I drop my eyes to the floor, wrapping an arm around the top of her shoulders and kiss the top her head. “Somewhat, how are you?”
She rests her hand on my chest and pats it, “Sweetie, don’t worry about me. You need to focus on Heather and getting your baby girl back. Not me,” My mother’s crystal blue eyes well with tears. “I’ve lived my life, Roman, luckily I didn’t know I was living a lie, but it doesn’t matter anymore. What matters now is getting your family back and you getting the chance to live the life you deserve, sweet boy.”
“Mom-“
Her head shakes before I can protest, “No, Roman. No.” She looks up at me after blinking her tears away and sadly smiles, “You want me to make you boys something to eat? Please let me, I need something to keep my mind off what…”
“Mom, if you need to, yes, please do. You know I love your chicken salad sandwiches.” I smirk at her trying to follow her lead in keeping things light.
Shaking her head she makes her way towards the kitchen calling out over her shoulder, “You and your smirk have gotten you out of more trouble with me, I swear.”
I don’t know if it’s because I’m a parent, or maybe it’s just my love for my baby girl, but when my mother’s words are spoken they echo through me, weakening the hardened defense I keep trying to use to staunch my humanity.
There is no more word from any of our leads the rest of the day. After sandwiches with Andrew and my mother, I decide to head to my bedroom and feign sleep.
My cell phone ringing wakes me from yet another night of restless sleep, “This is Roman.”
“Mr. Payne, this is Dr. Harrison. After the CT scans came back showing we were in the clear yesterday, I ordered the night nurses to begin slowly weaning Heather off her sedation at midnight.” Her words have me bolting upright and race maniacally from the bed, headed to the master walk-in closet. I put Dr. Harrison on speaker as I grab whatever clothes might look presentable. “When I made my rounds this morning at seven, well, Mr. Payne, your wife is conscious and seems to have suffered no memory loss. She’s asking for you. From what the nurses reported during my rounds, as soon as she began coming to, she immediately started calling out for you-“
“FUCK! Why didn’t you inform me of the changes in Heather’s plan of care?! I wanted to be there. I fucking told you I wanted to be there. So again, why wasn't I notified of the change in her care plans? You know what, fuck this, I’ll be at the hospital in less than ten minutes. We can discuss this face to face.”
When my eyes land on Heather’s as I walk through the door of her hospital room, my heart beats in my chest again and all the air in my lungs is kicked out. It’s when she smiles at me that tears fill my eyes. Before I realize it, I’m laying down in her hospital bed next to her, gently cradling, molding her body to mine. I assume she is on pain medications, she just has so many bruises I’m trying to be careful.
“Hey you.” I whisper against her hair as the tears stream down my face and soak into her hair with my words.
Her too thin arms circle my neck and she snuggles the side of her face against my chest. “Ivy?” Her voice sounds raspy from the ventilator. Hearing our daughter’s name causes my brief moment of happiness to fall away.
“I’m doing everything I can, mouse, I swear to you I am. We’ll get our baby girl back.” Her body sags against me and I feel her sobs rack through her body, quickly I wipe my tears away. “Has the nurse or the doctor been in to speak with you?”
She shakes her head against my chest before whispering, “No.”
“Can you tell me where you were headed when you left the house, Heather?” Her trembling eases slightly and I feel her tense.
But she doesn’t speak.
“Mouse, you were running like a bat out of hell, I watched you, now tell me where you were going.”
She still doesn’t speak and her sobs are causing her body to shake harder than before.
I no longer have the strength to keep myself in check. Finally, I let the last threads of my humanity slip from my grasp.
The man you hate, the man you yearned to find a modicum of goodness in simply dies holding the love of a life he once did everything in his power to keep.
Only now he does the last, hardest thing a man can do to restore it.
I want you to know before I go, I did try. I swear to you, to my wife, I swear to my baby girl, I fucking tried.
And I’m sorry I wasn’t able to give you the redemption you so desperately craved for me to be worthy of, my love.
Chapter 32
I can’t tell you how long my body alternates between trembling with my sobs and sagging against Rome as he holds me tightly to him.
Once I remember the baby I can’t keep from falling apart again.
I can’t keep it.
I can’t.
The meds Dr. Sharp had me taking are reason enough. The thought of the hellish life Winter Ivy has endured because of my mistakes drives home that rationale as well.
But then why does the thought of losing the baby in the accident feel like it’s killing me?
“The baby.” I whisper because my voice still doesn’t feel like my own.
Roman’s hands cup my face and his crystalline blue eyes look back and forth between mine as his thumbs brush my tears away, right before his question slays me, “You don’t want my baby? Is that why, mouse? You don’t want to carry evil’s baby again, that’s why you took off like a bat out of hell.” His eyes close and he bows his head, whispering, “Or a mouse out of hell.” His sad chuckle shreds my heart and I shake my head, still cupped in his hands.
When our eyes collide, I mutter in my still gravelly voice between sobs, “No…” My hands grab his face, one hand on each stubble covered cheek, “No…no. No, Roman. Don’t…” To clear my head I shake it back and forth and plead him to understand with my gaze, “Don’t say that, how can you even think that? Roman, I love you. I’ll always love you. I’ll love you in hell, I’ll love you, only you, in chaos, during our highs, our lows, I’ve always loved you and I won’t stop…even at the end of this life,” My tears and cries transform the last of my declaration into a blubbering mess of words, “I’d find my way through Heaven and Hell both to get back to you, and I’ll love you then in our next life as much-if not more-than I love you now.”
There isn’t a single emotion shown in the expression on his face, “Then why did you run, Heather?”
Still pleading, I grapple trying to find the right words, “I…I don’t know, it just dawned on me, as soon as it did I had to know, I had to know, Roman. I wasn’t thinking about anything other than I needed to know right then.”
Stoic as the Roman I met all those years ago he nods his head before standing and laying me back in the bed and tucking the covers around me.
After he leans over me and brushes his lips against my forehead he turns to leave, pausing with his back to me in the doorway and tilts his head to the side. “Heather, I want you to focus on healing and gaining your strength back. Your brothers, Andrew and I are working around the clock to find Ivy and get her back home. I’ll check in with the doctor every day to see how you’re progressing. I’m afraid I won’t be able to visit often. Do you understand?”
He doesn’t wait for me to answer as he strides off down the hospital corridor. Then again, I don’t think when he asked the question he was expecting one.
His words and the image of him standing there with his back to me become a still frame permanently replaying in my mind. I see and hear nothing else until my consciousness loses its battle and sleep pulls me under.
Before sleep prevails, dread weighs heavier and heavier on me as I recognize the alarms and flags of not only his words but his body language at that moment.
I’ve lost him again.
I’ve fucking lost him again and this time he isn’t coming back.
You know that space between sleep and when you wake?
Have you ever tried to keep yourself there? It seems like it’s your mind whispering
to hold you there a little longer before you’re shoved into the calamity of reality?
But once your mind starts whispering, your heart knows it’s the beginning of the end to any semblance of peace you had a brief reprieve from.
Instantly everything comes crashing back.
And it fucking kills me when I remember I’ve lost him.
I know Roman more than any other person on this earth knows him, I know Roman more than even Roman knows Roman. I know he isn’t coming back this time and for reasons unexplained, I understand. I also know it’s my time to step up to the plate and keep the pieces of our life together, no matter how many times he, the Gods, or fate, try to shatter it.
Over the next few weeks I spend the majority of my time either staring at the walls of my hospital room, walking the halls, or learning from the OBGYN doctor how big the baby is or has grown. I’ve concluded the latter is not so much for the baby’s benefit but instead to placate me. As long as Roman wants me to remain here, there really isn’t another option.
Of course Dr. Sharp hasn’t allowed my pregnancy or my accident to interrupt our ‘sessions’. She did ease my worries about the medicine I was taking before I found out about my pregnancy. Not only did I have the OB/GYN’s reassurance, but Sharp’s as well.
During my session with Dr. Sharp this morning she finally gave me some credit, or a verbal pat on the back, whichever. I don’t have the energy to care at this point. What she terms patience and perseverance I consider being a coward and a wife who’s too tired to fight anymore. In my defense, we both know now with my brothers involved, Roman and Andrew will find my daughter and all I’d do is get in their way.
This was solidified when my brother, Cody visited yesterday.
The conversation he and Roman had surprised me, especially when I heard how…truthful Roman was, I would have never expected him to be so candid with my brothers.
After Cody left and I had time to process everything about the legal and non-legal investigations surrounding Ivy’s disappearance as well as how well Roman is getting along with my brothers, I decide my husband is right. So I do as he wishes and leave everything to Roman.
The only thing I can do in my current physical state is to make this pregnancy my top priority. Assuring that the child I carry makes it to full term. Even after being told odds were slim and the warnings of it not being a physical possibility that I would become pregnant after the trauma Sebastian inflicted on my body. I have my complicated mind, or my minds conjuring of Mace, to thank for taking the brunt of his malicious emotional scarring. After enduring those things. I’m pregnant.
I must say, it’s humbling when you find yourself where I am. It’s humbling and I hate it.
I hate it.
As Heather I hate it. As Mac I hate it. And as Mace… I fucking detest it.
Chapter 33
I lived my life the best I could with the hand the good Lord gave me. I’m a simple woman born of simple means and raised on simple beliefs. To truly understand my reasons behind the choices I made in this life, I think its best I start at the very beginning with the woman who some considered a legend, yet most considered an infamous spoiled chienne. My great-great grandmother, Angelina Chaisson.
She was only sixteen when her fifty three year old wealthy French husband brought her to Louisiana and gave her one of the South’s finest plantations named in her honor, Le Angelina Plantation.
Even though my great-great grandfather Frances only lived six years after marrying Angelina, they still managed to have five daughters. Five daughters, all of which she would have quickly given away for one single son.
After Frances died, Angelina had no problem burning through his fortune. She spent every last dime on whatever she wanted. Including anything for her daughters and practically every young bronzed skin, black haired, brown-eyed poor field hand in the parish.
Unfortunately her extravagant lifestyle left no inheritance to Angelina’s daughters’ daughters. Sealing their fate as nothing more than poor white trash.
Angelina was the last of the Chaisson women society considered a lady. Her tragic fairytale became the bedtime story told, embellished and retold to all of her forty-six granddaughters, great granddaughters, and great-great granddaughters. Her story is almost like a prophecy or a religion for us Chaisson girls, and holy or close to God we were not. Not a one of us.
All the women in our family, beginning with Angelina’s own daughters, blamed her for the rapid downfall of the Chaisson family reputation.
My mother and her seven sisters didn’t have two pennies to rub together, the only thing that remained of the Chaisson legacy was Le Angelina Plantation.
And for as long as I can remember, the solemn vow I made to myself as a child was to put as much distance between me and the Chaisson name and plantation as humanly possible.
The moment I saw Richard Payne on the front grounds of his parents estate with his hair the color of a raven’s wing stuck to the sweat on his forehead as he ran with a football clutched to him with all his might, and his bright colored flags flapping in the wind I knew he was the one. He was my one and only, and no matter what I would never live my life without him apart of it.
Richard and I were like a flash of light blazing across the midnight sky. We loved eagerly, hard and fast. It was as if we were constantly starved for each other… and as bright as we burned we faded just the same. But there’s no other way we knew how to love. Nor is there any way I would have done it differently.
When I found out I was pregnant with our son and Richard shoved money in a bag he packed for me, demanding I kill it, a piece of me died.
My main purpose was to live, breathe, and only ever love Richard William Payne. And from that burning purpose, the first Chaisson boy was born after forty-six girls.
Sebastian became my entire world.
And until my dying breath nothing will ever change that.
My tired, dry eyes blink in the darkness several times until they can barely make out Richard’s profile against the pale concrete wall opposite of the one I’m shackled to. Against my better judgment I’m unable to keep the words in any longer. “Why, Richard? I have to know, after all this time and all the heartache, I need to know why her and not me?”
The long silence is enough to drive me mad before he answers, putting me out of my misery.
“Lore, it was always her. It could have never been you, and you know it. You knew it then, and you know it now, yet still you defy me. Continuing to lie to yourself, make believing you were anything other than a sure thing, a piece of ass from a piece of trash from the dirty side of the tracks.” His chuckle is so evil and sinister my skin breaks out in chill bumps. When his dark silver eyes land on mine he smirks, “I can’t describe how happy I am to know that bastard of yours will die. I may make being in attendance my dying wish. I’m sure my real son will allow me to be a part of the audience. It truly fills me with joy.”
I won’t explain the level of pain his words leave scarred across my heart. As far as I’m concerned it needs no explanation. You know what it feels like to love someone so much, that decades later those feelings still remain. Then you also know how much it would destroy you to hear the words I just suffered through.
I hate the tears in my eyes as much as I hate my simple stupid heart. It doesn’t stop the tears from pooling in my eyes and when I blink they cascade down my face. At the same time the last shattered pieces of my heart break all over again.
This is all my fault.
And Richard, as evil as he is, he is absolutely right. Roman will kill Sebastian. I’ve known that child all my life, I watched as the same evil I see in Richard’s eyes began consuming him at a very early age. I tried very hard, I did my very best to raise Roman to be a good man, even going so far as to put him and his needs for a maternal figure before that of my own son. And for that, I will pay dearly. I will pay with not only my blood, but the blood of the first born Chaisson son in over a hundred years.
> This is all my fault, I just can’t see where I could have done anything differently. My last sin was committed trying to finally give my own son the peace he chased his entire young life.
Revenge is indeed best served cold, at least cold it will help numb some of the pain.
I never really considered myself part of the Chaisson family. I certainly wasn’t raised in the same house with them. I certainly wasn’t treated with the same respect or kindness as Sebastian.
I spent my life as an outcast. Just another damn female born to the Chaisson whores from Orleans Parish. Never anything more, never anything really at all.
After I finish braiding Winter’s hair I sit her on my vanity chair and slip shoes on her stocking covered feet and glance up smiling at her. “Winter, do you like it here?” If I had a heart left in my chest cage it would probably feel pain when her eyes widen and she anxiously chews on her bottom lip.
“Sweetheart, I’ve never tried to trick you, I’ve never hurt you, nor have I ever done anything for you not to trust me, have I?”
Her head shakes, but she keeps her eyes on her folded hands in her lap for several seconds, then clears her throat and looks back up to me, “No ma’am.”
“No ma’am? Which question are you answering, child?”
“Bof of em.”
I nod, smiling reassuringly at her.
“You know what I think?” She shakes her head slightly, “I think since you have been such a good girl, you deserve a treat.” Winter’s face lights up with a smile.
“Did you know there are airplanes that sell tickets, and if you buy them, those airplanes will fly you to Disney World in less than half of a day?”
Her excitement is almost palpable and I question my decision to reveal all my cards to the child so quickly.
“Really?! Oh wow! Do you tink I’ve been so much a good girl that I can getta ticktict?!” Her shrieking voice is like something piercing your ear drum.
Roman's Redemption: Roman: Book II (Roman's Trilogy) Page 16