Southern Storms

by Cherry, Brittainy

  Derek shook his head. “I’m sorry, Jax.”

  “It’s okay. Whatever it is, it’s okay.” He walked over to his brother, completely ignorant to the reason behind Derek’s tears. He hadn’t a clue why his brother was falling apart, but he gave him comfort. A comfort I didn’t believe he deserved.

  “Tell him,” I ordered Derek, who’s guilt was plastered all over his face.

  “Tell me what?” Jax asked. “What’s going on.”

  Derek lowered his head and kept apologizing. The words felt less authentic every time they left his mouth.

  “Sorry for what?” Jax questioned. “What the hell is going on?”

  Derek took a deep breath and revealed everything to his brother. The words burned as they fell off Derek’s tongue and hit Jax’s soul.

  Jax stepped farther away from his brother. “No. You let me…” He closed his eyes tight and took in a deep breath. “I spent my whole life thinking I was the one who…”

  “I know,” Derek confessed, nodding his head. “I know. I can’t take it back, and I’m sorry. I ran away all those years ago because I couldn’t face what I’d done, Jax. I was a coward. I was fucked up in the head and I left. I regret it every day of my life.”

  “Every time I called you, you told me it wasn’t my fault. You tried to hammer it into me. You tried to hit me over the head with the fact that I shouldn’t blame myself, and I never understood why. I thought you were trying to comfort me, but the truth was you were trying to confess.”

  Derek kept crying, and Jax stood still.

  I didn’t know what to do, what to say, how to make anything better. I was almost certain Jax was about to snap. I would’ve lost my mind if those truths were revealed to me. But to my surprise—to everyone’s surprise—he stayed calm.

  “Give it to me,” Jax told his brother. “This land—give it to me. I don’t want anything else from you. You owe me that much. I don’t want your time and I don’t give two shits about your apologies, but you give me this, and then we move on.”

  “It’s yours,” Derek said, his shoulders rounded forward as he surrendered. “It’s yours.”

  Derek walked away, still mumbling his apologies.

  I rushed over to Jax’s side and took his hands in mine. “I can’t imagine what you’re feeling. I can’t even think about what’s going through your mind right now, but I just want you to know I’m here for you. I’m here, Jax, and I’m not leaving your side.”

  He closed his eyes and lay his lips against my forehead. He pulled me into him and held on tight. “Everything’s a mess.”

  “I know.”

  “But I still have you.”

  “Yes. Jax, I’m here, no matter what, I’m here.”

  “I love you, Kennedy.”

  “I love you, too.”

  I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. I knew there was a lot Jax was going to have to work through, but I was going to be there for him. I was going to hold his hand throughout all the storms that came his way.

  * * *

  I stayed by Jax’s side the following days which turned into weeks. He was struggling with dealing with the truth of the accident from all those years back. Derek had reached out to him time and time again to try to fix their relationship, but Jax didn’t answer his calls.

  “I’ll have to talk to him some day,” he said, “I just don’t think that day is today.”

  More than understandable.

  After what he’d been through, I wouldn’t blame Jax if he never spoke to his brother again, but I knew Jax. His love was bigger than his hate. His relationship with his brother would never be the same again, but I knew at some point he’d reach out to him.

  For the time being, he began working on the landscaping of his property, with mine and Connor’s help, of course. It seemed getting his hands into the earth’s soil was healing for him. Each time he dug up a spot of his past, it felt as if he was discovering a new kind of future. Something that could be beautiful and healthy. He was finally finding a way to begin again.

  I was doing the same.

  Eddie—or, well he was Dr. Jefferson that afternoon—handed me yet another tissue to wipe away my tears. I’d been seeing him twice a week for the past three weeks, and our sessions always ended with me in tears.

  “This is good, Kennedy. Getting your emotions out is a very healthy thing,” he encouraged. I knew he was right, even though some days it felt very difficult to do. I was getting better at working through my panic attacks with some tips and tricks he’d given me.

  “Whenever you see another child, maybe say the word ‘Daisy’ in your mind. Think of those as moments of your daughter sending you her love, instead of making it out to be a moment of loss. She can live in every single moment, and if you allow it, that can be a beautiful blessing.”

  I’d been trying his process for some time now, and even though it didn’t always work, sometimes I’d end up smiling. Then, I’d share stories about Daisy with the people I loved, the people who were always willing to listen.

  That afternoon as I left the therapy session, Jax was waiting for me outside the building.

  “Tears?” he asked with a small smile on his lips.

  “You know it.” I laughed. “Would it be therapy without Eddie making me cry?”

  “He’s pretty good at his job,” Jax agreed.

  I narrowed my eyes and poked him in the chest. “Maybe you should get back to allowing him to be good at his job with you, too.”

  He kissed my forehead and pulled me into his side. “We can’t both get better at once, Sun. We need at least one unstable partner in this relationship,” he joked.

  I paused my steps. “Seriously, Jax. Are you doing okay? I mean, I know you say you’re okay, but are you really?”

  “I’ll get there. I promise. It’s just going to take me one day at a time. I just have to keep getting up in the morning and wanting more for my life. So far, so good.”

  I smiled. “Good.”

  “Yup. One step in front of the other. That’s all I can really do.”

  I planned to take every single step right there beside him. As long as we kept moving forward, I knew we’d be all right.

  “Now, can we get to this damn party? I promised Connor I wouldn’t miss it.” Jax tossed me his keys and headed to the passenger seat of his truck. He’d been letting me drive it around whenever I asked him so I could get more comfortable behind the wheel. We never drove anywhere further than ten minutes, but lucky for us, nowhere in Havenbarrow took longer than ten minutes to get.

  Today was Connor’s big birthday bash, and by big I meant huge. Connor was loved by pretty much everyone in town. The whole town’s center was shut down as if a huge festival was in town. There was a Ferris wheel rented, carnival games, and a tilt-a-whirl ride.

  Everyone in town showed up to celebrate Connor’s eighteen birthday, which was pretty much Jax’s idea of hell. He still hated the people in town—but he loved Connor more than he’d ever admit.

  We parked the truck—which I drove perfectly may I add—and Jax grabbed Connor’s gift from the backseat.

  People were running around the festival laughing, hollering, and stuffing their faces with cotton candy and popcorn. It was all so over the top and wonderful. Connor deserved such a celebration.

  When Connor said it was a twenty-five-dollar entry fee for his birthday, he wasn’t kidding. There were two teenagers taking the money in at the main gate. I left him a fifty—I was feeling extra wild and giving since I’d finished the first draft of my manuscript. Sure, my agent might not had been able to sell the book to a publisher, and I might’ve had to keep tapping into my savings for a while, but it felt good to be back on track with my dreams and goals.

  “Partner, you made it!” Connor said, rushing over to Jax and me with the biggest grin on his face. That wasn’t the only thing on his face. It turned out there was a face painter at his party and Connor had officially become a tiger. I hoped he never changed too much. His s
pirit was too bright to ever disappear.

  Jax smiled. “I couldn’t break our deal. Happy birthday.” He handed Connor his gift.

  “I hope you gave me this and my one hundred dollars you owe me.”

  “Yeah, yeah, punk. I paid the girls on my way in.”

  Connor hurried to open his gift, and he burst out laughing when he saw what was inside. I couldn’t help but raise my eyebrows at the oddity of the present.

  “Holy fuck!” Connor exclaimed.

  “Language,” Jax said.

  “No way, Jax. I’m now eighteen so I can say whatever the fuck I want. But seriously, this is the best gift ever.”

  I raked up an eyebrow. “Are those…anal beads?”

  “They sure are.” Connor grinned ear to ear. “Tell me the truth, Jax. Are these Eddie’s?”

  “Wait, what?!” I gasped.

  “Never mind,” they said in unison.

  You know what? I’d go ahead and let that thought die off. The last thing I needed to do was burst into tears at my next therapy session as I thought about Eddie using anal beads.

  “I also got you this,” Jax said, pulling out his wallet.

  Connor wiggled his eyebrows. “More money?”

  “No, but I think you might like it.” He handed him a business card, and within seconds, Connor got emotional.

  He waved the card in the air. “Serious?”

  “Yup.”

  Connor handed the card over to me to show what was making him so emotional. I read it out loud. “Kilter & Roe Landscaping: Two Men and a Hoe.” Classy. I liked it.

  “You really want to start up another business with me?” Connor asked.

  “It would be an honor.” Jax held his hand out toward him. “What do you say, partner?”

  “I say hell fucking yeah!” Connor jumped around with excitement. “Oh! I almost forgot the best news I had to tell you about my mom. She’s in remission. The cancer is officially gone.”

  Jax’s eyes welled with tears as he tossed his arms around Connor and flung him around from excitement. “Fuck yeah!” he hollered.

  Connor laughed. “Language, Jax! Anyway. I’ve finally saved up enough to take her to Disney World this winter, and I wanted to invite you both to come with me. You know, I need my partner there to experience the happiest place in the world.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Jax said, grinning so wide. At that moment I was reminded of something so important about life. I was reminded that even though there were dark moments, there were ones filled with light, too. Connor’s mother found a happy ending, and I knew there were so many more happy endings to come in our lives. I was looking forward to all of the moments with Jax. The ups and the downs.

  “Just to be clear, I’m not paying for you both, so you better start saving up. I want you there, but I’m not your meal ticket,” Connor joked before hurrying off to talk to other people.

  Jax pulled me into a hug and held on tight. As we stared out into the crowd, my heart filled up with joy as I saw a little girl shoving her face full of cotton candy.

  “Daisy,” I muttered to myself.

  “What did you say?” Jax asked, smiling my way.

  “Nothing.” I stood on my tiptoes and kissed his lips. “Just felt a wave of love, that’s all.”

  Went spent the rest of the night losing our money at the carnival games and whirling around on the Tilt-A-Whirl. When I went home with Jax that night, I couldn’t help but feel grateful. So much had happened in my life, and even through it all, I was still able to smile. I was thankful for all the rainstorms that brought me back to him.

  * * *

  “Do you want to read them?” I asked Jax, after we made it home from the carnival. We sat on his bed with the shoebox of old letters that we’d sent each other. For the past few days, we’d been debating what to do with them.

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so. When I wrote those letters, I was in a very dark place. I’ve relived that place for so many years of my life, and I’m tired of that story. I want to move on, and that means getting rid of those letters.” He pulled me in closer to his body. “We have the rest of forever to leave each other love notes.”

  I kissed his lips when the doorbell rang. “Expecting someone?”

  “Never,” he said as he stood to go answer it. I followed closely behind him to see who it could be.

  When he opened the door, we were both surprised to see Amanda standing there with a box in her hands. Her eyes landed on me before she gave Jax a weak smile.

  “Hey, sorry to interrupt your night. I figured it was about time I return your stuff you left at my place. I don’t know why I held on to it for so long, but here it is,” she said, passing it over to Jax.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “Yeah. And I’m sorry about what happened at the bar. Lars was wrong for what he did. He’s a jerk sometimes. You didn’t deserve that.” She kept fidgeting with her fingers and avoiding eye contact. “You deserve to be happy.”

  “You do, too, Amanda. You deserve more than Lars.”

  “Maybe.” She nervously laughed. “Only time will tell.” She looked toward me and gave me a broken smile. “Take care of him, will you? This man doesn’t love easily. For a while, I thought he didn’t love at all, but I see it when he looks at you. You make him whole. You were his missing piece. So, can you do me a favor?”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  She smiled to us both and released a weighted sigh. “Stay.”

  39

  Jax

  Kennedy refused to leave my side throughout all of my hardships. She stayed during my darkest moments, and promised she wasn’t going to go anywhere without me. Day by day, she opened up my heart, and she didn’t seem afraid by what she saw.

  When it came time for some deeper healing, I knew exactly where I had to go.

  “Well, I’ll be. I’ll admit when I saw your name on my schedule, I thought it was a typo,” Eddie said as I walked into his office.

  I snickered a little and took my very familiar seat across from his desk. “Yeah, well, what can I say? I like to keep people on their toes.” It had been a few weeks since Derek came into town and I was still trying to deal with the truths he revealed to me. Each day came with its own struggles and I had gone through every emotion out there, but I didn’t have to deal with them alone anymore. I didn’t have to feel what I felt in the dark, because Kennedy was there to be my light.

  Truthfully, I had a whole team around me to help guide me home whenever I started to slip away, and that included my therapy appointments with Eddie. If anything, I learned what it meant to conquer ones demons. It wasn’t something you did, and then it magically disappeared forever. No, life was determined to throw shit your way, no matter how hard you tried to stay in the realm of happiness.

  But I’d discovered quickly how important it was to learn to fight back.

  That was the thing about storms. When you were in the middle of them, they felt so powerful. They felt as if they were driving your life, and you were left with no control over the way the winds blew you. That was why it was so important to have a core group of love surrounding you at all times. When you faced the storms together, when you held the hands of the ones you loved, and stood steady, the storms had a harder time pushing you over. The storms didn’t blow you away because you were linked to the world with love, the most powerful weapon that could be used during the mightiest of storms.

  And when the storm passed? You were left standing with the ones you loved, staring out at the rainbows. Kennedy was what grounded me. Her hand in my hand kept me still, and with her love, I survived the hardest of my storms.

  Eddie and I spoke for a while. We went over my allotted time, but he didn’t seem to mind, and when it came time for me to leave, he sat back in his chair, staring at me with tears in his eyes.

  I snickered. “Are you getting emotional on me, Doc?”

  “It’s just…” He cleared his throat, took off his
glasses, and wiped at his eyes. “This is good. This is amazing, Jax. It’s been an honor to watch you become the man you are today. You are the definition of healing. You put in the work, and it shows.”

  I felt it, too. I felt the healing, felt myself becoming whole again.

  * * *

  I called Derek down to Havenbarrow, telling him I needed to go over some paperwork about transferring the property over to me. Even though that wasn’t the real reason I called him. I figured it was time we truly talked over everything that happened.

  When he arrived at the house, he looked broken down and full of guilt. Before he could let another apology slip through his lips, I told him not to say it.

  “Just come inside,” I told him, heading into the house. He followed behind me.

  The moment he stepped into the living room, he paused and raised an eyebrow. “What’s going on?”

  Around the space were cans of paint and materials to fix the house up. I sat down on the couch across from him and clasped my hands together. “I’m tired of hard stuff. I’m tired of trying to figure out why you did what you did, and how my life could have been different if you told the truth. I’m tired of trying to hate you. I’m tired of feeling bad for you and the shit you’ve been carrying on your shoulders. I’m tired of the past, Derek. So, I’m fixing up the holes around this place. I’m removing all the memories of what Dad did to me. I’m filling up the holes that remind me of everything that happened before, and I want you to help me.”

  He cleared his throat and crossed his arms. “I don’t expect you to forgive me, Jax.”

  “Yeah, I know, but I will someday. It will take a bit of time. For now, I just need your help painting these walls.”

  We didn’t have to figure everything out right then and there. We didn’t have to hug and make up with one another. We didn’t have to fix our scars because they were still badly bruised, but we could paint together. We could cover up the past and bring about a brighter future. Healing came in waves, and I was willing to ride this one out.