Reclaim Me (The Jaded Series Book 2)

by Alex Grayson

  It’s been nice to see this different side of Trent. We’ve grown closer, and I cherish every minute of it. Mac and Trent have also grown closer, the bond they once shared back in place and stronger than ever. Trent may still have a lot of feelings to work through regarding his mother, but with the help of Mac, and hopefully me, he’ll get through them fine.

  I’m in the kitchen making a peach cobbler. Mac’s in his office going over paperwork for the station, and Trent’s in the living room playing a video game. I’m pulling the cobbler out of the oven when I hear a door slam from outside. I quickly put the hot pan on a dishtowel on the counter and nervously smooth down the front of my deep purple sundress. I don’t wear dresses often, but felt the need to wear one today. I want to look pretty and proper for Mac’s parents. When I came out of the spare room earlier, Mac just shook his head at me. He knows what I’m doing. He’s tried talking to me about my nerves, but nothing he says helps. Only time will tell if I’m truly accepted by his parents again. And that time is now.

  I grab a bottle of water out of the fridge and take a few mouthfuls to wet my dry mouth, before walking out of the kitchen. The front door is open, and I hear Trent yelling, “Grandma and Grandpa!” Trent tries so hard to act older than his age at times, but underneath it all, he’s still a child.

  I smile at his excitement at the same time Mac walks out of his office wearing a pair of beat up jeans with holes in the knees and a dark grey Nirvana shirt. I meet him at the door, and we both step out onto the porch as we watch Trent hug Maryann and then Sam.

  They break apart and make their way towards us. I glance down at my white flip-flops, not able to look them in the eyes yet. Mac wraps his arm around me and squeezes my shoulder. I feel him kiss the top of my head. “Stop stressing so much, Pix,” he murmurs against my hair. “Everything is going to be okay.”

  I glance up at him and see him smiling at me. It helps a bit.

  Mac releases my shoulders and meets his parents at the top of the steps. He pulls his mom in for a hug. When he takes a step back, she grabs his face and pulls him down so she can kiss his cheeks.

  “Oh, my baby. It’s been too long. I’ve missed you so much.” Her eyes glisten with tears as she looks at her only son.

  “Hey, Mom. How are you?” Mac asks her.

  “Much better now that we’re here.”

  She takes a step away so Sam can shake hands with Mac. Mac grabs his hand, but Sam yanks him forward and gives him a man hug with a thump on the back.

  “It’s good to see you, Son,” Sam says when they pull apart.

  “Yeah, Dad, you too.”

  The whole time Mac and his father greet each other, Maryann has her eyes on me, tears still in their depths. I start fidgeting, shifting from one foot to the other.

  “Hey, Mrs. Weston,” I greet her quietly.

  I’m taken aback when she launches herself at me and puts her arms around me. As with almost everyone, she’s taller than me by a few inches, so I can easily lay my head on her shoulder, and that’s just what I do.

  God! I’ve missed this woman so much.

  She takes a step back from me, but keeps her hands on my arms when she gazes at me. “Don’t you dare start that Mrs. Weston crap with me, young lady. You know it’s Maryann and Sam to you. That hasn’t changed.”

  My body relaxes at her words. Why I ever doubted this woman is beyond me. I should have known all along that she would welcome me back into her arms. That’s just the type of woman she is.

  I smile at her and lean up slightly so I can kiss her soft cheek. “Thank you,” I say in her ear.

  Sam steps up next and pulls me in for a tight hug. “It’s about damn time y’all got back together. Welcome back to the family, Mia,” he says when he pulls back.

  I laugh at him, and the tense feelings I’ve been having since knowing they were coming, melts away. This right here is why I love Mac’s family so much. Although they have every right to have hard feelings for me for damning their son, they don’t.

  Later that evening, I’m out on the porch sitting on the swing. I told Mac I was coming out to get some fresh air, but the truth is, I wanted to give Mac’s parents some alone time with Mac and Trent. It’s been awhile since they’ve seen them, and I’m sure they have a lot to catch up on.

  Earlier, while Trent was outside, Mac informed Maryann and Sam of everything that’s been going on with Tessa and Shady. Maryann, of course, was devastated and couldn’t understand how someone could do that. To say that Sam was pissed was an understatement. They both wanted to know what was being done. Mac explained they were both currently in hiding, but warrants were out for their arrest. Now, it’s just a waiting game. Waiting for them either to show themselves or to make a mistake. I hated waiting.

  I hear the screen door open and glance over to see Maryann walking my way. I smile at her as she takes a seat beside me. We both sit in silence for a few minutes.

  “Mac told me you were worried that we wouldn’t accept you back into our lives,” she says softly into the darkness.

  “Yeah, I had this irrational thought that you and Sam would hate me for not being there for Mac when he needed me. It’s stupid now when I think about it. I should have known you wouldn’t do that. You and Sam are some of the best people I know.”

  She reaches over and grabs my hand in hers. “From the very start we understood, Mia. It must have hurt seeing Mac in that position. There’s no way you could have known that he was drugged and not acting of his own free will. Mac tells me that he knows you still feel guilt. You need to let that go, Mia. Just like he needs to let go of his guilt as well.”

  Is it any wonder why I love this woman so much? Besides my mother, she’s the one woman that I would always run to if I ever needed advice. She always knew what to say to make me feel better. Just as she is doing right now.

  I rest my head on her shoulder and tell her quietly, “I’m sorry I stayed away.”

  She pats my hand with her other one. “And we understood that as well. We knew that it would hurt to see us, and we accepted the fact that you needed to find your own way to cope. Don’t get me wrong, we missed you so much, Mia, but we knew you would come around in your own time.”

  Tears prick my eyes with what she said. I have no idea if what she said is the truth, but I want to think that it is. Until Tessa showed up pregnant, that is. Once that happened, there was no way I could be around them because I knew that Mac, Trent, and Tessa would be around as a family, and that I couldn’t handle.

  “I knew that once Tessa showed up pregnant that we had seen the last of you,” Maryann continues. “It broke my heart, but I knew that being around Trent, and then Tessa, was something no woman would be able to handle. Especially with a love like you and Mac had.”

  “It hurt so much to know that Tessa had not only taken something that was always meant to be mine, but she also took away my dream of having a baby with Mac. Trent was just an innocent baby, and I’m so ashamed to admit that I feared I would look at him and see Mac and Tessa and resent him. I know that makes me a bad person.”

  “That does not make you a bad person,” Maryann says vehemently. “It makes you a real person.” She’s quiet for a minute before she asks, “You know that I got pregnant when I was sixteen and gave the baby up for adoption, right?”

  Yes, I knew. Mac doesn’t talk about his older sibling much, but he has mentioned it a few times. I don’t know many details, but I can tell it’s a painful subject for him.

  At my nod, she continues.

  “What you may not know is why I gave him up for adoption.” I look at her with a puzzled expression. I had assumed it was because she was so young and couldn’t care for a baby on her own. Mac’s grandparents didn’t have Maryann until they were in their mid-forties, so they were getting on in their years. Their health wasn’t the best and wouldn’t be able to handle much when it came to caring for a newborn.

  “This all happened before Sam and I started dating. I was a rebellio
us child, if you can imagine that.” She chuckles, and I laugh with her. “I blamed it on my parents. They were so much older than the other parents were and never wanted to join in on the fun and games the other kids and parents were doing. So, I decided to have fun on my own. When I was sixteen and in tenth grade, there was this bad boy that intrigued me. He was a senior and very popular. He noticed my appreciation of him, and we started dating. Two weeks after we started dating, he started pressuring me into sleeping with him. I wasn’t ready.”

  Oh, shit. Please do not tell me this is going where I think it is.

  “I kept putting him off, but he became more persistent. One night, about a month after we started seeing each other, we were at a friend’s house for a party. We were in the basement where all the other kids were. He said he needed to show me something and pulled me into a room. Leaving out all the gruesome details, it was there that he raped me.”

  “Oh, Maryann, I’m so sorry.” I wrap my arm around her waist in comfort. To think that someone would hurt this beautiful and sweet woman makes me want to hunt down the bastard and cut off his dick.

  Maryann’s quiet for a few minutes, but I hear her sniffling. The pain that I know she must be feeling is unbearable to think about. The night of my attempted rape seems dull in comparison to what happened to Maryann. At least I had the drugs to help dull the pain. She had to withstand being raped sober, and by someone that she thought she could trust.

  “I found out a month later that I was pregnant. By then Joseph was in jail for rape. The thought never crossed my mind to have an abortion. I knew that I couldn’t knowingly kill an innocent child, but I also knew that I couldn’t look that child in the face every day for the rest of my life and not feel the pain I did that night. I closed myself off so I wouldn’t form a bond with the baby. When I finally delivered, I gave him up for adoption.”

  “I understand, Maryann. That would be hard for anyone to endure, especially with you being so young,” I tell her quietly.

  “My point, Mia, dear, is that we all find ourselves in situations that we’re not proud of. I couldn’t stand the thought of looking at my own baby because I would see Joseph in him. I now know that it would have been hard at first, but I would have gotten over it and loved my first son just as much as I loved Mac.”

  “Have you ever thought about looking him up?” I ask, wondering how Mac would feel about it.

  I feel the swing move slightly as Maryann adjusts her position before the swing starts swaying. “Hmm…I thought about it years ago. Sam’s supportive either way. However, I didn’t want to uproot him and everything he knew. I think it’s best to just leave it like it is. The adoption agency I chose is about five hours away in Cincinnati.”

  I understand her reasoning. Even though it must be hard to know you have a child out there somewhere, you wouldn’t want to destroy his sense of security. For all she knows, the child’s adoptive parents could have never told him that he was adopted. Finding out you were adopted, even as an adult, could be damaging to the person and their family.

  We lapse into silence for a while before we both decide to go back inside. We walk in to find Mac, Trent, and Sam sitting on the couch watching a baseball game. I walk over to Mac and peck his cheek, telling him I’m going to get in the shower.

  “Okay, baby,” he says distractedly, obviously watching a big play on the screen.

  A smile tugs at my lips, and I shake my head. Leaving the guys to watch the game and Maryann in the kitchen, I walk to the spare room and gather my clothes. To keep up appearances and to help keep Trent more comfortable, I’m still sleeping in the spare room. However, each night I either go to Mac’s bed, or he comes to mine. We always wake up in our respective beds in the morning though.

  After getting out of the shower and dressing, I grab my dirty clothes to take them back to my room. I’m a little chilly from the shower, so I go through my bag that’s in the closet to find a hoodie.

  Shit. I need to do laundry. I only brought one hoodie with me, and it’s dirty.

  I throw my shit back in my bag and go to Mac’s room to borrow one of his. Walking in his closet, I rifle through his clothes that are hanging up and pull a black hoodie from a hanger. After pulling it on over my head, something on the floor catches my eye. It’s a box with two of the flaps open. I squat down and pull open the other two flaps. My hand goes to my mouth and tears gather in my eyes at what I see.

  Gingerly, with shaky hands, I reach inside and pull out a glass jar with a purple lid. I hold the jar up to my face, but I already know what is written on the front.

  The words, All the reasons why I love Mia, are written in Mac’s manly handwriting. Inside the jar is a bunch of small different color slips of paper. Each piece of paper only holds a few words each.

  When we were in high school, I, being the typical girl, would write Mac love notes. Mac had told me that he wasn’t the type of guy that wrote love notes, something I already knew, but it didn’t stop me from continuing to write them to him. One day when I went to my locker, I was surprised to find a folded up piece of paper. When I opened it, I immediately recognized Mac’s handwriting. On it, it simply read, I love you. From that day forward, I received little slips of paper in my locker once a day, each one with a reason why he loved me.

  I unscrew the lid, and with tears leaking out of my eyes, I pull one little paper out.

  Her eyes.

  I smile at the words and pull out another slip of paper.

  Her laugh.

  Again, I pull another one out, and then another, and another.

  Her honesty.

  Her sense of humor.

  Her hair.

  Her sweet nature.

  Her tender heart.

  Her amazing tits.

  I laugh at that one. His reasons started getting somewhat explicit at the end.

  A throat clearing pulls my attention away from the glass jar and I look over to see Mac leaning against the closet doorway. His muscles are bulging from his t-shirt as he crosses his arms against his chest. He has a small smile playing on his lips as his green eyes watch me intently.

  “I can’t believe you kept these,” I tell him, looking back down at the small amount of papers sitting in my lap.

  “I kept everything that had to do with you and me,” he says softly.

  The last day Mac was in school, I brought all the little slips of paper with me to Mac’s house. He put them in the glass jar and set it on his nightstand. Each day, when I came over after school, I would walk to the jar and there would be a new paper inside. Even though he wasn’t able to slip them through the slats in my locker, he never stopped writing down reasons why he loved me. It was one of the highlights of my day, curious with what he would come up with next.

  “There’s a lot more in here than what there was the last time I saw it.”

  “That’s because I kept slipping papers in there. Once a week for two years I would write another reason.”

  My head jerks up with that, surprised and touched he kept up with the tradition that meant so much to me.

  “But why would you do that? Why, when you knew I wouldn’t see them?”

  He walks to me and squats down. Reaching forward he cups my cheeks, and I look into his eyes when he says, “Because, although we were no longer together, I never stopped loving you. Those reasons never went away, Pix. And I hoped that one day you would see them.”

  I close my eyes and breathe in deep. I wish so much that I had done things differently, that I had given him time to talk, to explain. So much precious time wasted.

  I open my eyes and turn my head to kiss his palm. He leans forward to rest his forehead against my own.

  “I’m so sorry that I never listened to you. I wish so much that I had, that I hadn’t turned my back on you.”

  His breath feathers across my lips when he says, “It doesn’t matter now, Mia. What matters is that you’re here now. That we’re here, together.”

  I pull back from him and
put the precious papers back in the glass jar and screw the lid back on. Curious at what else is inside, I look in the box again and pull out several photos of Mac and me together. There’s also a bundle of letters tied together by a piece of twine. A little black box catches my attention, and I set the bundle of letters aside.

  Looking up at Mac, I see him looking inside at the little black box as well. When his eyes flicker to mine, I see pain and heartache in them. I reach inside and pull the box out. Nervous fingers slowly open it, and I suck in a sharp breathe at what I see resting on bed of black velvet.

  “Oh, Mac,” I breathe.

  It’s a wide silver ring with the word ‘Pixie’ carved in calligraphy. There’s a single diamond embedded in the silver on either side of the word. I pull the ring from the box to get a closer look, and I see there are words on the inside as well. I bring it closer, and my heart jumps in my chest.

  Mac + Mia = Per sempre e sempre is engraved on the inside of the band. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.

  I look up to Mac with tears in my eyes and whisper, “It’s beautiful.”

  “I was going to give it to you that night. It was my promise ring to you. I had planned on asking you to marry me after I left the academy and had a steady job.”

  A sob escapes my throat at the lost opportunity. At the lost dream.

  Mac reaches forward and pulls me between his legs and into his arms. I lay my head against his chest and cry out the pain I feel building inside me. I hate that so much was taken from us. I hate that we never got the chance to have our happily ever after. I hate that I became so bitter and engrossed with my own hurt that I neglected the man that meant the world to me. But, what I hate most of all is that Mac had hurt just as much as me. Mac, one of the sweetest men that I’ve ever known. The man that worshipped me and treated me like I was the most beautiful thing in the world to him.