The crazy thing is, as much as I want to run back into the past to change things, I can’t. It would be sacrificing one of our children for the other. If I had stood up and done something about the club whores and the party dynamic all those years ago, we might have never added Ever to our family. I can’t regret her. I won’t wish her away. Hell, I did enough of that when I was fucked in the head over that entire situation. I lost enough of her. I’d give almost anything to have Toby back with us, but she isn’t a sacrifice I’m willing to make for that to happen. I’d give myself so that he could be here with all of you though. If God were willing, I swear it to you, I would give myself to bring him back to you.
I don’t know where we’ll go from here, if you can ever forgive me. I can barely stand to see my own reflection right now, so I need you to know that I don’t blame you for hating me. You should. My fuckups have cost us enough over the years. What am I saying? They cost us too much, far too much. I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry, Toby. Please, forgive me.
For what it’s worth, you still have all my love until there are no more breaths in my body and then beyond that.
CJ
I had to get up and go to the bathroom. I tucked the letter into a drawer and hopped into the shower. It was the only way to hide the fact that I was sobbing uncontrollably. That letter. I should have saved that one for while he was gone. I don’t know how long I just stood there letting the water mix with my tears and wash them down, but I was startled to feel a hand on my shoulder.
“Lucy, love, are you okay?”
I nodded my head and then cuddled into his naked body. I often felt a little ill at ease about the way my body had aged, while his had stayed so firm. The tell-tale gray hairs everywhere were one thing, but CJ was determined to stay fit right up until the day he left this mortal world. Then there was me, with the slight baby pouch I never could get rid of and the faded reminders of the people I had brought into the world. Just thinking about that made me start bawling all over again.
“Please, tell me what’s wrong.”
“I don’t know,” I cried into his chest as he just held me there, rubbing my back under the fall of water from our shower. “I was just thinking about Toby and I don’t know why it’s so fresh today,” I lied.
“My lovely little liar, I saw you reading one of the letters. It was about him, yeah?”
“You were awake?”
He didn’t answer, just kissed the top of my head. “You know, I didn’t write those for you to read now. They’re for after I’m gone.”
“What if I’m gone first?”
“That’s never going to happen if I can help it. Do you really want to torture yourself with pieces of our past that weren’t all that great?”
“It’s not really torture,” I told him and when he scoffed, I bit his nipple to get him to stop and listen to me. “It’s usually not. Today, the letter I was reading, it was just hard. No matter how long it has been, that ache from losing our boy is still so visceral when I allow myself to go there.”
“I know,” he agreed. “I love you, Luce. I’d still give up my place here to bring him back to you.”
“There’s no doubt in my heart that you would. It was never your fault, you know? I should have made sure you knew I didn’t think that.”
“Luce,” he started, but I stopped his words and continued on to say my peace.
“No, listen. I know what I said to you back then. There were awful things I put on your shoulders that should have never weighed you down like that. It wouldn’t have mattered. Once you guys got Crow’s confession, that should have been evident. The woman, she didn’t matter. Yes, she was off her rocker, but she wasn’t the one who came up with the plan. That was all on Crow and none of you could have seen that coming.”
“Seems like we focused a lot on what the whores took from us over the years, but we never really acknowledged that the club itself played a bigger part in all that. Every time I lost you, it was a club brother at the head of things orchestrating that shit. I don’t know what it was about our chapter of the club back then, but there was a rot inside of it. That’s part of the reason I need to find Deck and bring him back. He cleaned all that shit up and made it a place those men can be proud to be a part of. Toby would have been so fucking at home there the way things run now.”
I agreed with a nod of my head. “I know you think you have to do this, to keep going out and searching and following leads, but isn’t there someone else in the club to do that now?”
“There are plenty of people doing the same things, and more that would step up,” he informed me.
“But you think it’s your responsibility?”
“Luce, I can’t give up on him. I can’t put it off on someone else either. I’ll forever wonder, if things don’t turn out, if it had been my fault for not trying harder, looking longer, following one more lead. I know that it’s taking me away from you a great deal, but baby, that boy put my daughter back together after I tore her apart. It’s the least I can do to bring him back home to her. He’s been like a son to me too, and damn it, I will not leave our grandbabies without their daddy.”
“Okay,” I whispered into his neck when he pulled me closer.
“Okay?”
“Yeah, just okay. I love you and I will support you doing what you think is best. I know out of everyone out there, you have one of the biggest reasons to get him back to us. I believe in you. You will find him and bring him home.”
“I’ll be coming back to you too, you understand that, right? We aren’t done with our story yet, sweetheart.”
The hot water heater took that moment to give up the ghost and I felt the instant blast of cool water against my back. “Ahh!” I screeched out. “I would say you just melted me with your words, but the shower made sure that didn’t happen. What do you say we get dried off and spend some time alone in bed for a bit before you head out again?”
“I’d say you just read my mind,” he laughed as he swatted my ass. “Now, turn that fucking water off, it’s cold.”
Chapter 14
Birth
Ever
Tears burned down my cheeks as I shook my head and denied the inevitable one more time. “I can’t do this yet. Not without him,” I pleaded with the last bit of strength I had.
The door to the hospital room opened and Momma-Luce entered. She looked so frazzled, but the moment our eyes connected, everything I was feeling was reflected back to me. She knew. She would understand. Of course she would. She had to endure giving birth to my brother without our dad there. The moment the thought hit, my emotions were completely unleashed, and I couldn’t hold back the sobs that escaped. “Not without him,” I begged again.
“I know,” Momma cooed in her sweet voice as she approached me and shooed one of the nurses out of the way. “I know, baby girl. He should be here. He would want to be here.” Her words only made me cry harder. The heartache I felt was stronger, even than the contractions that continued to rip through my body. “He can’t be though, so he would want you to be strong for him, for your baby, and those beautiful girls you have. You can’t keep waiting, honey. It will hurt you and the baby.”
“Momma,” I keened in a pathetic whine as she hugged my face to her shoulder.
“Shh, baby. It’s time for you to do this now.”
“He’s never coming back to me, is he?”
“I believe he will. You better believe it too because that man has one thing keeping him going wherever he is. He has the memory of his family and the need to get back to you. Now, come on, let’s not disappoint him. We need to bring my newest grandbaby into this world.
Two hours later, at 6:54 pm on July 12, 2019, my son was born without his father there to welcome him into the world. I couldn’t help but think that history was repeating itself in an odd way as I watched my mom sweet talk my baby boy.
“Do you have a name for him yet?” I had a name in mind for this occasion, but never got to run it by Deck.
“I don’t want to,” I started to say but turned away, unable to look at the beautiful baby I’d just brought into the world. It was so painful to think about the fact that everything was up to me this go round. My husband was missing everything and I understood that it was against his will, yet, there was still that niggling doubt at the back of my mind wondering if there was any truth to the images that had been delivered to my door. I hadn’t received anything else in months, but that didn’t mean good news. It could mean that he was on board with the woman’s plans by that point. There was also the possibility that it meant that he wasn’t alive any longer.
When I closed my eyes to get some sleep, I fell right into a dream where I stepped backward in time. I was standing by Toby’s grave, just staring at the monument to his life. “Not really flattering for my figure is it?” A voice called out, startling me from my incessant staring.
I turned to see my brother there, looking just as handsome as he did the last time that I saw him alive. “Toby?”
“In the flesh,” he offered up on a laugh before looking down at his own body. “Well, so to speak, anyway.”
“No offense, but I thought I would dream of Deck today,” I informed my brother. He didn’t take it personally. Instead, my Toby just laughed at me.
“I’m sure that’s who you would rather visit you, but you’re just going to have to put up with me for a minute.” He seemed thoughtful for a moment. “How did you know this was a dream?”
“Well, if it’s not a dream, then I guess they’ll be dropping my body in the ground beneath one of these things soon,” I told him as I patted the cool stone in front of me. The strange thing was that I could actually feel the morning dew that had accumulated on the stone too. That was a level of detail I never really experienced in dreams before. As if reading my mind, Toby gave me an explanation.
“First of all, you said that out loud. I’m not reading your mind. Secondly, everything feels more heightened because I’m here with you.”
“Jesus, Toby, you have a massive ego in my own dreams!” I chuckled and he returned the gesture.
“One day, you’ll understand. I wanted you to know that I’m proud of you. That your son is amazing, and that I’m doing everything I can to help bring his daddy home to him.”
“What do you mean?”
“You didn’t think I was sitting idly by on my ass in heaven getting fat and being blown by angel chicks, did you?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, T. Really? Blown by angels? Now, I know I wouldn’t dream of you saying some shit like that.” I actually started to panic a tiny bit because maybe I was well and truly dead.
“You’re not hopping off the ride of life just yet, little sis. Calm down. I need you to keep the faith, Ever. He’s going to come home to you.”
“You know he’s still alive?”
Toby tipped his head up and down. “He’s been through some shit. I’m not going to lie about that, but he’s still alive and if I can find a way, I’ll bring him back to you, I swear.”
“Do you think that will be anytime soon?”
“Actually, things are looking promising, and maybe I won’t have to because someone else is going to step in to intercede. It’s hard to tell from where I am because people’s true intentions are sometimes lost, but I saw some things that give me hope. It won’t be much longer.”
“Okay,” I told him before I turned to look at my brother again. “I miss you too, you know?”
“I know, how could you not? I’m the most incredible person you ever met.”
“Seriously, Toby?” I laughed though because even as a ghost in my dream, he was a cocky bastard. I wondered what Gretchen would think, and then I felt a little sick at the thought. She had actually lost her man, but she was happy again with Kane. Would that happen with me if Deck never came back home? “Do you miss her?” I blurted out.
“Miss who?” His answering question was quiet, and it seemed he already knew who I was talking about.
“Gretchen.”
Toby smiled at me, and it made him look so serene and peaceful. “I’ve watched. I missed her so much and it hurt in the worst way to see her destroying herself in the beginning. But then I saw that spark come alive again, and even though she was a little different from the woman I knew and loved, she became the perfect person for him.”
“Does it hurt seeing them?”
He shook his head. “You would think so, but no. It just makes me happy that she’s cared for that way.”
“Do you think that will happen with me?”
“No,” he told me very adamantly.
“No?”
He shook his head again. “You’re not going to live the same fate, Ever. He’s coming home to you. I promise.”
There was a wailing cry off in the distance. “Looks like my nephew is demanding his mommy’s attention,” Toby commented.
I turned to look over my shoulder, toward the sound I was hearing as it grew louder. “Yeah, I better go. I love you,” I called out, but when I turned back, Toby was gone already and the light from the hospital room was creeping into my conscious mind.
“Sorry,” I heard my mom tell me as my eyes opened and I began to focus on her. Without another word, I just held my arms out to take my son.
“He’s probably hungry.”
“I think he just needed you,” she told me before kissing his sweet little head and handing my boy over to me. I didn’t dare call him by name, even in my thoughts. My brother said Deck would be home soon. I was going to hope it would be soon enough to help me name our son.
Chapter 15
Another Baby
Deck
Time slipped away from me as I worked on my body and battled the strange dreams that plagued me at night. Sometimes in those dreams, the sweetest woman in the world and two little girls made my heart ache and leap all at once. I missed them. They were a piece of me that I knew I was without. They had to be. My dreams of them didn’t feel like the normal sort. They were like memories playing, only they were reminiscent of silent movies where I couldn’t quite catch the sounds. Every now and then, a peel of laughter or squeal of delight from one of the children would bleed through, only to go silent again when I tried to tune into it. I would wake up with my heart hammering and angry because I couldn’t hold onto them once I was awake.
The other dreams were more nightmarish in nature. I could never see the woman’s face, but she taunted me with needles and naked flesh. I knew that those too must have been memories of some sort because it had been explained to me when I was brought here that detox was necessary due to the condition I had been found in. From those nightmares, I always woke up a little less than myself. They tore me down in a way I wished wasn’t possible. They left me craving the substance that used to be shot into my veins, keeping me in a blissful oblivion. They also left me fearful that it might happen again.
The battle I waged between my two nighttime worlds was astronomical, and somewhere in the middle of it all was the life I couldn’t quite remember. My brain was supposedly all healed, so was my body. That didn’t mean that everything pieced back together all at once. The nurse who came, for a while after Durbin failed to return, once told me that I would probably remember if I ever encountered a trigger from my old life. That didn’t seem to be happening any time soon.
The man who had come to tell me that I would be going home soon also failed to come back from a meeting. He wasn’t as gone from my life as Durbin had become though. There were minions who would stop in to check on my progress. No doubt, they reported back to him. None of them would answer my questions about going home though.
The other odd thing was that I didn’t know exactly how long I’d been here anymore. Durbin used to tell me. He counted down the days with me at first to teach me that one day at a time worked. If I could get through this one day, I would be okay. “Make each day count, because it’s always going to be a fight from here on out.” That’s what he used to tell me. While t
he rest of the place didn’t have any visible signs of time passing, some things, you just couldn’t help noticing. One of them was the fact that summer had almost burned itself away at this point. The leaves were beginning to change over again, signaling that fall was upon us.
The building I was in wasn’t a lonely place. Isolation hadn’t been intended here and while I sometimes felt like a prisoner, it didn’t feel as though anyone was worried I would just up and leave. Truth be told, that was probably because I couldn’t. Where the fuck would I go? Who would I call? Was there someone to call? I had no fucking clue. The woman and little girls from dreams popped in my head any time my thoughts strayed toward leaving, but I had no idea who they were or how to find them just yet. Hell, for that matter, they could be nothing more than a vivid recurring dream I’d been having. Psychologically speaking, it was probably just me craving some sort of normal relationship.
A knock on my door startled me out of my wayward thoughts. I didn’t get the chance to invite whoever it was in because they just barged in. That was when my gut clenched and a light sweat broke out over my forehead. “Oh my goodness! Baby! I can’t believe I finally found you!” The woman patted her obviously pregnant belly and smiled down at me where I was seated. “Not a moment too soon too. I can’t believe you’ve been here all this time!”
I narrowed my eyes on her. While the cadence of her voice seemed enthusiastic enough, something in her whole demeanor rang false. “Who are you exactly?”
“Declan? Seriously? You don’t recognize your own wife?” She chastised me as if I didn’t have a head injury I had been recovering from, as well a whole hoard of other issues. Not the least of which had been a serious drug addiction. I knew, no matter how weird my dreams were or how much I wanted to believe that I had come from a beautiful life with a wife and daughters somewhere, that my reality didn’t support that.
Everlasting (Aces High MC - Charleston Book 6) Page 7