Chasing Serenity

by Ashley, Kristen

  However, we were only spared glances upon our dramatic arrival.

  All attention was centered on someone else.

  My eyes moved through my loved ones, and it didn’t make me feel better that each and every one looked pissed.

  And then I found Judge.

  He looked much like he did yesterday in his mother’s home.

  Enraged.

  I started to rush to him but didn’t get all the way there.

  An arm around my belly stopped me.

  I looked up to see who’d detained me, my mouth opening to protest, but Dad gave me a firm head shake.

  But he said nothing.

  “This is fucking unbelievable,” Judge bit out.

  I turned back to him and saw he was staring down at a laptop on the table in the living room.

  Sully was seated there, by the laptop, and his face was carved in granite.

  He’d found something on the Internet.

  Shades of Samantha Wheeler laying out Mom, Bowie, Dad and Uncle Corey on a gossip show blanketed my sunny day in dark.

  “It’s what he does, ignore it,” Jamie, standing close, advised.

  “I don’t think you get it, Dad,” Judge retorted.

  “I do. I’ve been dealing with his shit for decades, Judge,” Jamie shot back.

  “Okay, but did you ever have to do that when you were falling in love with a woman whose famous parents have taken pains to publicly sort their shit that’s no one’s business and they don’t need to be dragged into Granddad’s utter, complete bullshit?” Judge returned. “The press turns an eye to us, they turn an eye to them and that can’t happen.”

  The room had gone still with the “falling in love with a woman” comment so no one said anything when Judge paused to take a breath.

  “So I’m going out to the goddamn Gulch and shutting his mouth myself,” he went on to threaten.

  “Judge, darling, we live our lives like this. It doesn’t affect us,” Mom said earnestly. “Please, do not think of us and listen to your dad.”

  Judge glanced at her then returned his attention to his father. “It’s you he’s dragging through the mud. It’s just me that’s getting splattered with it.”

  Oh God, I needed to see whatever was on that laptop.

  “So much truth and lies have been reported about me, buddy, I can barely tell it apart anymore,” Jamie replied. “I don’t pay attention to it. It doesn’t matter. It’s out there now. It gets them clicks. And tomorrow, they’ll be attempting to suck the blood from someone else.”

  “I don’t give a fuck about the reporters!” Judge suddenly shouted.

  Dad pulled me closer.

  The room went wired.

  “He is doing this to us. To her. They’re gonna look into her. And they’ve gone to that house…” he carried on.

  The house?

  Oh God.

  “And they’re gonna know the kind of life she lived and they’re gonna tell everyone about it, and he’s spinning it to blame you for her being a fucking junkie.”

  “Judge, buddy—” Jamie started softly.

  “I don’t need the whole goddamn world talking shit about my mom. I grew up with that. I put it behind me. I do not need that shit again. And I won’t have Chloe wading through it,” Judge declared.

  And with that, he turned on his boot and marched toward the door.

  I started to pull from Dad, but he gently set me aside before he took long, ground-eating strides in order to step in front of the door.

  Bowie came in on the other side, and they stood shoulder to shoulder, barring Judge’s way.

  Jamie followed him, Rix closed in at Jamie’s side, and Matt, Gage and Sully positioned to flank.

  “Respect. Get out of the way,” Judge growled to the men barring the door.

  “Look at me, Judge,” Dad ordered.

  Judge turned his gaze to Dad.

  “Listen to me, yes? Can you cut through your anger, that is justified, but I need you to get through it for just five minutes and really listen to me?” Dad asked.

  “Tom—” Judge started.

  “Can you do that, Judge?”

  Judge jerked up his chin.

  “Good,” Dad said quietly. And then, “If what you said a minute ago is true, there are two people in this room that matter. Listen to me, Judge,” he said quickly when Judge’s head started to turn, probably to find me since clearly he’d missed my entrance, regardless of how dramatic it was.

  Judge refocused on him.

  “Chloe. And you,” Dad went on. “Now, you can go see that man and confront him and piss off someone who is notoriously unpredictable, nasty and vengeful, or you can do the only thing that will beat him at his game. You can act like his shit is the baseless nonsense that it actually is. The only one who doesn’t know AJ Oakley is a joke is AJ Oakley. If you give time and attention to his bullshit, you negate that. You give him power. Don’t give him power over you. And absolutely do not give him power over the woman you love.”

  Judge took a moment with that, I saw a muscle in his jaw bulge, and then he asked, “What about the memory of my mom? Do I give him power over that?”

  That was when Bowie spoke. “I’m sorry, man, but your mom is gone. There is nothing that can have power over her now. It’s hateful she’s gone, and we all hurt for you, but that’s the bottom-line truth.”

  Judge stared at Bowie after this honesty came from his mouth, and then I tensed, Dad tensed, Bowie tensed.

  And Jamie had a view to his back, but he felt it and moved in as Judge turned and asked his father, “Why couldn’t she love us?”

  “Let’s go,” Dad whispered, and everyone moved.

  Everyone but Jamie, Judge, Rix, Dru and me.

  It was my turn to position at Judge’s back.

  And I didn’t mess around getting there.

  “Come here, buddy,” Jamie encouraged.

  Judge didn’t take the last step to his dad.

  He dropped his head.

  The door closed on Gage.

  I put my hand on my man’s back but otherwise didn’t move.

  It hurt to stay away from him, but he had to get this out.

  He had to process it.

  He had to face it.

  So he could truly let it go.

  “I…” Judge stopped, that word so clogged, he had to clear his throat, and I felt pain in mine. He lifted his head and focused again on his dad. “I lied at the funeral home. She didn’t want us together. She didn’t love you. She didn’t love me. She—”

  Jamie cut him off. “Judge, she loved you.”

  “She didn’t love me. Love is not that.”

  “No,” Jamie said softly, coming closer, but not too close. “Love is not that. But when she found out she was pregnant with you—”

  At these words, Judge stepped back and almost ran over me.

  I scooted out of the way.

  He didn’t even glance at me.

  “You’ve told me this story so many times, Dad, it isn’t fucking funny,” he stated bitterly. “She might have been excited she was pregnant. She might have been thrilled to have a healthy baby boy. I’m sure she nurtured me and took care of me when I was little. And then…that stopped. And it didn’t stop because New York made her feel small. It didn’t stop because you fucked up by taking her from Texas. It didn’t stop because she did what countless other people have done, except for her it would have terrible consequences, she snorted her first line of coke. It stopped because she was just not a good person.”

  Oh God.

  My eyes darted to Rix, and I saw he was still mid-flinch.

  He felt my gaze and looked at me, the uneasy in his eyes warming, but he said nothing and didn’t move.

  I didn’t either.

  “Addiction is not that simple to characterize,” Jamie said carefully.

  “You know,” Judge said matter-of-factly, “when you told me she was dead, I blanked out. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move.” He tossed a
hand my way. “It freaked Chloe out. And I thought about that. I thought, ‘I not only don’t give a shit my mother’s dead, I’m not surprised she is. I’m just surprised it took this long.’ So I had to think on that, Dad. I had to think about why I blanked when I don’t give…that first…fuck that she’s gone.”

  No one said anything.

  So Judge kept going.

  “I figured it out. And you know why that is, Dad?”

  “No, Judge, why is that, buddy?” Jamie asked.

  “Because that was it.”

  Oh God.

  Oh God.

  Oh God.

  I closed in him after the way his voice broke on the last word.

  “Do you know what it’s like to live for twenty-nine years hoping your mother will give a shit about you?”

  At these rough words grating up his throat, I was done.

  I moved into his back, put my cheek to it, pressed my body to it, and wrapped my arms around his middle.

  It was like I wasn’t there.

  “Do you know what it’s like to lie in bed with your woman pressed to you, your dog, both of them, even my fucking dog, Dad, showing me more love in the time I’ve had them than she has my entire life?”

  I closed my eyes tight and held on tighter.

  “You can’t possibly know what it’s like to have that moment where everything stops because any last hope you had that your mother would someday give that first shit about you is gone,” he declared.

  Then, he wrapped his fingers around my forearms so strong, it hinted at pain.

  “Look at this,” Judge demanded. “She can’t even stand listening to this fucking garbage without doing everything she can to show me love. How hard is it, Dad? Just a movement and I’m surrounded with it.”

  I swallowed.

  Judge kept speaking.

  “You’d call and she’d shout at you for an hour and wouldn’t let me talk to you and it was like she got off on the fact she could hang up on you and you’d call again and again and again, and she’d scream at me not to answer. And I’d sit there and listen to you calling and that’s what I thought love was, the sound of a phone ringing, because in that house that’s the only love I felt.”

  I heard Jamie make a low, pained, ugly noise that hurt me almost more than what Judge was saying.

  But I just held on.

  “She was so fucking beautiful, and I’d look at her and I’d swear to myself never, never to be with a beautiful, weak, empty shell of woman. And that’s what it was. It wasn’t addiction. It was that she was empty.”

  He was right.

  His mother was empty.

  My mother had known him mere months, and she flew our entire family to Dallas, the boys leaving school, planning things that would take Judge’s mind off his loss.

  And his mother had given him nothing.

  But this pain.

  Judge kept going.

  “You told me she was something in high school. But she lived her glory days then, being pretty and dating the local rich man’s tall, handsome, ambitious son and that was all there was to her. And she knew it. She never reached for more, worked for more, hoped for more, dreamed about more, wanted more. And because she knew it, because she knew there was nothing to her, she couldn’t hack it. She had to bury it, live in an alternate reality where she couldn’t think or feel. Or make up devils she had to fight who did her wrong. She knew you were destined for greatness, and she couldn’t just know this about herself, and simply stand at your side, love you, support you, make a family with you and take care of that family, all of which is something beautiful. Something real. But in the end, it’s something. Instead, she hated you for being what she fell in love with in the first place. And she hated you because you reminded her that her peak was senior year and then her life was over.”

  He took a huge breath and finished it.

  “And I didn’t factor at all.”

  It took Jamie a second, but he finally said, “I wish I could argue, say you’re wrong, but my greatest fear has always been that you’re right. Everything you just said is right.”

  “You know what her greatest fear was, Dad?”

  “What was it, Judge?”

  “That I’d spend time with you, and I’d know it too. The same with Granddad. They worked in tandem to keep me from you because they knew, if I spent time with you, I’d know exactly what those two wastes of flesh were. And my reason for being would be getting to you. She tried to turn me against you. She’d lie about you. And Granddad is not dumb. He saw early what I was like, and what I liked. He’d come and get me and take me out on a horse and tell me it all was going to be mine, and how I should thank my lucky stars I wasn’t growing up choked by concrete and steel.”

  Jamie made no reply, but the room was seething with emotion, heavy and dark, and Judge sharing that didn’t alleviate any of it.

  “So Tom is right. And Duncan is right,” Judge continued. “He’s a piece of shit, a joke, playing games, striking out when he has to know on some level we are both dealing with some serious fucked-up shit. Talking trash, when anyone who’d listen to him isn’t worth knowing, and everyone else gets that he’s an old man desperate to stay relevant.”

  He paused, and I was behind him, but I could still hear the ragged breath he pulled in.

  And then he finished.

  “As for Mom, she’s dead, and she didn’t care about much when she was alive, including me, so why should I give a fuck anyone knows that?”

  When he was done, no one said anything, and no one moved.

  It was Dru who broke the tense, heartbreaking silence.

  “I don’t know if it’s the right thing to say, if it’ll help. But you should know that my mom thought the world of you, Judge. She loved you. She loved you loads.”

  I turned my head and pressed my forehead in Judge’s back as I felt the tremor go through his body at hearing those words.

  “It means everything, doll,” he said hoarsely.

  And then I was sharing a Hug Judge Moment as I felt Dru’s hands clasping my waist because she was hugging him from the front.

  Yes, it was official.

  I loved that girl.

  “See, Dad? A movement and I’m surrounded by love,” Judge groaned.

  And that was when I was forced to shift around his body, gently press Dru away and go down to the floor with my man as he folded.

  He ended on his ass, cross legged. I ended in his lap with his face pressed into the side of my neck, holding him around his head and shoulders and rocking him as his anger and sadness wet my skin.

  “It’s fucked up to cry for her,” he grumbled against my flesh.

  “No, it isn’t, honey. It’s perfectly natural,” I cooed.

  “She didn’t earn this.”

  “What’s coming out right now is not for what you lost, but what you never had.”

  “Fuck,” he grunted, and I took this to mean he was overwhelmed by my wisdom.

  Therefore, it was a moral imperative to remind him, “As you know, I’m always right.”

  This time, Judge did a laugh-cry, pulling away from my neck and looking at me.

  He then blinked.

  “Jesus, what happened to your face?” he asked.

  Oh no!

  Did one of my eyelashes come askew, holding on to him?

  I lifted a hand to check, but before I could assess, he asked, “How the fuck do you find new ways to be even more gorgeous?”

  God, I so very, very, very much loved this man.

  I dropped my hand to his shoulder and whispered, “Magic.”

  “Then I love a witch,” he whispered back.

  Yes.

  Yes.

  He loved me.

  “And I love a miracle,” I returned.

  “Babe—”

  I knew my magnificent, humble boyfriend was going to refute that.

  So I didn’t let him even start.

  “You became you. In your circumstances, that’s a
lmost impossible. But you did. You’re my miracle, Judge. And I’m so glad you are, because you hold my heart in your hands, and there’s no man on this planet who has what I need to take care of it, except you.”

  His beautiful brown eyes framed by their now spiky-with-wet lashes heated and then we were kissing.

  “Right, brother, that was all super awesome, but a surprise porn ending is not the way to go when your sister is in the room,” Rix called.

  And Judge and I broke the kiss with neither of us laugh-crying.

  We were both just laughing.

  Keeping hold on me so I went with him, Judge took his feet.

  We were barely up when Jamie requested quietly, “Just very quickly, Chloe.”

  I took in the expression on his face and stepped aside.

  Father and son hugged.

  It wasn’t very quickly.

  It lasted a long, long time.

  And at the start of it, I heard Jamie say low to his son.

  “That phone ringing was love, Judge.”

  And then I saw my man’s shoulders heave.

  Within seconds, Rix’s arm landed along my shoulders, and he used it to tuck me to his side. I tore my gaze away long enough to see he had his other one slung around Dru.

  And three people who loved Judge Morgan Oakley watched as the original one held him close to his heart.

  Magic.

  And miracles.

  Chapter 29

  The Gossip

  Elsa Cohen

  The Elsa Exchange

  Celebrity News and Interviews

  YouTube Channel

  Thursday…

  “To end my show, all my wonderful watchers, we must spend some time chatting about all that’s happening in Texas. Woefully, we have to start with what a truly impossible endeavor it is to wrap my head around the sad fact that the woman who was once the talk of New York, in good ways, then very bad, died too soon from a reported lethal cocktail of drugs and booze.”

  Photo on screen of a young, vibrant, stunning Belinda Oakley wearing a vintage Halston swathe-front, sleeveless, satin gown walking on the arm of the young, dark, dashing Jameson Oakley. He’s in profile, looking to the side, smiling a dazzling white smile that crinkles the corners of his extraordinary blue eyes. She’s face front, ice-blue eyes and carved cheekbones aimed to the camera, looking cool and chic and butter-would-not-melt.