I heard little footsteps and turned my head to see my eldest, her sleepy eyes blinking as she looked up at me, big olive eyes filled with curiosity.
“Hey, pumpkin. Are you sleepy?”
I knelt down in front of her and spoke softly, knowing Avery was sleeping just a few feet away.
“Yeah.” Rubbing her eyes, she came into my arms and cuddled into my chest, like she always did.
She is a Mama’s girl at heart.
“Daddy’s not here, Mama.”
I sighed, hoping she couldn’t feel the worry emanating off me as I thought of him.
“No, pumpkin. Go ahead and lay back down. I’ll come find you when it’s time for bed.”
Nodding, she planted a wet kiss on my cheek and threw me a wide, toothy smile, the kind that could make even The Hulk melt. She had one of those infectious smiles that lit up an entire room when she walked in. God, I loved that I had a hand in making this precious little girl.
“I love you, Lily.”
“Love you, Mama.”
She ran back to the couch and the moment she was back at her sister’s side, Lucas popped right back into my mind.
After our lunch date, he never showed up to walk me home, something that was so unlike him that it had caused me to worry uselessly for most of the night. Why hadn’t he come?
I knew Lucas Jones deep in my bones and he was a determined man. To a fault, I would say. Once he put his mind to something, there was no stopping him from following through.
It was one thing I used to love about him.
His loyalty. His instinct to protect me no matter what. I especially loved the way he loved me.
Fiercely.
Devotedly.
With no regrets.
It seemed that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get him out of my head or out of my heart.
He was stuck there and there had to be a reason why.
I just didn’t want to admit it.
I dropped my head to my hands, shaking it in frustration.
I wanted him.
I knew that from the moment I saw him again.
Every time I saw him and he pierced me with that beautiful smile of his, I felt another piece of the wall I’d built around my heart fall away. It was only a matter of time until he found his way back inside.
If he did, would he stay?
Or would I be left with an even bigger hole in my heart when he inevitably left again?
I heard what sounded like a motorcycle engine coming from outside and my head lifted from my hands to see someone standing outside, booted feet covered in dirt and grass, head bowed and a Bears knit cap covering his head. It had started to pour and there he was, the one man that had always made me feel alive and whole and broken and loved and real.
Lucas Jones.
My heart twisted in my chest as I rushed to the door, and pulled it closed behind me, my heart now beating twice as fast as I saw the state he was in.
He was still dressed in the tee he’d been wearing this afternoon, but his leathers were gone. The jeans he’d been wearing were now ripped at both knees, most, if not all of the denim covered in grass, dirt, and mud stains.
He was a mess.
I couldn’t breathe at the sight of him, knowing something had happened.
When I stopped only a foot from him and my eyes caught on the horrible gash that split the skin across his forehead, I froze.
“Wh-what happened?”
He shook his head, his wet hands coming to gently smooth over my cheeks as he looked at me with eyes filled with regret and hope. I grasped his wrists with trembling fingers, needing to touch him.
“I crashed my bike. Hey, come here, Sweetheart.”
All the breath left me in a whoosh and I pressed my face to the crook in his neck, pressing light kisses all over the skin there.
“I’m okay. Everything is okay.”
I could have lost him.
I could have lost him.
I could have lost him . . .
The words ran through my mind over and over as I felt my heart splinter with the reality of it.
He had been back in my life for a month now and all I had succeeded in doing was push him as far away from me as I possibly could.
Silent tears fell down my cheeks as his fierce hold tightened around me and he held me up when I should have been holding him.
“I-I can’t believe . . . You’re here. Wait.”
I pulled away from him and pulled my face from the place where I felt a bump in the fabric of his shirt. I didn’t know what had come over me, but it became so important for me to see what it was. It could have been some meaningless charm or a chain or a collar, but I had to see it.
I blinked through the wetness in my eyes as I pleaded with him with my eyes until he nodded, taking my hand as I quickly led him inside.
I gently pulled the front door shut against the ravaging rain and wind outside and all I could see was him.
“Lucas.”
I said his name like a prayer before pushing the fabric of his shirt with desperate fingers.
His eyes held an understanding that I was grateful for as he bent his head for me to pull the fabric off him completely.
My fingers glided down his neck in feather-light touches, feeling each and every curve and crevice underneath his skin. He had grown into his own skin in the years we’d been apart, I could see it in the flesh now. There was no guessing what lay beneath his clothing, I was seeing it, feeling it, reveling in it.
A simple chain fell around his neck as he removed it and took my hand from his chest, lifting my palm up as he placed the pendant in my open hand.
“I never take it off. I may not have been able to stop our downfall, but parting with this wasn’t something I was willing to do.”
I gasped as I saw the ring placed in the palm of my hand, all gold with a silver engraving marring the interior of the ring with a message we had agreed on long before our wedding.
Our love is infinite.—Kaelyn
My eyes filled with moisture again, but this time, I didn’t fight it.
“I never stopped believing in us, Sweetheart. Please tell me I haven’t lost you already.”
His voice held such emotion and I had to look into his eyes to see if it was true. When I did, I could weep with the love I found there.
“Lucas.” Tears fell down my face as I finally felt the love that had hummed beneath the armor of my heart all this time for this man. Had I ever truly stopped loving him?
I wasn’t sure how, but my back was pressed to the wood of my bedroom door and Lucas’ hands were covering my cheeks as he silently wiped my tears away.
“Sweetheart, let me in. Let me love you again, let me see that gorgeous smile of yours every fucking day. To see those soulful eyes of yours, so filled with the light you cover me in the moment you look at me. Let me be your home, your safety net, your lover, your best friend. Let me watch as our daughters grow and let me grow old with you. I can’t promise you that I won’t ever do something to cause you doubt in my love for you or that I will always say or do the right thing, but I swear to you, I will spend the rest of my life making the pain I caused you a distant memory. I will protect your heart from it for as long as it takes. All you have to do is let me in.”
I gasped at his words, so true and so raw with the emotion captivating us both that they speared my heart with so much light I could light up the world with it.
But as I looked into his eyes, I was terrified.
The mixture of emotion that swells inside of me as Lucas stands before me, his deep olive eyes filled with warmth and regret, creates a potent hope to uncurl inside of me.
“I don’t want to run,” I whisper, my hands gripping onto his shoulders in need.
Lucas dips his mouth to my forehead and places an open mouthed kiss on my skin.
“Then, Sweetheart let me show you. I will tell you everything. Just let me in.”
I’m nodding before he even gets his words out. The wall that had shielded my heart from him was cracking and falling away as I molded myself to him and wrapped my legs around him so he had no choice but to lift me into his arms.
His arms held onto me as if I would slip away at any moment, his sure footsteps taking us into my bedroom where he sat at the end of my bed, never letting me go. His mouth crushed gently onto mine and sparks flew beneath my skin as I tasted his wintergreen scent and the rough scent that he emanates. My lips fell open on a deep moan and as he delved his tongue over mine, I whispered his name.
“Fuck, Kaelyn,” he growled against our kisses, moving his mouth away in order to sear me with his intense gaze. I blinked away my tears and ran my hands over his head, a sharp need to remove what covered it making an appearance.
“I-”
Just then, I heard the giggling of two little girls outside the bedroom and I was reminded what I had intended to do before Lucas stole my level head and heart just a few minutes ago.
“I have to put the girls to bed. Do you want to come with me?”
A blindingly beautiful smile spread over his features as he nodded, his lips rubbing over mine once more.
“I would be honored.”
The huge smile that covered Lily’s face as her daddy carried her up the stairs was infectious and I found myself smiling right back at her. I knew our road may not be easy and I still needed answers from him if we had any hope of moving forward, but as I led Avery up the steps and heard my daughter’s laughter fill the room, I felt happy.
Blissfully, unrelentingly, happy.
“You’re all wet, Daddy.”
Nodding, Lucas tickled Lily under her chin as they sat on her bed, her eyes never leaving his as she watched him.
“I was stuck in the storm, baby. We’re all safe now.”
As I watched them, my chest filled with love.
He loved them so very much and I knew they would never be the same if he left again.
Yet somehow, I knew deep inside of me that wouldn’t happen.
He wanted us.
All of us.
For now, that was enough.
It wasn’t until two stories later that Lily’s eyes drifted shut and her mouth opened, her face relaxing as she fell asleep. Gently pulling the blankets to her chin, he kissed her cheek and whispered something too low for my ears.
I tucked Avery in gently as not to jostle her, her eyes heavier by the second.
“Sleep, baby girl. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“I love you, Mama.”
Pressing a kiss to the top of her head, I watched her eyes close.
“Moon, baby.”
I felt the rough, warm hand that could only belong to one man fall across my hip and I lifted my head to meet his gaze.
“Ready?”
I nodded, leaning into his side and closing the door to our daughters’ room behind us.
Lucas took my hands in his and silently led me to the couch in the living room, then sat beside me.
“Do you remember the last day we had together?” he asked, his voice low as he spoke to me.
I nodded, the humming of worry and curiosity covering my tingling skin.
I wanted to know everything, ever since he came barreling back into our lives that was all I wanted. Why, now that he was opening up to me, was I afraid to listen?
He squeezed my hands gently, the rough pads of his fingers smoothing over my palms in comfort.
“You went to the doctors that day, you were avoiding it, but I insisted.”
A slight smile spread over his lips as he nodded, his eyes fierce as he looked at me.
He didn’t want to tell me this. I could see it in his eyes.
But why?
“You were always taking care of me. It’s one of the things I loved about you. Your strength.”
Smiling, I took his face in my hands and pulled gently before his forehead fell to mine.
“I know you’re afraid to tell me, but you have to. We’ll never be able to move on from our past if we don’t face it head on.”
He drew his face from mine just a few inches, his green eyes captivating mine instantly.
“Together?”
I nodded, taking my hands from his jaw and placing them against his chest.
“Together.”
Nodding, he took a deep breath and never once taking his eyes from me, began to speak.
“It was just going to be a routine doctor’s visit. A simple checkup. I had avoided it because I didn’t see the point, not until I was standing in front of the doctor because instead of a clean bill of health, I got something completely different. I didn’t expect it. How the fuck was I supposed to expect it?”
He paused and he must have heard my gasp because he began rubbing circles on my palms again.
Except this time, the gesture did little to comfort me.
I was terrified, but still, I let him continue.
Whatever it was, we would face it together.
The mantra ran on repeat as we held each other in that moment.
“I was diagnosed with Stage two cancer of the colon. They said they think it started in my stomach and moved south. I didn’t know what to do, Kaelyn. I was a lost man. I watched my mother slowly become a shell of the woman she once was all because of the cancer that ravaged her body. I couldn’t allow you to watch that happen to me. It would have broken you.”
My hands fell to my lap as I tried to wrap my head around what he had said.
Cancer
Stage two
I was diagnosed with stage two cancer of the colon.
Oh
God
No . . .
A whimper left me as I crumpled to the ground beside the couch and began to weep.
I couldn’t stop it if I had tried. It was as if every pain I had felt since he had left had doubled and I just couldn’t be strong anymore.
He had been sick.
When I was buying baby shoes and onesies in the aftermath of his betrayal, he was sick.
When I had cried in my bed each night, begging for an answer to the pain that ravaged my heart, he had been sick.
When he had come back into town and I had pushed him away, all of that time he had been sick.
And I never knew.
How could he not tell me this?
We had been married. Blissfully, madly, crazy in love and the worst part of himself he had kept from me.
Six fucking years and he had hid this from me.
Did I even know this man?
Or did I just tell myself I did when my heart fell for him all over again as I watched him with our children?
I don’t think I ever stopped loving him and all the while he had kept this huge secret from me.
As a pair of strong, warm arms came around me, I ripped myself away, moving away from him as the anger rose, dark and big and nasty, leaving none of my warmth for him to grab onto.
“Sweetheart, please talk to me.”
“No.”
I stood on shaky legs, my hiccups the only sound in the room as I looked at him.
I wanted to understand this somehow, but I just couldn’t.
I didn’t know if I would ever understand this.
Not this.
“Y-you had cancer.”
Nodding he stepped forward but on a curt shake of my head, stepped back again.
“I have cancer.”
My chest was pierced with blinding pain at the knowledge and my knees weakened with the need to touch him.
I let a shaky breath out from my lips and moved forward, my hands smoothing over his face as I spoke again.
“What happened?”
He must’ve understood the gravity of my question because he didn’t so much as try to distract me from it.
“It spread. I was on chemotherapy treatments for four months before they were stopped and th
e doctors told me I was getting too weak to handle them. A month later I was told I was in remission. I was so happy, but even then I knew I didn’t deserve you. I didn’t deserve your light, your kindness, your love.”
My hands covered the fabric against his forehead and I held his eyes, stark green and gold to my brown as I pulled it off his head entirely.
My fingers ran over the back of his head, bare to my fingers without even a trace of hair in sight.
My eyes, puffy and red fell closed at the enormity of this moment.
“Two months ago I was told that my cancer had come back and this time, it was worse. Sweetheart, I need you to listen to me. Hey, look at me.”
My eyes were captured by his as I nodded, my hands squeezing his in a silent gesture for him to continue.
As the enormity of his sickness rose inside of me, I wanted to hate him.
I just didn’t think I ever could, because my heart had always needed him, even when I didn’t know it at the time. But how could I forgive him for this?
And how could we move on if I couldn’t?
A deep breath left Lucas and I tasted his minty breath upon my lips.
I looked at him and could feel my heart beat wildly for him, even now.
How was that possible?
“I was told that the treatment I was given, chemo and radiation to stop the growing of white blood cells in my body and to lessen the size of the tumor—was successful.”
I gasped and he tightened his grip on me.
“They can operate to remove the tumor, but there are risks.”
He paused, his haunted eyes meeting mine and his hold shifting to my neck as he lifted my chin and seared that gaze of his so deeply to mine that it felt as if he was looking straight into my soul.
“Sweetheart, I may have lived on the edge for most of my life, but even I know there are things just too important to risk losing. I can’t go back and change the worst mistake of my life, leaving you. If I could go back, I would have asked you to love me-”
My fingers pressed to his mouth as a memory attacked my mind at his words.
When we were young, in high school Lucas’ mother got sick. She was diagnosed with lymphoma. It had crushed him. But, he was hopeful, always reassuring her that she wouldn’t miss his wedding, his children, her fiftieth wedding anniversary to his father, but it was only a matter of time until she had to give up her fight, he knew that. Towards the end, Lucas would go to her hospital room each night and sing a song to her. The song he used to sing was on a repetitive loop within my mind as Lucas looked at me, waiting for me to say something.
Breaking Lucas (Trinity series Book 2) Page 17