by Chloe Walsh
Instead, she continued to shred me apart with her words and hopeless hopefulness. "I like to sit under that big old oak and read to her when the weather's fine. Of course, I haven't been able to do much of that lately with the weather being so unpredictable, but I know she hears me. The sun always opens through the clouds when I read to her. It's a sign she likes to give me –"
"Dammit, Margery," Mr. Clarke roared, slamming his palm against the wooden table. "That's enough. Hayley's dead. Standing in front of a piece of black marble with her name on it doesn't mean shit. She's not there."
"Excuse me, Lucky," Mrs. Clarke warbled as she jerked to her feet. "I have to go and check on something…" A small sob tore from her throat then as she hurried out of the room.
"I'm sorry about that, Lucky," Mr. Clarke said, clearing his throat. "She's still…struggling to cope. It got a lot worse after your momma passed on." He sighed again and rubbed his eyes with his thumbs. "I think Margery used to lean on Georgina for support. In many ways, your mother was the last connection she had to you. And you were her last connection to our daughter."
I didn’t know what he wanted me to say to that. I loved his daughter and she died. I had spent more than a third of my life grieving that loss. I'd had thirteen years to come to terms with it, to grieve Hayley, and eleven of those I'd spent alone.
I cleared my throat a few times before daring to speak. "Living with grief isn’t easy." It probably wasn’t what Mr. Clarke wanted to hear, but it was all I had.
I loved his daughter and a part of me always would, but I was tired of being judged and stuffed in a box that was labeled 'damaged goods, don’t touch.'
I didn’t want to end up like his wife.
I wanted to live.
I was built up to look like some goddamn martyr, avenging my dead woman. And yeah, that's exactly what I did. But my actions were selfish. I'd left her there, dying on the ground while I beat the life out of some loser I would never remember.
I was only eighteen years old back then, dammit, and his daughter had been my first love. She was my first fucking everything and she was gone.
And as horrible and fucking horrific as it sounded, there was no guarantee we would have made it. It hurt to acknowledge that even to myself, but there it was.
She was a year older than me and had already left for the University of Colorado in Boulder when I was still in my senior year of high school. I'd never intended on following Hayley to Boulder. Football had been my entire life before I got the taste of her pussy and had been sidetracked. That didn’t mean I never loved her. I had, deeply, and had planned on putting a ring on her finger back then. But my heart had been set on a football scholarship to the University of Alabama. And that's exactly where my life had been heading until that night…
"I heard the sale of your momma's house has gone through," Mr. Clarke stated gruffly.
"Yeah." Nodding slowly, I took another sip of my now cold tea. "I packed up the last of our stuff this morning." The family that had bought my mother's – my – house had needed a fast sale and were moving in next week. "I have some boxes of my mother's stuff packed up that Margie might like," I added, tone a little too hoarse for my liking. "I'll drop them off on the porch before I leave."
"You've put down roots in Boulder?"
Again, I nodded.
"With the fighter and his family?"
"Yeah." I smirked. "With the fighter and his family."
"Good." Mr. Clarke nodded. "Family isn’t all about blood. It's what you make it." He paused before asking, "You got a girl waiting on you back there?"
I felt my body tense up. I had no fucking clue how to answer that question.
"It's okay to live again, son," he added gruffly. "Hayley would've wanted that for you… and so do I."
I exhaled a heavy sigh and whispered, "I'll always love her."
"You're a good boy, Hunter Casarazzi," he finally replied. "Always were." Shoving back his chair, he stood up slowly and motioned for me to follow him towards the door.
Wordlessly, I got to my feet and walked behind him.
"Go and build yourself a damn fine life, son." Reaching for my hand with his, he shook it tightly. "Take chances, go after what your heart desires, and don’t you dare waste another minute of your life… God knows enough time was taken away from you."
This was my closure, I realized.
The closing chapter on this part of my life, and Chris Clarke was giving me his blessing.
And until this moment, I hadn't realized just how badly I had needed it.
"I will," I choked out. "I promise."
He released my hand and took a step back. "Goodbye, son," he whispered before closing the front door, leaving me standing on the porch steps of the first girl I had ever loved.
When I walked back up the street towards my truck, I knew it was for the last time.
I wasn’t going to be coming back here.
This town was my past.
And I was moving forward now.
To my future.
Chapter Fourteen
HOPE
I once read somewhere that a person falls in love three times throughout the course of their lifetime.
Your first love; the love that is the hardest to get over, the one that takes root so deeply inside your soul it's damned near impossible to recover from.
Your second love; the healing love, the adventurous, crazy and blind, hard love.
And finally, the third love; the unexpected love. The love that ruins you. The endgame love.
I wasn’t sure if I agreed with this theory or not, but I guess it was a valid one. But then I wondered if a person had the ability to feel this with the same person. Like, falling in love with a person in three different ways or loving three different versions of that person throughout three different stages of life.
That had to happen, too, right?
If not, then how did they explain those lifelong relationships between two people that met in high school or college?
I knew my mother had only loved one man her entire life and she was in her forties.
And Teagan? Her heart had only ever belonged to Noah.
Maybe a person didn’t feel all these forms of love in a lifetime at all.
Maybe you only fell in love once and it was one of the three.
And maybe Teagan and Mom had lucked out and skipped straight to the third love. Every character in every book I had ever written ended up with that third love.
Or maybe I just had too much time on my hands to overthink this?
My brothers always said I lived in my own little love-bubble and that I was born to be a writer. I wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be a compliment or not, but I didn’t care. I loved being inside my bubble. I adored my fictitious world of alpha males and epic love stories. There was only one thing more appealing than drowning myself in my latest one-click love story and that was writing one.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I wondered if this was normal. I wondered if it was normal to feel more excitement from a story than from real life. If it was wrong, then there was something seriously broken inside of me, because working on my latest WIP these past few months had given me more satisfaction than anything in my real world had.
"Hope, would you mind dropping Ryder off at daycare this morning?" Annabelle called out from the doorway of the living room where she was adjusting one of her pearl earrings.
The grey pantsuit Annabelle was wearing was pressed to perfection and fitted her like a glove. It was a far cry from my baggy gray sweatpants with my fluffy socks pulled over them, not to mention the ratty black tee-shirt I had on with the words World's Okayest Sister – curtesy of Colton – emblazoned in neon pink letters across the front.
"I am running so incredibly late for this meeting," she continued to ramble as she kicked on a pair of killer black heels and adjusted her perfectly styled bun. "And if I don’t leave now, I'm never going to make it on time."
I glared up from whe
re I was sprawled on the floor with my laptop open and a bunch of detailed notes for my current WIP surrounding me, and bit back the urge to scream 'Fuck off and do it yourself!'. But then my eyes landed on the tiny, dark haired child with a head full of lush curls pulling at his mother's leg and my resolve weakened. Ryder was so stinking cute.
"I wouldn’t ask," she rambled. "But Jordan's not back from his night shift yet and, well, you're not doing anything important, are you?"
"No, I'm not doing anything important," I replied in a sickly-sweet tone, masking my absolute outrage at her blatant disregard for my career. "Just penning my latest book." Closing the lid on my laptop, I climbed to my feet and stretched. "You know, the books that paid for that Range Rover parked out front."
"Oh god, I'm so sorry," she was quick to say, cheeks staining pink. "I didn’t mean to offend you. I just meant that you didn’t actually need to go to work like the rest of us."
Irritation gnawed at the frayed tethers holding my temper in check. "Newsflash, honey, this is work."
"Of course, but you know what I mean; a real job."
Breathe, Hope, breathe…
"Yep," I bit out. "It's one of those, too."
"I thought your father bought you that car," she mused before slapping a hand over her mouth in embarrassment. "Oh god, I'm putting my foot in it, aren’t I?"
Choosing to take the high road, I walked over to where she was standing and scooped her son up in my arms. "What time does he need to be at daycare?"
"Daycare opens at eight-thirty," she said with a smile before planting a lipstick smudging kiss on her son's forehead. "Thank you for doing this, Hope," she gushed in that soft, feminine tone of voice I envied. "You're the best."
Forcing myself to mask my emotions and distaste, I smiled at my husband's full-time roommate and part-time fake fiancée. "No problem."
She flashed a megawatt smile before turning on her heels and walking off like a model on the catwalk in Milan, with her blonde hair shining like a halo of light and purity.
Christ, I couldn’t put into words how uncomfortable this woman made me.
"Oh, could you let Jordan know that I'll call him later?" she added as she yanked open the door and hurried out. "I may need him to pick Ryder up this evening."
With that, the front door swung shut with a bang and she was gone.
"Looks like it's me and you again, buddy," I cooed as I bounced with Ryder in my arms. He was adorable. I didn’t start off with the intention of bonding with the enemy's baby, but that's what happened. I liked spending time with Ryder. I found myself caring about him. And when he called me "Opie", it always melted my heart. How fricking cute!
Ryder rewarded my cooing with a big, one-toothed gummy smile that blew my ovaries to hell. "Come on, handsome," I laughed as I carried him into the kitchen. "Let's go wash Mommy's icky lipstick off your face."
Chapter Fifteen
HOPE
When Jordan rolled in from work thirty minutes later, Ryder and I were in the kitchen wolfing down a yummy breakfast that consisted of mashed bananas and baby rice. Delicious…
"Morning," my husband announced in a weary tone when he walked in and hung his coat on the hook on the back of the kitchen door.
"Good-morning!" I replied in a baby voice, attention focused on Ryder who was bouncing like a maniac in his highchair. "Ryder, can you say good morning?" I cooed, reaching over to tickle under his chubby chin. "Say good morning, Jordan."
"Da-da," Ryder babbled, face alight with pure adoration as he stared up at Jordan like he had brought the sunshine with him. "Da-da-da-da-dad."
"No, Ryder," Jordan was quick to correct in a gentle tone. Walking over to the table, he pressed a kiss to my cheek before crouching down in front of the highchair and smiling at Ryder. "Jordan," he said in soft tone. "Can you say Jordan?"
"Dada," Ryder babbled, his hands splaying wildly with excitement. "Up. Dada up!"
With a rueful shake of his head, Jordan exhaled a heavy sigh and picked the baby out of his chair. "He'll get it when he's older," he said by way of explanation before pressing a kiss to Ryder's head.
"I bet," I replied before popping a piece of chopped banana in my mouth.
"Are you alright?" Jordan looked down at me when he asked that, searching my face for the anger he presumed I was feeling. But the truth was, I could never feel anger at this baby. In the four weeks I had been living here, Ryder had become my favorite roommate – my husband included. It wasn’t Jordan's fault he came in second place to Ryder. I rarely saw him. I knew that sounded like a ridiculous statement considering we lived together now, but it was the truth. Jordan worked crazy long and sporadic hours that consisted of several twelve-hour night shifts during the week, not to mention the eight-hour days he put in at his other job. He was either going to bed when I was getting up or he was rushing for work. And on the rare occasion when Jordan wasn’t working, he was playing daddy to Ryder. And I didn’t want to even think about the lack of intimacy between us. It was too damn depressing.
Resentment roared to life inside of me and I felt a huge amount of shame. Little Ryder wasn’t to blame for any of this. He was fatherless and utterly innocent. His mother, on the other hand, drove me batshit crazy. Until moving into this house, I hadn't realized I didn’t do well with other females. I hadn't been aware of how much of a tomboy I was. Living with Teagan didn’t count. I never considered her to be a girlie girl. She was like the other part of me. We'd been together since high school. But Annabelle? I was struggling to make a connection with her. We had nothing in common and it was hard to find and level ground between us.
"I'm good," I shot back, forcing my dark thoughts from my mind. My gaze flicked to the clock hanging above the kitchen door. "But I better get going if I'm to get this little guy to daycare on time."
Jordan's brows furrowed in confusion. "Where's Annabelle?"
"She had an early meeting," I reeled off her earlier bullshit excuses as I took a protesting Ryder from Jordan's arms and put his coat on. "She said she'll call you later." I placed a wriggling Ryder into his car seat and fastened the safety clips around him before retrieving my own coat from the back of the door and shrugging it on. "She might need to you to pick him up this evening," I added before reaching for the handle of the car seat and hoisting it up.
"Do you want me to take him?" Jordan asked, following after me as I carried Ryder to the front door. "I know you're on a deadline."
Yeah, I mentally snapped. I am on a deadline, but apparently, no one in this house gives two shits about my job. "Nope, I'm good," I said instead. Walking out into the early morning rain, I opened the back door of my truck and battled with strapping in Ryder's car seat. "I'm probably going to stop by Teagan's for a catch up after I get this guy to daycare."
Leaning against the side of my truck, Jordan handed me the baby bag I'd stupidly forgotten to bring with me and smiled. "A catch up?" He shook his head and chuckled. "You girls live in each other's pockets. Don’t you ever get bored of talking to each other?"
Closing Ryder's door, I turned and gave Jordan my full attention "Bored of talking to my best friend?" I asked, feigning shock. "What is this blasphemy you speak of?"
"Get out of here." Jordan rolled his eyes and pressed a kiss to my cheek. "Have fun with Teagan."
"I will." I grinned up at him and patted his chest before walking around to the driver's side of my truck and climbing in. Cranking the engine, I rolled down my window and called out, "See you tonight," before pulling out of the driveway.
When I was halfway down the street, I cranked the stereo, needing music to drown out my thoughts.
Pink's song Just Give me a Reason filled my ears and I momentarily debated on switching it off or changing the song, but decided against it, choosing to drown in the lyrics.
Every time I heard this song, something chipped away inside of me. I wanted to believe it was a piece of my pride, but I knew better.
My heart, still battered and barely patched ba
ck together, was still aching, and the words of that song brought me back to that night.
The night he walked away.
The night my world fell to pieces.
Chapter Sixteen
JORDAN
There were so many things I wanted to say to my wife. So many promises I longed to make her that I knew I wasn’t capable of keeping. But unspoken words were easier to live with than broken promises, so I kept my mouth shut as I watched Hope reverse out of the driveway.
My heart, my stupid, dysfunctional heart somersaulted around in my chest like it was the first time I'd ever seen her. It didn’t make sense, but then, nothing ever did when it came to my feelings for my wife.
Once her truck was out of sight, that feeling of elation quickly turned to dread in my chest. And just like every morning since rekindling my marriage, every single one of my deepest, darkest fears and secrets roared to life inside of me.
What was she doing with me?
How long would she stay?
How could I keep her happy when I wasn’t sure when or if I could get to a place in my life when I would feel ready to satisfy her in the ways she needed me to?
I felt like I was drowning, and in all honesty, I didn't have the faintest clue of how long I was going to be able to keep her at arm's length before she snapped.
Most of my teenage years had been consumed with inappropriate thoughts and sexual urges all directed at Hope.
Hell, at thirty, they still were.
But it was different now.
My needs were different.
Sex, I could handle.
Intimacy, not so much.
And Hope was the kind of woman that needed both.
She deserved both.
I couldn’t give that to her.
I kept love and sex in two separate compartments in my brain.
I guess somewhere in between being raped and fucking butchered by my mother's husband, I'd forfeited all notions of romance.
I was fourteen years old when it first happened.