Damaged Love

by Riann C. Miller

  Tension I didn’t know I was still holding onto melts away hearing his story.

  “Does it make me a hypocrite that I’m glad you haven’t slept with her?”

  Jet laughs. “Maybe.”

  “Can we eat now?” Alana asks, causing Jet to step away from me to find my daughter already sitting at the table by herself, waiting for dinner.

  “Yes, sweetie.” Jet gives me a lazy smile then grabs a bowl off the counter and heads to the dining room table.

  “Sit by me, Jet,” she says in her sweet little voice.

  “There’s no one else I’d rather sit by, pumpkin,” he adds, taking the seat next to hers, and once again, my heart melts.

  RACHEL

  “POOR MAX. HE ALWAYS SEEMS to pick losers.” Zanie smirks, causing me to give her a dirty look. “Oh, shut up. I didn’t mean you,” she adds with a laugh.

  “He really liked Katelynn.”

  “I really like alcohol, but that doesn’t mean it’s good for me.”

  I do my best to hold back a smile. “I feel awful.”

  “Why? You didn’t set them up, and if you ask me, it sounds like Max was thinking with his dick and not his brain,” Zanie adds as she gathers up the last of her things.

  “You’re right, but still I feel bad.” I glance down at the paper with the address for the consultation that Zanie booked for me. “What’s this about again?”

  “Some guy with a lot of money dropped some serious cash to redo a park in Queens. Some newspaper is doing a write up on it and wants a bid. They asked for the owner personally.”

  Queens is the opposite direction from where my apartment in Astoria is, and this is only a bid—which means it is not even guaranteed money later on.

  “I have a couple hours to kill, and if I’m heading to a park, I might as well go pick up Alana and take her with me.”

  “Okay, enjoy your weekend,” Zanie calls out before walking out the door. I have no idea what Max has planned for the weekend now that he has cut Katelynn loose, but I’m going to give him a free pass—at least for a while. I grab my phone and rattle out a text, telling him that I’ll get Alana from the sitter, and we’ll be home later.

  Before walking out the door, I send Jet a text saying practically the same thing. The more I think about it, finishing off my week with my daughter in a park doesn’t sound like a horrible idea.

  * * * *

  Cunningham Park in Queens is huge and filled with people who are enjoying the start to a beautiful fall weekend.

  “Mommy, watch me go down the big slide.” Alana pulls her hand out of mine as she runs over to a slide.

  Other than a name, I have no idea who I’m meeting, but I’m early. I glance around and spot an open bench where I can keep my eyes on Alana. After I’m settled, I grab my file and do some research before my client is scheduled to be here.

  “Mommy, did you see how fast I went down the slide?”

  I look up and smile. “I did, princess. You’re growing too fast. You need to slow down.”

  “Mommy, I can’t grow too fast,” she says before turning around and running back to the slide.

  I can’t believe how great things are going with Jet and Alana...hell, even Max. With the exception of Katelynn, the four of us passed whatever awkward stage we were once in, and I couldn’t be happier.

  I watched Alana hop off the slide and start to walk around the side to get in line again, only she never comes around the corner. I jump to my feet in a panic. I figured she must have tripped and hurt herself, but nothing could have prepared me for the heart-wrenching moment I experience when I find my brother holding her with a gun pointed at her little head.

  “Calvin,” I whisper.

  Several people start screaming all at once when people finally notice that there’s a man holding a gun against a little girl’s head, no less.

  “Mommy?” Alana says as tears start falling down her face.

  “You’re going to be fine, baby. Calvin, what do you want?” I do everything I can to stay calm and collected, but my heart is about to beat out of my chest, and all I want to do is grab my daughter and run.

  “You’ve been looking into me, but you can’t have it. I won’t let you,” he frantically says while the gun starts to shake in his hand.

  “I don’t understand what you mean. I wasn’t looking into anything, and you can keep it—whatever it is—it’s yours,” I softly add. I have no clue what he’s talking about, but I’ll say anything if it gets him away from Alana.

  “Your fucking boyfriend and his little P.I. friend have been digging around in my files. I know it.” Alana starts to struggle against his hold, only adding to Calvin’s frenzied state of mind.

  “Alana, baby, you’re going to be fine. Calvin put her down, please, and you can have whatever you want.”

  Calvin looks nothing like the man I remember. His dark hair has thinned almost to the point that he has a few bald spots. He looks about thirty pounds underweight, and at this very moment, his eyes are bloodshot, making me think he’s on something.

  “You’re lying. That’s all you ever do is lie. You promised you’d never leave me then you ran away. You left me all alone.” My stomach bottoms out as his statement causes something in my head to click. Calvin is acting exactly how our mother used to act: paranoid, frightened, and more times than not, on some type of drug.

  I always blamed an untreated postpartum depression along with her failing modeling career for her reckless and unstable behavior, but countless doctors told us it went deeper than that, and Calvin must’ve inherited whatever problem she had because never in a million years did I promise to stay anywhere near him.

  “I’m sorry I left you all alone. Why don’t you put her down and we can go somewhere and talk?” I force a shaky smile.

  “Don’t fucking lie to me,” he screams, waving his gun around and almost dropping Alana, who’s a sobbing mess in his arms.

  “I’m not lying. You put her down and I’ll go with you, but not while you’re pointing a gun at my daughter.” His frantic eyes scan the park, and I think maybe...just maybe he’s thinking about my offer.

  “If I put her down, you’re going to leave me again.” Off in the distance, we can hear police sirens, which cause Calvin’s hands to shake even more.

  “You called the police?” he desperately questions as his eyes continue to scan the area around us.

  He’s standing in a park holding a gun to a child’s head...I didn’t call the police, but of course, someone was going to.

  “Put her down, and we can leave now,” I add while slowly taking a step closer to the two of them.

  Calvin looks down at Alana then back at me. “I needed you. I needed you, and you left me. How could you do that to me?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. After mom and Russ died, I couldn’t handle being in California anymore.”

  Calvin’s eyes turn wild as he drops Alana and points the gun at me. “Russ, Russ, Russ. It was always about Russ. He didn’t love you, not the way I did.”

  I reach my arm out and grab ahold of Alana only to shove her behind me. I had no idea the mention of our brother would set him off more than he already was, but unfortunately, it did. Slowly, I start to back the two of us away from him. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see police officers slowly making their way toward us, but I think Calvin is rattled by my comment about Russ to the point that he’s not paying attention to anything else.

  “Why was it always about him?” Instead of answering, I take a huge step back. The second he processes what I’m doing, he brings his gun up to my face and points it directly at me.

  “Alana, run,” I say under my breath as I step toward Calvin. In my peripheral vision, I see Alana run to an officer standing off toward the side by a tree.

  Calvin’s eyes drift toward Alana then back to me. “Now it’s just us. Where do you want to go?” I ask, hoping to distract him from Alana and the police that appear to be closing in. “Back home. I want you t
o come home with me where you belong. We’re a family, and it’s about time you stop hiding from me.” A creepy smile takes over his face.

  “Then let’s go.” His face changes and he suddenly starts looking at me like I’m the crazy one. I thought agreeing with him would help, but I think I just raised a red flag. In the past, I never willingly went somewhere with him.

  “You’re lying to me again. I know you. I know you better than anyone.” His hand begins to shake as his eyes once again scan the area. I can tell the second he spots something because he goes from panicked to mad in a second. He tries to grab ahold of me, but I jump away from him as I see police officers closing in.

  Calvin’s eyes flash around before he points his gun at me and fires.

  He missed. My heart continues to race as he points the gun at his own head and fires again before falling to the ground. A few officers take off toward Calvin as a bunch of other people start running toward me.

  “Ma’am, lie down and let us check you over.” I push away from them.

  “My daughter? Where’s my daughter?” I ask while my eyes wildly scan the park for Alana.

  “Your daughter is fine. She’s right over there. Now, please, you’re losing a lot of blood. We need you to lay down.” I watch as paramedics start running toward me. I look down at my stomach only to see blood everywhere. I bring my hand up from the spot it appears to be coming from as pain starts to take over.

  “Ma’am? Ma’am?” I hear someone shouting as I slowly lie back. I’m trying to answer, but words aren’t forming. The voices start to fade and slowly my world goes black.

  * * * *

  JET

  I knock again, louder this time, on Rachel’s door. She sent me a text earlier while I was in a meeting telling me she was going to a park with Alana, but she’d planned to be home by now. I grab my cell to call her as Max opens his door.

  This is the first time I’ve seen him since the awkward dinner with Katelynn.

  “I don’t think they’ve made it home yet,” he says as he points at Rachel’s door. He grabs a set of keys and unlocks her door, motioning for me to go in. “I’m sure she’d want you to stay here and wait for her.”

  Tension similar to the kind we had when I first met Max has returned. “I’m sorry about, Katelynn. We never dated. We only went to a few fundraisers together.”

  Max slowly nods his head. “And I wouldn’t have cared about that, but she was ready to dump my ass the second she saw you.”

  “I’m sorry,” I mumble when I can’t think of anything more appropriate to say.

  “Don’t be. If anything, that night saved me from investing any more time with someone like that.”

  I’m still unsure of what I should say, but I’m saved from replying when Max’s phone starts ringing. His eyebrows scrunch as he answers the call.

  “Hello. Yes. I’m Max Sullivan. Yes, I’m Alana Sullivan’s father. What’s wrong?” Max brings his hand up and drags it through his hair. “Where? Is she okay? Oh God.”

  My stomach drops. Something is wrong, that much is obvious, and my brain starts to run wild. “We’ll be right there,” he says then looks up at me. “Come on. We’ve got to go. Rachel is hurt.” Max takes off out of Rachel’s apartment and into his, but he’s back in the hallway seconds later.

  “What’s going on?” I ask as we’re racing out of their apartment building.

  “Rachel is at New York Presbyterian in Queens.”

  “Why? What happened?” Max flags down a cab, and within seconds, we’re both inside and on our way to the hospital.

  “She was shot. That’s all I know.”

  My muscles coil and my stomach turns. “Shot?” I weakly repeat. “What about Alana? Where is she?”

  Max turns toward me with pain sketched across his face. “She’s at the hospital being checked out, but whoever that was on the phone said she appears to be fine.”

  The rest of the cab ride is made in silence, but the second we make it to the hospital, I toss a large bill at the cab driver, and the two of us take off.

  “My daughter, Alana Sullivan, is here somewhere. She’s only four.”

  A woman points toward a hallway. “That way, room 1116, and you’ll have to show some ID to the officer at the door.”

  We both start running down the hall, only to be greeted with police officers everywhere.

  “Alana Sullivan? I’m her father. Where is she?” Max hollers at no one in particular.

  “Mr. Sullivan? I’m Officer Randell; I’m the one who phoned you.”

  “Where’s my daughter?” Max frantically asks again.

  “This way.” He turns and walks into a room. Max and I quickly follow to find Alana, who appears to be fine. She’s coloring while lying on a hospital bed.

  “Princess,” Max says.

  “Daddy!” Alana jumps up and into Max’s waiting arms.

  “Oh, thank God,” he breathes into her neck.

  I turn back to the officer. “Where’s Rachel?”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Jet McKenzie, Rachel’s fiancé.” That might be a bit of a stretch seeing as I haven’t asked Rachel to marry me—yet—but she will be my wife one day—hopefully soon.

  “Oh, let me find the doctor that was asking for her family,” he says before he walks out of the room. He returns moments later. “What happened?” Both Max and I ask at the same time.

  “A man was holding them at gunpoint in Cunningham Park.”

  Alana starts crying, causing the officer to pause. “Maybe we should step outside and away from the little one.”

  “You go. I want to say with Alana,” Max says with Alana attached to his arm. The officer and I step outside Alana’s door where he immediately starts talking. “We received several calls about a man in Cunningham Park who was holding a gun to a little girl’s head. By the time officers arrived on the scene, the gunman had become extremely agitated. For whatever reason, he let the little girl go, but minutes later, he shot your fiancée then turned the gun on himself.”

  I heard Max earlier, but hearing it now in this fucking hospital after seeing how upset Alana is has my heart plummeting.

  “Do you know how Rachel is?” I desperately question.

  “Last I knew she was in surgery.”

  “And the gunman?”

  “He died at the scene,” he whispers.

  Max steps out into the hallway as he continues, “Do either of you know a Calvin Scott?”

  My heart dangerously starts racing. “That’s Rachel’s brother. Why?”

  “He was the shooter.” Oh fuck. Oh holy shit.

  Max deeply sighs before chiming in. “Rachel has always been afraid of him. He abused her for years.”

  My head whips around to Max. “What?” I ask as my voice cracks.

  His eyes slowly close and open again. “Calvin abused Rachel for years. He’s the reason she fled California after her family died. She lost the only protection she had.”

  Fuck, she lost me during the same time.

  “Abusing?” I know in my heart what he’s referring to, but I have a desperate need for him to confirm my worst fears.

  “Yeah...sexually. Her dad knew about it and didn’t do a damn thing, but she never told her other brother out of fear of what he might do.”

  “Why the hell didn’t she tell me?” I scream.

  I know she cared about me then, and I know she does now. Why in the hell would she keep this from me?

  “She had her reasons, and it’s not like she told me seconds after I met her. I didn’t know until about two years ago.”

  She waited three years to tell Max. Fuck. I thought...I thought she had opened up to me, but that’s not the case at all.

  “Doctor,” I hear Officer Randell say. I quickly turn around. “This is Rachel’s fiancé.”

  “I’m Doctor Powell.” He extends his hand to shake mine.

  “What’s going on? How is she?”

  “The bullet lodged in Ms. Stein’s l
iver. We were able to extract it. However, we had to remove a portion of the liver as well. Originally, I was worried about the amount of internal bleeding, but we also have that under control.

  “I’m going to keep Ms. Stein in ICU for the next twelve hours to monitor her closely, but I expect her to make a full recovery.”

  “Thank God,” I gasp.

  “Yes, I would say God was on your side. Ms. Stein was extremely lucky. A few inches either direction and I’m not sure I would have the same outcome to deliver to you.”

  I nod. “Thank you, doctor.”

  “Once she’s settled, you’ll be allowed to see her, but no more than two at a time.” The doctor shakes my hand once more before he turns and walks back the way he came.

  Max exhales a deep breath. “You go be with Rachel. I’ll stay with Alana.”

  “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to check in on Alana before I go find Rachel.”

  Instead of answering me, he nods his head. Once my eyes land on Alana, I start thanking God all over again.

  JET

  “HOW IS SHE?” I HEAR Zanie softly whisper from the doorway.

  “The same.” Rachel has been out of surgery for over eighteen hours. The doctor told me to expect her to wake up anytime, but that was six hours ago. The more time that passes, the more panic that starts to seep its way back into my mind.

  I allowed myself to believe that she was going to be okay, and now I’m not sure.

  “I met your sister in the waiting room. She seems nice.”

  I know she’s trying to make me feel better, but I’m not in the mood for small talk. “I thought you might want to know that your friend Matt just arrived.”

  Matt tried calling my cell earlier, but I didn’t answer it. I had no idea he was coming to New York.