Reft

by Libby Austin

  “From what I’ve been told and what I’ve seen, you’ve made good use of the second chance you’ve been given, but, as I’ve learned over the last several months, only you can decide if you are worthy.”

  “That will probably be harder.”

  “I know.” And I did know. Even now, I struggled with that battle daily.

  Silence settled between us. I wasn’t sure how to say what I needed to. My words were meant for Layna, but I had to earn her brother’s trust or she would never hear them.

  “For what it’s worth, I love my sister, but I don’t agree with what she did. She shouldn’t be made to suffer for my sins. Layna has a big heart, and she’s always wanted to help people. But there is a part of me that hates you for how you hurt her.”

  “I don’t blame you. There’s a part of me that hates me for how I treated her, too. I’d like the chance to tell her myself, in my own words. I think she and I both deserve the chance to talk to each other with everything out in the open.”

  “If you hurt her again, I will kick your ass.”

  “You’ll have to get in line.”

  I WALKED UP THE STEPS and knocked on the screen door frame. The weathered wooden door was open, allowing the breeze from the bay to flow through.

  “Coming,” she called from somewhere in the house. “You’re early, Harry. I wasn’t expecting you for another half hour.” She made it to the door, hopping to get her shoe on as she walked, and looked up. “You aren’t Harry,” she said when she saw me.

  “No, I’m not Harry,” I said. Then we just stood there and stared at each other. She was more beautiful than the last time I’d seen her. There was a radiance about her that I’d missed. I held up the jar I’d brought with me. “Pickle delivery.”

  “I’m not wearing steel toe boots at the moment, so I’m not sure I should accept any deliveries.”

  “I promise to be very careful. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “You already hurt me,” she whispered.

  “I know. And I want to apologize, but I’d really like to do it without a door between us and a jar of pickles in my hands.”

  For a second, I thought she was going to say no, but she stepped forward to flip the latch on the door. As I stepped inside, she backed away from me and pulled the sweater-thing she wore tighter around herself, as if she needed another layer of protection from me. This time I didn’t sit on a couch. Layna chose the kitchen table. I set the pickles down before taking a seat catty-corner from her.

  “How have you been?” I asked. It was a stupidly basic question, but I really wanted to know.

  “There have been some good days, some bad days, some okay days.”

  “Layna … God, there’s so much I want to say. I want to make sure I get it right. I’ve thought about what I would say when I saw you. Beg for forgiveness. Apologize for you getting caught in my parents’ misguided attempts to get me help. Ask if you still care about me at all. Beg you to give me another chance. And I can’t get any of it to come out the way I want.”

  “Your parents have already apologized for their part. I can’t blame them. They wanted to save their child. I can empathize with that.

  “I just didn’t anticipate you. I thought I could keep myself separate, but I failed at that. And then I made everything so much worse because I couldn’t stop myself from loving you. What a cosmic mess! Shakespeare couldn’t have written this shit.” She wiped a tear from her eye, then reached for a tissue to blow her nose. “And now I can’t quit fucking crying and my nose is running.”

  “You never told me you loved me,” I said quietly.

  She laughed bitterly. “Because I didn’t want to tell you when you had no idea just how entwined our lives were. I was there to help you accept the truth while I was living one great big lie.”

  “Do you still love me?”

  “Brandon.” I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like what she said next. “I will always love you, but you have to see how a relationship between the two of us would never work. Our families’ histories are way too twisted and fucked up.”

  “What I see are two families who chose to walk the path laid before them with grace, dignity, and forgiveness. It’s up to us to decide what works for us. Who cares about the rest? You love me, and I love you so much that I’d wait the rest of my life for you to accept that we can make it, if you’ll tell me that there’s hope for us.”

  “And how do you see this working?”

  “I see the two of us getting to know each other without a bunch of baggage. Then we spend the next week in bed, not leaving until we’re about to pass out from hunger. At the end of the week, I convince you to come home with me. A month or so down the road, I beg you to take pity on me and make me yours for the rest of our lives. Afterward, we’ll spend the next five or ten years seeing the world and practicing our baby-making skills, and then we’ll settle down to raise a passel of youngins.”

  “Exactly how many ‘youngins’ are in a passel?”

  “Six or seven or however many you want. I’m open.”

  She sneezed as I was answering and her eyes got really round. She stood up abruptly and said, “I’ll be right back.” Then she took off down the hall.

  I didn’t understand what the hell happened. I thought we were making progress and that she was at least was entertaining the idea of a future together.

  “Damn it, Virginia Patsy Cline. You destroyed an entire roll of toilet paper.”

  What the hell was Patsy doing here? I got up to follow Layna down the hall. I found them in the bathroom off the master bedroom, which wasn’t much bigger than the other bedrooms in the bay house.

  “What’s Patsy doing here?” I asked from the doorway as I watch Layna picking up scraps of toilet paper as she cursed Patsy’s entire lineage.

  “Joker and Ruff needed someone to keep her while they went on their trip to the Bahamas. Danelle refused because Patsy ate a couch cushion the last time they kept her, and Ruff said she doesn’t do well in a kennel. So I volunteered since they were nice enough to let me stay here and I need the practice.”

  I’d have to address my bandmates’ complicity in hiding Layna’s whereabouts at a later date. Although I couldn’t really say they hid anything, because I hadn’t thought to ask them since they weren’t exactly friends with Layna. It was the second part of what she said that caught my attention. “Why’d you need the practice? Are you getting a dog?” I asked, looking around the room.

  “Not exactly,” she said softly.

  My eyes landed on the framed picture sitting about a foot away from me on the nightstand. “Layna, what’s that?”

  She knew what I was looking at. “It’s a sonogram.”

  “Why does it have your name on it?” I knew. I was pretty dense when it came to a lot of stuff, but even I could put this together. Still, I needed to hear her say the words.

  “Because it’s mine.”

  In the movies, the guy always gets dizzy and passes out. Okay, there’d been a few chick flicks with my mom in the past several months. But, I swear the fucking world flipped.

  “Brandon,” Layna said as I tried to grab the doorframe to keep from landing on my ass. Next thing I knew, I was sitting on the floor with my back against the bed. Layna was sitting beside me, holding my face, and Patsy was barking.

  “Why didn’t they just take the damn dog with them to the Bahamas?” I asked for—who the fuck knows why I asked, except my brains were scrambled.

  Layna laughed, and my heart leapt. “I think the word divorce was mentioned.”

  “Are we really having a baby?”

  “I’m really having a baby. You don’t have to be a part of her life.”

  “She’s a girl?”

  “I don’t know for sure yet. She wouldn’t turn when I had my last ultrasound.”

  “I want to be a part of her life.” I looked into Layna’s eyes. “I want the two of you to be my life.”

  “Okay.”

  “Can I touch her?
” I asked, holding my hand above what I could now see was Layna’s slightly curved stomach.

  “Yes.”

  My hand curved around Layna’s stomach, and I realized I was holding both of my girls in my hand. I bent forward and spoke to my little girl. “Hi, baby girl, I’m your daddy. I haven’t been so good to you and your momma so far, but I promise to be better, so be patient with me.” I sat back up and looked into Layna’s tear-filled eyes. “I know I’ve fucked this up so badly, but, Layna, I promise to spend the rest of my life making it up to you if you will give me the chance. I love you so much.”

  “I love you, too, Brandon.”

  I stood and bent down to pick her up off the floor, then I gently laid her down on the bed before I lay beside her. I felt as if I could breathe again when my lips met hers. Soon one kiss led to another and Layna began to tug at my shirt. I pulled back and asked, “Will we hurt her?”

  “Brandon,” Layna said breathlessly.

  “Yeah.” I drug my eyes from her barely rounded abdomen to her face.

  “Shut up and kiss me.”

  AS LAYNA SLEPT, I SAT in the chair next to her bed, holding our new daughter, who’d made her eventful appearance with an unplanned C-section. After the scare of both their heart rates dropping, things changed quickly and we were moved from a delivery suite to an operating room. Less than fifteen minutes later, our baby girl yelled out her first loud screech.

  There had been a flood of loved ones to meet the newest addition to our families. They had meshed just as we’d thought. It seemed the only one that hadn’t been a part of them all these years was me. When the nurse tried to tell us that Brett couldn’t visit with his new service dog Gemini, let’s just say a large donation changed the tune of the hospital administration. It was probably a good thing the nurse didn’t realize that Ruff snuck Patsy into our room in a diaper bag. But even I could admit Patsy was family. Damn dog.

  I’d forgiven Ruff and Joker for their part in concealing Layna’s whereabouts, even though they hadn’t really hidden anything. They’d merely withheld what they knew regarding Layna because I’d never asked, as they reminded me when I’d said something about it. I couldn’t argue with their logic. When Layna left my condo, Ruff and Joker had been waiting in the hallway outside my door. The two of them had driven her back from Touch’s place and stuck around to help if I needed it since they were fairly certain I wasn’t okay.

  Bow and Danelle had stayed at Touch’s house to try and minimize the fallout there. The confrontation between Touch and Kaitlyn had been ugly. I knew the choices Touch had made were in my best interest. He thought he was helping me. He’d just never suspected that Kaitlyn would betray his trust the way she had by using the information he confided in her about me to write an exposé to sell to the highest bidder. It was going to take him a long time to get past Kaitlyn’s betrayal.

  Once Layna called my mom and was assured my parents were on their way, she began to shove her clothes into a couple of suitcases. Ruff asked if she was going home. Layna confessed she wasn’t sure where she was going, probably a hotel. She didn’t want to go home to her parents’ house, and she’d let her apartment go because she couldn’t afford the rent anymore. Out of character, Joker spoke up and offered to let her stay in the bay house he’d inherited from his grandparents. In the end, I was thankful my friends had stepped up to help Layna.

  As a band, we were still trying to balance life at home with a life on the road. No matter what, we were a family and we’d find a way to make it work. In less than a year, I’d gone from feeling alone and lost to having a family larger than I could have ever thought possible.

  Brett and I still had an unbreakable bond. Sometimes I wonder if part of me knew he wasn’t really gone and that was why I felt him with me all those years. The way the two of us were connected was hard to explain to those who’d never experienced it. We were still two halves of a whole. I knew the likelihood that Brett would face medical difficulties in the future was very high, but I chose not to worry about the ‘what ifs’ in life, and instead I focused on the many ways I’d been blessed, the greatest of which I held in my arms.

  Now, as I held our baby girl, I tried to think of something to say to convey all the things I was feeling. I’d had months to think of what my first words to our daughter would be, and once again, now that the moment was here, I was at a loss. So I spoke from my heart.

  “Pendant toutes ces années, j’ai demande pourquoi je n’etais pas le seul qui a ete pris” All these years I’ve wondered why I wasn’t the one who was taken. “Mon coeur et mon ame ont etaient Peinée pour trouver la reponse.” My heart and soul have ached to find the answer. “Depuis de nombreuses annees, j’avais abandonne tout espoir et essaye de mon mieux de simplement exister et pas gachis quoi que ce soit d’autre” For many years I’d given up hope and tried my best to just exist and not mess anything else up. “Haut maintenant que je suis ici avec vous dans mes bras, J’ai enfin trouve mon raison ma jolie mélodie” Now that I sit here with you in my arms, I’ve finally found my reason, my pretty melody.

  “That’s a pretty name,” Layna said in a groggy voice.

  “What’s a pretty name?”

  “Majolie Melody.”

  “Babe, it’s not a name, it means my pretty melody in French.”

  “I didn’t know you spoke French. Why haven’t you ever talked to me in French?”

  “Do you speak French?”

  “Well, no, but neither does the baby.”

  “The baby doesn’t speak English, either, so it doesn’t matter what language I talk to her in. Besides I have talked to you in French, ma bichette.”

  “What does ma bichette mean? It sounds like you’re calling me a bitch”

  “My doe.”

  “My doe? Like a unique way to say my dear, as in beloved?” she asked.

  “No, as in the female animal.”

  “Really? You pet named me after Bambi’s mother?”

  “Well, I’m not sure what Bambi’s mother’s name was, but I call you my doe because the first time I saw your eyes, they reminded me of doe eyes.”

  “Oh. So what do you think of the name?”

  “Which name? Ma bichette? I like it, obviously.”

  “Majolie Melody Carmichael.”

  “I like it, with one change. Her name should be Majolie Melody Reft. I’ve always been Reft, even when I wouldn’t admit it. It’s time I change that and do the name proud. What would you think about adding Reft to your last name?”

  “It’s a lot of paperwork to change my last name professionally. How about if I keep Reft as our family name?”

  “The Reft family. I like the sound of that.” I smiled at Layna, and then I looked down into the beautiful face of my Majolie Melody Reft, and as I stared into her beautiful eyes, I felt all of the cracks in my wounded heart heal, and it once again beat not only to exist but to live.

  The End

  THE PLACE TO BEGIN IS always the beginning, and the beginning, for me, is my family. Thank you for putting up with leftovers, laptops, and me constantly saying, “Let me finish this one last thing.” There is nothing without you, and I love you through infinity & beyond …

  Thank you to the following people, be they real or imaginary:

  Liz with Book Peddler’s Editing, just for being you because you’re a fucking awesome bitch!

  Murphy Rae with Indie Solutions, thank you for all of your input and advice. Thank you for sharing your expertise and understanding. You’re a great asset to my team.

  Aimie Grey, critique partner extraordinaire, you drive me nuckin’ futs! But I say that with love in my heart … well, what little heart I have.

  Thank you to the beta readers, Janet F., Janet M., Pam B., and Corinne B., for reading a work in progress. It’s a job that should come with a hazard warning. Reft wouldn’t be the story it is without you.

  Christine Borgford with Perfectly Publishable Editing, Formatting, and Design for being the best damn formatter (
ever!) and all of the other extra stuff she does that takes up way too much of her time and effort, which she gives generously without expectation of anything in return. There aren’t enough words to say how thankful I am for everything you’ve put into Reft.

  Heather Davenport with Book Plug Promotions for organizing anything and everything I ask for without telling me I’m crazy.

  Sarah Eirew, photographer and designer for the beautiful cover for Reft. He’s gorgeous!!!!!

  Thank you to the bloggers and ARC recipients for your honest thoughts and feedback. Thank you most of all for taking the time to read and promote my book.

  Most importantly to the readers, thank you for taking a chance and opening a book, and then sticking it out until the end. I hope the journey was worth it.

  through infinity & beyond …

  Libby

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  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for taking the time to pick up this book. There are a few things I would like you to know before you begin reading:

  First, if you are looking for a book where the heroine meets the hero, who happens to be the college football star, on the first day of college, this is not that book;

  Second, if you are looking for hot, raunchy sex (WOHOO! Good for you.), this is not that book;

  Third, if you have a problem with gay people or drag queens, this is not the book for you.

  Fourth, if cussing or vulgar language offends you, this is not the book for you. There’s no need to message me about how many times this happens. I’ve already counted for you; it’s much easier in a Word document. Fuck appears thirty-five times. Shit appears fourteen times. Damn appears thirty-one times. Bitch appears twelve times.

  Fifth, I’m not a medical professional. I’ve done my best to make the situations realistic, but they may not go by a medical textbook. If you want to read such, I hear Gray’s Anatomy—the textbook, not the TV show—is good for that.