by Mj Fields
I now know where I get the ability to fake happiness. It’s from her.
“Isn’t it, Lucas?” she asks from over her shoulder.
He nods. “Yeah, it’s wonderful.”
Wonderful.
I remember vividly our first night together and when T’s mouth touched me everywhere and the way he made me feel.
“I’m not drunk anymore, T, and I’m not a child, and I want you to feel like I do.”
“How’s that?”
I told him, “Wonderful.”
Logan walks out of the elevator, his hair soaked with sweat. “Holy shit!”
“Go shower. I can smell you from here.” I smile at him then turn and look at Mom. “Take Chance a second?”
When she does, I walk quickly to the office, open the desk drawer, and pull out the journal.
I open it to page twenty-seven as I sit and grab a pen.
Page 27
Our Love is forever, Thomas Hardy. Yours, mine, and our children’s … forever.
I set the journal on the table next to my father’s phone charger, knowing he will get curious and read it. Then I get up and walk out.
When I pass the nursery, I look in. Hope’s crib has been moved to the window, and she is sleeping soundly with the sun on her back. I bend down and kiss her sweet, little head, and she stirs yet doesn’t wake up.
When I turn around to walk out, I am greeted with a father’s wish for his children: butterflies and a smiling sun.
I kiss my fingers and reach up, touching the cloud that Piper pointed to and told me he was sitting on. “Our love is forever.”
When I walk out, I see Dad warming up lunch, clearly something Tessa cooked for tonight.
“If you don’t want to eat, you don’t have to.”
I hold my hands out and take Chance from Mom. “I’m actually a little hungry,” I say, walking over next to him.
“He looks like me, doesn’t he?” I ask.
“He does.” Dad nods.
“Except this right here.” I point to his dimple. “That’s totally T. Even Liam said so.”
Dad nods again.
“They have matching birthmarks, too,” I tell him. “Right on their left cheek.”
Dad looks at Chance’s cheek and then at me.
I smile. “Butt cheek.”
He kisses my head and turns to put the casserole in the oven.
“And to think, your daddy didn’t think you two were his and made me do a paternity test,” I say in a sickly sweet tone.
“He, what?” Logan laughs.
“Yeah, men.” I look back at Chance. “He said he loved me, anyway, but needed to know. Simple blood test and that stress was gone.”
“Hell, I could have told him it was his. If I remember correctly, I saw him Christmas night bare-assed, running after you.”
“Shh,” I say. “Not in front of the kids.”
“Or your father,” Dad says in a more relaxed tone.
“Condom broke.” I shrug. “Good thing we aren’t Indian; that would have been a hell of a name to be stuck with.”
Logan laughs, getting the joke. “Broken Condom and Bare Ass. Yeah, that would have sucked.”
“It wouldn’t have happened.” I smile at Chance. “No way would I have done that to you. No way.”
Epilogue
Love is hope, love is chance, love is forever. — MJ Fields
The police found the car that hit and killed T. It was registered to a ninety-year-old man who had dementia and an alibi. The police think that the car was stolen and that the old man never reported it because he didn’t notice it was gone. The plate was registered to a totally different vehicle. They didn’t close the case, but because of empty bottles and drug paraphernalia they found inside the car, they were sure they were right.
It didn’t help to know that no one was gunning for him. I never thought it to begin with. I had never seen Thomas Hardy unkind to anyone except Luke Lane. It didn’t help that they found a motive for why it happened. It didn’t help, because it didn’t bring him back.
That night, I dream of T, and when I wake up, I am confused.
You know that feeling when you walk into the bitter February cold and you take your first breath, and your breath is frozen? You feel the pain in your throat, your chest, and you think to yourself, This is what it feels like when you are dying.
Or that moment you walk into the desert air, and you feel like your lungs are so full that you can’t take a breath when you desperately need one? None comes, and you are dying.
I can’t breathe. Death is strangling me. It’s bitter cold, it’s sufficiently hot, and then there is this.
I look around. I am in the middle of the twins’ room. Dad put a bed together for me in here so that maybe they could sleep, and when they did, I would.
I get up and look in their cribs, terrified they are going to be taken away, too. It has become a secret and all-consuming thought.
My dad rushes in the room, and I smile. It’s fake, so fake, but I need them to leave. I need to grieve and love and grieve and love repeatedly.
I walk past him, needing to use the bathroom, and quickly hide behind the door.
I grab a towel and sob into it as I climb into the empty tub and sit.
The door opens, and Dad walks in, steps in the tub, sits down, and holds me.
“Talk to me, baby girl.”
Everything rushes out, and I can’t stop it.
“Daddy, I don’t want to live, and I don’t want to die, but this pain … This pain is unbearable. I can’t do this. I can’t do it anymore. I want to die. I want to fall asleep and never wake up. I want our babies in my arms on a cloud high above the world that is so full of death and pain and suffocation. I want to open my eyes and see him. I want to see him and for him to sit on the cloud, pain free and breathing, looking at me the way he did, and for his babies to see him and all the love he has for them! They are his, Daddy. They are, and Jade is wrong! You are wrong! I heard you and Mom. Do you know what that felt like?”
“I’m sorry, Ava. I’m sorry I wanted to ask you.”
“Do you know what it would be like if they were his? Do you? It would be horrible, horrible and awful, and I don’t want it. I don’t want him. I want T, Daddy. I want him here with me so badly so that I can breathe and love and not think about death and sadness.”
“Ava, what are you saying?”
“I’m telling you that T and I did a paternity test when I first found out. Dr. Kennedy administered it. T is my babies’ father, and—”
“Could Luke have been, Ava?” he asks, his voice shaking in anger.
“No!”
“Okay. Christ, Ava.” He holds me more tightly. “Okay, baby girl.”
“It’s not okay. Nothing is okay. There is life, and there is death, and there is nothing else.” I sob.
“You’re wrong, baby girl. You are wrong because you have me. You have us,” he says as Mom and Logan come into the bathroom. “You have yours and T’s babies. It hurts, and it’s hard, but in the midst of death, there is life.”
“It hurts,” I cry. “It hurts so badly.”
“You don’t want to die, Ava,” he says, and the fear in his voice shakes me.
I shake my head. “No. No, I just want to see him again. I didn’t get to say good-bye, Dad. I didn’t even tell him I loved him before I was carried out of that room.”
“He knew, and he wants you to live, Ava, just like Collin wants Tessa to. When you love someone, you don’t want them to be miserable; you want them to be happy. So if not for you, be happy for those babies and T, Ava. Allow yourself to be happy.”
After that outburst, it takes a week before I can convince them it was due to a dream and that I’m fine.
Dad agreed to go home, but at a moment’s notice, he would be back. He made me promise I would go to the Cape for Labor Day.
Mom was easier to convince. She hired a nanny to come in for five hours a day to allow me to rest and help wit
h laundry.
When everyone was gone, I sent Casey home for the night with a promise I would call if I needed anyone. Otherwise, I would see her at eight so we could get Chance to the doctor.
That night, I close my eyes and remember page twenty-seven and all the pages before that. In our journal is all the truth that matters. He left me that without even knowing he would, and on page twenty-seven, I wrote, Our love is forever, Thomas Hardy. Yours, mine, and our children’s... forever. My promise to him.
“You are the truth about love,” I whisper to Hope and Chance as they sleep. “There is no greater love than that.”
Afterword
The Truth About Love
Just like life, true love doesn’t always come to us in the way we anticipate, dream, or expect.
Just like life, losing something we cherish doesn’t mean that all is lost.
Just like Ava’s father told her, life doesn’t end in death. I believe that love in its truest and most breathtakingly beautiful form comes from within and grows when mirrored by those who are able to give it back.
Just like millions of people in this big, beautiful, and somewhat broken world, love lives in hope.
The greatest love in my life came to this world much earlier than expected, tiny and beautiful. Her eyes are blue and full of love, dreams, and kindness.
What I hope I can show her is the beauty in herself, in this world, and in people who are different. And, in differences, there is beauty.
Keep dreaming, hoping, and loving,
XOXO MJ
27 Lies (Luke’s Story)
Truth About Love Duet, Book Two
This book is dedicated to my favorite band.
My very first book, Blue Love, was inspired by the song Hate Me, by Blue October.
Their music is so inspiring and is always playing when I write novels that are raw and full of the feelings that dig so deep you feel it in your soul. That's what their music does to me.
27 Truths and 27 Lies was written while listening to many of their songs on the album Sway. Worry List, and Not Broken where the top two.
The song Bleed Out is my go to when I need 'someone' to cry with.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your music. It inspired, heals, and let's me feel.
Preface
Note To Readers
In the name of love, we often do things we would normally question ourselves for doing. One of those things is lie. Often times, they are trivial, meaningless lies.
Yes, I’d love to watch that movie with you. In reality, we just want to spend time with that person, and we’ve seen the movie and disliked it.
I love the way that looks on you. Even though it isn’t flattering.
I don’t mind. Really I don’t. And in reality, you mind.
Then there are lies we tell ourselves.
It won’t happen again. When, in fact, it’s already happened before.
It doesn’t matter; it’s just words. When someone says something unkind and we swallow it back, yet it chips away a tiny piece of our heart.
It’s okay. I love him, and he will change. He doesn’t change. It just keeps getting worse.
He loves me.
Love is so very complicated. In order to make love last, both parties must love themselves and be on the same “page” as to where their futures are heading: together...or in separate directions.
Like love, Luke’s book is not easy.
The hero is flawed and has done things that may be unforgivable. The heroine is, too, as well as broken, shattered, and growing into a role that was meant to be shared by two people.
At it’s very core, though, there is growth, realization, acceptance, a mutual path to be traveled, and love in its truest form, one that is shared.
In each chapter heading is a lie told in the name of love, as told by one of my amazing readers. It does not necessarily introduce the chapter.
This book does end in a HEA, but like all journeys worth traveling, it is not easy. It is about the beautiful and the broken.
XOXO
MJ
Prologue
My childhood was picture-perfect as far as childhoods go. I have a loving mother, a great stepfather who raised me as his own, a brother, and two sisters, who are funny and kind. They have never made me feel like I’m not one of them.
Outside of that circle is an extended family who love me, who I love, and who loved a man I was never able to meet. Through them, I learned of their memories. Through me, they get to keep a piece of Tommy Lane.
In high school, I was a star basketball player, like my father. I excelled at football, like my father. I was tall and built, like my father. In essence, I used to be a constant reminder of the young man who was some kind of wonderful. In reality, I was, and still am, no such man.
The months preceding graduation, I felt lost. I felt like a child who had held the hand of a man who was always there, but I knew he hadn’t been. I also knew I outgrew him, my father. One simple statement meant to provoke thought and encouragement, instead incited anger.
I was angry at myself for never stepping out from the shadow of a ghost. Angry at all the people who never gave me the opportunity to grow outside of who he was and into my own person. Therefore, I joined the military, something I heard my father had planned to do but was never given the opportunity. He, too, lived in a shadow of sorts. He also died in that shadow.
I was going to honor my father in my own way and grow beyond his shadow, leaving behind those who held the both of us back. It was a wonderful plan and, when executed, I became a man. I found myself, and in finding myself, I got to serve my country, and she served me.
Home was a great place to visit, but not a place I ever wanted to plant roots, until a little girl I could never say no to grew into a woman.
Ava Links, the daughter of my father’s best friend, the man whose shadow my father lived in until his dying breath. One night inside of her, hovering over her, her calling out to God, to me, she was in my shadow. At least, that was what I always told myself the morning after.
Seven years later, she was still at my mercy.
My. Mercy.
Then she told me she loved me, and my fucking world imploded.
Chapter One
I don’t love you. — J. Dietrich
Luke
Sleep isn’t always necessary. Hell, I have gone without it for days when out in the field. When I am home, though, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, it’s welcome.
Why can’t I sleep? Because five-foot-nothing; one hundred and ten pounds of curves and ass; long, thick raven hair; and blue eyes pop into my head when I close my eyes. I am a full foot taller and outweigh her by a hundred pounds and yet the sight of her is enough to weaken me and cause blood to pump into my dick, something I have kept in check for years.
Fucking is fucking, and yes, I like that I am fucking something I shouldn’t be. I like that I am breaking unspoken rules. I like that, in fucking her, there is an invisible yet ever present wall separating me and the people back home.
Guilt kicks in when I allow it, so I stop allowing it. She sure as fuck doesn’t want anything more than I do. We are both adults. Well, she can be a little fucking brat at times, but for the most part, she is just as self-serving as I am. And I know damn well she gets off as hard as I do on the fact that we are a taboo...a secret. And that’s all there is.
There is no path to opening up that spicy, little bit of information so that shit’s sealed as tight as her perfectly waxed, tight little twat that strangles my cock every fucking time we are both home.
When I allow myself the time to think about it, which is usually on a plane heading back to Ithaca, NY, or in the hot as hell monthly letters I get from Miss A, I do feel a little guilt. And yes, I intend on ending this fucked up game I am playing in my head, the one where I am in control...until I see her and the desire she has to get fucked wipes my mind of any thought of ending this.
Yeah, we are not in a relationship,
but I know that, when I’m around, I’m the one sticking it in her hot box. I’m the one who she cries out to, the one fucking that perfect little pussy, and I don’t have to worry that she’s thinking about anyone else. I know damn well she wants my cock, and my cock fucking loves her pussy.
Five-foot-nothing; one hundred and ten pounds of curves and ass; long, thick raven hair; blue eyes; and a pussy that has become my kryptonite. That is Ava Links, the girl I can’t seem to say no to and never have been able to.
We fuck. We fuck hard, and I have had her at my mercy for over seven fucking years...until now when she told me she loves me, and I told her she didn’t. She told me she knew I loved her, and I told her it wasn’t true. Then, true to Ava’s nature, she pushed. True to mine, I wrecked her.
Do I love her? I love my country.
Do I love to fuck her? Yes. Best piece of ass I ever had.
Did it feel good to hurt her? No, not at all.
Is it cool that some fucking drummer, who clearly needs his ass kicked, is going to be fucking her? No.
Do I hope it fails? Yes. She can do better.
I roll over onto my front and bury my head in the sheets. I think about shit nobody should ever think about because, right now, all the shit I have seen in seven years is more welcomed than the image of her when I left this morning: angry, hurt, and completely confused, all caused by me telling her exactly how it needs to be.
When I wake up in the morning, and seconds after my feet hit the floor of my civilian apartment, I do one hundred crunches. Then, on the bar hanging in my doorway, I do one hundred pull-ups. It gets my blood pumping, and my body awake and alert.
I eat half a dozen eggs, a few slices of bacon, and a bagel. I drink milk, the real shit, and then orange juice. Am I that hungry? Hell no. In order to remain in my top physical shape, though, that amount of food is necessary to fuel the man I have to be, need to be. The man I want to be.