“Okay, so if you had plans to ask me to marry you, why did I find you with another woman that night?” Her voice was even in tone, but she couldn’t hide the hitch of emotion that welled up at the end.
“I can tell you what I know, and then what I was told.” She gave me a questioning look. “You’ll understand in a minute.” I launched into the story of what happened to me, how Stiff – Johnny – had set me up, drugged me, and nearly killed me while allowing the club whores of his choosing to rape me as I sat there incapacitated. I even told her what happened to all of them as a result. I wasn’t holding anything back. It seemed to be the one thing that kept us apart for far too many years – withheld facts, misleading information, lies and bullshit. I was done with it all. I told her everything including all the times I’d gone to Jack, crying, screaming, threatening his life – each one depended on how far down into the abyss I had sunk on that particular day before showing up. I also told her the story of her birth, her true parentage, and how even her biological father had a part in our being kept away from one another. In the end she just sat there staring off into space as a steady stream of tears dripped down her battered cheeks.
I wanted so badly to reach out and touch her, comfort her, but I didn’t know if I had the right to do so. I didn’t know if she would find my touch comforting or another source of pain. “I need to know something now,” I finally managed to get out, breaking the silence as I did.
“What?”
“I need to know my son’s name,” I told her. Her response was a small smile before she leaned in and placed a sweet kiss on the top of his sun-bleached hair.
“His name is Toby. Tobias Jason Carter.” When she saw the scowl cross my face she just shook her head. “Even though I thought you hated us and didn’t want us I was still going to use your name. They wouldn’t let me. They told me since I wasn’t married to you I couldn’t put your name on the birth certificate unless you were there to okay it.” She shrugged her little shoulders and then winced at the pain the movement must have caused. “I asked my dad, and he just told me that you didn’t want anything to do with us. I didn’t know what else to do. I gave him your middle name, because I knew you didn’t like Charles. It was all I could give him of you.”
“You could have come to me,” I insisted.
“I feel horrible for not sticking around now that I know what you went through, but remember, from my point of view that last night was humiliating and heartbreaking. I had my soul crushed, and then every time I asked my father to let you know how the baby was doing before he was born, he said you didn’t care.” She shook her head. “Before I gave birth, I wasn’t strong enough to face that kind of rejection head on. After he came into this world, I couldn’t bear him knowing you only to be turned away. I know first hand how horrible that feels.”
I growled out my frustration then. “Except you were never turned away!” My tone had become to sharp and it jolted Toby from his sleep.
“Momma?” He questioned as his eyes turned to me with a solid amount of fear in them. I never wanted my son to know fear when he looked me in the eye again.
“It’s okay, baby.”
“He huwts you?”
“No, baby. He won’t hurt me. He won’t hurt you either. He’s here to help us?” The last was a question for me to which I nodded my head.
“That’s right. I’m here to take you and your momma on a trip to some place special where the bad man won’t ever hurt you again.”
I watched as my son’s eyes shifted from fear to a bright-eyed wonder. “You Batmans?”
I chuckled at that. “I’m better than batman,” I told him. Fuck if that guy in tights was gonna steal my heroic thunder from my kid.
Toby looked thoughtful for a minute before he turned to gently pat his mom’s damaged cheek. “Jorwa powed my mom right hewa.” At my puzzled look Lucy translated. “Jordan hit me right here,” she managed with a sad smile.
“He’s never going to do it again,” I promised. “Should have never had a chance to do it to begin with.” I flash of guilt swam across Lucy’s face, and I didn’t want that for her. “I don’t blame you at all considering what you thought sent you running and what you were told after. I do blame some other people though.”
“I can’t believe he’s not my real father. No one ever said a word to me. I could maybe understand when I was younger, but I’m 24 years old. How could they not tell me?”
“These are the same people who worked pretty damn hard to keep our family apart, babe. I don’t think there’s an answer in that mess that will make any sense at all.”
“What happens now?”
“We get you out of here, pack up the necessities from your house, and get you back to South Carolina. I’m going to have to leave you for a bit though. I’ll need to track down a rental truck big enough to hall my bike back along with your stuff, and seat all of us up front too.”
“You brought your bike down to pick up two people?” She laughed as she asked the question, thinking I was ridiculous.
“Babe, I brought the bike down to bring you back, but honestly, I thought you’d be riding with your dad in his truck on the way back. Never new there would be an extra person.”
“You didn’t know anything about me having a child at all?”
“They wouldn’t even tell me if you were still breathing out there somewhere until they decided to taunt me with the fact that you had moved on with someone else, and hell, that had to have been while you were pregnant.”
“I didn’t meet Jordan until after Toby’s first birthday. He moved in next door to me when my friend moved out.” I nodded, because what could I say? I’d been with another woman once since she left, and I honestly couldn’t remember much of that interaction beyond the guys ribbing me about the fact that I apparently busted up a marriage in doing so.
PeeWee’s brother got a divorce and got shy of that woman as quickly as he could after coming to collect her from the clubhouse. I hadn’t heard anything from or about the woman since. Hell, I didn’t even know her name since PeeWee wouldn’t call her anything but ‘that cunt’ when she was brought up. It gutted me that while that was the extent of my post-Lucy sex life she had been in a relationship with another man. Knowing that they lived next door to one another and so might as well have been living together for all the access he probably had to her was seriously fucking with my head. If I didn’t already want to kill him for laying a hand on Lucy – I’d definitely want to kill him for thinking he could touch what was supposed to be mine all along.
Lucy had to stay in the hospital for another night, and I called in some favors from our Tallahassee Chapter to have them sit on her house and wait to see if the asshole showed up since Lucy said he had a key. My brothers were instructed to detain him if they found him, but also to ensure the fucker didn’t mess with any of Lucy’s things. It turned out that it didn’t matter, because the police showed up in the morning wanting to talk to Lucy. They attempted to kick me out of the room for the discussion, and I wasn’t having it. When Lucy explained I was the father of her little boy they quieted down a bit.
“Ma’am, Jordon Ashburn is currently under arrest, though he has a room on the floor below this one currently. He was found beaten, near to death, though the person responsible was not apprehended.” They both glanced at me then, as if I was going to incriminate myself.
I just grinned at them. “Wasn’t me. You can check the cameras. I haven’t left this room all night.” They both ducked their heads in acknowledgment of my statement and turned back to Lucy, but I interrupted them before they could get started again. “If you find out who did beat his ass, let me know so I can congratulate them on a job well done, yeah?”
The younger cop had a hard time swallowing the laugh that had almost spilled forth while the other just gave me a look that said he was tired of my shit already. Oh fucking well.
“Is she going to have to come back to testify?”
“It shouldn’t b
e necessary, but make sure the District Attorney has her information for where she can be reached in case things change. The man was mumbling about how he didn’t mean to hurt her, he even named Lucy, so that will be used as a statement of admission.
The younger cop showed me something strapped to his chest. “Our department is doing a flagship testing of these body cams. It’s a bit clunky, but Mr. Ashburn’s statement was recorded with one.”
“Good to know,” I insisted. The cops wrapped up what they had to say to Lucy and left just as quickly as they’d arrived.
“I guess that’s good news. I shouldn’t have to worry about him coming to look for me any time soon.”
“Sweetheart, you don’t have to worry about him coming for you ever again. I promise the minute he’s released from jail – if he makes it out of the hospital – he’ll be watched.”
She nodded her head and then tears fell from her face. I wasn’t sure what those tears were all about, but I didn’t like seeing them. “I didn’t know,” she finally sobbed out.
“Didn’t know what? That he was a dick who had no problem beating on a woman? Most women don’t know until something like that happens.”
She shook her head in the negative though. “No, I meant, I didn’t know about you. I didn’t know that you hadn’t wiped your hands clean of us. This,” she offered up her face in a quick gesture, “doesn’t hurt near as much as feeling like I was the one who moved on. I didn’t do more to check for myself. I thought I could trust my father.” She choked back another violent sob. “I thought he was my father. I thought I could trust him. I loved him so much and he took everything from me.”
“Fuck!” I hissed out. What was I supposed to do with that kind of hurt and betrayal? Sure, I wanted to kill the man for the shit he’d done, but she just learned her entire life had been a lie and that she had in fact met her real father before and he’d continued the lie too. Then top all that off with the bullshit done to keep us apart, and yeah, it was a lot more than a beating she took. That was physical. It sucked, but it would heal. The shit her father had put her through, the lies her family told, and that was the kind of thing that damaged a person at a soul-deep level.
Once back in South Carolina I hesitated momentarily, unsure of where to take Lucy and her son. My son. Jesus. That was going to take some getting used to. I obviously couldn’t take them to her parent’s house. The clubhouse was nothing more than shitty reminders of how our past got so fucked up, and then there was…
I turned left instead of right going in the opposite direction of the clubhouse. Lucy eyed me warily for a moment. She must have thought I was taking her to her parent’s house. I didn’t say a word otherwise, just continued on until we turned again, in the opposite direction from the home she’d grown up in. “Where are we going?”
“Somewhere you won’t be found unless you want to be,” I explained without really explaining. It only took about fifteen more minutes and we pulled up to the driveway of a four bedroom, two bathroom house in North Charleston that I had purchased almost four years ago. I got it for a steal considering it boasted almost 3,000 square feet of living space. It was a gorgeous modern design with the strange angles that Lucy seemed to love the few times I’d taken her out looking at places.
“What is this place?” Lucy asked.
“Maybe we should get the little guy inside first, and then have this discussion.” She nodded her head, clearly a bit overwhelmed and from the looks of things the drive had done her no favors. Sitting still in basically the same position for so long had stiffened all of her muscles and sore spaces. I jumped out of the truck and ran around to her side to help her out. Then I moved to go pull Toby out of the car seat he was drooling all over in the back.
Once I got most everything unpacked from the truck I came back inside to find Lucy tucking Toby’s blanket around him where he was lying on the couch. The boy could sleep through anything. “Will you tell me now?”
I closed the front door behind me, threw the deadbolt lock to be sure that Toby wouldn’t be able to open the door if he woke up, and then turned back to her. “Come on, let me show you around and I’ll tell you everything.”
I gave her the tour of the home including the upstairs bedrooms and office area, the workout space in the garage, the new modern kitchen with all brand new appliances. “This is the house I bought four years ago,” I finally admitted.
“Aside from being really clean, it doesn’t look like anyone actually lives here though,” she stated quietly as she took another glance around with fresh eyes.
“I never moved in. I tried to once, for all of about two weeks, and then I just fucking couldn’t do it anymore so I went back to the clubhouse.”
“If you weren’t going to live in it, why did you keep it?”
I shrugged my shoulders and turned away. How could I tell her what this house meant to me? “It was the last thing I had of the dream we shared together.” The night your father told me you moved on I threw the engagement ring I’d gotten for you into the damned ocean. I was drunk, and I regretted the shit out of it the next day, but I stupidly thought at the time that it would magically help me let go and heal. I wanted the action to make me stop missing you.” I turned back to see that tears were spilling over onto Lucy’s cheeks then.
“When I really gave up after your dad closed down his shop, and I knew you were never coming back, I burned the kutte I’d had made for you.”
“Did it make you feel any better?” She asked, sniffing.
I shook my head. “Worse. It made me feel so much worse, Lucy because I couldn’t get it back. So, instead of having it just in case I ever found you again the damn thing was just as lost to me as you were from that point on.” I glanced around seeing the house from her point of view. “I couldn’t let go of the house because it was the last thing I’d done for us before everything went wrong. I bought this house to build our family in. It was everything you kept saying you wanted, and I needed to give you that. I knew the day I let the house go would be the moment you would never be able to come back to me.”
“CJ,” she whispered. “If I had known,” her words were choked off by emotion.
“I know, baby,” I managed to get out as I reached for her and pulled her into my body, holding her close in our house for the first time. “Things will be different from here on out, I promise you that.”
“CJ, I need to know…” She hiccupped and then slowly her eyes traveled up my chest until she was staring into my own. “Was there ever anyone else?”
I shook my head again. “What you saw that night,” I started to explain again.
“No. Not that. I know what that was now, and I can’t tell you how sorry I am that I didn’t realize sooner. I wasn’t there for you and I can never take that back.”
“There was never anyone else. I won’t lie to you. One night, when I had vowed to start moving on, I got deliriously drunk and I had sex with a woman. Fuck, I still feel bad that I wasn’t aware enough to question who the hell she was.” I saw Lucy flinch, but I needed her to know the story. If she planned on sticking this time, we both needed to be completely honest with one another so there would never be a need to doubt again.
“It’s just that the woman ended up being someone’s wife. PeeWee – from the club – has an older brother by about 17 years, I think. His wife came to the clubhouse and like I said I was drunk, looking to get over my hurt, and move on. We talked, drank some more, and I remember the moment she climbed into my lap, but then I was pretty much out of it until I was being punched in the face by her husband the next day.”
“Oh my God! I can’t believe she did that!” Then Lucy scrunched up her nose. “Wait, if PeeWee’s brother was older, then how old was the woman?” It was my turn to cringe.
“In her forties according to PeeWee.”
“Oh, CJ, you had sex with an old lady? And not the kind of old lady you guys treasure, but like… really, an old lady?” She surprised the shit out of me then whe
n she started laughing. “Poor guy!” She managed to hiss the two words out between her laughter before she grabbed hold of her ribs and groaned in pain the movement had caused.
“Damn, I already hear enough shit from the guys at the clubhouse. Not you too, sweetheart!”
“I’m sorry,” she huffed out while trying to quell her laughter. “It’s just… that was honestly the only time you were with someone the whole time I’ve been gone?”
I tipped my head up and down quickly. Her face sobered and then her lips drew down in a bit of frown that I disliked immensely. “I’m sorry, CJ. That must have been pretty lonely for you. Even when I was angry, thinking you did the unthinkable, I still only wanted you to be happy in the end. Even if it wasn’t with me.”
“That was the problem. I couldn’t be happy because you weren’t there.” I looked her in the eyes then. “There is no happiness without you, babe. I know that for a fact now.”
She clutched her stomach, and then turned worried eyes my way once again. “CJ, there was always something missing with him, but I had to try.”
“Shh,” I cooed to her. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Luce. Am I happy to know you were with someone else? Fuck no. Does it make me happy that the asshole you were with fucked you up and put you in the hospital? It makes me murderous. I don’t think any of it was your fault or something I you need to feel bad about. You believed the illusion Stiff left you with. You believed your dad, and you had good reason to. He’s been your go-to person all your life.”
“He wasn’t even my real dad.” The devastation in those words rang out in each one.
“He may not have been the one who created you, but he was the one who stood by your side, kissed your hurts away, watched you graduate, and got you to that point in your life.”
“He’s also the person who lied about everything, and kept you away from me with more lies. He knew all along what had happened to you?”
“He did,” I admitted. She nodded her head.
A Love So Hard (Aces High MC - Charleston Book 2) Page 17