“We knew as soon as we saw those pictures that it was our chance to find you. We weren’t sure if you would really be here, but we hoped if we found Ace he would be able to tell us where you were since you were dancing with him in some of the pictures,” Caitlyn finished for her.
“Is he your boyfriend? Can you introduce me to Kyden?” Leila asked. Frustration with her pulled at my brow. If this was the only reason they came, they could just go back to Seattle.
“No he’s not and no I won’t. He just married my best friend. You remember those were his wedding photos, right?”
“Yeah, but it’s Kyden McCabe. I’ve heard that lots of married celebrities have open marriages when they’re away and you know he’s got that bad boy player thing going on.” I hoped like hell my sister hadn’t really turned into the slutty brat she was coming off as.
“He might have the look down, but I can assure you his and Jax’s marriage is very closed, if this is all you guys came here for – ”
“It’s not,” Caitlyn interjected. “We want you to come home.” Of all the things she could have said, that was not what I expected to hear.
“You know I can’t. Do Mom and Dad even know you’re here?” Her eyes darted to Leila’s guiltily. “Right. Of course they don’t.”
“We told them we were going to San Diego with our friend Tiffany,” Leila admitted.
“You should probably go before they find out you lied,” I advised.
“Would you at least hear us out?”
“I’m sorry Cait, but I just don’t think there’s anything you can say that will convince me to go back there.”
“What about Mia?” That was a low blow. Malia Rose, the youngest of the four Pierce girls and the one it hurt the most to leave behind. She was only ten at the time and practically my shadow and mini me. The twins did everything together, they were an inseparable team, often times excluding Mia. Any time that happened, I would let her hang out in my room. I’d paint her nails and do her make-up and hair while we watched movies. I was the one she came to with her secret crushes, or when she was fighting with her best friend. I was the one to help her with her homework and give her rides to sleepovers. Keeping me from her was one thing I didn’t know if I would ever be able to forgive my parents for.
“That’s not fair. You know it wasn’t my choice to stay away.”
“We know it’s not all your fault, Mom and Dad played their parts in the mess too, but – ”
“But nothing. They didn’t just play a part in it. You don’t have to tell me it wasn’t all my fault. None of it was my fault. They did this, not me.”
“Maybe if you tried to see things from their point of view,” Leila chimed in.
“I’m sorry, but that’s not possible, and even if it were, I don’t want to. I’ll never be okay with what they did.”
“Please just think about it. We know they miss you too. They’re just too proud to admit it.”
I doubted that very much. “Their damn pride is what caused all of this.”
“Actually I think it was Clayton.”
I turned on Leila so fast, “Don’t you dare say his name!” She at least had the decency to look remorseful.
“Forget about whose fault it is or was, maybe if you came back we could all fix things and be a family again. Mia’s really having a hard time. She and Mom fight all the time.” I hated hearing that things weren’t going well at home for Mia, but I didn’t know what I could do about it.
“They fight about you a lot. I think if you came back, and Mia saw that Mom and Dad aren’t really the villains, it would be good for her. You’ve all had enough time to cool off that I think you should just put the past behind you and work things out. Now that things are different, and you’re not – ”
“Not what?” I asked sharply. Cait couldn’t even look me in the eye. “Go ahead say it.” All three of us knew exactly what she meant. I just couldn’t believe that they actually had the nerve to bring him into this.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you. I know it must have been hard for you, but this has been hard on our whole family.” She really didn’t have a clue how hard it actually was. Nobody did. Not even Jax knew the real depth of my hurt and loss, and I’d told her more than I’d ever told anyone else.
“If you really knew what you were asking me to do, you wouldn’t.”
“But we are asking. Please, come home. If not for us, or to make things right with Mom and Dad, at least for Mia. Take some time to think about it. You should come for Thanksgiving. There will be lots of family and Mom and Dad’s friends so you know they won’t cause a scene.”
Against my better judgment, I promised them before we said goodbye that I would think about it. They had a flight to catch to California so they could really meet up with their friend. The second they were gone Spade and Ace reappeared. I knew they were curious. Ace especially was struggling to hold his questions back. I knew he was disappointed when, instead of providing answers, I hid myself away in my room.
For the first time in years I allowed myself to cry for the broken relationship I had with my parents and sisters. I cried for Clay and his family and everything we lost. I cried because I couldn’t even picture what Mia looked like at sixteen, no wait, she would have just turned seventeen a few weeks ago. All I had was the image of the fair haired and freckled little girl who begged me not to go almost seven years ago. I remembered what it was like to feel isolated and on the outside in my own home and I hated the idea that she was feeling that now. I hated that I’d promised her I would always be there for her and then was forced to break that promise.
Sometime during my cry fest I drifted off to sleep, but I felt just as miserable when I woke later in the afternoon. I hated to do it to her on her honeymoon, but I needed to talk to Jax. She was the only one who knew the story with my family and would be able to give me advice. I pulled out my phone and called her, not even sure of what time it would be there.
She answered and immediately picked up on my distress and coaxed it all out of me. She listened supportively, and afterward told me that it was my decision to make, and that she knew whatever I chose to do would be the right choice for me. She even offered for her and Ky to go with me to Seattle if that’s what I decided to do.
When the call ended my dilemma wasn’t solved, but I felt better for having let it all out. I trusted her more than anyone and she knew about making tough choices when it came to family. Of course when it came down to it, she had chosen to go home. She made the choice to face her past. I wasn’t sure if I could be that brave.
I was lying in bed, staring at my ceiling, hoping the answer to all of my problems would materialize in the paint, when the door cracked open and I looked over to see Ace standing in the doorway with a small sack in his hand. When I didn’t immediately berate him for barging in, or yell at him to leave, he took it as an invitation, softly closing the door behind him as he came to sit on the edge of my bed beside me. He reached in the sack and pulled out my favorite Ben and Jerry’s fudge brownie ice cream and a bag of sour skittles. He also had two spoons in his hand. It made it that much more difficult to tell myself he wasn’t the guy for me when he was this thoughtful.
“Did Jax call you and tell you to do this?”
“She didn’t have to.” He handed me a spoon and pulled the top off the little carton of ice cream. We sat there quietly, eating the ice cream until there was enough gone for me to pour some skittles in. He ate around them, while I savored the sweet and sour, fruity-chocolate combo.
“Did you know I was engaged once?” He asked softly.
I almost inhaled and choked on a skittle. I most definitely hadn’t known that. “What happened?”
“We were high school sweethearts. I enlisted in the Marines right after graduation and once I completed basic training, before I shipped out, we got engaged.” This story was all too familiar. It could have been my story. “Then four years later, I was just a few months away from discharge, anx
ious to get home to her and start our life together. I was in the middle of hell and I didn’t get to call home often, but I did when I could, but that time when I called she told me not to anymore. She’d found someone else and just like that we were done. Well, actually we’d been done for a while; I just hadn’t known it until then. So instead of getting out, I signed back up for another four years and was lucky to make it home at all.”
My heart broke hearing him say that. It hurt for what he went through, what he experienced with his fiancé, but mostly for what he must’ve seen and experienced over there. Sadly, I knew just how lucky he was to make it home, just like I knew the worry his loved ones must have felt the entire time he was away. I knew what it was like to pray night and day for a soldier to make it back safely, and I knew what is was like when he didn’t.
Once again there were tears in my eyes, but I wasn’t ready to completely let Ace in yet, so instead I told him a partial truth. “A friend of mine from high school joined the Marines too. He didn’t make it back.”
“Too many didn’t. Too many are still out there who won’t make it home, except in a box, if at all.” There was so much pain behind his eyes and I couldn’t imagine what it was like for him to be right in the middle of it, wondering every day you went out if it was going to be your last one, watching your friends and brothers give their lives. I often times wondered if the reason he and Spade acted so carefree and reckless sometimes was because of what they had gone through, what they were still living with. It would certainly teach one to not take life for granted and instead live it to the fullest.
Silence passed, not uncomfortably, between us while I worked up the nerve to share some of my past with him. I don’t know how long it was before I finally spoke, but when I did he listened. “I haven’t seen my sisters or my parents in over six years.” He didn’t look shocked by my confession. He continued to eat away at the ice cream, and let me open up to him in my own time and way. It made it easier to go on.
“My parents have money, like a lot of money. My father is CEO of a huge internet company in Seattle. Both of my parents came from affluent families and my grandparents on both sides were the original investors when my dad started the company fresh out of Yale, and he only made them all richer. Appearances and social standings mean everything to my parents, especially my mom. I was raised to behave a certain way and portray a certain image, but my entire life I never felt like I fit anywhere, but I tried to please them and I became a girl I didn’t really care for. I felt lost until I met a boy who showed me who I really was. It turned out that my parents didn’t like the real me so much and they liked that boy even less.”
I could still close my eyes and see his warm chocolate brown eyes peering into my soul. He was so beautiful; his mixed American and South American heritage gave him a dark golden complexion. He had dark hair that he kept too short for me to run my fingers through. I was so young then, but I had known he was the one. I didn’t care how much money his parents made, or what kind of house they lived in and cars they drove. All I cared about was that he saw me when no one else did. None of that had mattered to my parents though. All they saw was their precious name and image being tarnished because their daughter was dating a poor kid. I could hear my mother’s voice now, “We give charity to the poor, we don’t bring them home.”
I swallowed back my emotions and cleared my throat before going on, but my voice still came out shaky. “He wasn’t from the right kind of family, so my parents considered him beneath us. When I refused to break things off with him and date someone they approved of, they said I was an embarrassment and as long as I chose to link myself with trash like him, I was no longer welcome in their home. I think that maybe they thought their threats would get through to me, they didn’t expect me to actually choose him, but I did. I was eighteen and they told me to go, so I left. They also served me with a restraining order to keep me from seeing my sisters. They were afraid of my influence on them. Then today, Cait and Leila showed up here to ask me to come back home to try and fix things with my parents.”
He was looking at me intently, and I wanted to squirm under his scrutiny, but I held myself still while I waited for him to say something, anything.
“What happened with the guy?”
I wasn’t ready to let him see that part of me, he’d seen enough of my scarred heart for today. “It didn’t work out.” I could tell he wanted to push further, that he wasn’t satisfied with that answer, but he held back.
“Are you going to go home?”
“I don’t know. If it were only about making things right with my parents, then I wouldn’t. I don’t care to see them again, but there’s Caitlyn and Leila, and I have another sister, Mia. She’s even younger, just seventeen, a senior in high school now. She was my heart back then and I’ve missed her like crazy. I was closest to her even though she was so young. I don’t know how Caitlyn and Leila feel about me, it was hard to tell, but they’re adults now and can do what they please. If they want me in their life, I don’t have to go home for that, but if there’s a chance that I can see Mia again, I think I have to take it.”
“It sounds to me like maybe you’ve already made your decision.”
“I guess I have,” I sighed.
Chapter 11
Ace
“So how long do you think this is actually going work man? I mean I know she loves this house¸ but people are already staring out the windows. I give it a week before that girl down the street breaks in and you find her naked in your bed. Have you seen the crazy eyes on that one?” I was helping Ky unload the last of his things from my truck. They were back from their honeymoon and he was officially moving into Jax’s house. She was inside or I wouldn’t have brought it up, but it just didn’t seem like they had really thought this situation through. It was a nice neighborhood, but not at all realistic or even safe with Ky’s status.
“I know man, but she loves this house. It has to be her decision, I won’t make her move.”
“Won’t you worry about her here when you’re gone?” I sure as hell wouldn’t leave my wife in a neighborhood where any crazed fan or stalker could find her, even with the security system installed.
“That’s the thing, I was going to talk to you guys all together, but she’s going to come with us. I hope that won’t be a problem.”
I smiled. “Are you kidding, Jax on the road with us. It’s gonna be fucking great.” Not to mention that if she was with us all the time, my chances were better at getting Sadie to come out to more shows.
He gave me a pointed look. “I’m not bringing her to be your guys’ personal chef.”
“No, you’re bringing her to be your personal sex slave.” I waggled my eyebrows at him. “So how is it now that you guys are –”
“Dude, I’m not sharing details of our sex life with you.”
I scoffed, “I’m not looking for details. Fuck, it’s Jax for crying out loud. I just meant like is it different with her, has it changed your relationship, do you feel closer to her?”
He looked at me strangely. “You feeling alright man? Cause I’m pretty sure you just asked me if sex brought Jax and I closer. Since when has sex meant anything more than a release to you?”
“You’re one to talk.”
“I know, but I’ve got Jax now. I haven’t been that way in a long time, but you … what the hell is going on?”
“Shit, I don’t know.”
He grinned. “Is this about your new roommate?”
I drew in a deep breath and then blew it out, “Yeah. That girl’s got my head all sorts of twisted up. I’m actually feeling shit and stuff. I think that maybe, I might be a little in love with her.”
He just laughed at me. “About damn time you figured that out, but I don’t think you’re just a little in love with her. It’s not your style to do anything just a little.”
“Fuck. Yeah you’re probably right. I just don’t even want to go there yet, because I don’t know if I have a shot in
hell. Sometimes I think so, but then, just when I think she’s finally going to let me in, she slams all these walls in place and shuts me back out.”
“I don’t know what to tell you man, except that you need to figure out real fast if it’s worth it. It’s not gonna be easy and there’s no point in you going after her if you’re just gonna decide later that she’s not the one, or you don’t want to have to try with her. You might as well just let her find some nice, respectable douchebag before you go fucking with both your heads.”
“Thanks for the encouragement,” I said sarcastically.
“Hey, I’m just being straight with you. Nothing about loving Jax has been easy. She’s a good girl with a lot of pain and baggage, and girls like that, like her and Sadie, don’t belong anywhere near fucked up assholes like us, but I wouldn’t trade a single second with her to go back to when things were simpler.”
“So you’re saying it is worth it?”
“For me, hell yes. There’s not a feeling in the world for me that can compare to being loved by her, and the hard times don’t even come close to touching the good ones. It’s up to you to figure out what you want, if you can handle being all in with her. I will tell you this man, not a single one of my past experiences even compares to what I’ve got with Jax and how it is between us, so yeah, we are even closer now, but that only came after all the shit we had go through to get here.”
I just nodded and set a box down on the ground, then turned to reach for another while I thought about it for a minute. I think I understood what he was saying, the same thing Jax had said. Loving Sadie would change things, and I think I wanted it to.
“Now can we stop with the touchy feely shit and get this stuff inside, then I want to get the guys together and rehearse some new stuff I wrote.”
“If you wrote a song about mind blowing sex with Jaxyn, I fucking quit. I can’t play shit like that man. I would never be able to get the images out of my head, and I don’t think you want me to have them there.”
Chasing Ever After Page 11