Breaking Lucas (Trinity series Book 2)

by Amanda Kaitlyn

  The moment my eyes swept down to look at her, the entire world stopped, tilted, and seemed to begin spinning in a completely different direction. She looked just like her mother.

  Beautiful.

  Gentle.

  Innocent.

  Miracle.

  “Miracle,” I whispered, but this time out loud.

  “What, honey?”

  I blinked, not being able to take my eyes off the beauty laying within my arms.

  “I am going to lay the world at your feet, Angel. I am going to protect you with my entire being.”

  Pressing a tender kiss over her forehead, I inhaled the sweet smell of her skin.

  “My love for you will go on forever.”

  Sitting on the side of my other miracle, I placed our baby within her arms with the gentlest care.

  “Hey, my sweet girl. You sure made a loud entrance. A bit dramatic, don’t you think?”

  Brushing the light blonde hair on her head from her eyes, Kaelyn covered her face in kisses.

  The intimacy of the sight before me made yet another few tears fall.

  “She’s so beautiful, Lucas. She’s really here.”

  I smoothed Kaelyn’s hair back from her eyes and gently pressed her head to my chest as we watched our little girl take a hold of each of our fingers in open curiosity.

  “Miracle?” My girl whispered, the question in her voice.

  “I’m a bastard. I know that. I have never deserved the light you’ve shone into my cold black heart, but I’ve thanked God for every ray of it that I’ve held within my grasp. You have healed every dark, cynical corner of this heart and done so much more.”

  “Lucas.” Her voice broke in a whimper from the pain she heard in my roughened voice.

  “She is our miracle, Sweetheart.”

  Sweeping my mouth delicately over to hers, I crushed her lips in a kiss and tasted her tears against our lips.

  “Lily Miracle Jones.”

  Kaelyn declared and we both lifted one of her hands and kissed the promise into her skin.

  “God, I fucking love you,” I whispered over her need filled kiss, licking into the velvet depth between her lips. Whispering against me, she said, “To the moon, baby.”

  Present

  My eyes stung against the wind as I came to a stop sign and an intersection. I knew it well. If I turned right, I could go to the studio, maybe use all the pent up frustration to get out a few songs, but I doubted that would work with how my state of mind was at this moment.

  All I could think about was that gorgeous girl I’d left a little over a half hour ago and those thoughts wouldn’t allow for anything other than seeing her beautiful face again.

  I had to see her again.

  I was thoroughly intoxicated by her, yet again.

  The wheel of my Harley pulled a sharp left and the feeling of the harsh wind scattering across my face calmed me yet again.

  There was nothing that could calm me like a ride through the country did.

  Pulling one hand over the back of my head, I pulled my hat off and rested it at my feet, kneeling over the uncut grass in front of the small stone marking my mothers death. I had made the long flight back to Chicago, Illinois where I had grown up today. I needed to talk to my mother, now more than ever. My eyes lifted from the ground and I read the words etched on her gravestone.

  Candace Prescott Jones

  September 12th 2006

  “You were loved”

  Dropping my head into my hands, I shook it violently, as if that would give me the answers I needed. This was the first time I visited this place and fuck, I wasn’t ready.

  Being here after staying away for so long was something that I had been avoiding for way too long.

  The time it had taken me to get here, to this place should have supplied me with the strength to say what I knew I had come here for. I needed my mom. I needed her to tell what the hell I was supposed to do because I was lost. six fucking years had gone by and I had always thought I was doing the right thing by Kaelyn and Lily. I left to protect them from having to watch me weaken in the face of the disease that not only took my mother but inevitably would have taken me. I couldn’t let them be hurt by my demon. Not even for another day. When I left them, still sleeping peacefully on that winter night, I’d promised myself that I would never disturb their lives again.

  I would go. And I would stay gone.

  It was for the best.

  That was what I thought. But as I looked up through the trees and to the clear blue sky above me, I didn’t believe that vow anymore.

  My leaving hadn’t been a saving grace, or a selfless act. It had been a cowardly one.

  I was afraid. My shoulders began to shake from the storm that rose inside of me.

  Anger.

  Regret.

  Pain.

  I felt it all now. I couldn’t hide from it anymore.

  I had abandoned them.

  My gorgeous girl, my miracle daughter and the beautiful little girl I had only met today.

  Avery Jane Jones.

  The daughter I never knew I had.

  “Mama, I need you.”

  The words hung in the air like a thick fog, one I so wanted to lift away in the presence of my mother’s never faltering strength.

  I wanted her to tell me what to do.

  Did I run back to the woman I loved?

  Or was it better to just be the best father I could be and let the past stay forgotten?

  Because the last thing I wanted to ever do was hurt her again.

  I would do anything but that.

  Warm wind gusted over my closed eyes and the grass at my feet was wet against my fingers.

  It didn’t faze me until then that it was raining, pouring really.

  The warm drizzle hit my bare neck, fell down the leather jacket spread over my shoulders, soaking my jeans as I knelt in the middle of the storm that brewed overhead.

  I blinked, then moved my palms over the smooth stone we’d set for her.

  “Miss you so much, Mama.”

  My voice got caught between the breaths I took and I paused, trying to form a question in the midst of the storm, similar to the one surrounding me, though this one lay within the walls of my heart.

  “What do I do?”

  I got up and started to pace, uncertainty creeping through my thoughts, hatred for myself and for the stupidest decision I had probably ever made.

  The day I left them.

  “I messed up, Mama. I thought I was protecting them. It’s what I vowed to do. To protect them, from anything that threatened to cause them harm.”

  The rough sound of my father’s voice bellowed behind me, momentarily jarring me from my deprecating thoughts.

  “Well, you failed, son.”

  “Uh, hey, Dad. How long . . .”

  Stepping into the clearing, he looked at me with disappointment laced through his gaze.

  “Long enough. Do you know what that woman has gone through?”

  Narrowing my eyes at him, I turned to face him.

  Another type of anger seeped into my veins at the thought that my father knew something I did not.

  “She’s had to raise that little spitfire girl all by herself for the past six years, Luke. Trust me when I tell you, that wasn’t easy for her.”

  “I know. I was trying to shield them from what would have happened if I had stayed . . . But I don’t know if that’s true anymore. She’s different, Dad.”

  His heavy footsteps sounded between us as he came closer and bent beside me, laid yet another bouquet of yellow roses on top of my mother’s grave, then sat a foot away and looked at me with his always knowing eyes.

  He knew me, bone deep. He knew why I’d done what I had.

  But that didn’t mean he liked it.

  Not a day had gone by since I walked away that my dad had stayed quiet.

  He knew how much we loved
each other.

  Sometimes, I wished that I hadn’t been so stubborn. Then maybe I would have opened up my eyes and really listened to him when he told me I made a mistake.

  A fucking rotten mistake.

  I’d thrown away the strongest woman in this world and along with her, our two beautiful daughters had lost their father, too.

  If that wasn’t a sin, I didn’t know what was.

  “I’ve kept in touch with them, even when you refused to. That stubborn streak you’ve got? You got it from her,” he said as he tilted his head toward my mother’s grave. I nodded. Wasn’t the first time someone had said that to me.

  “Son, I know you loved her. She was everything to you. Anyone could have seen that. But you hurt her. Possibly beyond repair.”

  My eyes widened at his last word, the piercing pain of the possibility of truly losing Kaelyn momentarily blinding me.

  “Don’t say that, Dad. I was doing what I thought was right!”

  Clapping a hand over my shoulder rather harshly, rage filled his gaze.

  “You fucking left them! Do you think for one second that woman is going to blindly forgive you for leaving them high and dry? No. She is going to shut you out. So if you think you can win her back with a flash of the bad boy smile you got, you have it all wrong, son.”

  Hearing the anger and concern in his hardened voice stilled the quick words on my tongue.

  He was right.

  It hadn’t dawned on me that I could lose them until that moment.

  My father was right. Every word he said was exactly what I needed to hear because as my hand met the metal of the birthstone I wore against my heart, I knew what I had to do.

  I could lie to myself for six more years if I wanted to. I could tell myself that she would forgive me someday. She may even allow me to see the girls on weekends or holidays.

  I didn’t want it.

  I didn’t want the midnight calls from my teenage daughter asking why I’m never around.

  I didn’t want the sad look Kaelyn gave me in the foyer of my parents’ house.

  The one that told me how hurt she still was by my betrayal.

  I wanted the light.

  The good.

  I wanted to spend forever deserving their love and their forgiveness and their warmth.

  I just had no idea how to find my way back to it all.

  But what I did know was that I was going to fight for them.

  No matter what was to come, I would fight for them.

  “What do I do, Dad? What if I’ve already lost them?”

  Regret shadowed through my veins once again, but when my father took my hand and squeezed it fiercely, I felt the strangest sense of relief.

  It was the first time in a long time that I saw a light at the end of the tunnel I’d found myself in.

  “You fight, son. You do that and everything else will come.”

  The glass door of Wrecking Ball Studios hit my back as I entered, my head a mess. It seemed every time I found myself inside these walls, it was because I just couldn’t function without having music to calm me. I had gotten a call this morning about an interview for the office assistant position at the studio. The record studio my father had bought to lift my spirits had been transformed since the last time I stepped foot within these walls. Over the past few weeks all three of my siblings had pitched in to tidy up the place; replacing the old, metal doors with nice glass ones; placing furniture in the foyer and a few office desks to accommodate the staff we would eventually pull on to help the place strive. It had been decided among-st the four of us who would manage the studio, who would sponsor it, and who would take on the administration position of the office.

  Colby went for the paperwork side of the business while Asher and I decided we would join our savings to invest. All that was left was the day to day operations. Ben and Natalie agreed to run and manage the studio, splitting their time between his shifts at the garage and the pre-K classes she taught during the day.

  As I looked around at the rooms, I couldn’t help my shock at how much work we all put in.

  It was a business now. While the reception area was painted a light green to welcome clients, complete with a small coffee stand, waiting areas, and charging stations, our offices were much brighter in color and ambiance. Colby, the decorator among-st us, had insisted that the offices that would house our future clients had to be warm and inviting. I hadn’t really liked where she was going with it until I saw it with my own eyes. It was perfect. My brothers had already started looking for music savvy receptionists, producers, and clients.

  All I had done was supply the music under our name.

  Yet so far, I hadn’t been able to get many tracks down.

  I guessed that was what happened when a growing portion of your brain was occupied by a tumor.

  Sliding the glass door open, I retrieved the brown leather bag that held my electric guitar, the one I hardly ever used. Yet today I needed the buzz of the mic and the rhythmic sound of this guitar to fuel the words flowing through me. Needing to be set free.

  My ass hit the stool I always played on, my lone chair the only piece of furniture here besides the mic and the two speakers overhead.

  My Taylor slid out of its case with ease, the smooth black exterior meeting my callused hands as I handled it and set it just right under one arm, hitched up on my knee as my hands came into place by way of instinct. I had begun playing when I was nine years old. Ever since then, playing guitar had been as easy as breathing to me. Sometimes a particular melody would mess me up, but I always toyed with it until it felt perfect.

  I heard the door to the viewing room open then close as my agent and lyrical mentor, Aiden, entered. As my gaze lifted from the cords, I nodded to him, seeing the smirk he gave me.

  I would bet that Ben had let him in after the events of the last month or so. He had always insisted that Kaelyn was my muse. And when I lost my drive to write after our demise, he knew why. Even if he hadn’t said it at the time, Aiden knew the reason. The only reason had been her.

  Always would be.

  We had worked together since I graduated at Columbia. At the time, I had a Master’s in Business Management with the hopes of opening my own record label. I had a dream of finding the hidden gems, the undiscovered songwriters and the independent musicians and helping them strive. After all, if Aiden hadn’t seeded me out from the small crowd at a local bar almost ten years ago, I wouldn’t have had the success I did. I loved writing music. I loved performing too, but the aspect of creating a song and molding it without any outside interference was something I wanted more than anything. Even back in college, I knew that making it big wasn’t something I wanted. I just wanted to reach people with my music. Working with Aiden and the recording house had done that for me.

  “Shit, you look rough, Aiden. How are you?”

  I moved from my spot and slung an arm around the other man’s back, then moved to see his face. He’d grown considerably from the last time we saw each other, back in Chicago last year.

  “Yeah, I’m good, though. I’m dating again, so there’s that.”

  I let out a rumbling laugh at his words, surprised to say the least. Aiden hadn’t dated in years, not since the passing of his late wife, Emily. Casual flings, one night stands, that was what this man did. A date?

  Another cynical laugh left me at the thought of it.

  “Have you been drinking too much, man? You’re not making any sense.”

  He laughed, a rough sound that bounced off the walls around us, the sound chamber’s echoing the sound again and again.

  “It’s serious, Luke. I like her.”

  I stepped back, eyeing him, waiting for him to laugh it off.

  Maybe I had lost touch with one of my closest friends, but I would like to think I’d know if he had become the commitment type. I guess I hadn’t known. The glimmer of certainty in Aiden told me he was, indeed, serious. Clapping a
hand on his arm, I nodded.

  That’s all he needed because he grinned wide.

  “I’m gonna meet her, right?” I asked, sitting back down and continuing my gentle tuning of my guitar.

  Scratching the back of his neck, he leaned against the closed door and shrugged.

  Damn, he really did like this girl.

  He was nervous about this.

  “Yeah, I mean we’ve only been seeing each other for a week. She only told her best friend today. I wanted to ask you something, though. If you got a minute?”

  I nodded, set my guitar on its back and leaned it against the opposing wall.

  “Let’s go to my office. I’ll get you a drink, man”

  Nodding, he followed me out of the room, out into the reception area and down the hall toward my office.

  He was still scratching the back of his neck, something I knew to be a nervous habit of his.

  Why he would be nervous, I had no idea.

  “What’s eating at you?”

  Exhaling, he looked straight into my eyes, eyebrows drawn together.

  “I hate doing this but I need to ask you a favor. Meghan . . .”

  What the hell?

  “Her name is Meghan?”

  “Uh, yeah. She is in a bind and needs a part time job ASAP. Just enough to pay off some of her college debt. I offered to help, but that got me a slap in the face. Do you think you could help her? As a favor to me, Luke. I would really appreciate it.”

  Maybe I could have ignored the fact that the girl that is best friends with my wife has the same name as the woman Aiden is dating. But after hearing that this girl is just as much of an independent, stubborn woman as the one that just graced this office I’d be stupid to think it a coincidence.

  “Shit, man. I know who you’re talking about.”

  Lifting his head, his eyes widened at my response.

  “What?”

  “Meghan. I just hired her.”

  Sitting back in his chair, Aiden eyed me as if I had two heads. It’s a hell of a coincidence.