Southern Storm

by Natasha Madison

  Closing my eyes, I can’t stop the tears, and my eyes are burning and getting heavy. Then I hear the soft knock on my door. I think it’s my imagination, but then I hear it again. I get up and make my way to the door with only the light from the moon streaming in the window. I don’t check to see who it is, which is stupid of me since not too long ago someone was in town chasing Casey’s girl. I open the door, and I see him standing there with his hands gripping my doorframe and his head hanging. When he finally looks up, I see that his eyes are bloodshot. My heart breaks again when I look at the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.

  “Beau,” I whisper in a plea.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, and the sob rips through me. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  Chapter Three

  Beau

  “I’m so, so sorry.” Those are the only words I say right now. I stand here, and my whole body is numb as I look at her still dressed. Her eyes and nose are both red, and her hand over her mouth stops the sob that rips through her. My hands drop from the doorframe, and I rush in, wrapping one arm around her waist. She wraps her arms around my neck and buries her face in my neck. All I can do is realize that with her in my arms, I feel like everything is going to be okay. Her tears soak my skin as I walk her farther into her house and close the door behind me.

  Two hours ago, my life changed, and for the first time, I couldn’t control it. I had no way of controlling how this was going to play out, and that made me struggle even more.

  I sat in my office chair, watching the tiny droplets of amber liquid travel along the wall to the floor. My eyes remained fixated on the wall when the door opened , and I looked up to see Jacob walk in with Kallie behind him.

  “What the fuck?” he asked, looking at me and then at the bottle. I didn’t know what to say.

  He came into the room and sat on the brown leather couch against the wall. “Are you ready now?” I knew he was giving me time to cool off. I didn’t even care that he sucker punched me because I would have done the same to him.

  “Why?” I looked over at him and then Kallie, who sat next to him. She wiped her eyes with her thumb, not looking at me. “How?”

  “I can’t give you those answers,” he told me, and all I could do was hang my head. “There is only one person who can give you that, and you know it.”

  “She lied to me.” I wasn’t even sure if I was asking him or telling him. All I knew was that it hurt. It hurt all through my bones.

  “You have to give her a chance to explain,” Kallie said quietly. “I didn’t give Jacob a chance, and I lost eight years. Don’t do that.” I dropped my head back on the chair and closed my eyes. The only thing that played over and over again was the look in her eyes when I told her she wasn’t worth it. Even mad, I knew that wasn’t the truth. She was worth it all, and she deserved to have it all. “We can take you to her.”

  I blew out a long breath. “She’s going to kick me in the balls and tell me to go fuck myself.” I got up and had to hold onto the desk when the room started spinning.

  “She’s going to kick you in the balls whether you go there now or you go there tomorrow,” Jacob said. Leaning forward, he folded his hands in front of him. “You don’t want her to go to bed remembering the last words you said.”

  “Can you take me to her?” I asked.

  And now, here I am, standing in the middle of her living room.

  “Don’t cry,” I say, not moving for fear she’ll let me go.

  “I never wanted you to find out like this,” she whispers and sniffles. I want to sit down and have her tell me the whole story. “I never ever wanted you to know.”

  “Stop crying, please,” I say, and she slowly peels her arms from around my neck.

  “Sit down,” she says, and then she steps back. I watch her walk into her kitchen and go straight for her secret stash of whiskey. I know she doesn’t like whiskey, but she bought it for when I come hang out.

  “I don’t want anything to drink,” I say, putting up my hand. She looks so beautiful and tiny. Her brown hair perfectly curled even though I know she hates when it’s all done up. She likes it straight and up on her head. Her blue eyes look darker in the dim light than if we were in the sun.

  “It’s not for you,” she says, unscrewing the brown cap and grabbing a glass. She pours the amber liquid into the glass and takes the shot, wincing and coughing after. “I don’t know how you drink this.” I want to laugh, but all I can do is watch her. She takes another shot as I sit on the couch. Bringing the bottle and the glass with her over to the couch, she sits on the couch facing me and then sets the bottle down and the glass beside it. She pours more into the glass and looks at me. “Liquid courage.”

  “Before you start, I want you to know that I didn’t mean it,” I say, having to get it off my chest. Secretly, I want to tell her she is worth everything. She shakes her head, and I watch as the tears fall from her eyes, and it takes all my strength not to get up and go to her. To reach over and wipe her tears from her eyes while I tell her that nothing will change how I feel for her and nothing will ever come between us. But instead, I remain sitting, holding my breath as I wait for her to tell me the story. She looks up at me, and when I see the tears running down her face, I have this fear that my brother did something that I might have to kill him for. If he forced himself on her, I’ll kill him with my bare hands.

  “I think the best thing is to start at the beginning.” She looks down and then up. “I’ve never told anyone this story.” I wonder why she never told Jacob. I want to know why she kept this from me for so long. “I started working at the country club around the same time Liam came home for the summer.” She takes the glass in her hand, and this time, she just takes a sip.

  “He was his normal arrogant and obnoxious self.” She is not wrong with her description of my brother. From as far back as I can remember, my brother was a … Well, he’s a bastard. He always had to win, and he wasn’t opposed to cheating to ensure he won. I can count on one hand the times he won fair and square at anything, and then I’d need an army to count all the times he cheated to win. He wanted to be the perfect son in my father’s eyes, so he would do whatever was necessary for Father’s attention, whereas I couldn’t give a fuck. I just did my thing.

  “Well, one week in, I had fucked up an order, and this old member was on my ass. Your brother told him to relax, and he actually made it okay.” I want to roll my eyes, but she beats me to it.

  “I should have known something was up.” She shakes her head, taking another sip. “I should have known, but you know me. He started coming into the club every day and being nice to me, so I thought he had changed.”

  “A leopard doesn’t change his spots,” I say, and she laughs bitterly.

  “Isn’t that the truth?” she says, finishing the whiskey and then pouring more in her glass. “He was there one night when I got off my shift, and he walked me to my car. He did that every night for a month.” She takes a sip. “Each night, we would spend more time talking by my car, and by the second week, we just ended up sitting on the grass talking.” I bite my tongue to keep from adding he lied, but she beat me to it. “He lied. He told me he loved me. It was the first time anyone had ever told me they loved me or held my hand or even hugged me. He was the first one to tell me that I was beautiful.” Her eyes fill with tears.

  She has to know how beautiful she is and how loved she is. She has to know I would do anything for her.

  “He was probably just playing me from day one.”

  “He’s my brother, and the only thing I’m sure of is that you were just a pawn in some game he was playing.”

  “Well, it figures I would lose my virginity to a man who would turn out to be the biggest waste of time. You were right about some things.” She looks at the glass in her hands and then looks at me with a broken stare. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” She repeats the words, and my stomach burns.

  “Don’t say that,” I snap, and she looks at me.
“Don’t say that. You are nothing like your mother.” I try to be as respectful as I can toward her mother, but the bottom line is, that woman is a bitch. She literally kicked her daughter out of her house when she was sixteen. Well, she didn’t kick Savannah out, but she decided she was going to move, leaving Savannah to find somewhere to live. Who does that?

  “Needless to say, the joke was on me when two days later he walks into the country club with this blonde debutant on his arm.” Her voice trails off, and she takes another sip. “Yup, his girlfriend was visiting.” She shakes her head. “A girlfriend he never mentioned, and I knew nothing about. If I’d known …” She looks me in the eyes. “If I’d known, I would have never ever gone there with him.”

  “I know,” I reassure her.

  “He sat in my section with her.” She wipes away the tear from her cheek with the back of her hand. “It was so hard not to throw the glass of water in his face. It also made me feel like I was cheap … God, he …” She takes a gulp. “He got down on one knee in front of me and proposed to her. There in the middle of the country club, he proposed to her.”

  “Son of a bitch,” I hiss while she refills her glass. This time, she takes the whole gulp. She must be getting used to it because she swallows without wincing. I wait to hear the rest of the story.

  “I found out I was pregnant right away,” she continues. “I don’t know if you want to hear the rest.”

  “I want to hear it all,” I say, then lean forward, folding my hands together. My stomach suddenly feels sick because I have a feeling I haven’t even heard the bad parts yet.

  “When I found out, I tried to reach out to your brother. I called, but he wouldn’t answer. And then one day, I was stupid enough to seek him out.” I can feel the worst part of the story coming. “I thought he would be at your father’s office since he came home to be an intern.”

  She avoids my eyes when she says the next part. “I walked into the house, and your father was just coming into the hallway when he saw me. He looked at me like I was …” She wipes the tears away. “He told me to follow him into the office, and then he closed the door behind me. At that point, I knew I should have left. I knew that nothing good would come from me being in that room. He walked behind the desk and sat down and asked me what I wanted. I stumbled with my words, before saying I was looking for Liam. It was like he knew. He told me that Liam was gone for the weekend with his fiancée, and that I should find someone else to hang around with.” My hands form into fists when I think of what a bastard my father could be. Cold and calculating, he would knock down his own mother to get ahead.

  “I told him what I had to discuss with Liam was private.” She looks up now, and I see the broken girl who was there eight years ago. The girl who thought she was nothing and would walk with her head down to avoid eye contact. The girl she’s fought every single day since then not to be. “I can still hear his bitter laughter in my head, and when he guessed I was pregnant, he stood and walked around the desk. I held my breath, not knowing what he was going to do, but then he put his hand in his pocket and took out two hundred dollar bills.” My heart speeds up, and my blood starts to boil. “He threw them at me and told me to take out the trash.” Watching her say the words, I know they cut her deep.

  “I’ll fucking kill him.” The words fly out of my mouth, and I don’t know who I’m going to hurt first—my father or my brother.

  Chapter Four

  Savannah

  “I’ll fucking kill him,” he hisses. My heart almost explodes in my chest when he flies off the couch. I sit here in shock as he paces in front of me. “I can’t …” he says and pulls his hair. “I can’t even believe.”

  My heart has been in overdrive ever since I started telling my story. I had to take sips of the whiskey in order to continue because thinking back to that time in my life is not something I like to do. It was a dark period when I had no idea what I was doing nor did I realize the consequences of my actions to the people around me.

  “Beau.” I say his name softly, wanting to get the rest of the story out so I never have to say it again.

  “There can’t be more,” he tells me, and the hurt fills his eyes as the tears fall. “They just wrote off their flesh and blood.” He sits next to me, placing his hand on my knee. I know that it’s just to comfort me, but I didn’t know how much I needed his touch until then.

  “I ignored your father and then finally got ahold of your brother.” I swallow now and look at the empty glass and wonder how crazy it would be to pour another one. My head is already starting to spin, and I don’t know how much more I can drink without blurting out everything.

  Telling him that I love him isn’t something I want to do on the same night I share my biggest regret. I don’t regret Ethan for one single minute, and I never will. The only thing I regret is who the sperm donor was. I lean forward and put the glass down on the table, hoping he doesn’t remove his hand from my knee. “I found him the week after. He was coming into the country club, and I told him I needed to speak to him.” I close my eyes, ignoring the pain gripping my stomach as I think back to that day. “He looked at me like I was dirt.” I avoid his eyes, not ready for him to see that it still affects me.

  For my whole life, I’ve been looked at like I was dirt. Either that or a charity case. Not once has someone or anyone looked at me as just another person. I was always talked about in whispers. “She’s the one who Mary Ellen feels sorry for.” I would hear that one a lot when I walked into school, and some of the other moms would see me. The pointing was always evident. I tried to ignore it and tried not to let it bother me, but I would always go quiet and not make eye contact. “She’s her daughter,” they would say of my mother. God, that one would get me every single time. I would have to blink away the tears so fast that sometimes they would sneak out, and I would suddenly have “allergies.” But my favorite has always been, “She’s the one who ruined everything.” That one has been at the top for the past eight years along with the finger-pointing, the rude stares, and the blatant hatred worn on their face.

  “When I finally told him …” My hands start to shake. “He told me it could be anyone’s, and it can’t be his since it was only one time.”

  “What a fucking moron,” Beau hisses. Leaning back on the couch, he scratches his face with his hands and then looks at me. I have to stop talking for a second because all I want to do is lean back into his arms. I want him to wrap his arm around my shoulder like he does during scary movies. But instead, I take a deep breath and tell him the rest.

  “I wasn’t with anyone else,” I say, looking down. “He was my first. He was my only.” God, I can’t believe I confessed that last part. He didn’t have to know that, but since I’m already telling him my deepest, darkest secret, I might as well tell him the rest. The minute I say the words, I see the look on his face and the questions that are forming. I’ve been on dates, but they have never even gotten past first base. I tried, but the reality was, none of them were Beau.

  “You don’t have to.” He looks at me, and I avoid his eyes.

  “After he said that, I knew that I was going to be in this alone. I just …” I put my hand to my stomach the same way I did eight years ago. “I went over it in my head for a week. I even went so far as to tell my mother.”

  “Oh, good God,” Beau says and rolls his eyes. He isn’t wrong.

  “Yeah, that’s a story for another day. Needless to say, she told me that I would ruin my life by having a baby.” I have to get up now to say the rest of my story, the nerves running through me, but the minute I stand, the room spins, and I fall back onto the couch.

  “No more whiskey,” I say, and he smiles at me for the first time since he’s gotten here. But I can’t sit, so I try to get up again, and this time, I get my balance right.

  “I scheduled an appointment and went to the doctor. I sat in that waiting room.” I close my eyes, and I’m back in the bleak room with white walls and the blue plastic chairs. No p
ictures even hung on the wall. It was the most depressing room I’ve ever been in, and you have to think that there is no way it would ever be a happy place anyway. “I sat in the waiting room by myself, and I just kept telling myself that this was the only choice. It was the only choice.” I wipe the tear off my face, but another follows right after. “They called my name, and I got up, but something just …” I shake my head. “I couldn’t do it. I just, he was the size of a pea, but I already loved him more than anything in the world.”

  I walk over to the fireplace and look at the picture sitting on the mantel. It’s the first picture they took of Ethan when they placed him on my chest. I will never forget that feeling. It was an all-consuming love, a love I could never put into words. “That night was prom.” My finger traces Ethan in the picture. I turn to look at him, and he sits there, looking like he wants to jump up and grab me, but he knows I have to get this out. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know who to go to.” I shake my head. “No,” I say. “I’m lying. I wanted to come to you.” I’m going to blame the whiskey for that slip. His mouth opens, but I don’t give him a chance to say anything. “I wanted to run straight to you but …” I shake my head. “I just couldn’t tell you. I didn’t want to see the look of disgust on your face.”

  He jumps up now, and before I even know what is happening, his hands are on my arms. “I would never ever do that to you,” he says, his voice high, and he moves his face closer to me. He pulls me to his chest, and for the first time ever, I sob while someone holds me. For the first time, I have someone holding me up, and I am not standing by myself.

  “I’m so sorry, Savannah.” I wrap my arms around his waist. “It’s over,” he tells me with one hand holding my head.