The UN Series Complete Box Set

by Shantel Tessier

  Holly and I close up the bar and I get home around three. I crawl in bed next to Slade and cuddle up to him. My body is exhausted. I just feel like I have no energy, like I’m running on fumes. I’ve had trouble sleeping ever since we drove back from Tulsa and I think it’s starting to catch up to me. I let out a long breath and try to close my eyes, but all I see is my mother. And it’s the bad memories that come to mind, of tears running down her face as I stood screaming in the middle of her living room. It’s the same nightmare, playing in my mind every night. I hope that my meeting with Tate tomorrow can give me something else to dream about.

  *****

  I wake up to the sound of the shower coming on. I look over to my phone to see that it is eight in the morning. I lay there for a few minutes because, once again, I didn’t get much sleep last night. It was weird actually. I went to bed thinking about my mother, but all I remember is dreaming about Slade. I had a dream about Slade finding out I went to Tate’s without him knowing, and then he left me. I can’t even imagine my life without Slade in it. I need to tell him. He doesn’t deserve for me to go behind his back. I sit up when I hear the bathroom door open.

  “I’m sorry, Angel, I didn’t mean to wake you,” he says, standing at the end of the bed with a towel wrapped low around his hips. My eyes roam over his sculpted abs and hard muscular chest. His body glistens with the water that his towel missed. I stare at his star tattoo for a few seconds and I sigh. I wish he wanted me as much as I want him. I would feel better if I knew why he was staying at arms’ length. “I tried to be quiet.”

  “You didn’t wake me.”

  He walks over and sits down on the bed beside me. He reaches up and runs his hand through my tangled hair.

  I take in a deep breath before I fill him in on my plans for the day. “Slade, I have something I have to do today.”

  “Just stay home today and relax. Lay in bed and try to get some sleep,” he says softly.

  “You want me to lay in bed all day?” I ask him, dumfounded.

  “You need your rest. You’re not getting any, Angel.”

  Crap. I hope I didn’t keep him up last night as well. I push myself toward him and run my palms over his chest. “Why are you getting ready so early on a Sunday?”

  “I have some business I need to take care of.” He cups my face in his hand.

  “Stay with me?” Can’t he see how much I need him?

  He shakes his head, pulling my hands off of him. “I can’t, Angel. I have to go to the office to get some files that I had forgot yesterday, then I have to go over to my parents’ to discuss a case with my father.”

  I take in a deep breath, ready to get this over with. “Slade, I need to go talk to—”

  “You don’t need to do anything,” he says slowly as if speaking to a child, eyes searching mine. “You don’t have to make any decisions about your mom’s house or your dad’s house right now.”

  What would make him think that’s what I need to take care of today? I’m going to put that off as long as I can. “But that’s not—”

  He places his finger over my lips. “Angel, I keep telling you not to worry about it. When you’re ready to deal with that, we will talk about it.” He leans down and kisses me softly on the forehead before he goes to get dressed.

  I lie back down as I feel the tears threatening my eyes. I don’t know what to do. He obviously does not want to hear about my plans for the day. So, once more, I will just keep my mouth shut, keep everything inside.

  Slade walks out of the closet, now dressed in a pair of jeans and a clean white t-shirt. I close my eyes, thinking about how we are drifting apart. I know a relationship is not supposed to be based solely on sex, but we aren’t having it at all and that’s a problem for me, especially since I’m living with the biggest horn dog in town.

  “I love you,” he says, getting my attention.

  “I love you too.” I lean up and kiss him before he heads to work.

  I finally get out of bed and don’t waste a second getting ready. I throw on a pair of white jean shorts with a gray t-shirt and a pair of white Nike Shox. I grab the keys to Nadia and make my way toward St. Charles.

  It doesn’t take more than twenty minutes to get there, but twenty minutes is a long time when your mind is trying to prepare itself for the worst. I can’t keep my leg from bouncing up and down. I don’t know if it’s my nerves or the coffee that I downed.

  I pull up to Tate’s house and take a deep breath. Not wanting to waste any more time, I hop out of the truck, walk up to his door, and knock. I keep telling myself that I need to do this, that I need to know, but I’m starting to rethink the situation.

  I tap my foot a few times while I wait for him to come to the door. “I can do this,” I whisper to myself. Crossing my arms over my chest nervously, I start to bite on my lower lip. I’m about to turn around and run back to Nadia when Tate opens the door.

  He is standing before me in a pair of tight black boxer briefs and nothing else. I turn my head as fast as I can, not wanting to stare at his muscular abs and chest, that I now know are also covered in tattoos. Slade is very built, but Tate is like body builder huge. He has tribal work all over his chest and down his left side, along with both arms. There is a saying written on his right side, but I’m not going to stare long enough to read it.

  “Sorry, Sam.” His deep voice sounds rough, like I woke him. “I didn’t think that you would be here this early. Please, come on in.” He steps aside as I enter, looking down at the floor.

  This was a bad idea, I now find myself chanting.

  I should have just waited for Slade to get home so he could come with me. “Just give me a few minutes,” he says as I sit down on his couch, looking at anything but him.

  I sit, twiddling my thumbs, and hear him speaking to someone. I can’t make out what he is saying since he has lowered his voice. Then I hear a woman. I instantly feel uncomfortable, I didn’t think about the fact that he may not be alone.

  “I can wait,” I hear her tell to him.

  “I’ll call you later,” is his only response.

  “Tate,” she whines.

  “I said I will call you later,” he says with more force.

  I sit in silence for another minute before a blonde walks into the living room wearing a short mini dress and carrying her heels in one hand. Her bleached blonde hair is a ratted mess, and her makeup is smeared across her face. She doesn’t even bother making eye contact with me as she lets herself out the front door, closing it behind her.

  Tate walks in wearing a fitted t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants.

  “Sorry about that.”

  “Oh, no, I apologize,” I say in a rush. “I didn’t mean to come so early. I just couldn’t wait any longer,” I finish as he sits down across from me.

  “I understand,” he says, eyes boring into mine, and then he lets out a long sigh.

  “What did you need to tell me Tate?” I don’t want this reunion to be any longer than it has to be. And from the situation I just witnessed, I have a feeling he is a tad like Slade used to be and another woman may show up any minute for her turn.

  He sets down a couple of pictures in front of me. I pick up the top one, looking it over. It’s of Tate and my mother at what looks like a hospital. She is sitting in a wheelchair.

  “When were these taken?” She looks so frail in her light blue hospital gown, and she’s not wearing a wig, showing the loss of her hair.

  “These were taken the day that she called you.”

  I look up at him, frowning. “Where is she at?”

  “She was at the hospital.” He lets out a breath.

  “Start making sense, Tate,” I say rather annoyed. “You wanted to tell me something. Spit it out, all of it,” I demand.

  “Same old Sam, aren’t you?” He smiles a half smile and it reminds me of when he was a little boy. That same little boy that played Barbie’s with me. Well, I played with my Barbie’s, he played with his GI Joes.

/>   “I was with her the day she called you, wanting to see you. She was ecstatic when you said you would come. She asked me to take her home the following morning. She didn’t want you to see her at the hospital. She wanted to tell you in her own way, not have you come to the cancer ward spitting out questions.”

  That makes sense. I would have freaked if she had told me to come to a hospital room and not our house.

  “I was supposed to come back and get her the next day to return her to the hospital, but she called that morning saying she had talked to Slade and you wanted to stay with her.” He takes a deep breath as his eyes roam my face before he continues. “She had decided Slade was right, and she wanted to spend whatever little time she had left with you.”

  “Wait. So you’re saying if she had gone back into the hospital, she may have lived longer?” I question in horror.

  “No,” he states emphatically. “She had already lived longer than what she was told.” We sit in an uncomfortable silence for a few minutes before he speaks again. “Can I tell you something, Sam?” he asks.

  “Isn’t that why I’m here? For you to tell me things?”

  “She first called my mother when she and Greg were getting together. They kept in touch often. I moved here about six years ago, but I go home and see my mother every now and then. One day Marie called when I was visiting my mother in Alaska. She was hysterical and my mom couldn’t understand what she was saying. When I got on the phone and finally calmed her down, she said that she had just finished having lunch with Jack.” He closes his eyes briefly and takes a deep breath. “And she had received a phone call from her doctor. They wanted her to come in right away. So Jack had gone with her to the doctor when she was informed that she had breast cancer.”

  I feel the familiar sensation of my throat closing up; it’s been doing that a lot. I can’t seem to keep my sadness at bay.

  “She didn’t want you to know. You were getting ready to start your senior year of high school. She wanted you to enjoy it, not worry about the outcome of her situation. Your mom was leaving Greg and Jack had told her he was going to move back in with you guys.”

  My eyes widen at the thought of that. They hated each other.

  “They both decided not to tell you. They wanted you to have a great senior year and go to the college of your choice.”

  “If he would have moved back in, I would have known something was up. They couldn’t stand one another.”

  “Sam, they were very much in love. Jack still loved her more than anything.” He looks down to the floor before bringing his gaze back up to me. “I had talked to him several times.” He gets a small grin on his face.

  “You did?” I question. “Why didn’t you call to talk to me? I don’t mean tell me everything, but just call to talk?” I mean, we were once best friends.

  “They didn’t want it to stir up questions. Which it would have.”

  I nod in understanding. “Anyway, when Jack passed,” he sighs out, looking down to the floor again. “It took everything from your mother. She went crazy, said you were out of control, and didn’t want to come home.”

  I nod as tears run down my cheeks.

  “She was terrified. The chemo treatments weren’t working. She was feeling sicker and Greg was making things worse. I personally think it was the stress from Jack passing.” He runs a hand over his short dark hair. “She called my mother the day you graduated and bawled her eyes out. She said you were leaving the next day.” He stops and looks up at me and I can see the pain in his dark blue eyes. “I booked the next flight out. By the time I got there, you had already left for Texas. We argued, I told her you needed to know, that you had just lost a father and you didn’t need to lose your mother as well.”

  A sob bubbles up my chest and I place my hand over my mouth. “I was so stupid. I was so mad that she didn’t come to my graduation, I was so selfish,” I mumble to myself.

  “No you weren’t, Sam. You were just a confused kid who had lost a father and didn’t know what to do,” he reassures me. But I wasn’t a kid. I was just a selfish adult. “She begged me not to tell you, she was just like you. She was a fighter. She fought to live, every day. She fought for you. I ended up moving to Tulsa to help take care of her. She was in and out of the hospital a lot, but she got to the point where she would ask me questions about you. I started asking around and it wasn’t hard to find out what you were up to, between the Internet and friends. She asked me to take her to your college graduation, and I thought she was going to confront you.” He looks down, shaking his head. “She said she couldn’t. She saw how happy you were with Jax, and didn’t want you to feel like you had to take care of her. She just wanted you to be happy.” His eyes move to the pictures I hold in my hand. “She kept those two pictures of you in her hospital room. Every time I would visit her, she was holding one of them, smiling.”

  I let the tears flow out of my eyes. How stupid could I have been to think that she hated me?

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me?” I whisper. “Why would you just agree to spy on me without confronting me?” I close my eyes shaking my head. “You know I would have went to see her.” I open them and stare into his hard eyes.

  “That’s why I couldn’t.” He bends over placing his elbows on his knees. “You were always so stubborn. You lived life by your own rules. It was your mother’s life and that was her one rule. Not to tell you. I wanted to, believe me.” He sighs leaning back in his chair. “It wasn’t like I followed you around, I’m not a PI or anything.” He chuckles. “I found out when your college graduation was and I took her. I found out that you moved here to St. Louis, and she was so excited because it was close to me. She wanted to know everything about you. I have a friend who goes into Larry’s often. He called me the night that you worked your first shift.” He shrugs, like that’s enough reason. He takes a deep breath, looking into my eyes. “I wanted to stop you from going out with Slade, when I first heard you two were together. I thought that you had traded one heartbreak for another. I know girls that have had…past experiences with him. I didn’t want you to get hurt. But it wasn’t my place to tell you how to live.”

  I nod as I look down at my fingers laced together. “I don’t want to upset you, Sam.” I look up at him. “I just needed you to understand. Marie called me crying the next morning, when she said she was going to stay home with you. Said she had made a mistake, that you thought she hated you. That she couldn’t turn back time and change it, but she would stay home and let you take care of her. She wanted to give you every second she had left. No one could have known she wasn’t going to make it much longer.”

  I swallow back the lump in my throat as tears trail down my face. “The neighbor called me as I was packing my bags, and said that she had passed.” I blink letting the fresh tears fall.

  He nods his head slowly. “Yeah, I showed up right after he had talked to you. I wanted to stay and explain then, but I figured you would need some time to process what was happening. I…” He pauses as I stare at him, still silently crying. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the lies. Sorry that you didn’t get the time you wanted with her. She loved you, and in her own way, she was accepting her fate, coming to terms with the fact that she couldn’t fight the inevitable. She was tired of fighting a battle she knew she wouldn’t win,” he whispers as his eyes fall to look at the pictures sitting on the coffee table. “She spoke of Jack all the time. When he discovered she had cancer, he didn’t waste a second getting everything set up for her. The best doctors money could buy, setting her up an account. She was so excited that he was moving in with her and then when he passed…. I think when he died it broke a piece of her. She wanted to die as well.”

  I close my eyes, thinking of my stepdad. “He was telling the truth wasn’t he? She was cheating on Greg with my dad?” I ask, biting my lip. She had to have been. She was still married to Greg when she found out she had cancer. Dad must have passed before she had the chance to leave Greg. She told me they
had only divorced last year.

  “I don’t know if Marie and Jack had a physical relationship, but I know they never stopped loving each other,” he replies honestly.

  “I just don’t understand why she wouldn’t tell me,” I say, grinding my teeth together in frustration. “You say after my dad died she just gave up. Was I not enough to live for?” I sob out, not able to hold it in anymore.

  “Oh, Sam.” I hear him move closer. He pulls me into a hug as I cover my face with my hands. “Your life was more important to her than her own.” He rubs a hand down my back. “That’s why she didn’t want you to give it up for her.”

  I shake my head, pulling away from him. I stand up and start heading for the door. “I need to go,” I cry as I try to stop the tears. I feel the need to fall apart again and I want to do it alone.

  “Sam?”

  I would have kept walking if not for the desperation in his voice. I stop with my hand on the door, but keep my back to him. I feel his hands on my shoulders and he turns me around. I stare up at him, into his dark blue eyes. “I’m so sorry for everything. I want to be your friend. Please let me help you.”

  “Help me?” I question, not really knowing what he means.

  He comes closer to me, and reaches up to brush the tears from my face. “If I know you, you won’t allow Slade to see you like this. I just want to be your friend. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when you thought she was pushing you away. I’m asking you now, let me in to help you through this time of need.”

  “Thanks.” He’s right. Slade cannot see me like this. “You can never have enough friends, right?” I give him a small grin that he returns.

  I turn around and open the door. As I step out of the house, I turn around and look at him. “I’m not mad at you,” I say. The only person I am mad at is me.

  “Yes, you are, but that’s okay. I can take you being mad at me, just don’t hate me. Please don’t hate me,” he whispers as his blue eyes search mine.