Lessons Learned (The Gifted Realm Book 2)

by Jillian Neal

  “He knows we were all drinking. Maybe it won’t be as bad as you think.” They shared an endless glance that was the unspoken confirmation that Logan was lying. Rainer nodded his acceptance of the lie.

  He began his death march slowly towards Governor Haydenshire’s office. Thoughts of Emily’s body spread out on a bar for all the Realm to see, of his tongue dancing in her mouth, and of him, Rainer Lawson, sucking liquor off of her in a crowded bar, had him turning abruptly and falling into the men’s room.

  He moved to the sink, and held onto the cold marble counter for support. He couldn’t look in the mirror; his disgust with himself was too strong.

  He turned on the faucet and splashed cold water on his face as he thought about what Governor Haydenshire must be thinking, and of what he was going to say. The fact that he’d most certainly disappointed the only man who had ever really stepped in and been there for him had him feeling violently ill.

  He grabbed several paper towels from the dispenser on the wall and mopped his face. His heart still beat erratically.

  You did it, so now you can face the music. He forced himself to put one foot in front of the other and make his way to the Governors’ wing of the Senate.

  Governor Carrington was standing in the hallway as Rainer edged open the door between the Iodex offices and the Governors’ wing.

  He gave Rainer a sorrowful gaze, and placed his hand on his shoulder to brace him. “Rainer,” he shook his head in consolation.

  Rainer couldn’t speak. He just offered the Crown Governor a terrified, desperate expression.

  “Sometimes, when we’re just twenty-one years old, and we have the weight of the world on our shoulders, it seems we’re just young enough to know we can, and barely old enough to know we shouldn’t.”

  “And the worst part of being in that horrible position is that we’re just stupid enough to do it anyway. Don’t let this define you, son. That guy in the papers this morning, that isn’t you. I know that, and you know that, so now you just have to work a little harder to show the Realm that, okay?” His low, soothing intonation made Rainer momentarily feel like his world might not be ending.

  “I’m so sorry,” he managed to choke out. He was unable to take his eyes off of Governor Haydenshire’s closed office door.

  Governor Carrington patted Rainer’s back consolingly. “I know you are, Rainer. And, for what it’s worth, as furious as he is, he knows you are, too.”

  He gestured his head to Governor Haydenshire’s door. “Go on, son,” Governor Carrington edged Rainer forward. “Won’t get any easier standing out here talking to me. I’m sure you know this, but your dad used to say, ‘You can’t solve a problem standing on the sidelines wishing it away. You have to put yourself in the game’.”

  Rainer nodded. He felt his stomach flip and twist in sharp jarring knots. “You’re gonna have to play hard, Rainer. Earn back his trust and his respect. Unfortunately, it won’t be easy, but it’s also not impossible.”

  With a single nod, Rainer swallowed down the terror that rose quickly into his throat as he took the last few steps towards the door.

  Baby Girl

  His heart stuttered again as he forced himself to knock on the door.

  “Come in!” Governor Haydenshire bellowed furiously. Rainer couldn’t recall a time he’d ever sounded angrier.

  His hands were drenched in sweat, and he had to wipe them on his pants before he could get the knob to turn.

  He opened the door painfully slowly, and took a half step into the large, opulent office.

  Jack Stariff was standing at Governor Haydenshire’s desk. He shot Rainer a baleful glare. “Guess you’re gonna make me earn my paycheck,” he shook his head and exited the office quickly.

  Rainer tried to choke out an apology, but found his throat so dry he was unable to make audible sound.

  The Governor stood behind his desk, but said nothing for several long hellish moments. Rainer would’ve preferred he’d screamed at him or cussed him out, though he knew Governor Haydenshire would never do that, not that he didn’t deserve it.

  The furious, reflective, disappointed grief that etched the Governor’s entire being cut Rainer to the quick.

  “Sit down, Rainer,” Governor Haydenshire demanded in a pained whisper.

  “Sir, I am so, so sorry,” he choked, but there were no words that could erase the damage those pictures had done.

  He stared at the ground and willed his brain to come up with something, anything that would make the Governor respect him again. He came up short every time the picture of him taking a bow with a cherry in his mouth settled in the mass of whirling desperation in his head.

  “You’ve put me in a very difficult place, Rainer,” the Governor informed him. His voice was low and injured. He began to pace behind his desk.

  “You see, Rainer, I’ve always thought of you as one of my own, as my very own son. I celebrated your accomplishments with you, and I hurt when you hurt over the loss of your parents, over the hell the press has put you through over the years, even when you and Emily were at odds, I hurt for both of you.”

  “I tried to help you work through the difficult life you’ve been handed. But now I not only get to live the shock and disappointment of one of my sons behaving in such a manner, but I also get to live the fury that comes with the knowledge that it was my little girl you laid out over a bar for all the world to see. She is my daughter, Rainer. Do you understand that?” His low furious tone finally broke into shouting.

  Rainer let his eyes close in utter terror.

  “Oh, I don’t think so. You did this, Rainer. You can open your eyes and face it, because the entire Realm is holding photographic evidence of it even as we speak.”

  “I understand that you’re twenty-one years old, with more money than you know what to do with, and that you think you’ve got this world all figured out, but let me be the first to tell you that you don’t.”

  “I have never been more disappointed and disgusted with you than I am at this moment.” The pain ingrained in the Governor’s quiet voice was a thousand times worse than Vindico screaming at him.

  “Governor Haydenshire, I’m so…” Rainer begged, but the look the Governor shot him made him stop speaking.

  “What would possess you to do something like that? Don’t you think that Emily deserves a little more respect than to be displayed on a bar while you lick something off of her stomach and then run your hands up her skirt?”

  Rainer felt faint as fever flooded through him followed immediately by his blood running ice cold. His brain offered him nothing but drivel like ‘Emily asked me to do it’, or ‘It was all Garrett’s idea’.

  He knew that telling Governor Haydenshire that his little girl had asked him to do that would not help the situation at all. He would never sell Emily out like that, but he thought he should at least try to explain why he’d done it.

  He swallowed down the rock-like enclosure in his throat and willed his heart to stop hammering quite so loudly. “I don’t know, sir. Garrett had all of the Angels doing it and,” he trailed off. He sounded reckless, irresponsible, and stupid blaming Garrett when he’d known perfectly well it was a lurid and tasteless thing to do.

  Shame washed over him with threatening force. He let his head fall back in his hands. The pain on Governor Haydenshire’s face threatened to overwhelm him.

  “She is my baby girl,” he growled low and furious. “I held her mother’s hand when she gave birth to her. I changed her diapers and held her in my lap. I rocked her to sleep before you ever even thought about it.”

  Governor Haydenshire glared hatefully as he continued. “I protected her from all of her big brothers. I was there when she dared you to kiss her at seven years old, and I thought right then, as I saw the look in both of your eyes, that it was done for. You were sold, soulmates from childhood, and I was thankful. If my baby was going to fall for anyone, I wanted it to be you. Right now, I’m thinking I was a fool.”

&nb
sp; “I was there when you left. I held her while she sobbed when you’d hurt her more trying to protect her than anyone has ever hurt her in her life.”

  “And I paid for the plane ticket for her to go and get you back, because I knew she wanted that more than anything else in the world.”

  “I knew what you were planning when you took her off to my beach house, to take away her innocence and her childhood. I let her go because I knew you loved her, and that she loved you more than anything else.”

  “I was sick, but I let her go because I thought you would take care of her.” He edged closer to Rainer and narrowed his eyes. “And I agreed to let you put your ring on her finger, and that I’d give her away to someone I thought would always care for her, but this,” he held up the picture of Rainer with his hands up Emily’s skirt. “This isn’t what I had in mind.”

  Rainer met the Governor’s devastated glare to see tears fill his eyes. He had never hated himself more than he had in that endless moment of terror.

  “Quite frankly, Rainer, you need to remember that it’s my home you’re living in, and that you’ve lived in since you were fourteen years old. And that it’s my daughter you’re crawling into bed with every night, despite the fact that you aren’t married. I happen to think that my wife and I deserve a little more respect and a lot more consideration than what you’ve shown.”

  Rainer nodded his agreement.

  “Lillian doesn’t know about this,” Governor Haydenshire concluded morosely. “She was sick this morning, and you and I both know she’s not coming down with something.”

  Rainer tried to process that information, but couldn’t make sense of it at the moment. “I do not want her upset right now so, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d prefer to not discuss this in front of her.”

  “Sir, I’m just so sorry,” Rainer tried again, but Governor Haydenshire shook his head defiantly.

  “I don’t want to see you right now, Rainer. And I don’t want to hear how sorry you are.”

  With that, he moved to the door in his office and opened it. He gestured for Rainer to make a quick exit.

  Never As Good

  It was several minutes before Rainer understood that he was physically shaking. He could do nothing more than put one foot in front of the other and relive the hell he’d put Governor Haydenshire through.

  All of the times growing up when Rainer had done something wrong and been summarily punished, either by his own father or by Governor Haydenshire, was nothing compared to the horrific disappointment that resonated in every word the Governor stated as he’d let Rainer know exactly what he’d thought about their activities Saturday night.

  Rainer trudged to his desk. His heart beat frantically. His blood ran hot and then cold at varied times. He fell into his desk chair, and everyone stared at him. Logan stood and moved to him.

  “Lawson, Haydenshire, now,” Vindico demanded from his office.

  Not certain how much more he could physically withstand, he travelled wearily back into his boss’s office.

  “I’ve decided that they could use a few more rock-slingers out at Coriolis, so why don’t you two volunteer your services until lunch. Then, I suppose you can eat, since the law says I have to allow you lunch, but after that, come back here, and we’re going to have team sparring practice until I decide you can go home.”

  Rainer and Logan nodded, and made their way back out of the office, having never uttered a word.

  “Here,” Vindico threw Logan the keys to one of the Expeditions as they exited.

  Coriolis prison was covered with topsoil and rock. It kept the uranium at bay, so that Gifted officers and family members could visit Coriolis without feeling the full effects of the prison until they were actually under the ground.

  Rock-slingers shoveled rock on a daily basis, to make certain the uranium stayed where it was needed to keep the prisoners from being able to summon.

  Typically, a Gifted person became a rock-slinger if they were unable to obtain employment anywhere else, as it was excruciating work.

  It wasn’t as horrible as actually going into the prison, but the uranium exposure would leave a Gifted person weakened slightly, and often sick.

  To keep the effects from being too devastating, shifts were only a few hours long, but to shovel rock over Coriolis and then come back and spar with Vindico would be hell.

  “Come on,” Logan guided Rainer out to the cars. Rainer had no desire to drive. He had no desire to do anything at all, except figure out a way to earn back Governor Haydenshire’s respect.

  “What did Dad say?” Logan cranked the car and gave him a sorrowful expression. He refused to answer.

  “As bad as you getting caught coming out of her bedroom?”

  “Way worse.”

  “Maybe I can help. If you just tell me, then I’ll entertain you with all of the ways that I’ve ruined Adeline’s life. Then we can discuss how clearly she was actually better off without me.”

  “Uh,” Rainer drew a steadying breath. His voice sounded distant and frightened, “well, he said he’d never been more disappointed or disgusted with me. And that it was his little girl I had leaned over a bar for all the Realm to see. He said that he thought I would take care of her, which I obviously didn’t.” Rainer decided that he deserved to hear it all again.

  “Rainer, man that’s just…” Logan searched for a word.

  “The truth,” Rainer supplied.

  “Did you tell him Em asked you to?” Logan seemed to feel a great injustice had been done. Rainer looked at him like he’d lost his mind.

  A full minute later, Logan nodded his understanding that Governor Haydenshire knowing that Emily had asked Rainer to do that would have been the nails in the coffin.

  “Your dad thinks your mom’s pregnant again,” he recalled that part of the lecture as it came back to him suddenly.

  The car swerved as Logan gasped, “What?!”

  Rainer found it odd that he couldn’t seem to locate an emotion to associate with the next Haydenshire child. He could only feel his own deep regret and remorse.

  “He told you that?”

  “Yeah, in an ‘I don’t want Lillian to be upset right now so don’t tell her about you being a moron’ kind of way.”

  “Ah geez! Don’t they ever get tired of being looked down on all the time because of all of us?”

  Although Rainer knew the statement was exaggerated, it was clearly something that concerned Logan. He turned the car past the entrance gates to Arlington National Cemetery and a deep, desperate desire suddenly overwhelmed Rainer.

  “Logan, please stop here. Just for a minute, please!”

  Logan nodded. Without question he pulled into one of the parallel spots beside of the cemetery.

  “Do you want me to come with you?”

  Rainer knew that whatever he wanted that’s what Logan would do. Even if they never went to Coriolis and were fired for it, he would be there for Rainer.

  Certain that he’d never deserve a friend like Logan Haydenshire, he still wanted to be alone. He tried to give Logan a reassuring smile but wasn’t able. “I’ll just be a minute.”

  “Take as long as you need, man.” With that, Rainer threw open the door and took off in a heated sprint towards the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

  He rushed over the hallowed ground. He ran faster until he was no longer certain his feet were hitting the ground as he moved behind the largest of the monuments and headed west.

  He hated that he knew how to find the spot so readily. He halted and walked, as a funeral was taking place and respect was clearly something he needed to work on.

  He felt his throat close and tears threaten to burn his eyes. He nodded his head as he passed Cal Haydenshire’s cross grave marker.

  Keeping his head bowed, he moved to the monument at the end of one of the endless rows and fell to the ground. He summoned and watched as his father’s name, birth, and death dates appear in the marble.

  His parents had been buried
in Arlington, because of the sheer number of Non-Gifted lives they’d saved in their quest to make certain that the Gifted didn’t abuse the Non-Gifted with their powers.

  Rainer moved slightly and turned his cupped hand outward. He watched his mother’s name appear. He sat there staring at the letters and numbers, lost for several minutes.

  He wasn’t certain why he’d needed to come so badly, not certain what to say, or how this was going to fix anything at all. He just sat staring at the marble headstone, the granite representation of all he’d lost and all he’d given up, of what had made him who he was, the devastation that had defined him.

  He knew his father would’ve been just as disappointed and horrified at what he’d done to Emily as Governor Haydenshire was. He felt sick.

  “I’m sorry,” he blinked back tears, “I just don’t know how I screwed up so badly. I just…” Rainer wiped away the hot tears that flowed down his face.

  “I’ll never be as good as you!” he shouted the thought that had haunted him since he’d watched his father’s casket be lowered into the ground so many years ago. He pled to the pitiless granite and the merciless air around him.

  “I don’t think that’s true, man.”

  Rainer spun around. He gasped as his heart flew. Logan had followed him. “And I don’t think he expected you to be perfect, Rainer.” He sank to the ground beside Rainer. “I mean, at least Em’s not going to end up in jail because of a belly shot.”

  Logan turned back to the monument and bowed his head. “S’up, Governor Lawson?”

  Rainer felt a smile form on his face.

  “He’s a good guy, sir. Try not to be too hard on him. He was only doing what Emily asked him to, and you were married, you know women will always get you into trouble,” he vowed to the ether.

  Rainer found it very odd to be sitting in front of his parents’ graves, with all that had happened, laughing. After another few minutes, Logan stood and offered Rainer his hand.

  “Come on. Let’s try and clean up the mess we’ve made.”

  Rainer accepted Logan’s help up.