Letters to Lily (Letters to... #1)

by Christine M. Butler

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ~Kade~

  Oct. 31 - My mom showed up just as I was about to leave the house and head for the hospital, because that's how my life with Sasha had been rolling for months. Every time I got close to getting back to her someone popped up to get in the way. “Kade, I just got back from meeting with Mick.”

  “Not now, mom!” I almost yelled, but managed to pull back on my frustration a bit.

  “Kade, you need to listen. He heard from the man he hired today, and I have an address for Sasha.” Her smile stopped me in my tracks and kept me from losing my temper with her.

  “I all ready know where she lives and where she is right now, because it's not at her house. I was just on my way to go see her when you stopped me.”

  “I want to go with you,” my mom said, putting her hand up to stop me from brushing past her.

  “No offense mom, but I don't want you there when I finally get to see Sasha again for the first time in months. This whole situation is bad enough as it is. I really don't think we need an audience to this particular reunion just yet.” I almost felt bad when my mom couldn't disguise the hurt she was feeling.

  “I just wanted to be able to tell her it was all my fault so she wouldn't blame you.” Her sniffles kicked me in the gut right along with her words.

  “Ah hell,” I pulled her into a hug and kissed the top of her head. “Mom, you don't have to do that. I'm a big boy. My decisions and screws are just that, mine.”

  “I know, but I want to see her too. She's carrying my grandbaby, Kade.” I love my mom, but just once I wanted her step back and stop being selfish. Sure, it was her grandbaby, but it was my baby, and the love of my damn life that was sitting in a hospital right now after getting hurt. I hadn't even told my mom that yet. If I did she'd never let me leave without her.

  “Fine, but you will wait until I speak to her first. I will bring you in after I get to talk to her alone for a minute. There's no negotiating that.” She nodded her head and moved past me to the passenger side of my Jeep.

  We were just walking up to the hospital entrance when a familiar voice called out to me. “Dude! I haven't seen you in forever.” He noticed my mom walking up behind me and called out to her too. “Helen, hey, it's good to see you too.” Just as Jason came close enough to us that he was in my reach I pulled back my arm and then decked him with everything I had in me.

  “What the fuck bro?” He shouted from where he'd fallen back on his ass.

  “I'm not your fucking bro! What the hell did you do, Jason?” I shouted at him.

  “Is that little cunt telling stories to get out of the fact that she cheated?”

  I punched him in the face again. “Call her another name and see what happens. What. Did. You. Do?”

  “I don't know what you mean,” Jason played dumb while holding onto his furiously bleeding nose.

  “You convinced her I left because of her? You convinced me that she cheated and didn't want me anymore. Ringing any bells yet?”

  “Look, if you two were meant to stick, it wouldn't have been so easy as all that.” Yeah, he got punched again.

  “She's pregnant!” I screamed in his face as he cowered before me.

  “Heh! I guess she cheated after all or didn't wait long to get under the next guy, huh?”

  “She's pregnant with my kid, asshole!” The shock registering on his now battered features tells me he at least didn't know that when he was mucking around with our lives. “She's been doing it all alone and I've missed out on all that stuff with her pregnancy because of you. What the fuck was so damn important that you fucked that up?”

  “I didn't want to lose you as a roommate. You were the only family I had left, and I knew she was not going to allow you to live with me and her at the same time.”

  I had no words. I couldn't even comprehend losing so much because he didn't want me to stop being his roommate. “FUCK!!!” I screamed right before my fists started flying again. “You stupid fucking fucker!” Another swing landed. “You still didn't get what you wanted,” another punch. “I missed it all for this bullshit!” I was seeing red and flying hot in a blind rage.

  “Kaden Miller, you need to stop right now,” my mom's shrill voice filtered through the rage a bit, and hands were pulling at me then. I was being moved away from Jason's slumped form when I finally recognized another voice that had been trying to get through.

  “Damn dude. I didn't think you actually meant…” his voice trailed off as he looked around and registered the security men who were currently advancing on us, along with an actual police officer. Damn. I was about to be arrested.

  “You have to tell her. Explain what happened. I will get to her as soon as I can, I promise. FUCK! I can't believe I fucked this up, yet again.”

  “Don't worry,” Brad said as the police officer was cuffing my hands behind my back. “Your mom can follow behind and bail your dumb ass out, and I will tell Sasha what happened. I'm assuming she wasn't even expecting you to show up here since I didn't give you her number?”

  I shook my head no then, and my mom had to go and piss me off once more. “I want to see her before…”

  “Mom, I swear to fuck, if you even think of talking to that girl before I get to I will never speak to you again!” Her eyes widened as I was being maneuvered away from the hospital and towards an awaiting police cruiser. “I mean it, don't test me!”

  “He blames me, rightfully so, but I don't think he'll ever truly forgive me.” My mom was saying to Brad who had wrapped an arm around her then. Just before we pulled off I noticed hospital personnel were loading Jason onto a gurney and wheeling him inside. I supposed I was about to be handed some medical bills to deal with too. I couldn't bring myself to regret beating the shit out of Jason, with the exception that I was currently being hauled off to jail instead of going to see my girl.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  ~Sasha~

  Oct. 31 - Brad made his way into my room about 45 minutes after he had helped me set off my alarms with my rapid heart rate from our phone call. “Hey, Sasha,” he called out to me as he came through the door. Weird, because he hadn't called me by my actual name since I found out I was pregnant.

  “You look exhausted. Maybe they can roll another bed in here and you can take a nap until the cute redheaded nurse comes in to poke and prod at you!” I winked at him eliciting a small chuckle.

  “Sasha, I need to tell you some things.” He started, and immediately I was on alert. I didn't respond though, instead I just tipped my head towards the end of my bed indicating he could have a seat. Brad sat in the spot I indicated and took one of my hands in his. “I talked to my brother, Kade, after our call got disconnected.” The smile faded from my face. “I can't believe that all this time I never knew it was him. I never knew the girl he… well, I never knew it was you either.” He was shaking his head in disbelief now. “I wish I had known. I could have made it better for both of you so much sooner, and hell, spared myself while I was at it.” That admission coming from him really sucked. “He was here a minute ago,” I looked up toward the door of my room waiting to see him magically appear in my room. I was split down the middle about whether I wanted that to happen here and now or not. “He's not here now, but that wasn't exactly by choice.”

  Now, I was getting a little angry, because if Brad had kept him from coming to see me I was going to go ballistic. “Please, explain why.”

  “I will get there, and I don't think it's what you're thinking right now so give me just a minute to catch you up on what I learned today, okay?”

  I nodded and waited for him to continue. “I had no clue, as I just said. Neither of you ever said the other's name. Hell, all he ever said was that his ex had been his best friend right up until she cheated on him.” I gasped, my jaw dropping, and tears forming in my eyes, but he carried on. “He said she changed her number and moved without anything more than a message sent through his old roommate.”

  “Cheated on him?
What? I never!” I couldn't even form a whole sentence.

  “Jason, his old roommate, showed him pictures of you. He had all ready deleted them by the time he was telling me about it, but from what he described, I would say it was the day you found out you were pregnant. You started to fall when we were on the apartment landing, and I tucked you into my lap and held you. Remember? Then I carried you into the apartment. Well, Jason had been lingering around the complex for some reason that day and snapped a couple pictures. They weren't exactly high quality, but you'd been wearing a special shirt or something, so it was easy to recognize you.”

  “He'd had it made for me a few months before,” I confirmed. “Well, because of the pictures, and then your number being out of order. He believed Jason.”

  Tears were streaming in hot little rivers down my cheeks now. “Oh God! All this time, he thought… and I thought… but he left before that though,” I finally managed to eek out.

  Brad told me what he knew of how things went down with Kade going to rescue his mom from his dad swindling her, and how everything spiraled out of control from there. He told me about Jason sabotaging his phone before he left and how he had to get a new one, but the number transfer didn't go through, and he actually still had a Vegas number, because of that. Everything was starting to fall into place then, and it only made the heartbreaking situation I thought I was in that much worse, because none of it ever had to happen.

  “Why was he here, but didn't come up?” I finally asked.

  A smirk appeared on Brad's face then. “Well, Kade was about to walk into the hospital when Jason was walking out. No clue why he was here to begin with, but they had some words, and then Kade beat the shit out of him. Actually, Kade beat the shit out of him while they had words and after too until hospital security and the cops showed up.” That elicited another gasp from me.

  “They arrested him?” Not that I needed to ask, of course they did. There were bound to be witnesses and security tapes to show what happened even if the hospital security guys and police hadn't seen anything.

  “He wanted more than anything to be up here, but he'd just put most of this together, and Jason seemed to be the worst damn part of how everything went wrong.”

  “I don't understand why though.”

  “Something about not wanting to lose Kade as a roommate. Of course Kade pointed out the irony that he wasn't his roommate anymore anyway and it had nothing to do with you being in the picture.”

  “That bastard. I bet he's the one that did that shit to my phone and e-mail too so I would have to change it all.” Brad nodded.

  “It would surprise me if it wasn't him. Actually, I all ready told the police that downstairs when they asked why I thought Kade attacked Jason. I told him that Jason had been stalking you, messing with your phone and e-mail, taking pictures of you. I'm not sure how that will factor into things since Kade destroyed the pictures, but hopefully just hearing it will help. I also let them know that Kade thought Jason may have been here to harass you which is what set him off.”

  “I haven't seen Jason in a few weeks, and haven't spoken to him in months,” I admitted.

  “Yeah, well, if the cops ask you might want to help my brother out a bit and tell them you've seen him watching from a distance quite often.” He winked at me then. I didn't say anything to that.

  “I know this whole situation was worse on you while it was happening because of the baby and all, but it's been tough on him too. The way he spoke so reverently about you…” Brad's voice trailed off and he cleared his throat to try to hide the little bit of pain that slipped through.

  “How broken hearted could he have been though? He moved on… when I wouldn't. He has a new girlfriend. I saw them together,” my own voice choked up as the memory of seeing them so happy in the diner hit me full force.

  “Sasha, he didn't have a baby reminding him daily. He had stories of you cheating and being involved with someone else. It took a lot of convincing to get him to even hang out with Jenn as friends.” I flinched at the sound of her name. “Hell, I don't think he was even giving it his all, more like going through the motions hoping it would help him get over you.”

  Tears were once again streaming down my face. “Logically, I understand the differences in our situations. But how could he ever believe I would cheat on him?” A sob broke free then. “I keep seeing him walking into the diner with his arms around her, laughing, and looking happy. I know he believed what that asshole told him, that I cheated, but… seeing that… it still stabs at my heart. I was sitting there writing about him, about my broken heart, about how I wished he would come back for the baby even if he couldn't find his way back to me…” another sob tore loose from me. “Then there he was, obviously close enough that they were intimately involved at some point. Looking happy. He looked happy with her. I saw that, and there's this piece inside me, one I didn't even realize was still left there, that just broke away after seeing that. Hell, it's all I've seen when I try to go to sleep at night for the past few days.”

  Kristin had come in the room and was standing by the door while I'd been talking to Brad. She moved across the room at a quick pace and threw her arms around me. I looked over her shoulder at Brad. “I need time, Brad. Please, my heart hurts, and I know Helen will have him out of jail quickly. Make him give me time to figure out how to deal with all of this.”

  “Sasha, I'll do what I can, but you should also know that he's not with Jenn anymore. He realized she knew about your connection to him and never said anything to either of you.”

  “She did say something to me,” I admitted. He looked startled. “I thought I was seeing Kade in a silver Jeep around town, and one day I saw her getting dropped off at the diner by that same Jeep. Honestly, I figured I was going crazy, because Kade never had a Jeep before. He used to have an old Honda Civic. I asked her anyway, who it was, and she told me it was her boyfriend and that he had just moved to town. She'd read my journal over my shoulders before. She knew his name from them, because she asked about it being so unusual once. She didn't just fail to tell me about the connection, she lied to me about it.”

  “Damn,” Brad huffed. “I'm honestly not sure if I should tell Kade that after what he just did to Jason.”

  “He would never hurt a girl, no matter what,” I told him.

  “Nope, but I will cut a bitch!” Kristin threw out there. “She best hope that I don't ever see her somewhere without cameras and witnesses. And someone needs to tell me what Kade did to Jason.”

  A knocking on my door called all of our attention to Dr. Marsh as she came in. “Hey, I hope I'm not interrupting, but I figured you were probably ready to spring free of this joint.”

  “Yes, please,” I begged.

  “Are you okay?” Dr. Marsh asked after seeing my puffy eyes and tear stained cheeks.

  “Yes, this is life drama, not pain or anything.”

  “Okay, well, remember what we talked about with the baby being able to feel those moods,” she chided briefly.

  “I know,” guilt dripped from my words.

  “If it helps Dr. Hot Stuff in the ER had her laughing her panties off yesterday when she got here. His cousin, the almost as hot EMT had her giggling in the ambulance on the way here too.” Kristin winked at Dr. Marsh then.

  “Dr. Hot Stuff, huh? You must be talking about Dr. Stevens.” She fanned herself playfully. “I bet he did, he's as funny as he is easy on the eyes.” We were all nodding our heads in agreement while Brad sat at the end of my bed looking slightly uncomfortable.

  “Well, I do have to check to make sure you haven't dilated further, so if your guests would like to step out into the hall for a moment we can get this taken care of and hopefully get your discharge papers started.”

  Brad stood with Kristin then. “I'll wait long enough to see if they're going to release you. I assume Kristin's here to take you home?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, then if all is good I'm going to go make sure my brot
her got bailed out of jail okay.” I nodded and gave him a watery smile as both he and Kristin stepped out into the hall.

  Dr. Marsh checked me out and confirmed that I was dilated to almost a two, and that she was moving my appointment up by a few days so that she could make sure I got a proper follow up. She also took a look at my back and hip and sent me home with a list of things I could do to try to make me more comfortable. Less than an hour later I was finally on my way back home.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ~Kade~

  Nov. 02 - Brad had come over again this morning. I was beginning to think he was acting as my jailer. “I told you I would respect her wishes and stay away for now. I meant what I said.”

  “I know. Can't I just check on my brother?” He asked without making eye contact.

  “Sure, if that was what you were really doing. I'm not an idiot, most of the time, I can see you're trying to make sure I don't go running to her house the first time I'm not supervised.”

  “I heard Jason requested to have the assault charges dropped.”

  “Great subject change, but yeah he did. Apparently he told the DA and the cops that he deserved a good ass kicking and if they tried to push forward he would be sure to tell everyone how hard he ran his face into the wall… repeatedly.” I had to chuckle at that. “Apparently the camera out front was down, so they didn't have video and didn't bother arguing with him. I got the call from Mick this morning telling me charges were officially dropped.”

  “Good. He's right, you know.”

  “About?”