by Mj Fields
“You need to tell her that he’s going to want the truth when he’s stronger,” Mom says.
“How the hell is it even possible?” Lucas asks.
“I looked it up,” Mom says. “One in four hundred sets of fraternal twins are thought to be bi-paternal. It doesn’t happen often, but there is a chance. Look at him, he looks just like Luke did when he was born.”
“And you trust Google,” Lucas huffs.
“Not one hundred percent no, so then I called a fertility expert. Like it or not, it can happen.” Mom sighs.
“You need to let her get stronger. She’s been through a lot,” Lucas practically growls at her.
“So has he,” Mom snaps.
“Have I said one fucking thing to him, Jade? Have I said anything that would send him running back to the Carolinas or make his depression deepen? Have I?” I hear a chair skid on the hardwood floor. “Let’s go, Tessa.”
“No. No, sit down. This isn’t about either of you. Jade, you remember what went on with Tommy’s parents; how they wanted to take him away from you. How she slapped me. How she tried to keep you in that house, away from all of us. What she did to Lucas!” Tessa nearly yells.
“Of course I do. That crazy bitch. She’s still crazy. But I’m not crazy, and Luke, by the grace of God, is alive and breathing. He’s not thinking straight, but when he does, when he takes the time to figure it out—”
“Maybe he doesn’t want to,” Logan comments.
“Or maybe he just can’t right now,” Ryan interjects. “This is all speculation. No one knows for sure—”
“We’ve seen the pictures, Ryan. He looks just like Luke did when he was a baby,” Mom cries.
“Well, let’s just be honest here; Chance didn’t even look like a baby when he was born. Hell, they both looked like baby birds.” Ryan chuckles, but no one else makes a sound. “Look, I know my son. He may not be my blood, but he is mine, and just like me, when it comes time, he’ll do what’s right by her and that boy, just like I did.”
“How the fuck did I not know? How did we not know?” Lucas hisses.
Christ, here we go, I think.
“Tessa?” Lucas says in an accusatory tone.
“They are adults,” she counters. “They were inseparable as kids. How did we not know? We chose not to.”
“Why are you pointing at me when you’re saying we?” Lucas asks. “Did you know? Aw, fuck, baby, tell me you didn’t know.”
She doesn’t answer.
“Tessa,” Lucas growls.
“Lucas, settle the fuck down,” Mom says, sticking up for Tessa.
“Am I having a fucking flashback here? Why is she always right?” Lucas asks.
“Oh, shut up, Lucas. I just assumed. I never knew for sure.”
“And you, you didn’t think I should know?”
“Well, I thought maybe you were ignoring it,” she answers. “You know you are stubborn and—”
“And you’re a pain in the ass.”
“I knew,” Logan speaks up.
“What!” everyone says at once.
“I knew, but it wasn’t my business,” he states.
“So you’re okay with what your sister is going through?”
“No, Dad, I’m not, but shit happens. I’m pretty damn sure neither of them expected it, so I agree with Ryan. If Luke wants to know if Chance is his, he’ll find out when he’s ready. But Ava...Ava will never be ready. She made the decision to love T and allow him to love her. I am team Ava here one hundred percent. I can’t imagine what she’ll do or how she’ll feel if he tries to take Chance away from her, or Hope. Hell, I don’t know what I’ll do, and I love him like a brother.”
“So, you’re saying you’ll do whatever Ava wants, regardless of what a man you just said is like a brother wants?” Mom asks.
I hear another chair move.
“With all due respect, Jade, you bet your ass I will.”
“Logan, where are you going?” Mom asks.
“I’m going home, to my place in Syracuse. I need to get the hell out of here. You all smother each other. No wonder Ava beat feet to Brooklyn after her last visit. Can’t imagine how she must feel about herself. Hell, even I gave her shit, but I won’t anymore.”
“Logan!” Mom calls after him.
“Jade, this isn’t about us. We need to let those two get through whatever they need to, and then we support them,” Ryan says calmly.
“When did I become the bad guy?” Mom snaps.
“The moment you held him in your arms and knew you would do anything to protect him, just the same as Ava is doing for those two babies.”
Over the past few weeks, my mind has been focused less on the bombing, the death of a friend, and more on the girl who never called and asked how I was. I understood. She has been going through a hell of her own, but it isn’t sitting well with me.
After overhearing the conversation, I decided it is time to man up, to find out what the hell is going on. I can’t do that lying in a bed, waiting for answers to fall from the fucking ceiling, so I made changes.
Today, I am walking with just a cane. I’m still in pain, but I won’t take the medication. It fucks with my head, makes me angry and numb, and that is far worse than the physical pain.
Tomorrow, I am taking a road trip, and like Ava, I’m leaving and no one will know until morning.
***
This is the third day I have sat outside in my truck as the snow falls in big, fluffy flakes onto the ground. Unlike the last two days, though, I am parked closer. Today, I will confront Ava and find out what the truth is.
Casey, the girl Ava trusts with her kids, has a record. She was a whore, a prostitute, and I have no fucking clue why that’s okay with Ava. Hell, maybe she doesn’t know. The woman’s record is buried, but I know how to unearth just about anything. Now Casey hasn’t been around for two days.
The tenants on the other floors are all involved in the entertainment industries, all making more money than God, and that is hard for a man like me to understand. It pisses me off.
I open my duffel bag and pull out the bottle of eight hundred milligrams Ibuprofen. It helps with the swelling and to take some of the physical pain away. Then I wash it down with a bottle of water and some crackers before drinking down a protein shake, forcing myself to eat what I can. Then I wait ten minutes before getting out of my truck, waiting for Torrance Talon, a resident of this building, to enter.
My insides are a mess. I’m not sure I’m ready to do this, but I have to.
I follow him inside and into the elevator. There are three apartments on the second floor, so I make small talk with him, leading him to believe I am visiting Nan Buford, a Broadway extra who is brought home by a different man every night. He doesn’t question my visit. I’m sure he assumes I’m going to fuck her. I allow him to believe that.
Once he’s in his apartment, I head toward the stairway I found online of the blueprints to the building and make my way up the flight of stairs to the emergency exit.
I know Ava. If I simply knock, she won’t answer. Therefore, I use my skills to disarm the alarm before opening the door. It takes all of twenty seconds to get in, and I make a mental note to fix that issue, whether she likes it or not.
It’s quiet and nearly dark inside the apartment. The only light is from a big screen TV, but no sound is on. It’s a video, one of the Burning Souls, paused.
On the still screen is a shot of Thomas Hardy on the drums, looking off stage with a smirk on his face. I see what he’s looking at: a younger Ava Links with a big grin on her face.
My fists clench. Fucker could do that to her when I was fucking her back then. I know damn well I was, yet she never lit up like that for me.
Like a punch in the gut, I realize I never gave her a reason to.
Fuck it. None of that matters right now. I am here for one reason, and it isn’t about a dead man and what he did to a girl who I pretended not to love. It’s about a child, one that may be mine
.
I see the curtains on one of the French doors blowing and wonder why the hell it’s open when it’s only thirty degrees outside.
I move toward the door, taking in my surroundings. The place is not what I pictured Ava living in. It’s nice, very fucking nice, but it’s walls are cold, and there are no family pictures, no girly shit. It’s not Ava.
I get to the door and look out onto a balcony, finding her sitting on the ground, in...sweatpants and a tee-shirt, socks pulled up to her knees outside of the sweats, and her hair looks like it hasn’t been washed in days, up in one of those give-a-shit-less dos. She is sobbing into her hands, and her body is shaking.
I clear my throat to say something, and she looks up and gasps.
Then she stands and barks, “Get out!”
I shake my head. There is no fucking way I’m leaving.
“Now!” she yells then bends down and grabs some sort of walkie-talkie. She looks at it, and then whispers harshly, “Get. Out.”
“You and I need to talk,” I tell her as she begins to walk past me.
“No. No, we don’t,” she sneers.
I grab her hand, and she tries to pull it free.
“Yes, we—”
“I’ll call the cops,” she threatens as her bottom lip begins to quiver. “I will.”
“I highly doubt that. I know you—”
“You have no idea who I am now! No idea.”
“Don’t give a damn, Ava. We’re gonna talk.” Just then, the wind blows in the wrong fucking direction, and I am assaulted by a vile smell. “You stink.”
“Fuck you,” she hisses, pulling her arm away. This time, I let her, but then I grab her around the waist and haul her up over my shoulder.
The Ava I knew had curves. The Ava I just threw over my shoulder is skin and bones. That is not okay with me. It’s also not okay that she isn’t taking care of herself. She is a mess. I have my work cut out for me.
She begins fighting, and my knee buckles, forcing me to grab the counter I am walking past to steady myself.
“You are such an idiot. Put me down!”
“You gonna take a bath so you don’t smell like a camel’s ass?” I ask.
“I’m gonna call the cops.”
“Uh-uh,” I quip and keep on walking.
I have no clue how I end up in a bathroom, but I do, and she begins getting really pissed. Pain means shit.
I count in my head, five, four, three, two, one, and it’s gone. Then I walk into the glass and stone shower, her still over my shoulder, and start the water. It pours down from the ceiling from both ends, up high, and stomach level.
When she begins to sob, she stops fighting, and I am able to adjust the temperature. Then, when it’s damn near perfect, I let her down nice and easy, keeping myself in the doorway.
“I hate you,” she spews.
I shrug as I grab a bottle of body soap and squeeze it over her head.
“I hate you!” she screams as I put my hands in her hair. She tries to pull away, but I grip her hair hard enough that she can’t.
Still, I say nothing. I just scrub my hands in her greasy hair as she cries.
“I hate you so much,” she says, closing her eyes and allowing me to clean her fucking hair.
I have no idea how much time passes, but we are standing there, fully clothed and soaking wet, when I finally feel like her hair is clean enough. I turn her so she’s facing away from me and let the water rinse her hair clean. After that, I pull off my sweatshirt, my tee-shirt, and kick off my shoes before peeling off my jeans and stepping out of the shower.
I wring my clothes out as best I can in the sink, then remember the laundry room next to the door I came in. Therefore, in my Under Armor boxers, water dripping down my face, I walk across the apartment, leaving a trail of wet footsteps, when I feel something smack me in the back of the head. A washcloth.
I turn around and look at Ava, who is wrapped in a men’s red and black flannel robe, stomping toward what I assume is her bedroom. Ignoring her, I continue to the laundry room, throw my clothes in her dryer, and then walk out in my wet underwear and look around, thinking food first.
I’m still standing in front of the open refrigerator, looking at the bare shelves, when she walks out.
“My babies slept through that bullshit you just pulled, and you’re lucky they did.”
“I wasn’t the one throwing a fit—that was you—so I guess you’re the lucky one,” I remark without looking back, half-expecting to get hit with another flying object.
“You broke into our home.”
“Pretty damn sure you wouldn’t have opened the door if I knocked, and it wasn’t all that hard to get in,” I say, turning to face her.
She throws a Syracuse sweatshirt at me. “You need to leave.”
“Not gonna happen.” I turn back around and open her freezer, seeing it full of frozen pizzas. I grab one then walk over and turn on the oven.
“Luke, I—”
“You’re gonna eat something, you’re gonna chill the hell out, and then you and I are gonna chat.”
“I have nothing nice to say to you.”
“Well, if that’s the way you wanna do it, that’s fine. Or we could be two fucking adults, who have been through hell, figuring shit out.”
“I’ve got it all figured out.”
“Let’s be honest here, Ava; you haven’t figured out how to take a shower when you need one. You have two babies feeding off you, and they have to smell you, get their nutrients from you, and apparently a frozen pizza. You haven’t got shit figured out.” Irritated, I slam the oven door shut before turning to look at her. “It ends now.”
Her face is red, and her mouth is in a straight line. She’s ready to either throw something at me or break down. Neither one of us has time for that.
I take the initiative to tell her some of my truths.
“I lost one of my best friends just months ago and up until two months ago, I couldn’t face it. I was surrounded by all those people who care about what the fuck happens to me, and I pushed them all away because they had no clue who the fuck I am or what really happened to me.”
“And you despise them.”
“No, Ava, I was fucking confused. Still am a little bit, but that’s neither here nor there. I’m gonna tell you what the fuck happened to me, and you aren’t gonna say shit to any of them because you love them. Same as when I flipped out on you back at Christmas, and you didn’t say shit, ‘cause you and I are different people.”
She shakes her head. “Don’t trust me, Luke. Nothing is the same as it was then. Not one damn thing.”
“Maybe not, but you and I will figure it out.”
She looks at her phone. “My babies are going to wake up and will need to eat in just—”
“Good. I’d like to meet them.” I walk around the island and pull out a chair. “Sit, Ava, and let me tell you about what it’s like to live in the shadow of a dead man.”
“No.”
“You’ll sit, you’ll listen, you’ll eat, and then you’ll let me meet those babies.”
“You need to look at me real hard, Luke Lane, and tell me if you see the girl—”
“I left to find myself,” I start, blatantly ignoring her. “I left because I have a grandmother who distorted my view of all those people you love so much, that I”—I pause, not the kind of man who just puts his emotions out there for the world to hear—“I love. She made me believe they didn’t give two fucks who I was and only what they lost. I wanted to find me, and I did. Was damn good at it, too. I wasn’t Tommy’s kid. I was Luke. I was a soldier.
“A couple years into being a Ranger, I was approached to become a part of Delta Force. It wasn’t run by the military. I wasn’t following any rules. I was the rules. I was given a mission and, together with men just like me, we went in, took care of shit, and got out. We took down terrorists before they attacked our country, and we did it in small groups, not twenty to a hundred men. Within that organiza
tion, I became me.” I feel my jaw tighten. It takes a minute for me to go on.
“Killshot and the rest of them had wives, kids, family who knew nothing about what we did. Well, not that we were Delta Force, not that we went up against terrorist cells, or lived within them for months at a time, gathering intel. I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to come home in a bag to a wife and a couple of kids. I married my country and—”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because, Ava, what you and I—”
“I don’t want to hear it. I’m sorry you went through what you did, but—”
“I was wrong to fuck you while home on leave and expect you’d—”
“I knew what I was doing!” she snaps. “It’s done and over with.”
“You loved me, Ava. You told me that, and I couldn’t fucking push you away fast enough. In doing that—”
“Just stop.” She looks away from me.
“In doing that,” I continue, “I lost the one person who saw me. The person I couldn’t wait to come home to.”
“Pft.” She rolls her eyes. “Me and Alexis.”
“I didn’t fuck her. Her old man was beating her, and I helped her get out.”
“Well, that’s neither here nor there,” she says, throwing my words back at me. “I should thank you for fucking or not fucking her. Because of that, I—”
“T.” I say his name as nice as I can.
“Yes,” she says, her eyes getting misty.
I want to tell her what I think of the man who hung the fucking moon in her eyes, but I have a mission to complete, and that won’t get me anywhere, not yet, anyway. I can’t say anything, so I need to just shut the fuck up and regroup.
“I was protecting you, Ava.”
“Right, well, whatever it was you were doing, I thank you because, if not for him, I wouldn’t have two babies and a reason to live. Mission accomplished, soldier.” She looks down immediately, knowing damn well I can read her. That, right there, tells me she’s hiding something.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“The letters you wrote me, the prayers—”
“About those prayers...” She gets up, her hand on the waistband of her sweats, holding them up. “I used every one of them I had coming to me on you for all those years, so when he needed one, they were all used up.” She walks to the elevator and pushes the button. “I want you to leave. I want you to leave because you and I aren’t gonna happen. If you drove all this way, thinking now that you can walk, you can fuck me against a wall, you’re dead wrong.”
