by Mj Fields
“No, she might be mad at you. T is.” With that, she skips away, leaving me standing there, confused.
I look around and see Tessa standing two feet from me with Chance. She smiles as she looks at me like she’s trying to figure something out.
“What is this?” I ask, walking up to her and doing the little hand thing.
Tessa smiles and shakes her head. “Piper says she has dreams. She says that’s how T wants us to say hello to Hope and Chance.”
“What?” This is unreal, but I want so badly to believe it.
“She says she talks to him.”
“Has she seen a doctor about this? I mean, I understand kids and their imaginations, but—”
“She also told everyone you were going to be okay, T was okay, and the babies would be okay.” She pauses, allowing me to take this in. “That was before we knew, or even suspected, Chance was yours.”
“I don’t understand.”
She sighs. “I had dreams like that, too...a long, long time ago.”
Lucas walks up and puts his arm around her. “She dreamt of an accident, and a baby boy for months before anything...” He stops, and his eyes widen before he clears his throat. “… before your father’s accident.”
“I don’t understand,” I admit, totally confused.
“Neither do we,” Tessa says. “Maddox wishes to ignore it. Harper tries to stop her from being as vocal as she is about it.”
“So, you are saying the two of you are psychic?”
Tessa shakes her head. “Not at all. Not in the TV/movie way. I mean, I don’t know what it is exactly, just dreams. Sometimes they come true, and you wish they could go away. Sometimes, you wonder why you didn’t dream so you could stop something from happening.”
“I dream about talking frogs, too,” Piper says from out of nowhere.
“Oh, yeah?” I half-laugh.
“Yep.” Then she leans in and whispers, “Real frogs don’t talk.”
“They do, too,” I argue, and her eyes widen.
“You’ve talked to a frog?” she asks even quieter.
“Yep, and he said, ribbit, ribbit.” I laugh, and so does she.
“Do you know what that means?” she asks, still laughing.
“It means, brush your teeth.”
“Does not.” She giggles.
“Does, too. If not, they’ll turn green.”
She rolls her eyes, and then I watch as she sneaks into the bathroom. When she comes out, she looks at me, and I look right back at her, elevating my eyebrows. She tries to raise hers.
“Her teeth green from the food coloring in the cookies?” Lucas asks.
I nod. “Made for a good story.”
Two seconds later, I feel a tap on my shoulder and turn around.
“I need my daughter now.”
“Well, good after—”
“Now,” Ava hisses as she unbuckles the contraption and takes Hope.
Hope looks at her, and her lip starts to quiver.
“Oh, sweet girl, I’m here.”
Ava stops when Hope does the same.
“She’s doing good, Ava,” I tell her.
The look she gives me nearly drops me to my knees. I have seen her hurt, pissed, angry, but that look...I never want to see that look again.
She all but runs to the stairs, heading up them.
“Can I have him please?”
I take Chance from Tessa, who just finally got him away from my mother five minutes ago, and then I head up the stairs to find Ava.
The door to Harper’s childhood bedroom is open just a crack, and when I walk in, I find Ava holding Hope tightly to her chest as tears roll down her face.
“I’m sorry, Ava,” I start.
“Don’t. Just go.”
I start to turn when she says, “Can I say hello to my son?”
“You want me to go or stay?”
She doesn’t answer. She grabs a pillow and puts it under Hope to hold her up while she feeds. Then she wipes away her tears and holds her arms out.
Chance grins at her and lunges. Then he reaches down her shirt, and she somehow manages to get his hand out while grabbing another pillow, using her teeth to pull her shirt up. Chance all but grabs her tit and starts going to town.
“I swear they drank the boob juice.”
“You are not a stupid man, Luke. An asshole, yes. Stupid, no. This is about bonding as much as it’s about feeding. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like some privacy.”
I am just about ready to leave when Piper bounds in.
“Lunch time?” she asks, climbing up on the bed.
“Yep,” Ava answers, wiping away tears.
“T said no more sad Ava. Only sunshine and butterfly hi’s.” She does the little hand gesture, and Ava heaves a silent sob. “He said so. He also said Luke’s a fanny, but that he’s okay. I told him Luke’s not a fanny.” She giggles.
Ava blinks away her tears. I feel her pain and want to make it go away.
“He said he loves you, and took a chance for one miracle and he got two.” She holds up two fingers.
“Piper,” I whisper, hoping she will stop.
“Leave her alone,” Ava scolds, not looking away from Piper. “Go on, Piper.”
“He said number”—she scratches her head—“twenty-something—I don’t remember—but something about forever, and his forever is you, and yours is the babies and the fanny.” She giggles again. “Oh, and he says he’s sorry he told a fib, but he didn’t know what else to do to make you see the sun.” Piper takes in a deep breath then smiles, holds the palms of her hands up, and says, “That’s it. No, wait. He said it’ll be okay. Everything is okay.”
“What else?” Ava all but begs.
“He’s really funny. He said bricks hurt bottoms, and...”—she scratches her head again—“Luke’s a fanny.” Then she cracks up.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I’m okay and will be okay. — L. Migliore Clarke
Ava
“Anything else?” I ask.
Piper shakes her head. “I gotta make cookies. You coming?”
“I’ll be a while,” I tell her, trying my best to smile.
When Piper leaves the room, Luke looks up from the ground. “I don’t know what to make of that, or what to say.”
“I don’t want to talk to you, Luke. I don’t want to do anything but feed my kids, and then sneak out of here and take them home.”
“I can help.”
“You’ve helped enough.”
He looks back down. “I don’t want it to be this way, either, Ava, but we were making progress. Then...Jesus, I wish I hadn’t tried to find the guy and make him pay for what he did to you, to Thomas, to the kids. I was trying to take some of your worries away.”
“That’s not what this is about,” I tell him. “It’s not. And I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Ava...” He closes his eyes. “I got a new phone, so I’ll never miss a call again.”
“It’s not that, either, Luke. Do you not listen to me?”
“I’d rather listen to Piper talk about your T than listen to you tell me what I have done—whatever it may be—is unforgivable.”
“I want to feed my babies and hold them, not fight with you.”
“Fine, Ava, fine,” he says and walks away.
As soon as he leaves, Harper comes in.
“Is the room too crowded, or can Reed and I join you for lunch?”
“He’s beautiful, Harper,” I tell her as I start to move over.
“Don’t you dare move. I have one; you...you have...skill.” She laughs, and I can’t help smiling.
“It was out of necessity. I didn’t have a chance to pump last night.”
“How awful was it?” she asks, and I know it’s out of deep concern.
“Well, on a scale of T dying in my arms just a few months ago, to finding out he knew there was a possibility that one of them wasn’t his and never told me, to telling everyone I lied for months
, it was still an eleven.”
“Oh, Ava, I am so sorry.”
“I don’t want pity, Harper,” I tell her, looking at the babies as they drift off.
“It’s not pity. It’s...It’s awful what he did,” she whispers, looking around like she may get caught.
I shake my head. “It’s not okay, but I probably would have done the same if it were the other way around.”
“My God, you and Maddox are the same,” she says. “He said the same thing.”
“The problem is, T knew I couldn’t keep it a secret from Luke, so he made it go away.”
“You would have told him?”
I nod. “Yes. I’m really not that bad of a person.”
“I know you’re not. I know that, Ava.”
“I mean, I see why he did it. Now I see even more. I don’t want to share them with anyone. I don’t, but I have no choice.”
“You do. That man loves you, Ava.”
“He needs to stop saying that.”
She gasps. “He told you he loves you?”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t mean a damn thing. He loves me in a different way than T loved me. He’s Luke, Harper. He’s going to do the right thing. Then, a couple years down the road, he’ll figure out that I was right, and he’ll be miserable. I’ll be miserable.
“Look at my parents. Their love was a lie. I don’t want to end up like that. I don’t want to be someone’s burden, and I damn sure don’t want Hope to be. Right now, as it stands, I’m a little slut, but I am nobody’s burden.”
“You are not a slut.” She laughs. “Besides, I don’t think he sees you as a burden. As a matter of fact, I know he doesn’t. And I am even more sure he doesn’t feel that way about Hope. Heck, he wore her around all day and wouldn’t let anyone hold her.”
“He’s Luke Lane, Harper. He’ll always be Luke Lane. And I will not hold him back from being who he is.”
“But you are, Ava.”
“He can take up another cause,” I huff.
“You’ve always been his”—she pauses— “cause.”
“So I hear. Well, I don’t want to be his cause; I want to be their mom. I want them to be happy and healthy.”
“Ava, they are. They are beautiful, and happy, and healthy. Now, what about you?”
“That’s enough for me. They are enough.”
Logan is sitting on the floor, surrounded by packages in a sea of wrapping paper, ribbons, and bows when I walk down the stairs after putting the kids down for the night.
“Why is Dad avoiding me?”
“He’s not avoiding, Ava. He’s trying to let you figure it out. But that all stops tomorrow at nine thirty in the morning. We’re going to get a tree at Morris’s.”
I laugh, knowing how much Logan hates all the Christmas “nonsense,” and how he is trying his best to pretend he’s enjoying this.
“Laugh it up. He is hell-bent on getting the biggest tree on the farm,” he says as he cuts a piece of paper far too big for the tiny box he’s attempting to wrap.
There is a knock on the door, and then it opens. Luke.
“Logan?”
“In the living room,” Logan calls out, and I start to stand up.
Logan grabs my knee. “Oh, no. You stay put.”
“Could use your help,” Luke grumbles, sounding strained.
Logan stands up and walks to the entry around the corner. “What the hell do you have there?” He laughs.
“It’s a tree,” Luke answers.
“You trying to get higher on Dad’s shit list?” Logan continues to laugh.
“Because I got a tree?”
“He planned to take Ava and the kids to the farm to cut one down in the morning,” Logan explains from over his shoulder as they carry in a gigantic box.
“That can happen a couple years down the road. They don’t need a real tree yet. Could be allergic.”
“Allergic to trees?”
“You never know,” he says, and then he sees me. “Ava.” He nods.
“Luke,” I return as I stand up. “I’ll leave you two to it.”
“Oh, no, you’re helping. I’m going out,” Logan says as he walks quickly to the door.
“Logan...” I warn.
“Don’t wait up,” he says, and then he’s out the door.
I just stand there, looking at Luke, and he at me.
He clears his throat and pulls a knife out of his pocket. “I can do it. You do whatever it is you were doing.”
I don’t listen to him. Instead, I pull the top apart as he slices down the middle.
“You upset the tree’s not real?” he asks as he kneels down to cut the rest of the box open.
“No,” I answer as I look at the fake tree.
“I got colored lights, even though I know you usually do white. Thought it would give them more to look at,” he explains as he pulls out the instructions.
I nod as I pull my cardigan closed around me.
He looks at the instructions for a minute then shrugs before he reaches in and grabs the bottom of the tree. “You wanna grab the base?”
“Sure,” I say, grabbing the green base from the Styrofoam it’s packed in.
“Put it where you want it,” he tells me, and I place the base next to the front window, where our tree has gone up every year since I can remember.
When I look up, he’s watching me, not saying a thing, and he’s not moving. Then he shakes his head.
“Ava, stop looking at me like I’m going to hurt you. My actions may be harsh, but they are necessary.”
“Why, Luke?”
“Let me ask you a question before answering yours. If you had to choose who hurt you worse, would it be the man in jail, the man in the sky, or the man standing in front or you?”
I start to tell him it’s him, but he holds up his hand.
“Think harder, Ava. Honestly, you don’t need to answer. I know it’s not me.”
He brings the tree over and puts the bottom in the base. “You wanna hold this still while I screw it in?”
“Sure,” I say, thinking about his question.
The man in the sky, he’s talking about Thomas. Thomas did everything out of want for happiness, his and mine. Did the things I learned hurt me? Without a doubt. However, I understand his reasoning. I’m not saying it’s okay, it’s not, but I know the man he was, and he was trying to protect...all of us.
Luke, the man before me, was hurting me worse, pushing me to face a future without Thomas, where I am up against an enemy I once loved. Still...love? But he, too, is doing what is best for my children, and I suppose...me.
The man behind bars took Thomas away. He took Thomas away from me, from Hope, from Chance, from the millions who loved him. He stole Thomas’s happily ever after. Accident or not, he stole that, and he stole Hope’s daddy, and I hate him. I will hate him forever.
I watch Luke kneel down and wince.
“Why don’t you hold the tree, and I’ll screw it in,” I offer.
“I got it,” he says, already tightening the base. Then he stands up and looks at me. “Now, the next piece.” After putting the three pieces on top of each other, he stands back and nods. “It’s good, right?”
“Yes, it’s beautiful,” I admit.
“Mom and Lauren are making bows. You want some?”
“Sure.”
We look at each other, him looking at my eyes then my mouth and back again.
“They’re like a light in the darkness.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your blue eyes. Every time shit got deep, or I got banged up, or the pain was too damn much to take, I closed my eyes and counted...”
“Five, four, three, two, one,” I finish.
“The pain was gone, and there you were—eyes being the light in the darkness, lips being home. First thing I ever wanted to do when I came home was kiss you. Never felt like I was home until I did.”
I stay unmoving as he keeps looking between them.
“Every d
amn time I saw your pictures on Instagram or Facebook, and especially the ones when you were with him or someone else, I would tell myself it was what we decided, what we wanted, that it didn’t matter because we were just fucking. We, Ava Links and Luke Lane, could never be together because of where we came from. It was tainted.” He shrugs and takes a deep breath. “Yet, every damn time I was going to come home and say, ‘no fucking more,’ I couldn’t do it. Being the selfish prick I am, I wanted inside as deep as I could get. I wanted to just feel you. You feel so fucking good, Ava.”
I close my eyes, unable to take the intensity of his stare.
“And now you close them to me. Hurts almost as bad as the day I pushed you away, because all of my fears came true. I hit you. I hit you because you touched me during the wrong fucking dream.”
“It was an accident.”
“Imagine if you had hit one of them and bruised them, Ava, someone you love with everything you are; would you be okay with it being an accident?”
I’m afraid to answer him, afraid that there will be no stopping what happens next if I do.
“You wouldn’t,” he continues. “You beat yourself up over what two selfish fucking assholes did to put you in this place you are now, and it’s not your fault. Imagine if it was a choice you made. You decided to become a warrior so that you could feel like a man and not a shadow of a man. And you chose that over the person who never treated you like a shadow, who knew who you were and loved you, anyway. Unforgivable, so I pushed you away. I pushed you to him.”
He takes a very slow step toward me like he doesn’t want to spook me, but he already has. “I loved you before that, Ava. And now, I can love you, and me, and them. I love you even more now. I can’t walk away. I won’t walk away. So yes, I have to be harsh, because you are worth the war.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
I deserve this. — R. Parrish
Luke
Christmas Eve
I want to kiss her. I want to kiss her, get lost inside of her, and take her to that lost place where nothing means a damn thing except her and I feeling each other. I want to take her to that lost place and take my fucking time because I can now.
