Point of Return

by Stacey Lynn

  I shook my head and stared at Travis’s casket. It was closed and braced above a covered hole in the ground. All around it were stands of flowers and wreaths. There were pictures of him in his uniform, smiling proudly.

  My feet moved toward him, pulled to his smile that he had always freely shared with me. I collapsed onto my knees when I reached the front. I didn’t know if Jules was near me or not. I didn’t care. The tears fell from my eyes as I thought about all the times Travis and I had shared over the years; the friendship that we had shared ever since we were kids, when all of us knew nothing about club life and guns and killings, but only knew that kick the can was the best game ever invented.

  I cried. I sobbed for his life, and for our broken friendship.

  Mostly, I sobbed for our baby that neither of us would ever know. I cried tears of pain at everything I had lost, again. I cried because Travis would have been an incredible dad. He would have loved me forever if only I could have felt a fraction for him of what he did for me.

  I cried because the pain in my abdomen over losing my child far outweighed the stitches and lingering pain from the bullets that had pierced me.

  With shaking hands, I dug out the photo I had kept close to me. The edges were already starting to fray and I could see my foot print on the right side from when I stomped on it when Travis had shown it to me before throwing it on the dirty ground. The footprint was just on the edge, but I knew it was there. I remembered how angry he was when he found out, and how I deserved every hateful word he spit at me that day. The fact we’d been able to forgive one another at the end didn’t mean a whole lot to me as I huddled on the ground staring at the picture of our baby.

  Our baby. The baby I would never know. The baby I would never see and never get to hold. I hated that the loss of someone I had never met hurt more than the loss of a person I had known almost my entire life. I hated admitting it, even if it was just to myself.

  What sort of horrible person was I?

  The picture shook in my hands as more tears fell from my cheeks onto the fuzzy shaped bean in the black and white photo.

  I cried out loudly right before I felt two strong, warm hands on my shoulders. In seconds, I was wrapped in Daemon’s arms as he kneeled next to me and held me while I sobbed through my pain and grief. I didn’t know how long he held me with one hand firmly on the back of my neck and his other around my waist. His arms squeezed me tightly against him and my face was plastered into his black shirt.

  He didn’t say anything. He just held me while I cried and mourned the loss of everyone I had loved. And when I was done, when I was finally able to take a breath without crying out in pain, I slowly pulled away and stood up.

  I placed my hand gently on Travis’s closed casket and whispered my good-byes. Then I took the picture I held tightly in my hands and placed it with the flowers that surrounded Travis.

  Daemon didn’t let me go. He held me in his arms while I rubbed my finger over the picture before I finally let it go. He didn’t stop holding me when I said good-bye not only to the baby I would never meet, but also to the man who had always cared for me.

  Finally, I took one last deep breath and nodded my head. Daemon kept me wrapped in his arms and slowly walked me back to his truck where Jules and Ryker were already waiting for us.

  I smiled sadly at all of them, not noticing that their faces and their sad smiles matched mine exactly.

  “You okay?” Daemon asked as he entered the door to his room. I was laying on my side, staring at a small spot on the wall. I went to bed as soon as we got home and cried myself to sleep with Jules’ hand holding mine before she had to leave. When I woke up, Daemon was sitting in the kitchen chair, keeping watch over me just as he’d been doing ever since I got back from the hospital. I was almost surprised he wasn’t in the bed with me like he’d done every other time I’d fallen asleep. I never saw him climb into bed, but every time I woke up crying and tried to hide it from him, he was always there holding me.

  It only made me cry harder, mostly because I felt guilty for enjoying his arms around me so much while I cried over the loss of another man.

  “Fine,” I muttered. From the corner of my eye, I saw him make a face.

  “You’re not fine.”

  I shrugged one shoulder and heard him sigh from across the room.

  “Talk to me, Liv.” I shook my head and closed my eyes. I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell him all the feelings that were warring against each other inside me. I felt the bed shift behind me and then Daemon carefully adjusted me so I was resting against him. His large, rough hand smoothed my hair as he pressed my head against his shoulder. I felt and heard his heart beating in my ear.

  “I didn’t tell you this,” he said slowly with a voice that sounded uncertain, “but I wanted that baby.” My breath hitched and his hand tightened on me like he knew I wanted to pull away. Tears welled in my eyes. I had wanted that baby. “I know it was never going to be mine, but I wanted to see you become a mom. All the rest of the shit would have worked itself out, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that before. I would have been there for you.” His lips pressed into my temple roughly. His hair tickled my skin; and I hated, and loved the warmth that simple kiss gave me. “I wish you would have called me. I would have been there for you. God, I hate that you went through that shit alone, Liv.”

  “Daemon-” He cut me off with another fierce kiss to my temple.

  “Stop it. Don’t fucking apologize to me. I get why you did what you did, but me not being there for you, able to stop all that shit, I just hate it. And I hate that I know you’re blaming yourself for everything, when it’s not your fault any more than it’s mine.”

  “If I wouldn’t have called Travis,” I whispered. More tears fell down to my shoulder. The wet tears burned a trail down my face and under the collar of my shirt.

  Daemon held me tighter and let out a breath that I felt through his shirt. “Travis’s time was up, Liv. I hate to say it; I hate to tell you that. He played us, he played the Black Death, and he played Sporelli. He was dead no matter what you did, babe, it was just a matter of time.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, and winced from the pain in my side as I tried to pull away.

  Daemon shook his head and adjusted my pillows. He sat over me, staring down at me. One hand gently trailed the tears on my cheeks as he wiped them away. “We found out a lot of shit at the meet the other night, and I don’t want you worrying about it. But if it hadn’t been that day, it would have been another. That’s all you need to know okay?”

  I swallowed slowly and closed my eyes. How could I be so conflicted about my feelings about Daemon and Travis?

  “Liv,” Daemon said and I opened my eyes at his deep rumble. My breath caught in my throat as he leaned closer to me. His lips pressed a gentle kiss along my jaw. I shivered underneath him and I know he felt it when his lips lifted into a grin against my skin.

  “I know you’re in pain, I know you’re hurting, but you also know that this… this is where you belong.” He moved his lips along my skin and my hands tightened into fists before I released them. His hand cupped the back of my neck and he tilted my head so I had to stare directly into his heated gaze. I felt the calluses on the pads of his fingertips. Signs of the man he had become as they scratched against my soft skin. “You know it, too. I know you can feel this, Liv. It’s always been there between us.”

  “I can’t,” I choked out.

  “You will.”

  I didn’t deny it. I couldn’t.

  His lips gently brushed against mine. My breath caught in my throat before he moved off the bed.

  “I got shit I need to take care of, but Ryker’s here to check on you.”

  Thinking of Ryker made me think of Faith. I still hadn’t heard from her, and it worried me that she was now avoiding me, or avoiding Ryker.

  “How’s Faith?” I asked and Daemon’s back went straight. “What is it?”

  He looked at me over hi
s shoulder, his words clipped in his voice. “Nothin’ you need to worry about.”

  “Daemon,” I warned.

  He shook his head and went to the door. “I’m handling it, Liv, and you don’t need to worry about it. Just worry about getting better, that’s all you need to do right now.”

  I scowled at the secret I knew he was keeping from me, but he was gone, and the door was shut behind him before I could argue with him.

  “I still can’t believe you kept your daughter a secret from me,” I told Jules, who was sitting on the floor in the living room at Daemon’s house while her two-year-old daughter built a tower with bright colored blocks nearby.

  Sophie was super cute with her mom’s blonde hair and blue eyes that almost seemed too large on her tiny face with her pudgy little cheeks. Even at two, it was easy to see she was the perfect blend between Jules and Scratch.

  I just couldn’t believe that she’d kept her pregnancy and daughter a complete secret.

  It wasn’t going to go well when Jaden found out, but Jules had decided that she’d hid her daughter long enough.

  “I’m sorry,” Jules said for probably the fifteenth time since she told me. My mouth had dropped open when she showed up at the front door today while I was resting on the living room couch. It had been over a week since the shooting and since I was physically starting to feel better, I had begun spending my days depressed and broken on the couch instead of Daemon’s dark bedroom. Jules and Sophie’s visit was helping… some.

  “Stop apologizing.” It was most likely the fifteenth time I’d told her that, too. “I get why you took off; it’s not like you really owed it to anyone to tell them, especially with how pissed Jaden was.”

  “Is,” she corrected quietly. Sadness flashed in her eyes before she blinked it away and stacked a blue block on top of a yellow one.

  “No, Mama!” Sophie immediately knocked off the blue block and replaced it with a matching yellow. “Ye-wo bwock.”

  “Okay, dear,” she told her little daughter, rubbing her hair. “Yellow works, too.”

  I smiled and felt my eyes clear. I knew why she hid Sophie. I also understood why she didn’t tell me when she first got back into town, but I hated the jealous pain that hit my chest when I watched Jules play with her little girl.

  “When are you headed back to Arizona?” I asked quietly.

  Jules licked her lips and leaned her back against the couch. “Not sure. I’ve got the summer off from my teaching job, but I was going to wait and see what happened here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She shrugged and played with a pair of blocks mindlessly in her hands. “It’s hard to be there, a single parent, all alone. My parents told me to leave and never look back, but I miss them. And I thought…” Her voice drifted off and I saw her eyes glaze over. It wasn’t the first time it happened and I wondered if she was missing Scratch or if it was something else. “I thought she’d want to know her whole family.” Her head dropped and she shook it back and forth. “Stupid, probably.”

  “You mean Jaden?”

  “I just thought… she looks so much like Scratch. She acts so much like Scratch, I thought maybe enough time had passed where he’d want to see her.”

  “But?”

  She sniffed and I wondered if she was crying. I couldn’t see her through the wall of her blonde hair while she stared at her lap. “I don’t know,” she said and then stood up, telling Sophie to pick up her blocks. “I should probably get her out of here before the guys get back.”

  “Jules,” I said, grabbing her hand. “He won’t hate her.”

  She nodded but she was frowning and not looking at me, more like over my shoulder at nothing. Then she shook whatever thought she had out of her mind and went back to loading up Sophie’s diaper bag and plastic bag of blocks.

  They were just about ready to go when we heard shouting coming through the front door.

  “Oh, no,” she said, and her face paled immediately.

  Both of our heads watched the group of loud—and pissed off—men come barreling into the room.

  “How could you not fucking tell me that they own her?” Ryker shouted. His eyes were wild and his black hair was a mess.

  “I just did!” Daemon shouted back and threw his hands in the air. “We just found out the other night!”

  “Jesus, Daemon!”

  They hadn’t noticed us, but Jules was frozen and her faced had paled. Daemon shouted something back at Ryker, but all I saw was Sophie raise her little fingers to cover her ears. Her little chin quivered.

  “Mama, it too youd!” She scrambled behind Jules’s legs as the noise of the arguing men came to a complete stop.

  You could have heard a pin drop.

  I think I stopped breathing. I looked at Sophie, cowering behind Jules. Jules was staring wide-eyed at Jaden.

  His face was purple. Was it truly possible for steam to come out of someone’s ears or was it just in cartoons?

  I was pretty sure I heard Daemon breathe out the word ‘shit’ on an exhale.

  No one moved and no one said a word. It felt like an eternity. It was probably only seconds and I don’t think I was the only shocked one in the room when Ryker made the first move.

  “Hey there,” he smiled and crouched down in front of Jules’s legs. One of Sophie’s eyes peeked out from behind them before she quickly disappeared again. I noticed Jules’s hands were shaking at her sides. “Who are you?”

  Ryker’s voice almost made me cry. He sounded so sweet and innocent, bent down on his knees, with a disarming grin.

  “Tophee. I two,” came the muffled reply from behind Jules. I smiled and laughed softly. She was too stinking cute.

  “Sophie,” Jules corrected softly. It came out mumbled and quiet and she was staring at the floor.

  “I’m Ryker. Do you want to play blocks with me?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. Instead, my jaw went completely slack as Ryker sat himself down on the living room floor, legs crossed like he too was a child, and he unzipped the carrying case for the blocks.

  He smiled at Jules who stared at him, still frozen. We all stared at him, frozen. Slowly, Sophie peeked out from behind Jules and she must have felt safer because she was sitting in front of Ryker within seconds, placing blocks on top of his already growing tower.

  My head jerked to Jaden. His chest heaved up and down under his cut. I heard his thumb knuckles crack under his fisted fingers, and I was certain the gnawing sound I heard was his teeth grinding together.

  “You knew about this?” He finally clipped out angrily and stared at Daemon.

  “Found out last time you were here.”

  Jaden’s lip twitched into a growl and his head snapped back to Jules. She still looked pale. From the couch, I sat up and gently grabbed her hand. Her hand was cold, clammy, and still trembling in my soft grip.

  On what sounded like a forced exhale, Jaden blinked. “Bastard kid.”

  “Jaden,” Daemon growled in a low warning.

  “Scratch’s kid.” I looked up at Jules. Finally, there was color returning to her cheeks and she took a step forward. A mama bear protecting her cub came to mind when I saw the fierce way she glared back at Jaden. “Don’t you ever… ever call my daughter that again.”

  “You’re a lying shit,” Jaden spit out at her right before Daemon’s hand smacked him in the chest and pushed him back a step.

  “Don’t,” he bit out, facing Jaden. “Watch what you say, right now. There’s a kid in this house, and you won’t disrespect Jules like that in front of her.”

  “Don’t fuckin’ tell me what to do, Daemon,” he growled right back, and then ran his hands through his short blond hair. Ryker snapped his head back and glared at Jaden in warning.

  “I know you already hated me and this doesn’t help.” Jules stood in between Jaden and his view of Sophie. I didn’t know if she was hiding her, or giving him more time to get used to the idea of her existence. “But she’s Scratch’s little girl
.” Her voice tripped over her words and I heard her sniff back tears. I tried to sit up on the couch and go to her but I saw Daemon pin me with a glare that told me to stay back. “I told him that night…”

  At that, I saw her wipe her eyes as the tears began to fall.

  “You’re fuckin’ kiddin’ me.”

  “Little ears!” Ryker snapped. “Shit, Jaden, watch it.”

  I snorted a laugh at the irony of his admonishment. Ryker flashed me a quick grin before he went back to quietly whispering to Sophie about their block tower.

  “I’m not,” Jules said. “He knew. He knew everything and it’s not what you’ve been thinking. I know you’re pissed and I know you blame me, but when I came back to see Liv I thought maybe now was the time you knew about her.”

  Jaden shook his head silently, but then he stared at Sophie. When it seemed he wasn’t going to freak out again, Jules went to her daughter and hoisted her up on her hip. Then she closed the small distance between her and Jaden.

  “This is your uncle, Sophie, Uncle Jaden. Can you say hello?”

  Sophie smiled at Jaden. It was a grin filled with spaces between her tiny teeth. She lifted a hand and raised two fingers in a peace sign. “Hi. I two.”

  I laughed silently from my space on the couch. That was how she always introduced herself, and it was cuter than anything I could imagine.

  Jaden stared. Then he blinked. He blinked again and stared some more. I think everyone was silent as he stared at the little girl.

  Then, he shook his head once and turned around. The slam of the front door punctuated his exit behind him.

  “Jules,” I said softly. Her back was to me, but I saw her shoulders fall forward and she sniffed again.

  Setting Sophie on her feet with a quick pat to her bottom, she wiped her eyes. When she faced me, and sat down next to me on the couch, she smiled sadly. “It went better than I thought it would.”

  She was full of shit. It hurt her deeply to see Jaden’s anger and disbelief. But what in the hell else was he supposed to do? I couldn’t imagine anyone’s reaction to finding out their dead brother had a kid they hadn’t known about. I wrapped her in my arms as she had done so often for me over the last few days and held her tight.