Altered: Carter Kids #6

by Chloe Walsh

  "What if I never see him again?" I sobbed. "What if this…" I waved a hand around the church aimlessly. "Isn't real?"

  "That's what faith is, sweetheart," my father replied. "Believe in what your heart tells you. It's rarely wrong."

  "Do you believe?" I squeezed out.

  "I believe when you are soulmates, you'll find each other again," he told me. "Wherever you go when our time is up on earth."

  "I think I need to get away from this place, Dad," I confessed. "I can't be here anymore. It's too hard. Everything reminds me of him and I can't…heal."

  "I know," Dad whispered. "Your Mom and I have talked about it, and we both think that's probably for the best." He tightened his arm around my shoulders and said, "I wish you'd speak to your mother, Hope. She loves you so damn much."

  "I'm not ready to speak to her," I shot back, feeling a huge burst of anger swell up inside of me. I had avoided every call, text and attempt my mother had made to reach out to me. "She never accepted him," I bit out. "So how can she tell me she's sorry he's dead?"

  Dad sighed heavily, but didn’t reply.

  I was glad.

  I didn’t want to talk about her right now.

  "I called your grandma Tracy a few weeks ago," he said instead. "I think you should go and stay with her in Louisiana for a while."

  "Am I running?" I choked out. "If I leave, am I failing him?"

  "No, Angel, you're not running," he promised, voice thick with emotion. "You're surviving."

  ****

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Hope

  I had a bag packed in the trunk of his Explorer, ready to leave.

  I pulled up outside the hospital and took a few minutes to compose myself before unbuckling my seatbelt and getting out.

  A second layer of heavy snow had started to fall, joining an already thick blanket of snow on the ground.

  Carefully, I made my way across the parking lot towards the main entrance of the hospital.

  Coming here tonight was the very last thing I wanted to do, but I had to.

  I had to see Teagan.

  She'd given birth three days ago and was recovering from a cesarean section.

  And I was the shittiest friend in the world because I didn’t call.

  I traveled up in the elevator to the sixth floor, the maternity ward, and then I walked down the sterilized corridor to room 26B.

  When I reached the room, I looked in the glass section of the door and my heart seized in my chest.

  Teagan was sitting up in her bed with a tiny blue bundle cradled to her chest.

  Noah was sitting on the edge of her bed, watching his wife and son.

  Tears filled my eyes at the sight of their little family – finally completed with the baby they so desperately wanted, but in no way replaced his sister.

  The happiness I felt for my best friend was sudden, and it threatened to overwhelm me.

  Teagan would be a fantastic mother.

  Noah would be a terrific father.

  And then the pain flooded back in.

  My baby would never have this.

  My son or daughter would never have their father smile down at them like Noah was smiling down at his son.

  When it was my turn to do this in five months, I would be doing it alone.

  Fighting down the swirl of emotions twisting around in my heart, I tapped gently on the window before walking into the room.

  Teagan looked up at me and smiled a huge, megawatt smile.

  Noah looked at me like I was a pained memory for him, but he forced a smile.

  "You came," Teagan said softly. "I wasn’t sure if you would."

  "I'm sorry," I whispered, walking on shaky legs towards her bed. "I should have come earlier."

  "You're here now," she replied. "That's all that matters."

  Sitting down on the edge of the bed, I stared at the tiny baby boy in her arms, with hair as black as coal. "He's beautiful, guys," I whispered.

  "His name is Finn Hunter Messina," Noah told me quietly.

  "That's a good name," I strangled out, batting away the tears falling on my cheeks. "So, you're a mom!" I tried to smile when I said it and sound enthusiastic, but it was hard to do when tears were pouring down my face. "Suits you."

  "Do you want to hold him?" Teagan asked.

  I shook my head and stood up.

  I couldn’t hold him.

  I wasn’t emotionally strong enough right now.

  "I'm going away for a while," I told them with a sniffle. "I'm going to go stay with my grandma in Louisiana." I shrugged helplessly. "Clear my head and all that jazz."

  "Hope," Teagan said, tone sad. "You don’t have to go–"

  "I need to do this, Teegs," I told her. "For me. For the baby…" I shook my head and exhaled a ragged breath. "I need to heal, and I can't do it here."

  "Promise me that you'll call me," she said, voice hoarse, eyes watering.

  I nodded. "I promise."

  "I hope you find what you need down there, Hope. I really do," Noah said gruffly, brown eyes locked on me. "And when you do, come back home to us." He shrugged helplessly. "You and that kid are our family."

  "I will." Wiping the tears from my eyes, I took one final glance at my best friends. "Goodbye," I whispered before walking away.

  ****

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Hope

  Five Months Later

  "That was your daddy on the phone," my grandmother announced in her thick southern accent as she stood in the doorway of my bedroom. "He'll be here in thirty minutes."

  "Okay," I mumbled, concentrating on the stubborn zip on my suitcase.

  Blowing out a breath when I finally managed to get the damn thing closed, I turned to my grandmother and said, "Grandma, I'm scared."

  "It's okay to be scared, Hope," she said, tone gentle and laced with empathy. "We've talked about this, honey."

  Yeah, we had talked – a lot.

  About my past.

  About my future.

  About the baby.

  About him.

  "If you're not ready, you can always stay," Grandma urged. Walking over to where I was standing, she took my hand in hers and said, "You are always welcome in my home."

  I knew that.

  But it was time to go.

  I had two weeks left before my due date, and as hard as I knew it was going to be, I had to return to The Hill.

  I wanted to be close to him.

  That hadn't changed in the past five months.

  But what had changed was my mindset.

  I had figured out how to cope – how to manage my pain.

  The life I was sure I would never want to be a part of again jumpstarted in my heart the day our baby kicked inside of me.

  No words could describe the emotions that had battered through me when I felt that tiny fluttering, that as the weeks progressed transformed into harder thumps and jabs.

  Every time the baby kicked, I imagined it was him giving me a gentle nudge, telling me to get back up. To rise up from the ashes of my burnt-out heart and live.

  During my stay at Grandma's, I found myself listening to a lot of Lana Del Ray's earlier music. The words in her songs, the melancholy lyrics, spoke to me. I downloaded every single one of her songs on my phone and listened to them constantly until I knew every single song by heart. Blue Jeans and National Anthem Monologue were my favorites – the two songs that completely shredded my heart.

  I used music to express myself, and I channeled my pain onto the page, writing darker and deeper than ever before.

  I wasn’t sure if I would ever publish another book.

  But I wasn’t writing for anyone other than me.

  Several hundred thousand words of my personal breakdown were captured on paper and safely stored away on my computer.

  My grandmother had given me a safe haven to heal, and grieve, and then piece myself back together again.

  And while I felt like I was close to crumbling at any given mome
nt, I was living again.

  I was talking and listening and holding down actual conversations with people.

  When my family called me, I answered the phone.

  When they text me, I responded.

  I was doing that, and it was huge progress.

  I'd even spoken to my mother a couple of times.

  The conversations were short and vague, but I had healed enough to offer her some semblance of forgiveness.

  In truth, I had done all the healing I could here.

  Now, I had to make the leap back into the real world.

  My world.

  And that was in Boulder, Colorado.

  "I'm ready to go home," I told my grandmother.

  And then I wrapped my arms around her small frame and thanked her for helping me put myself back together.

  "Are you going to stay at that big ole house your Daddy bought you?" Grandma asked, smiling affectionately at me.

  "It's a cottage," I corrected, thinking about the outrageous Christmas gift my father had given me; my own three-bedroom cottage, on a two-acre site, less than a mile from Teagan and Noah's house.

  Dad had every stick of furniture from the apartment moved to the cottage. When I had panicked, my father had assured me that every stitch of clothing that he owned was safely tucked in the cottage along with every cup, plate, and saucer.

  "Yeah," I told my grandma. "I think I am."

  I needed the fresh start.

  I had to move forward.

  But I was taking him with me.

  ****

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Hope

  When I had thought about moving into the cottage, I had imagined all of the work I would have to do, like organizing all of my furniture and decorating the nursery.

  Everything was already done.

  For days, I found myself just wandering around the little house, and admiring every nook and cranny.

  My home was a one level with a yellow painted exterior. I had a separate kitchen and living room, with an open fire, and a beautiful bathroom with one of those antique egg-shaped tubs. There were three bedrooms. One was my room, and the other was a beautiful yellow painted nursery filled with everything a baby could need and more. The smallest bedroom had been transformed into a home office.

  It was small and perfect.

  I didn’t want to be in a big house all on my own, and my father knew it.

  Neat and cozy worked for me.

  When he brought me home, Dad had made us dinner, and stayed late into the night. But now he was giving me the space I needed to settle in. I knew it was hard for him to not smother me, but he was trying and I was grateful.

  Four days later, when my doorbell rang, I had expected it to be Dad checking in on me.

  Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined it would be Jordan.

  But there he was, staring back at me, looking nothing like the broken man I'd last seen.

  His clothes were immaculate, hair trimmed tight, his face was clean shaven, and his green eyes were alert and bright.

  "Hello, Hope," he said, hands in his coat pockets, eyes locked on my face. "Can I come in?"

  ****

  "How was rehab?" I asked, placing a mug of hot chocolate on the table in front of him before taking the seat opposite. Wrapping my fingers around my own mug, I blew into it and asked, "Have you been out long?"

  "Productive," Jordan replied. "I got out a few weeks ago."

  I nodded, unsure of what to say.

  I felt like I was sitting opposite a stranger in a doctor's waiting room.

  That was how far we'd grown apart.

  "I got the final decree in the mail last week," he said. Reaching inside his coat, he pulled out a brown envelope and handed it to me. "We're officially divorced."

  "Thank you," I replied, numb, taking the envelope and setting it down beside me.

  I was divorced.

  It brought no emotion out of me.

  Just closure.

  It was finally over.

  "I wanted to come see you after it happened," Jordan told me, tone quiet. "But I didn’t want to make it worse for you."

  Again, I nodded.

  He was right.

  Seeing him would have made it worse.

  "I'm sorry, Hope," he added. "For what happened to him."

  "Yeah," I whispered, keeping my eyes trained on my mug. "You and me both."

  Silence enveloped us then, tense and uncomfortable.

  "How is Ryder?" I finally broke it by asking about his secret son. "Is he doing okay?"

  The last time I had laid eyes on that little boy was the night Noah burst through the front door of South Peak Road, covered in blood, and carrying him in his arms.

  I found out since that night that Ryder was in fact Jordan's son.

  But I felt no emotion because of it.

  If anything, I was glad that little boy had one living parent.

  "My parents took care of him while I was in Mountain View," Jordan explained. He reached up and rubbed his jaw. "I want you to know that I didn’t know Ryder was my son before she died."

  "It doesn’t matter to me."

  "I still need you to know it." He ran a hand through his tightly cut curls and sighed. "I broke off the wagon a couple of years ago. Never told anyone. Went on a three-week bender. When I came around, broke and covered in my own vomit, I went straight to a meeting. I stopped myself before I slipped too far."

  "It happened then?"

  He nodded. "I have no memory of it."

  "She loved you," I stated.

  "I know," he whispered. "She left me a letter…explaining everything."

  "How very Camryn Frey of her," I heard myself say.

  Jordan cracked a small smile at my comment.

  "What I did to you," he said, finally addressing the elephant in the room. 'The choices I made? I put you through hell. And for that, I'm going to be sorry for the rest of my life."

  "It's okay," I told him, and I meant it. "I forgave you a long time ago."

  "No, Hope." He shook his head. "It's not okay. If I could fix this for you? Bring him back? I would."

  "What's your plan going forward?" I changed the subject by asking. I didn’t want to drudge up the past, and I wasn’t going to talk to Jordan about my feelings. "Are you planning on staying with your father?"

  "Actually, we're leaving for Idaho this evening," he replied. "Dad and I are going to take Ryder to meet his extended family." Shrugging, he added, "We're going to stay for a while... family time."

  "That's good, Jordan." I smiled and it was genuine. "I'm happy for you."

  I watched him stand up and place his mug in the sink. "I really can never tell you how sorry I am for what I did," he added, voice torn. "I wish there was something I could do for you –"

  "Stay sober," I whispered. "Raise your son. Give him a happy life. Give yourself a happy life. That's what you can do for me."

  "I will," he replied hoarsely with a nod of his head. "Goodbye, Hope."

  "Goodbye, Jordan," I replied as I watched him walk away.

  ****

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Hope

  My due date came and went, taking with it three extra days, and leaving me swollen and overdue on Valentine's Day.

  And alone.

  Declining all invitations and offers of company from my family, I locked myself away in my little cottage and spent most of the day ironing baby clothes.

  The rest of the day I spent wrapped up in one of Hunter's hoodies with my face buried in his mattress, desperately trying to catch his scent.

  It had faded now.

  Almost gone.

  But if I closed my eyes and stayed very still, I could still smell him.

  Or maybe it was just a memory I was reliving of the nights we'd spent tangled up between the sheets of this bed.

  Either way, I found comfort in this small act, so I continued to do it.

  That night, I ate a huge bowl of homemade Mac & Chees
e before settling back down in bed, and watching Noah's old fighting tapes – my focus trained on the blond man always in his corner.

  The pint of ice-cream that followed my meal didn’t touch my taste buds.

  Probably because I was crying so hard.

  But I needed to do this.

  I needed to see him.

  Even if it hurt.

  I had to see.

  I continued to torture myself late into the evening until my eyelids became heavy, and exhaustion finally caught up with me.

  ****

  I guess the old saying was true; when a child was sick or in excruciating pain, the only person they wanted was their mother.

  It didn’t matter how old the child was.

  Only a mother's words and touch could comfort them.

  Well, that's exactly how I felt right now.

  "Hope, sweetie, what's wrong?" were the first words that came out of my mother's mouth when she picked up my call. "It's two in the morning."

  "Mom?" I breathed, clutching my phone with an almost death grip as I paced my bedroom floor. "Can you come over?" Grunting when a sharp, tightening sensation spread across my stomach, I managed to wheeze, "I think it's starting."

  Excitement and terror were coexisting in my heart as I tried to remain as calm as I could.

  It wasn’t easy.

  I was in labor and alone.

  Alone.

  Block it out, Hope, I mentally screamed at myself. Get a fucking grip!

  "Has your water broken yet?"

  I shook my head. "No, not yet." After another few seconds, the pain miraculously faded and I breathed out a relieved sigh. "It's too early to go to the hospital, but I don’t want to be on my own."

  "You're not on your own," Mom replied quickly, and I heard the familiar rustle of bed covers as she obviously climbed out of bed. "I'm on my way right now, honey."