by J. C. Cliff
I don’t know how long I zone out before a small voice startles me. “Hey.” I turn my head and see James approaching me with caution. God, this kid as my heart and then some.
“Is everything okay?” I ask, wondering why he left his mother’s side in order to come look for me.
“Yeah,” he replies before he takes a seat beside me. His feet are barely touching the ground, giving him the opportunity to swing his legs back and forth. The kid in him can’t help it, and he does just that. I inwardly grin, seeing how his feet alternate on the upswing, loving how his brain thinks most everything is a game at this stage in his life. I then frown, because I know the demons are silently lurking around the corner, waiting to attack his innocence. None of us are immune to the calamities of life.
I eye him from head to toe as he stares at one foot a time, each one making an appearance for a brief second before it disappears underneath the old bench seat. God, he looks so damn handsome in a cute little boy way, wearing the suit I just bought him. We stopped at the mall on the way home from Quinn’s last night, needing to pick him up a few things. The gray pinstriped suit for church he’s wearing today being one of them.
“What’s up, James? Why’d you come out here looking for me?” I tilt my head to the side, studying him. He’s acting a little aloof, and I’m not sure why. He shrugs his shoulders noncommittally, and then opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. He wants to say something, but he must either think better of it, or doesn’t know how to say what’s on his mind. “It’s okay. You can tell me what you’re thinking,” I prod him.
He looks up at me, worrying his lower lip between his teeth before he finally speaks. “Why do we look so much alike?”
“What do you mean?” I immediately respond back, playing dumb. He’s a perceptive little cuss, but I’m not sure he’s ready for the truth just yet. It’s a lot for a kid to take in.
“Those pictures,” he says pointing behind himself and back into the church. “They all look like me, but I know they’re not me.”
Mother-fuck, I’m not getting out of this one, and I’m sure as hell not going to lie to him. I refuse to start off our relationship with lies and deceit. I hang my head for a moment, trying to gather the right words for him to be able to comprehend. Screw it, I just shoot for the first thing that comes to mind.
“You look like me, because I’m actually your real dad,” I tell him, holding his gaze while my heart thuds like a bass drum. I watch him closely, trying to gauge his reaction, but he just seems puzzled more than anything else.
“So… you mean, I have two dads?” he asks, squinting up at me in confusion.
I clench my jaw holding back the vile and bitter words that want to surface over my hatred for Graham having been James’s father. In order to keep my mouth in check, I simply nod my head and repeat his words back to him. “Yeah, you have two dads.” His entire face scrunches up for a moment and God only knows what he’s thinking now. “What do you think about that?”
I can see him trying to formulate a cohesive thought, but no matter how intelligent he is, he’s still very much a kid at heart, and he has feelings. I take a wild guess as to what he’s trying to say and help him out. “James, I honestly didn’t know you existed. I never knew your mom even had you.” I think I hit the nail on the head, because what kid wouldn’t want to know the answer to this question. He chews on his lower lip and nods, silently processing. “The first time I ever saw you was in the basement of your house. I saw that we looked a lot alike, but I still wasn’t sure, not until you told me how old you really were.”
“Why did you never get to see me?” he asks with hurt lining his voice.
“Oh… little man,” I start off with a weary sigh, not knowing how to address this subject. “Your mom and I were very much in love when she found out she was going to have you, but for some reason she thought I wasn’t going to want you.”
“But did you want me?”
“Oh God, yes,” I tell him emphatically. “I’ve always wanted to have a family and children of my own. You are exactly what I’ve always wanted.” He seems consoled for the moment with my answer, but I’m far from done telling him just how much he’s wanted. “Your mom was very confused when she found out she was pregnant with you. She didn’t think I wanted her, so she kept you a secret, but she knows better now. I want you both, I always have.” I shift in my seat so I can face him better, willing for him to understand. “You have to know your mother did what she thought was going to be the best for you. She would never want to hurt you.”
He gives me a sidelong glance, squinting his left eye again then nods in acceptance. I can see the wheels turning in that bright mind of his, and I know he’s working on assembling together another killer question. “Is my dad is a bad man?” he asks, wrinkling his forehead in consternation. The despairing expression is so perceivable it tells me he already knows the answer to his question. It pulls at my heart strings knowing he’s counting on me to tell him the truth, needing his suspicions confirmed. What the fuck do I tell him?
I’m not sure as to how much information he can digest, or just how much truth is a healthy enough dose for him. Even one small word said the wrong way could be damaging. So I ask him a question to see where his mind is at. “What makes you ask if your dad is a bad man?”
“He hurt you,” he says as if I should already know this, and without blinking an eye, he adds, “and I seen how he hurt other men in the basement too.” Jesus-H, I run my hand down over my face wondering just what the fuck this boy has seen with his own eyes. It bothers me to no end to think his mental health could already be severely compromised for the future, all because he was witnessing shit he never should’ve been exposed to in the first place.
“What if those men were bad too, though?” I ask him.
He goes silent, adjusting his lips into a small pucker of sorts as he thinks through my question. He goes very introspective, and after a brief moment he then holds up two fingers in front of me. “If the other men were bad then that makes two bad men,” he concludes as if he just solved a calculus problem.
My brows roll upward. Sweet Jesus, not only did James make his answer a statement, he’d already come to his own conclusion about Graham. I don’t know what Graham hid from James, if anything, or if he simply thought his illicit dealings would be over the boy’s head, but it’s apparent James caught on.
“My momma loves you, don’t she?”
I try not to chuckle, but the boy’s questions are all over the place, giving me whiplash. A light laugh escapes me. It’s apparent he’s been throwing his brain in to overdrive lately, because he keeps hitting me with very pertinent questions. He’s most likely at that inquisitive age, too, where too much information will never be enough to satisfy his curiosity.
“Yeah, your momma loves me,” I answer with a humoring smile, “and before you ask, I love her right back.” It would’ve been obvious for even a blind man to see that Valerie was willing to take a bullet for me. She showed everyone just how far her love for me would go when we were down in those cell rooms, but I don’t ever want him thinking I had anything to do with busting his family apart. Graham did that all on his own.
I can now see why Valerie was up half the night, worrying about how to address all these topics with James. It’s fucking exhausting. I scrub my hand down over my face, and as I do, I glance at him from the corner of my eye to see a slight grin playing on his lips. “What’s so funny?” I ask him with a raised brow.
He narrows his eyes, but not in an angered way, more like he’s got me figured out. “You kissed her, didn’t you?”
I bust out chuckling and shake my head. “Anyone ever tell you that you ask too many questions?”
“Yep,” he says matter-of-factly, not caring about how many questions is too much. “Caleb tells me all the time.”
I glance at my watch and know we’re going to cut it close if we don’t go back in soon. “I’ll give you one more question before we go i
n… deal?”
“Deal,” he says scratching his head, thinking about what his last question will be. “When will I see my dad again?”
Damn, just when I think I’ve hurdled the mother of all questions, he comes up with another. “I don’t know, little man,” I tell him honestly with a frown. I lean back and rest my arm along the bench seat and run my fingers through his thick, blonde hair in thought. “He’s in a whole-lotta trouble.” I don’t think it’s possible for me to despise Graham any more than I do, but just thinking about the emotional wreckage he’s left behind for James to contend with makes me want to kill him. Sadly, for James, it will be over my own dead body before I’ll allow him to see Graham ever again. I don’t know how I’m going to be able to get Graham off his mind either, but I’m sure going to die trying.
“You ready to go in now?” I ask, changing the subject.
“Yep.” Then he tilts his head to the side and I know another fucking question is coming. “What am I supposed to call you?”
My shoulders go slack, thanking God this is an easy one to answer. “What ever it is you feel most comfortable with,” I tell him honestly.
He gets a little shit-eating grin on his face, and I raise a brow, wondering what’s going to come out of that mouth of his next. “How ‘bout Obi-Wan?”
I burst out laughing. I cannot believe this kid’s humor. He giggles behind his hand, his eyes dancing with mirth.
It’s in this very moment, even though there is darkness and chaos surrounding us, I know we’re all going to be all right. “We’ll have to save that name for special times, especially when your momma is around, she loves that name,” I inform him while rubbing the top of his head.
I stand up and hold out my hand, gesturing with the other that we need to head back inside the church. He gets up and slips his little hand in mine. I wrap my fingers around his, and the contact fills me with an indescribable emotion. “Let’s go say goodbye to Aunt Laine, okay?”
“‘Kay,” he says looking up at me with a warm smile. I return the gesture, and smile. I wish he could’ve known her. She would’ve spoiled the shit out of him. He’s going to have so much love surrounding him he won’t know what to do with it all, I’ll see personally to that.
From the second I knew James belonged to me, back in that cold dank cell, deep in the jungle, I knew I loved him. I love this boy with a fierceness that I, myself, can’t even comprehend, but I feel it. It starts in the pit of my stomach and radiates outward, fueling my every cell with a new purpose.
I reflect back on all the things that had to occur to bring Valerie and I back around full circle. Because of all those crazy-assed sequence of events, I have no doubt it was divine intervention. Not only did I get my girl back, but I got a son handed to me on a silver-fucking platter named after me. I shake my head in awe, wondering how I got so lucky to be given this second chance.
As we head inside, a sense of inner renewal and peace overcomes me, filling in the cracks and crevices in my soul. I somehow feel a thousand times stronger than I was only ten minutes ago, and when Valerie catches sight of father and son walking back in while holding hands, I can see the deep reverence she holds in her eyes for me.
Her beautiful chestnut colored hair is laying over her shoulders, full of wavy highlights, making her look like an angel in her own right. I shake my head in awe, acknowledging yet another mystery that I will never be able to forget or ignore. I will be reminded every day I look at Valerie’s dragonfly tattoo that my sister is in a better place, and she’s watching over us. I thought I’d come to hate dragonflies after finding out about my sister’s death, but now, they bring me peace; I look forward to seeing them, and I swear my sister has something to do with it. The entire experience with those winged creatures has been a true enigma, one I will never be able to piece together and solve. I suppose certain things are not meant to be understood, that’s why they call it faith.
I sit down beside Valerie as James follows suit, climbing up on the pew beside me. I wrap my arm around her, pulling her in close so I can plant an endearing kiss on her temple. “I love you,” I whisper in her ear, catching the scent of her light perfume.
She looks up at me and smiles, her eyes already teary, full of emotion. “I love you so much, Stryker,” she says thickly.
“Ain’t no reason to cry, darlin’,” I softly speak with renewed strength, “I’ve got everything a man could ask for, right here in front of me.” I give her a warm smile, meaning every word, because it’s true. I can honestly say I’ve never felt more complete than I do right now. I lean in and give her a chaste, but endearing kiss on the lips, a silent thank you for her love, devotion, and support.
I lean back in the pew, and think to myself how damn blessed I am. My heart can’t possibly swell any more than it already has. I twist my neck to the side and look down, taking a good long look at my son. Damn… my son… having him feels so surreal, and with the both of them living with me under my roof is icing on the cake.
He shifts his gaze to mine then winks at me as if we have some sort of conspiracy thing going on. I return his grin and ruffle the top of his head, the warmth from his eyes full of affection.
I’m wondering whether or not I should tell Valerie I’ve already decided the first thing on our agenda with James will be to educate him on Star Wars. I bite the inside of my cheek to keep the smile from my lips. I can see a father-son movie marathon happening real soon, and I’m excited to have a buddy to play light sabers with while making a colossal mess in the house.
*~*~*
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*~*~*
What’s the next book on the horizon? Well, currently I’m working on a storyline that skirts along the edges of the dark side, just like The Blyss Trilogy,
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Have you read The Blyss Trilogy?
The first book is Free!
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