I pushed my free hand through my hair and watched her watching me do it. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’d booked a termination, but then I realized I couldn’t go through with it.” Her words were weak and quiet.
She was going to kill my fucking baby, everything I’d ever wanted for us, she was going to take it from me without me even knowing.
“I panicked, and it felt like the—”
“The what?” I pressed.
“The safest option.” Tears openly flowed down her face.
Words weren’t coming to me naturally, like they were to Bailey, and she knew me better than to just blurt shit out.
“So, what was your plan? Do some coke and hope for the best?”
“I didn’t have a plan, and when I didn’t want to do the coke, he got mad, so I… I… did it to stop him getting madder. Inside my head, the voice was screaming that I needed to come clean with Thorn, the longer I left it the worse it was going to get and when I did, he went ballistic and beat me anyway.”
I ignored the hurt her words caused me. That she’d done drugs to stay safe, and it hadn’t worked anyway. “So, you backed out of it, killing my kid?” She winced at my words. “Were you going to raise it as his? Did you think I’d sit back like some fucking chump and let someone else raise my kid?”
“Everything about you is too dangerous, Zane, it’s not good for a family.”
I dropped her hand like a stone, I was the same Zane she’d played with for years, the same Zane who had her back no matter what, the same Zane who was good enough to fuck and toy with. But evidently, not good enough to have a family with.
“Would you have ever told me?” I hissed as she reached out and tried to take my hand again. “And don’t fucking lie to me again.”
“I don’t know, it would have been for the best.”
“The best,” I shouted. “For who? Not for me, missing out on my kid. Not for my kid, never knowing his real daddy, that’s if you let him live.”
“Of course, he would have known you.”
I laughed sardonically, “Just not as his dad.” I swallowed, maybe she was my soul mate because we shared the same callousness for life. “Did you… did you taunt him, so he’d do this?” She stilled. “So, help me God, Bailey, did you push him, so he’d do this and end our baby?”
Tears streamed down her face, and for a horrifying minute I thought I was right. “No! God No! I’d changed my mind. We can get through this. We can. We can try again.” She knew she was clutching at straws, panic had started to settle in. She didn’t want me to be her baby daddy to start with, so like Bailey always did, she reached for the right words, praying she’d be able to see them through in the end. Always, always telling me what she thought I needed to hear.
Fuck. How weak did she think I was?
Standing up, the real panic crossed her face. “Being with you, Bay, doing nothing but loving you would have meant everything to me, it would have been the best thing ever, but you lied to me about the most important thing in the world. You played Thorn too and he lashed out and look where it’s left us. Do you know what your brother has done for you?”
“Zane, please! No! No! You should have done it.”
I shook my head, understanding it finally. “Because my hands are soaked in blood already.” For the first time I wondered if I was really seeing what I meant to her, or if all of this was like looking at my life through a new lens. “And every time I look at you now, I’ll never see anything other than the face of a fucking liar, a manipulative bitch who thought that was okay. That it was okay to do this to the person who loved her so completely.”
“I fucked up. I panicked and I’m sorry.”
“You’re dead to me.”
On hearing those words, she clutched her head, tugging on her hair, her nails furiously scratching at wounds just starting to heal, and began to wail. My heart splintered and fractured as I ignored the instinct to step closer and soothe her, make it better. Tell her it was going to be okay, that we’d survive.
Backing away from her, I committed all of the memories of our time together to a place locked up tight deep inside me.
“Please,” she cried, holding her chest, the pain both physical and mental. “You’re breaking my heart.”
“Good, because you’ve obliterated mine and I hope yours never repairs, because I know mine fucking wont.”
“No! No!”
“Remember how this feels, so next time you play with someone’s heart you understand what’s at stake.”
I walked out of the door to hear her screaming my name. There was a thud as she hit the floor and monitors started beeping wildly out of control at the nurse station. People hustled in her direction, but I kept going.
I didn’t look back. I couldn’t.
I’d never felt such a sickness I couldn’t shake, if I gave in to that then I’d end up on the floor next to her, and Zane Teague would not go down like this, shaking on the verge of a panic attack over a woman who had demolished him.
I would have forgiven her anything, but I wasn’t sure I’d recover from this. She’d lied to me about our chance to be a family. Having a kid with her was my forever dream.
She was responsible for the death of our baby. She wouldn’t bear that pain alone, we’d always share that, but for once I was innocent in taking a life.
Epilogue
Two years later
For the first year, I’d made another stupid fucking promise to her brother. It was harder than the last one, and it made carrying on almost futile.
I promised I wouldn’t look for her.
Me, Zane Teague, with as much tech resource at my fingertips as the FBI, with dozens of dodgy detectives and private investigators on payroll had promised to leave Bailey Roach alone while she recovered.
That day, the last time I saw her, the damage to her body nearly overcame her. Those injuries led to internal bleeding and her chest cavity filled with blood, causing heart problems. I didn’t know how long that took her to recover from, but after three months when she didn’t get in touch, I figured she was taking time to recover from everything else too. What she’d been through and what she’d lost.
What we’d lost.
It was probably a good thing.
When I walked away, I thought I’d killed her, honest to God, thought I’d seen someone die from a broken heart. Well, someone other than me anyway. I think I felt the moment her heart stopped, but I was too stubborn, too selfish to go back. She needed to hurt as much as I did.
More.
I used to follow where she led me, but that had become unhealthy. She was my biggest vulnerability, and would we have survived anyway based on those foundations?
Doubtful.
The break she asked for, I gave her. The space she created, I needed too, only I didn’t realize that until she’d gone. It wasn’t just her that needed to heal, it was both of us. If there was to be any hope of us having a future, we both had to be sure that the damage we’d done to each other became a scar to remind us, not a poorly healed wound that kept opening wide and gushing blood. The longer I took, the more afraid I became of the need to be certain that I wouldn’t damage her again, wouldn’t finally break her.
And that she wouldn’t completely destroy me.
“Will you ever come home?” I asked as soon as the face of my trusted general appeared on the screen.
Bishop and I skyped most days, the fucker had stayed in Hawaii. I never found anyone else I trusted, and he decided to stay out here. It hadn’t taken me long to figure out that he had fallen for Roxanne. Watching her kill her cheating, lying fucker of a husband had earned Bishop’s respect and seemingly made his dick hard. We’d also left her kid without a dad, and Bishop had gladly stepped in. The guy who could slowly take off three layers of someone’s skin to cause maximum pain and suffering, had fallen under the spell of a little girl with blonde curls and eyes as bright as the Hawaii ocean itself. A little girl who called him Dad
dy and not the low life scum whose life we’d ended.
Bishop had also been the mystery buyer of Sixty-seven steps to heaven. For that reason alone, I’d never been out to visit him. It was all still too raw.
“I am home, fucker.”
“The girls okay?” That was how I referred to Roxanne and her daughter. She might have made her peace with Bishop, but not me. I was the boss, the one who took ultimate responsibility for ending her happy dreams. I could respect that she kept me at arm’s length, it came with the territory.
“Fine. Although if I have to sit and drink tea with a fucking Care Bear many more times then I’m likely to assassinate said fucking Care Bear.”
I burst out laughing over his pain. It was as domesticated as I’d ever seen the man, but I had visions of him producing a hunting knife and teddy bear stuffing floating around a girl’s playroom in a rage.
“Teddies and tea parties aside, everything else okay?”
He nodded. “Yeah, all on schedule.” That was as much as I’d get out of him over the internet, walls and wires had ears of the federal kind. “Listen, I found something out here, think you could come over and take a look?”
My heartbeat fast at the thought of going back there; I hadn’t been there since all of my doubts and insecurities about my love for Bailey had become rooted in the place. “Don’t think it’s going to be possible.”
Even on screen I could see the slight muscle jump in his jaw and knew that wasn’t the answer he was expecting.
“You think it might be time to look for her?” he asked.
“No. I’m thinking she’s made her choice and maybe this is best for both of us.”
Running a hand over his face Bishop forced out a frustrated breath, “Jameson gave the go-ahead fucking months ago. You have his blessing, what the fuck are you waiting for?”
The thing was, I didn’t know. J had always been in touch with his sister, at the very beginning he would only tell me that she was okay. I respected her wishes and our friendship enough not to ask anything else, and that just became the norm from then on. Then once, out of the blue, he’d tried to tell me, and I’d panicked and shut him down. I just wasn’t ready. That was when I realized I needed to heal too.
Going to her, trying to sort out shit was either going to work or end us for forever and in truth I wasn’t ready for that reality. I knew I’d made an epic fucking mistake the minute I kept walking down the hospital hallway away from her. But pride, fear, or a mixture of both kept me on the path out the door. I was more than prepared to live with the consequences, I just never expected those consequences to be… this endless nothingness. She wasn’t dead, so I couldn’t grieve her. We hadn’t broken up; she wasn’t mine to begin with. Bailey Roach taking time out just left me with a void.
A void I’d gotten used to.
A void I wasn’t sure I wanted to expose to the elements again.
“Do you know where she is?” I asked, tempting myself like a needle being dangled in front of a junkie.
“I’ve always known where she is and so have you.”
The door to my office opened and Jameson walked through the door, sat his ass down on a frustrated sigh, before propping his very shiny, very expensive, handmade shoes on my desk.
“I need to go, J is here, call me tomorrow?”
Bishop shook his head, his irritation with this whole ridiculous situation starting to really piss him off, and ended the call abruptly.
“Get your feet off my desk, fucker.”
Jameson ignored me and got down to business. “It’s been two years. Don’t you think it’s time to sort this shit out?”
I scratched at my beard, wondering where the fuck two years had gone. “Listening to other people’s calls is impolite, my dear friend.”
“Don’t be a coward.”
“She had her healing time, maybe I need some too.”
He reached for my father’s old decanter and sniffed the liquid. “That’s not one of ours,” he balked.
“Nope, it’s Irish.”
“Traitor,” he muttered before returning to the subject matter I thought I’d gotten away with. “It’s not just you who’s suffering. You already know where she is, so go find her, and get your life back on track.”
“I don’t!” I shouted, outraged, and still hating myself for making the promise two years ago to J that I wouldn’t look for her. The last promise I made I bulldozed my way through and look at how that turned out.
“Stop being a pussy, you know exactly where she is, you don’t even need to look.”
“Why won’t she come here?”
Jameson stood up. “What are we ten? You know why. You walked away too.”
He’d forgiven me for that. Forgiven me for leaving his sister in a dying pile on the floor. We’d taken chunks out of each other over it, but it seemed that I all did was reaffirm the decision he’d made regarding Bella. Love was complicated and he was happy to avoid real love at all costs, I was sure he’d learn at some point. Even in a loveless marriage there were real emotions involved, my mom and dad were proof of that.
“I don’t know where she is, I kept my word on that.”
“Stop being dumb and go get her.” On those words he stood up and walked out.
I waited another week before I was brave enough to start joining the dots.
And when I boarded the plane, I was worried I’d got it all wrong. If I had, going back to Hawaii was going to gut me. I’d get my hopes up, only for crushing disappointment at not being right to swallow me again.
I hired a car and with nervous energy drove it in the direction of Sixty-Seven steps to heaven. Pulling up outside was like visiting the grave of a dead loved one for the first time. There was no sign of life here and I was about to knock on the door of the house I’d sold to Bishop.
She couldn’t be here; it was too obvious.
I rapped my knuckles on the freshly painted door, noticing that the plants in the front garden were so bright and pink that they reflected off the whitewashed walls. When I owned the place, a gardening service used to look after it for me, but they never looked that good. No one answered and I was about to give up when I heard a squeal and a giggle from the rear. I walked to the side and tried the gate.
It was open.
The smell of the ocean hit me first, closely followed by the sound of the surf hammering my senses from all around. The sun loungers were still where they used to be, and for a second, I wanted to turn and run. I could see Bailey laid out on one, letting me love her and the pain of having it, then losing it assaulted me again.
The sound of the surf disappeared when a second squeal hit me, only to be followed by laughter. I ventured further, I was already in their backyard, I may as well make it known I was there.
Instinctively, I counted each step from the house to the beach at the back, knowing exactly how many I had left before I’d feel the soft grass turn into even softer sand.
A man’s roar broke through my reverie, my memories, and I had to blink and double take the whole scene—Bishop in board shorts, stomping up and down and doing a really poor job at impersonating a dinosaur. The girl in front of him, a chubby toddler in a bathing suit, dragged a soft toy away from him, laughing but not making much progress in the deep sand.
I watched for five minutes, wondering who this version of my friend was. It seemed Hawaii had mellowed him, but then I thought back to what it did for me, and I knew it had had the same effect on him.
It had thawed the harsh reality in his heart which had been replaced with hope.
When Roxanne’s little girl stopped running and stared at me, Bishop’s gaze finally landed on mine. He ran to her, picked her up by the back of her bathing suit and spun her around like she was a plane.
“You came.”
“Losing your edge, never thought I’d get the drop on you.”
He laughed, “Don’t be fu-flipping ridiculous.” He adjusted his cursing because of the little girl, which was crazy, a
nd carried on. “I got a notification on my cell from the cameras at the front of the house. Wanted to see if you had the stones to look around.”
He knew what this was costing me.
“Where is she?” I asked, my mouth drying instantly, wondering if I read everything wrong and she wasn’t here, wasn’t even in Hawaii. “Tell me I got it right.” There was more than a hint of desperation in my voice.
Bishop turned his head and looked out to the sea and my heart stopped, started and raced as soon as my eyes focused on the beauty on a paddleboard far out in the sea. “She hates water sports,” I mumbled to myself, utterly mesmerized.
Her hair blew in the wind, and as she came close, I knew the moment she’d spotted me, her arm stroke faltered just enough to let me know that my presence here affected her as much as it did me.
Bailey looked different, her body still did things to me, but it was leaner, more defined showing me how the outdoors and the ocean of Hawaii had helped heal her.
Bishop disappeared with his kid, leaving me to my reunion with a woman who I loved in spite of everything we’d been through, everything we’d done to each other. As she coasted up the shore, I waited until she stepped off the paddle board, bent down and dragged it behind her, throwing the oar on top of it, and stopping where she was.
The twenty foot of sand between us could have been a crocodile infested moat, neither of us moving, both of us wondering who would make the first move. I glanced to her stomach and saw my family’s tattoo snaking around her belly button.
She’d got that when she’d loved me from afar and it was what called to me and had me placing one foot in front of the other.
In spite of everything and throughout her recovery, I’d been with her every day, a constant reminder of the part of my life I thought drove her away from me.
“Hi,” she mumbled, I saw her lips move and wondered if they still felt the same, tasted the same and sent the same electricity pulsing through me like they did when our love was forbidden.
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