Irreplaceable (Underneath it All Series: Book Three) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance)

by Ava Claire

  "Your face," I squeezed my eyes shut because I couldn't stand to look at her. I could see it all happening and it made my stomach churn. The damage that had rendered my mother virtually unrecognizable was the result of someone pummeling her. Choking her. Damn near killing her.

  Closing my eyes didn't do me any good because I still saw the bruises and the gauze that was wrapped around one side of her head. "Your face, you can't even see out of your left eye, and you expect me to believe you did that to yourself?!"

  What I expected was for her to look away, caught in the ludicrousness of her statement. I'd called her bluff. She couldn't sit there and truly expect me to believe that she'd done this. The truth would rear its ugly, brutal head.

  My heart raced in my chest. There was a chance that the truth would be something I wasn't ready to hear, but how could I help, how could I make this right if I was in the dark? My worst case scenarios were turning me inside out. The dark shadows that loomed over her, hurting her, haunted me. Didn't she want justice? Wasn't she tired of protecting the asshole who’d pummeled her?

  Apparently not, because that look of certainty and resolve didn't falter. "I think you heard what I said, Sadie." I expected more of the biting, cruel woman I'd grown up with. Maybe she'd tell me to clean out my ears or shoo me out of the room and ask for Rose. Her favorite daughter. The daughter who just smiled and nodded and took her scraps of love and pretended she wasn't still starving for more.

  "Do you know why I named you Sadie?"

  I blinked at her in disbelief. "What?"

  She winced as she tucked the sheet tighter around her body. "I'm the one with hearing damage, Sadie. Am I going to have to repeat everything I say?"

  "Hearing-" I held up a hand, stopping myself because a wave of guilt crashed into me. I'd been stuck on the things I could see. Her face, the side of her head, her neck...how extensive was the damage? And why was she changing the subject and bringing up the past? The present was more than enough. "Why are you avoiding my question?"

  "I'm not avoiding anything," she rebutted. "Why are you avoiding my question?"

  I looked down at the floor, counting the colored squares to try and lower my blood pressure. I managed to speak and not yell, even though I was getting dangerously close to leaving the room. "I have no interest in playing games with you." I rested my hands on my knees in an effort to still the trembling, but it just intensified the rattling until I swore I felt it in my bones. "Do you even care that I dropped everything to come and be here for you?" I knew better than to look up, to seek out some form of awareness. Some remorse.

  Since we were talking about the past, I begrudgingly trudged backward with her. I didn't paint some happy story where she was there for me. If she wanted to talk about my name, finally, I could play along. "No. I don't know why you named me Sadie." I lifted my eyes from the floor and met her gaze, but I disregarded the excitement that brightened her face, dousing the flare of hope with water. "I remember asking you that question and getting ignored. Should I do the same and ignore you?"

  She was the one who did the ignoring, that excitement still flashing in her eye, her lips quivering. "One of my favorite memories of my mother was watching her get ready for a date. She was a huge Beatles fan. But that night was different." She brought a hand to her hair, almost touching the gauze, then remembering and detouring to the other side. She toyed with the red strands like she was the one getting ready for a date, or daydreaming. "You remember Grandma. She was far from a flashy woman. Putting on lipstick was a special occasion, and she always did neutral. Respectable colors."

  My throat tightened and a sadness filled my heart. It had been years since Grandma had passed away. Her visits were infrequent during those last months, her and Mom locked in their own battle because she got fed up with her daughter's negligence. I remembered that even though I rarely saw her, I felt more love in those short visits than years with my mother. Hugs, Jolly Ranchers, and sloppy kisses rained like manna from heaven.

  "That night, ‘Sexy Sadie’ was on the player as she applied this fire engine red lipstick. I watched her look at her reflection like she didn't recognize herself and I knew in that moment, she saw how beautiful she was. She saw herself like I saw her everyday."

  I was usually better at shutting down my emotions. It was a skill that the woman on the bed, tears streaming down her battered cheeks, had taught me. And yet...I couldn't keep my own emotions in check. Tears streamed down my cheeks too, hot, liberating and freeing. I could picture Grandma doing her makeup, her fingertips touching her cheeks like she couldn't believe how beautiful she looked. That she finally saw the glow that everyone who encountered her saw.

  "I didn't have a name for you. I didn't even care about the sex,” she confessed. “I was so young, so worried that I would screw you up-" She stopped talking and reached for a washcloth, hiding among her white sheets. She dabbed at her lips, but she didn't wipe away her tears. It hit me that I'd never seen my mother cry before. I'd never seen her vulnerable.

  "The doctor put you in my arms and you were so damn beautiful," she continued, tears rushing from somewhere deep inside her and spilling out for me to see. "That song rushed to me and I knew it was perfect. A beautiful name for my beautiful baby."

  I dropped my head in my hands, sobs racking my body. I didn't have words. All I had was tears. Gratitude. Because all I ever wanted was what she was finally giving me. I wanted to know my mother. I wanted to be seen. I wanted her love. "Don't..." I couldn't even get the words out. "D-Don't play with me. I don't think I can handle it."

  "Look at me, Sadie."

  I shook my head stubbornly. I wasn't ready. The hospital, her story about Grandma, her story about us, it was all too much. Once I dropped my hands and looked at her, I knew there would be no going back. I clung to the last pieces of that wall. It was all I had. The only thing that I could count on, in the end.

  And then I thought about Jackson.

  Letting him in, letting him close went against everything I knew. It was a risk that could cost my heart. The what ifs, the reasons I should keep him at a distance, all seemed to fade to dust. And it was more than his words. It was in his eyes. It was in his actions. I was no stranger to being let down and left high and dry—and neither was he.

  And neither was my mother.

  In the darkness, hiding, there could be no light. There could be no growth. No moving to a better place.

  I had nothing but my heart to give. A second chance. Or I could keep the door closed. Only this time, it wasn't my mother who had her shoulder, her dresser, and whatever odds and ends she could get her hands on to keep me out. This time, it was on me.

  I dropped my hands, my face still wet with tears. I lifted my chin slowly, a part of me waiting for her to laugh and tell me it was all a joke. We could go back to our respective corners. Stay at each other's throats. Fighting was our thing, and we did it well.

  But when I stared at my mother's face, I saw the sorrow and regret I'd been searching for.

  I saw love.

  "When I said I did this to myself, I didn't mean literally, Sadie," she said softly. She dropped her gaze to her lap. "And don't worry, I've already decided I'm pressing charges against that son of a bitch." That resolve, the McLeod fury, made pride bloom in my chest. It was a gift from my mother that I was damn proud of. And I wanted more; more details, names, addresses, and locations so I could bust some heads myself.

  "I know that look, and I want some revenge too, but I'm trying to do things differently." She attempted a smile. "I'm trying to take care of it legally."

  "Legally?" I frowned, making a fist, ready to knock out some teeth. "I think in this case, we need to make our own justice. Give karma a push in the right direction."

  "Look at my little delinquent," Her eye twinkled mischievously. "It only took a few decades, but I knew you'd come around eventually."

  The smile on my face, given in her presence, seemed as foreign as the tears drying on my cheeks. "I prefer
Batman over delinquent. There's nothing wrong with a little vigilante justice."

  Her twinkle dimmed slightly as she slowly twisted her head towards the window. My heart lurched when I got a better view of the lacerations on her neck.

  "I made a promise to you the day you were born,” she murmured. “A promise that I'd do better. Try harder. That I'd protect you from-"

  Her voice cracked and I couldn't stay seated. She was putting herself out there, and I could do the same. I walked to her bedside and reached for her hand. My fingers hovered before I rested my hand on hers.

  She didn't turn from the window, but I heard the sob in the back of her throat, intensified when she squeezed her eyes shut.

  "I never imagined that I would need to protect you from me." She tilted her chin in my direction, glancing at our hands before she raised her eyes to meet mine. "When he was-" Her nostrils flared and her hand jerked slightly, like she was about to bring it up to protect her face from some invisible blow. "It hit me that if I died, I would die without ever telling you something." She paused, licking her lips again, then used more energy than she should have to bring her other hand over, cupping mine. "I have done some awful things in my life. I've been selfish and mean and ungrateful. I am so sorry. And I know you have no reason to believe anything I'm saying. In fact, you'd be wise to think I was lying." Her nostrils flared a second time, and I knew she was right. Not believing her would be easy. The smart thing. But there was something more genuine, more real in her than I'd ever seen, and I knew she spoke the truth.

  "You and Rose are the best thing that's ever happened to me, Sadie."

  All the years, all the pain, was nearly erased. I almost forgot that she was seriously injured and nearly leapt onto the bed like I'd longed to do a million times when I was younger. In those fantasies, I'd laugh until I cried as she tickled me, her face as bright and carefree as my own. Rose would come toddling down the hall, woken from her nap by the noise and her annoyance would quickly be replaced by joy as we pulled her onto the bed with us.

  Catching myself, tears of happiness swarming in my eyes, I settled for doing something else I hadn't done in years. I leaned down and brushed my lips against her cheek.

  "Thank you, Mom."

  She didn't push me away or shrug off the affection, her usual reaction to anything other than blind obedience. Home was a cold place before, but I had the audacity to hope that we could both change.

  Chapter Eleven: Jackson

  I couldn't take my eyes off her.

  When we first met, I was awash with lust. A cocky urge to make her mine. To make her beg for me. For my touch. Looking back, it was hard to believe my desire for Sadie McLeod had ever been so two dimensional. Even in the handful of seconds that we were parked at the red light, I found something new to crave, and it had nothing to do with how badly I wanted to fuck her. When she was nervous, like now, she lassoed her hair around her pointer finger and twirled it like a forkful of spaghetti. And just that word, spaghetti, once so ordinary, was a rocket ship to memories that made me smile. The look of shock, horror, and she'd never admit it to me now, but delight was there too when she saw me at her door.

  I had my own delights, my own desire to comb my fingers through her scarlet hair and pull her lips to my lips. In time, I'd wrap her body around my body and thrust my tongue into her mouth as my cock explored her velvet, warm folds. For now, I just wanted to stroke my lips against hers and whisper, "I told you so".

  I didn't know what to expect when we walked into Falcon Memorial. Both Sadie and Rose had been pretty hushed about their mother's condition, but Rose's question in the car made it obvious that things were serious. Sadie had marched right up to the charge nurse. The woman had gawked, then glared at her, like she went from surprise at seeing some ghost from the past, then remembered it was a trip down Memory Lane that she had no interest in taking.

  When Sadie emerged from the patient rooms, her eyes bloodshot from crying, Rose had gripped my hand so tight that she left fingernail indents in my skin. I could take the pain, and then some. I'd take all their pain if I could. I didn't know their mother, knew nothing of her other than the fact that she'd hurt them, but some sentimental part of me clung to the fact that someone who created Rose and Sadie couldn't be all that bad. My chance to reconcile, to build something with my own mother, had been taken away long ago. I didn't want that for them. They made me want to believe in happily ever after and all the shit I pretended I wanted no part of.

  And then Sadie made the most tasteless, inappropriate and adorable joke.

  "Tough crowd. Did someone die?"

  Rose had hurled the nearest magazine at her sister's head. Before the hit was confirmed, she'd thrown her arms around her sister, spewing profanity. Once they’d stopped trading barbs and the tears had been wiped away, Sadie told us her mother was stable and wanted to see Rose. When we were alone, Sadie laid a kiss on me that made me, and everyone around us forget, that we were in a hospital.

  She'd gone quiet in the car, our conversation the rustle of the wind through the trees, the quiet hum of the radio, and the nerves that made me awkwardly drum my hands on the steering wheel. Well, that and my awkward prompting at every stoplight to make sure we were going the right way. I didn't let on that I'd drive all over the state until I didn't have a drop of gas, if she was my co-pilot. Even if she'd spent the entire commute so far staring out the window.

  The light had been green for a few seconds, but I didn't press the gas. I took my foot off the brake, the car inching forward of its own accord. "Straight?"

  Considering we were on a one way street, she finally twitched her head in my direction. That devil and angel combination danced over her pretty face. "Actually, you're making a left. Right into Martin's Furniture." She swept a hand through her hair and in the near darkness, her eyes almost glowed. "I've been in Martin's, you'd be classing up the place, trust me."

  Smirking, I pushed onward. "Straight it is." When quiet settled around us again, I cautioned a subject change that would either make her smile or ask me to call her a cab. "This has been quite the first date."

  "You should see how I celebrate anniversaries," she quipped.

  My head told me that despite my cruising speed, we were a runaway train pointed towards nowhere good. I ignored it and reached for her thigh, gliding my fingertips into dangerous territory. "I look forward to it."

  When she shifted in her seat, I pulled my hand away, but she stopped me. "Don't stop."

  Arousal rushed over me without pause. I felt a little crass and insensitive, but I was a man, after all. Just those two words, her voice low and sweet, was enough to make my cock pulse with want.

  She asked you to keep caressing her, not pull over to the side of the road and bend her over the hood.

  I drew a breath and shifted in my seat too, trying to mask my growing (and badly timed) erection. "So, you grew up in the bustling town of Falcon."

  "Is this is the part where we make awkward small talk?"

  I was still learning her in's and out's so even though we weren't at a stoplight, I glanced over to make sure she wasn't scowling and hoping I'd let the radio do the talking.

  She wasn't scowling at all, but there wasn't a playful wink that told me that she approved of the direction we were headed either. She was attacking her fingernails with the ferocity of someone who was anything but eager about our final destination.

  "Awkward small talk is my favorite kind of small talk." I replied. It was far from the truth. It was one of the things I hated about networking in my field. I didn't want to talk about my alma mater or my predictions about the game on Sunday, or the best bars to be seen, but not harassed. In my line of work, small talk was a way to measure your dick, and I had no desire to puff out my chest and prove myself to anyone.

  This was different.

  I genuinely wanted to know her, and for the first time in a long time, I wanted to be known too. I could have made another joke, or changed the subject. I had no in
terest in making it that easy for either of us.

  "Avoiding questions, is that a McLeod thing, or just a Sadie thing?"

  "Both," she harrumphed. Her annoyance was short lived because she danced her fingertips over my knuckles. "Yes, Falcon is home sweet home, for what that's worth."

  "I envy you," I confessed, keeping my eyes pinned to the windshield.

  "You wish you were from Falcon?" she asked incredulously.

  "I wish I was from anywhere," I answered frankly. I instantly wished I had an eraser and could go back and color in a different bubble. I was no relationship expert, but there were a handful of obvious no no's when you're at the start of one. Talking about marriage, talking about children, were obvious choices. Those were things one shared after you were certain the person you were falling for was planning to stick around. It seemed like talking about your shitty childhood should definitely be added to that list.

  I was never one for following rules, and maybe I was just fucking crazy, but something told me that it would take more than sharing my past, as colored and ugly as it was, to make Sadie walk away.

  "Everyone is from somewhere, Jax," she said softly.

  "Fair enough.” For the first time, I was grateful there were no red lights that would force me to make eye contact or make things even more uncomfortable. "I guess I mean I wish I had a home. And I don't mean four walls and a roof. I had that. And after I was put in the system, I had 'parents'." I made air quotes with my fingers because there was nothing parent-like about people who saw me as a monthly check instead of a child to nurture. "Short of Joe, I was never in a home long enough to build anything that resembled family or a home."

  The last time I’d shared a bit of my past, trying to give her some insight and show her that I, better than most, understood the ache of parental drama and frustration, she’d tersely reminded me that my current net worth disqualified me from musing about the past.