Logan (A Cocky Cage Fighter Novel)
Page 32
“Speaking of plans,” she starts. “Soon we’ll have to decide which room to turn into the nursery.”
“How about your old room?” I suggest with a grin.
“That will be a good room for him or her,” she agrees.
“Which do you think it is?” I ask, as I bring my palm around to her growing bump.
“I don’t know. What do you think it is?”
“A boy,” I tell her confidently.
“Really?” she asks, covering my hand with hers.
“Yes.”
“If so, I think we should name him Thomas.”
“Me too,” I agree with a laugh before I brush my lips over hers. “And I bet he’ll be a heartbreaker.”
Epilogue
Months later…
Riley
“Would you like to hold your brother?” I ask Sara once she joins us. The doctors and nurses have left the room and everything is beginning to finally calm down.
A few hours ago, I thought I was dying, the labor pain was so bad. And now all that seems so far away, such a distant memory, it may have well been another lifetime.
The only thing that matters now is the beautiful, sweet baby squinting up at me. It’s such a relief that he’s finally here after all the waiting, and I already love him so much that my heart aches, swelling up in my chest.
“Sara?” Brody asks from his seat on the edge of the bed, one hand on me and another on our son.
“I dunno. What if I suck at it and he cries?” my stepdaughter asks. That word still feels foreign, but I’m getting used to it. So is Sara, after Brody and I had a small wedding ceremony on the beach in front of the house.
Over the last seven months or so, Sara’s started to come around, smiling more around me while leering less. Especially after two girls came forward and told campus police that Dalton Michaels drugged and raped them. I finally got up enough courage to do the same, and now he’s been kicked out of school and sentenced to six years in prison.
“Come on. You’ll do fine,” Brody assures Sara with a smile as she creeps closer to the bed.
Lifting Thomas up and into her waiting arms, Sara finally relaxes a hair, the tension leaving her shoulders as she adjusts the baby more comfortably in her arms.
“Wow, he’s so cute and tiny,” she remarks while staring down at him. “I can’t believe he’s really here, or that I have a little brother who is twenty-three years younger than me.”
“It’s pretty incredible,” Brody agrees, leaning over to kiss my cheek. “Thank you for giving this old man a son. I may have a few more years in me yet.”
I laugh at that. “Hush. You’re so healthy, you’ll probably outlive us all.”
“I’m surprised I survived nine hours of labor with you, honestly,” he jokes. “You’re Superwoman for enduring that.”
“Was it bad? The pain?” Sara asks as she sways Thomas gently in her arms, looking like a natural.
I start to open my mouth and answer that it wasn’t too bad but Brody speaks for me. “There are no words to describe it. When she was pushing, Riley told me to take good care of our son, and tell him she loves him in case she doesn’t make it.”
Smiling, I admit, “I may have been a little overdramatic.”
“Abstinence is the best policy,” Brody tells his daughter. “Wait until you’re married before you…”
“She’s my age, Brody,” I remind him. “You can’t expect her to be celibate.”
“A father can hope,” he sighs, making me laugh.
“Save the protectiveness for your son,” I suggest. “Sara can take care of herself.”
“This is true,” Sara agrees, before placing Thomas back down in my arms and I admit, I missed him in just those few minutes she had him. “And I’m already jealous of my little brother.”
“Why?” Brody asks, his voice tight when he goes rigid beside me. “Sara, I don’t love you any less now that Thomas is here. My heart just doubled to make enough room to hold my love for both of you.”
“Oh, I know,” she replies. “It’s not that. I’m jealous that he’ll get to grow up in a house with both of his parents who love him. He’s lucky to have you for his mother and father.”
“Thank you,” I tell her, tearing up because that’s the nicest compliment she or anyone else has ever given me.
“Well, I better take off so you three can have some time alone together,” she says quickly.
“You don’t have to go,” I say honestly. Since she no longer badmouths me, I like having her around just fine.
“Yeah, stay,” Brody urges, standing up from the bed. “How about you and I go get some dinner together?”
“Okay, I’m starved,” Sara agrees, rubbing her stomach. “But let’s go through a drive-thru and bring it back, in case Riley needs you. And I’ll let Cheryl know she can come back to keep you company until then.”
“Good idea,” Brody agrees. “We’ll be back soon. Love you both,” he says with a kiss to my temple and one to Thomas’s.
“Love you too,” I reply, wondering how I found so much happiness that I’ll never deserve.
Life isn’t always a fairytale. Sometimes there are selfish villains who try their best to ruin another person’s happily ever after.
But luckily for me, there was also a white knight out there to help me slay the dragons of my past, making my world drastically better, and loving me more than the grains of sand on the beach or all the drops of water in the ocean.
The End
Thank you so much for reading Wreck Me!
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COPYRIGHT
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue were created from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual people or events is coincidental.
The author acknowledges the copyrighted and trademarked status of various products within this work of fiction.
© 2017 Editor's Choice Publishing
All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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WARNING: THIS BOOK IS INTENDED FOR MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY AND CONTAINS REFERENCES TO SEXUAL VIOLENCE!
Table of Contents
COPYRIGHT
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
> Chapter Thirty-Seven
Epilogue
JAX
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Epilogue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Prologue
Samantha Elliott
THE PRESENT
My old Hyundai rolls up slowly to the guardhouse. Stopping in front of the chain-link gate, I press the button to roll the driver side window all the way down.
“Photo identification and name of inmate?” the big, burly prison guard asks in a cold, impersonal tone from the high perch of his tower.
With shaking hands, I dig my wallet out of my purse and offer my driver’s license to him. It takes me three tries to finally speak the name of the man I haven’t seen or heard from in ten months. Even when he was free, our relationship wasn’t. It was built on secrets. My lies. I thought we had been careful. No one was supposed to find out we were together; but they did, which is why the only man I’ve ever loved was confined to a prison cell.
The guard hands my ID back; and the first gate slides open, allowing me passage to the other side of the tall barbed-wire fence. I ease my car forward and then down the empty winding road. This isn’t my first time here; it’s actually my fourth, but I’ve never been allowed past the front lobby.
The clock on my dash says it’s nine twenty-six. Only four more minutes before he’s a free man. The months have dragged by, each one seeming more like a century. Instead of pulling into an empty space, I decide to park right along the front sidewalk so that he can’t possibly ignore me this time. The two armed guards standing out front look over at me but thankfully don’t come over and tell me to move.
Tugging on the front of my seatbelt, I reach over and lift the stack of envelopes from the passenger seat to thumb through them while I wait. The first one I wrote before he even made it out of the local jail; that’s why I assumed it was returned to me opened but with the word REFUSED stamped in red across the front, because he was transferred out. The second and third letters came back the same way, so I made the two-hour drive out here to see him face-to-face during weekend visiting hours, only to be turned away because I wasn’t on his “approved guest list.”
Since then, I’ve written a new letter each month, hoping he would read at least one of them and send me a reply. All thirteen envelopes are now bound together by a rubber band, each saying the same thing. I feel like an entirely different person from the stupid, naïve girl I was when I wrote the first letter, but maybe I’m not since I still expected some sort of response from him!
Over these long months, I’ve gone through each of the five stages of grief. The first was denial, thinking it was all some huge misunderstanding, that his lawyer would appeal and he would be released, or I would wake up and it would all have been a horrible nightmare. Then came the anger. I was pissed because he refused to see me or write me back. How dare he not even take the time to write me one fucking letter? After the anger, I began to try and bargain. Assuming he blamed me for everything, I thought that if I could just see him one last time, then maybe I could explain and he would forgive me…
The worst and longest stage of grief was the depression. In fact, I don’t remember a single day without him that I haven’t been sad and miserable. Sure, there are bright spots here and there, like every time I hold my daughter, but the happy moment is quickly snuffed out as soon as the memories of the night everything went to hell come roaring back to haunt me.
I hate that he hasn’t even cared enough to ask about Adalyn, his own daughter that already looks so much like him. The two share the same blue eyes, long eyelashes, and dimpled chin. Adalyn even has his identical, adorable, jet-black cowlick at the back of her little head that won’t stay down no matter what I do.
So now here I am. A nervous wreck, because even though I wish this were the last time I’ll see him, I know it probably won’t be, not after I insist that he stop ignoring me so that we can finally have a conversation about our daughter after he’s avoided us for ten months!
Ever since I found out his release date and time last week from the district attorney’s victim-witness coordinator, there’s been the last and final stage of my grief --- acceptance. Today is about closure, nothing more. I no longer have any hope of him forgiving me or ever forgiving him for not being there for me the past ten months. I knew he couldn’t be physically, but I hate him for shutting me out of his life without an explanation or a goodbye. Fuck him. There’s one reason for me sitting here today, and only one reason. I need to confront him to see if he has any intention of being a part of his daughter’s life. After that, I’ll accept his decision, straighten my spine and, if necessary, deal with him as the law requires, but that’s it.
The front door of the prison suddenly opens, and then I’m looking at the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. One who still haunts my dreams and probably always will. That’s another reason why I hate him so much. My grip on the steering wheel tightens, wondering if he’ll just keep walking past when he sees me. There doesn’t seem to be anyone else here for him, just me.
Despite the wrinkles in his dark pinstripe suit and white button down that he had on the day in court when he was sentenced, he looks even better than I remembered, more like a high fashion model than a convicted felon. He’s bigger than reality, appearing wider in the chest and shoulders, with more jet-black scruff along his jaw and surrounding his sensual lips, giving him a darker edge. His beautiful blue eyes squint behind his thick rimmed glasses like the free world is too bright, at least until he sees my car and they blink wide when his feet come to an abrupt stop on the sidewalk. The broad shoulders underneath his jacket visibly slump forward before he hangs his head. His posture clearly portrays his thoughts --- he’s not happy to see me.
Nevertheless, he approaches my car and opens the passenger door to slip inside.
“What the fuck are you doing here, Sam?” he asks sternly. “You shouldn’t be here!”
His brutal words, though expected, still cause me to tense up even more.
Without even a glance in his direction, because it’s too hard to look at his gorgeous face when it’s so close, I slap the stack of envelopes against his chest. “Why?” I ask him. “Why couldn’t you respond to just one of my letters?” My voice shakes with nervousness and sadness, but no tears fall. There are no more left for him.
“My…my attorney said I shouldn’t have any contact with you and…”
“Your attorney is an asshole,” I mutter. “You shouldn’t have plead, but whatever.” No use arguing about that now that he’s served his time.
“And I wanted you to move on and forget about me,” he adds.
“Move on?” I exclaim. “How was I supposed to move on and forget about you when the only good thing in my life is a constant reminder of you?”
“Sam, we weren’t even together that long. I know you were young and that I was your first, but you’re better off without me. You have to see that,” he says calmly, like I’m still some stupid teenage girl with a crush.
Tears burn my eyes, threatening to fall even after I promised myself I wouldn’t cry. God, how could he be so callous? He’s nothing like the man I thought I knew so well. It doesn’t make sense for him to not even at least mention Adalyn. Unless…
“Did you read any of my letters?” I ask him.
“No,” he says immediately with a shake of his head. “When the guards brought them to me, I told them to send them back…"
>
“You never read them? Not even one?” I repeat.
“What was the fucking point?” he asks.
“The fucking point was to maybe see what I was going through!”
“I know I hurt you. That’s why I didn’t think I deserved your letters,” he replies.
Is he serious? He doesn’t know?
Well, there’s one way to find out.
“Just open one of them, any of them, so we can be done, and the court can take care of the rest,” I tell him.
“Sam –” he starts.
“Please!” I interrupt whatever protest he was about to make, closing my eyes tight to prevent them from leaking.
With a heavy sigh, I finally hear him rip the paper. Needing to see his reaction, I glance over and watch as he pulls out the single sheet of notebook paper. It’s the letter from the top of the stack, the first one I sent him the day after he was sentenced. I didn’t get to talk to him in court before he was taken into custody.
I watch his handsome face, admiring him for a few seconds before I hope to never have to talk directly to the bastard again. Hearing his audible gasp, I know he’s reached the important part. A single tear streaks down his unshaven cheek, melting my glacier of a heart just a little since it’s obviously the first time he’s read it. More silent tears follow, but I look away and hold on to my resolve. He doesn’t deserve my sympathy. I loved him more than anything in the world, and he ignored me; he ignored us, for months. My life was destroyed at the same time his was; and instead of finding our way through this together, he abandoned me.
“Is-is this true?” he asks through sniffles still clinching the paper in his hands. “God, Sam. I’m so fucking sorry I -”
“Your apology isn’t worth a shit now,” I tell him because he obviously didn’t think I was worth a second thought. “Get out.”
“Wh-what?” he asks in surprise. “Just let me explain.”
“Like you let me explain for ten months?” I ask. “No. Get. Out.”