“Is that better?” she asks as her voice hitches but her eyes remain locked with mine.
“I don’t know; why don’t you decide?” I reply hoarsely.
“Fact, I don’t like you very much right now,” she hisses.
“I can live with that,” I tell her, fitting her cap to my head.
“I love you for that,” she whispers as she lets the tears fall. “Can you promise me something?”
“I knew you were looking for promises,” I rasp, taking her hand. “What do you need, pretty girl?”
“That. I need a lot of that,” she says. “Promise me you’ll help me find myself again.”
I reach up and brush away the tears from her cheeks. And she gives me more of her beautiful when she doesn’t flinch at my touch. Instead, she leans her cheek into my palm and I give her the only beautiful I know.
I give her words.
My words.
“I’ve got you,” I vow as I take her hand and bring it to my lips.
A kiss is still a kiss and wherever it lands, it’s still a declaration of affection.
With her hand in mine, I walk the pathway lined with tulips. A pathway I never thought my boots would walk again and I ring the doorbell.
More beautiful comes my way as the door opens and one warrior greets another. My mother’s green eyes briefly meet mine before they lock with Gina’s green eyes.
“Hi, Mom,” I greet, waiting for her to tear her eyes away from Gina, but it doesn’t happen right away. I watch as the two women continue to silently stare at each other before Gina extends her hand.
“Hi, Mrs. Kincaid, I’m Gina…” She pauses slapping my arm, “You didn’t tell me if your mother calls you Chase or Stryker,” she whispers.
“You didn’t ask,” I counter.
“Still, don’t you think you should’ve told me?”
“Chase,” my mother interrupts. “It’s the name I gave him and the only one I’ll ever call him,” she clarifies. “And while we’re playing the name game, please don’t call me Mrs. Kincaid. It reminds me of my mother-in-law and she was a bitter old tool.”
Gina’s glare softens as she turns her gaze back to my mother and smiles.
“Call me Claire,” my mother says, before her eyes settle back on me. I watch as she drinks every inch of me in, her eyes glistening as they finally reach mine. “I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again.”
I keep the reasons for my visit to myself and shove my hands into my pockets.
“Is now a bad time?”
“Is that your way of asking about your father?”
I raise an eyebrow at the spunk laced in her words.
“Your father passed away a year ago.”
“I know,” I tell her. “So, to answer your question; no it’s not my way of asking about the old man, but it is my way of asking you if it’s okay we’re here.”
“Of course it’s okay you’re here, Chase,” she whispers, stepping aside as she opens the door wider. “Please come in.”
I place my hand on the small of Gina’s back and follow her into the house, watching as she takes in every single detail from the molding to the grain of wood the floor is.
“Are you hungry? Thirsty? What can I get you?” My mother asks as we enter the living room.
“I’m good,” I tell her, keeping my eyes on Gina as she stares at the only photo on the mantle.
“May I?” she asks, turning to my mother. Once she receives the nod of approval Gina lifts the frame and stares at the photo of me in my dress uniform.
“That was my proudest moment as a mother. Well, that and when he pooped on the potty.”
She did not just go there.
I spin around and glare at my mother, watching as she innocently shrugs her shoulders.
“Don’t give me that look. Training you was hell. It took months, and you marked all my plants like a dog. Besides, you came home to introduce me to your girlfriend, right? Careful, Chase, I’ll pull out my photo albums. I have three of them dedicated to your terrible twos,” she warns, turning back to Gina.
Her laughter fills the room and I spin around again, pushing back the realization that this was probably a bad idea and I’ll end up with whiplash chasing the sounds of their smart mouths.
“Can I see those photo albums?”
“No.”
“Of course.”
“Ma, no, no photo albums,” I demand, taking the frame from Gina’s hand and standing it back on the mantel. “Jesus fuck,” I growl.
“Language! Don’t fuck with the Lords name,” my mother chastises and again I turn to her wide-eyed.
“What the hell happened to you?” I question in astonishment.
“Oh sweetie, you only knew one facet of your mother. You never gave me the chance to introduce you to the woman I kept buried. I wish you would have, maybe then I would’ve had the chance to thank you.”
“Thank me?” I repeat, narrowing my eyes in confusion.
“Yes, thank you. You set me free. You, Chase, you saved me.”
I was nobody’s hero.
But I was my mother’s.
Go figure.
-Thirty-nine-
Gina
I forget.
I temporarily forget that I’m the victim. I become so engrossed in the stories Claire shares, the way her and Stryker reminisce over the times they ‘scraped happy from the floor of this old house’ and the way they both dance around the memories neither of them are fond of. There are memories that have them laughing out loud and memories that Stryker gets up and literally walks away from.
Claire tells me all about her gardens and then she blows both me and Stryker away when she admits the truth behind her green thumb.
I was an abused woman, something I didn’t want to admit, so I escaped it. I’d sit in those flower beds for hours pretending I was like all the other housewives on the block. Sometimes I was better than them because my pansies didn’t die and my tulips didn’t frost over. When cars rolled down the block, I wasn’t the woman whose husband smacked her around at night. I wasn’t the woman too ashamed to look her son in the eye when she put him on the school bus the next morning. I was Claire Kincaid, and I had the perfect life…just look at my flowers, the proof was right there in the front of my house.
I think that was big of her to admit, even now, years later. She found the courage to share what happened to her, to say the words I’m a victim. But she wasn’t only the victim, that badge didn’t stick with her for the rest of her life because she turned it around by admitting it.
Then she became the survivor.
And that’s beautiful.
I’m not sure Stryker felt the same way about his mother’s admission because he took another breather from the conversation, only this time he didn’t return after five minutes.
“He resents me,” Claire says quietly as she leans over the coffee table and fills both of our coffee mugs. “He begged me so many times to leave his father. Imagine that? A young boy pleading with his mama to be safe. My own son begging me to open my eyes. I ignored the fear in his eyes for so long, told myself every day he wasn’t scared to come home, but I knew deep down inside he was absolutely terrified of opening that door and finding me dead.”
I say nothing, watch as she fixes my coffee exactly as I did for the first cup and then she leans back and stares me right in the eyes.
“It’s sad when you meet your son’s girlfriend and in one sitting we’re able to share the few happy memories we have.”
She sips her coffee as I keep my hands steadily wrapped around my own mug before placing it down on the table.
“Can I ask you what changed?”
She looks at me for a moment, continues to drink her coffee in silence before she places it down next to mine and holds out her hand.
“Come,” she whispers.
I place my hand in hers and curiously follow her into the little bathroom off the side of the kitchen. She points to the toilet and I turn down the s
eat and sit. Silently she bends her head and washes her face, scrubs away all the make-up and then pats herself dry with a towel before turning to me. Claire crooks her finger and I stand, walking into the light and my eyes follow her finger as she points to the four faded marks beneath her eye.
“Scars,” she whispers. “These are the only ones that never faded and every time I look in the mirror I’m reminded why I lost my son.”
She pauses, drawing in a deep breath before forcing a smile.
“He came home from the service, thought being where he was and seeing what he saw made him a capable man and begged me to leave with him. He pleaded with me and told me he could take care of me; that we didn’t need his dad, but I was too broken and too fearful to realize I didn’t need him. I was too jaded by the things I conjured in my head to truly see how badly things had become, too blind to see my son joined the Marines to escape the life his father and I gave him.”
She brings the towel to her face, dabs at her eyes before draping it over the faucet of the sink.
“Still, he didn’t give up on his mama. He came and visited me once a year on my birthday…”
My heart hitches and tears sting my eyes as that little revelation hits home for me. My mother’s birthday has been the one day every year that Rocco and I always find our way to each other. The one day when we put aside our differences and visit our mom.
“Until one year he came and found me pinned against the wall and his father holding a fork to my face,” she whispers. “It was a nightmare,” she adds. “One that didn’t end with the fork stabbing my skin but a bullet piercing through my husband’s back.”
My eyes widen and the gasp involuntarily escapes my lips.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter, covering my mouth with my hand.
“Me too,” she says sadly. “I’m sorry it took my son shooting his own father to open my eyes.”
“Stryker shot his dad?”
She nods.
“That was the last day I saw my boy,” she cries. “And the last words I told him was to get out of here.”
She shakes her head, glances down and sighs before she lifts her sad eyes back to mine.
The color.
Oh my God, it’s so similar to mine.
“For years my son tried to be my hero, tried to rescue me from a hell I stayed in, but that moment, that one moment changed everything. Watching my son walk out the door, lying to the police and telling them someone broke into the house, flushing my wedding ring down the toilet—it all opened my eyes. I didn’t need someone to rescue me from the abuse, I needed to become my own hero. I needed to save myself from the nightmare I was living.” She shrugs her shoulders. “So, that’s what I became.”
“A hero.”
“My hero,” she corrects.
“What happened to your husband?”
“The bullet paralyzed him from the neck down,” she reveals, crossing her arms under her chest. “I threw his ass in a home and let the miserable fuck rot in hell until he died. Oh, honey don’t look so shocked. A woman can only take so much until she’s taken enough and then the world better watch out. There’s nothing more ferocious than a woman reclaiming her life.”
Smiling, she reaches out and touches my cheek.
“My son has good taste,” she says with a wink. “Green eyes, they’re so very rare and so unique.”
She pats my cheek gently before dropping her hand and turning around.
“Claire?”
“Yes, dear?”
“I think you might be my hero,” I whisper.
She turns around, immediately shakes her head but smiles widely.
“Be your own hero, Gina.”
“I don’t know if I can be,” I admit as my voice crackles and tears slide from the corners of my eyes. “I was attacked…I was…” My words trail off and I can’t bring myself to say that one word, too afraid if I say it out loud it will be the word that defines me for the rest of my life.
“My name is Claire Kincaid,” she whispers, taking my hands in hers and squeezing them. “And I’m a victim of domestic abuse,” she declares, eyes full of tears.
They’re similar to mine.
Not just in color, but also by the story reflected in them.
“And I am a survivor,” she adds. “Go ahead,” she urges, squeezing my hands reassuringly.
“My name is Gina Spinelli,” I cry, my voice trembles as I introduce myself—both versions, the old me and the new me. “And I am a victim of…”
I bow my head as my body shakes with sobs.
“And I am a victim of sexual assault.”
Before I can finish the final word, Claire pulls me into her arms and rocks me against her chest.
“The next part is the most important,” she whispers against my hair.
She continues to hold me as I cry against her chest, and in another lifetime I would’ve been mortified. In another lifetime I’d be chastising myself for completely blowing the whole meet the parents thing, but in this lifetime I embrace the comfort I find in Stryker’s mother and when she turns me around and I stare at the both of us in the mirror, I say the words I’ll come to know as the words that set me free from the nightmare.
“I am a survivor,” I whisper to our reflections in the mirror.
She smiles as tears slide down her cheeks.
“One day you’ll shout it, sweetheart,” she promises. “Until then the world better watch out.”
She doesn’t say the final part of that sentence.
But silently I remind myself of her words and the truth they hold.
There is nothing more ferocious than a woman reclaiming her life.
Claire helps me dry my eyes and by the time we both walk out of the bathroom Stryker is walking through the front door. He lifts his head and his eyes dart between me and his mother. His handsome face contorts with concern and confusion before his mother lifts her hand and smiles.
“It’s okay,” she assures. “I was just telling Gina about the time you threw a dozen eggs all over the house thinking they were balls.”
I sniffle a laugh.
Actually it’s more like a snort.
Then I turn to Claire and wrap my arms around her tightly.
“Thank you,” I whisper into her ear.
“I think the two of you have bonded over my youth enough,” Stryker says, clearing his throat.
“You’re no fun, Chase,” Claire says over my shoulder. “I was just about to tell her how you wrote all over my couches with a pink permanent marker. Or maybe how you put my shoes in the microwave and tried to nuke them.”
“I was two.”
“They were my favorite shoes and the only reason I got through your terrible twos is by promising myself that when you brought home a woman I’d embarrass the shit out of you.”
She releases me and turns to her son, crooking her finger.
“Come here,” she whispers. “I think it’s time you give your mother a hug. I’ve been waiting a real long time.”
Stepping aside, I watch as Stryker’s eyes wander around the room before he turns his attention back to his mother.
To her eyes.
And her open arms.
A mother looking for her son’s forgiveness.
A son looking for signs she’s real.
He closes the distance between them, wraps his arms tightly around her as he lifts her off the ground and hugs her with all his might.
In a single embrace years of regret, sorrow and mistakes fade away.
The ugly disappears.
Leaving just beauty in its wake.
Beautiful.
Just beautiful.
-Forty-
Stryker
Four days.
Four days spent reconnecting with my mother, learning things I never knew. Like, she wrote a book. A real book she published on her own two months ago. It’s a romance story, something I’ll never read but something I’m so proud of her for doing. I never knew it was her dream to writ
e. I never knew my mother had dreams.
But she did.
And she made one of them come true.
She told me I made another come true when I rang the doorbell four days ago.
And another when I told her I loved Gina.
She loved her too.
I would’ve known it even if she hadn’t of said it by the way she looked at her.
Which eased my mind a bit since today was the day I’d be leaving my pretty girl in my mother’s hands, trusting my mother with the fragile parts of Gina—fragile parts she’s collecting and piecing together.
Stepping out into the front yard I find my mother on her knees in a pile of dirt fixing her flowers. She doesn’t do it for the sake of the lie anymore, she does it because she enjoys it. I walk down the three steps and take a seat on the bottom one, watching as she pats the dirt around some freshly planted pink thing.
“Where’s Gina?”
“The shower,” I tell her, dropping my elbows to my knees as I lean forward. “Thank you for being so welcoming toward her. It means a lot to both of us. Her especially, she misses her own mother.”
“She told me,” she says, shaking her head. “Such a shame.”
“Yeah,” I say thoughtfully, wondering if Gina’s mother would’ve been receptive to me. Probably not considering the club and all. But maybe if she knew how much I loved her daughter and would do anything for her, maybe then I would’ve been able to sway her to team Stryker.
“She mentions her brother a lot,” my mother adds. “But she said they’re not very close, or they haven’t been since her mom’s passing.”
“She loves him,” I say instantly. I pause, thinking about pretty boy and the grief he’ll carry for the rest of his life knowing the men who attacked her were truly after him. “He loves her too,” I say finally.
“Then there’s time for them to find their way back to each other.”
“Yeah.”
I guess that means pretty boy will be a fixture in my life.
I can deal with it.
“I couldn’t help but notice your bike in the driveway,” she says, brushing the dirt off her hands and onto the front of her pants. “Do you still ride with that club?”
The Nomad Series-Collectors Edition Page 29
