasn’t stuck with a crazy, betraying bitch who was willing to take her friend’s soulmate from them and fake a pregnancy. I knew this because I read her fucking journals. They’d been there all along, sitting in our closet on the top shelf, tucked in a pink gym bag. Her parents had asked me to clean her things out and just send them anything that looked important or like they might want it to remember her by. How the fuck was I supposed to know what they might want? I thought it was something they should be doing.
Instead, I managed to find her journals, and I couldn’t stop myself from reading through them. She had known. From that first night she took me to meet her friend, and she went to the bathroom, she had known exactly who I was to her best friend. The act she put on that night before the accident had been just that – an act. Probably an effort to make sure that Christina and I never attempted to get together. The pregnancy was also just as fake as she was. That wasn’t even the worst of it. The worst had been what she had already done to Christina.
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