by Lane Hart
COPYRIGHT
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue were created from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual people or events is coincidental.
The author acknowledges the copyrighted and trademarked status of various products within this work of fiction.
© 2017 Editor's Choice Publishing
All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator” at the address below.
Editor’s Choice Publishing
P.O. Box 10024
Greensboro, NC 27404
Edited by Angela Snyder
Cover by April Flowers Cover Designs
http://www.afcoverdesigns.wordpress.com
WARNING: THIS BOOK IS INTENDED FOR MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY AND CONTAINS REFERENCES TO SEXUAL VIOLENCE!
Table of Contents
COPYRIGHT
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Epilogue
JAX
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Epilogue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Prologue
Samantha Elliott
THE PRESENT
My old Hyundai rolls up slowly to the guardhouse. Stopping in front of the chain-link gate, I press the button to roll the driver side window all the way down.
“Photo identification and name of inmate?” the big, burly prison guard asks in a cold, impersonal tone from the high perch of his tower.
With shaking hands, I dig my wallet out of my purse and offer my driver’s license to him. It takes me three tries to finally speak the name of the man I haven’t seen or heard from in ten months. Even when he was free, our relationship wasn’t. It was built on secrets. My lies. I thought we had been careful. No one was supposed to find out we were together; but they did, which is why the only man I’ve ever loved was confined to a prison cell.
The guard hands my ID back; and the first gate slides open, allowing me passage to the other side of the tall barbed-wire fence. I ease my car forward and then down the empty winding road. This isn’t my first time here; it’s actually my fourth, but I’ve never been allowed past the front lobby.
The clock on my dash says it’s nine twenty-six. Only four more minutes before he’s a free man. The months have dragged by, each one seeming more like a century. Instead of pulling into an empty space, I decide to park right along the front sidewalk so that he can’t possibly ignore me this time. The two armed guards standing out front look over at me but thankfully don’t come over and tell me to move.
Tugging on the front of my seatbelt, I reach over and lift the stack of envelopes from the passenger seat to thumb through them while I wait. The first one I wrote before he even made it out of the local jail; that’s why I assumed it was returned to me opened but with the word REFUSED stamped in red across the front, because he was transferred out. The second and third letters came back the same way, so I made the two-hour drive out here to see him face-to-face during weekend visiting hours, only to be turned away because I wasn’t on his “approved guest list.”
Since then, I’ve written a new letter each month, hoping he would read at least one of them and send me a reply. All thirteen envelopes are now bound together by a rubber band, each saying the same thing. I feel like an entirely different person from the stupid, naïve girl I was when I wrote the first letter, but maybe I’m not since I still expected some sort of response from him!
Over these long months, I’ve gone through each of the five stages of grief. The first was denial, thinking it was all some huge misunderstanding, that his lawyer would appeal and he would be released, or I would wake up and it would all have been a horrible nightmare. Then came the anger. I was pissed because he refused to see me or write me back. How dare he not even take the time to write me one fucking letter? After the anger, I began to try and bargain. Assuming he blamed me for everything, I thought that if I could just see him one last time, then maybe I could explain and he would forgive me…
The worst and longest stage of grief was the depression. In fact, I don’t remember a single day without him that I haven’t been sad and miserable. Sure, there are bright spots here and there, like every time I hold my daughter, but the happy moment is quickly snuffed out as soon as the memories of the night everything went to hell come roaring back to haunt me.
I hate that he hasn’t even cared enough to ask about Adalyn, his own daughter that already looks so much like him. The two share the same blue eyes, long eyelashes, and dimpled chin. Adalyn even has his identical, adorable, jet-black cowlick at the back of her little head that won’t stay down no matter what I do.
So now here I am. A nervous wreck, because even though I wish this were the last time I’ll see him, I know it probably won’t be, not after I insist that he stop ignoring me so that we can finally have a conversation about our daughter after he’s avoided us for ten months!
Ever since I found out his release date and time last week from the district attorney’s victim-witness coordinator, there’s been the last and final stage of my grief --- acceptance. Today is about closure, nothing more. I no longer have any hope of him forgiving me or ever forgiving him for not being there for me the past ten months. I knew he couldn’t be physically, but I hate him for shutting me out of his life without an explanation or a goodbye. Fuck him. There’s one reason for me sitting here today, and only one reason. I need to confront him to see if he has any intention of being a part of his daughter’s life. After that, I’ll accept his decision, straighten my spine and, if necessary, deal with him as the law requires, but that’s it.
The front door of the prison suddenly opens, and
then I’m looking at the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. One who still haunts my dreams and probably always will. That’s another reason why I hate him so much. My grip on the steering wheel tightens, wondering if he’ll just keep walking past when he sees me. There doesn’t seem to be anyone else here for him, just me.
Despite the wrinkles in his dark pinstripe suit and white button down that he had on the day in court when he was sentenced, he looks even better than I remembered, more like a high fashion model than a convicted felon. He’s bigger than reality, appearing wider in the chest and shoulders, with more jet-black scruff along his jaw and surrounding his sensual lips, giving him a darker edge. His beautiful blue eyes squint behind his thick rimmed glasses like the free world is too bright, at least until he sees my car and they blink wide when his feet come to an abrupt stop on the sidewalk. The broad shoulders underneath his jacket visibly slump forward before he hangs his head. His posture clearly portrays his thoughts --- he’s not happy to see me.
Nevertheless, he approaches my car and opens the passenger door to slip inside.
“What the fuck are you doing here, Sam?” he asks sternly. “You shouldn’t be here!”
His brutal words, though expected, still cause me to tense up even more.
Without even a glance in his direction, because it’s too hard to look at his gorgeous face when it’s so close, I slap the stack of envelopes against his chest. “Why?” I ask him. “Why couldn’t you respond to just one of my letters?” My voice shakes with nervousness and sadness, but no tears fall. There are no more left for him.
“My…my attorney said I shouldn’t have any contact with you and…”
“Your attorney is an asshole,” I mutter. “You shouldn’t have plead, but whatever.” No use arguing about that now that he’s served his time.
“And I wanted you to move on and forget about me,” he adds.
“Move on?” I exclaim. “How was I supposed to move on and forget about you when the only good thing in my life is a constant reminder of you?”
“Sam, we weren’t even together that long. I know you were young and that I was your first, but you’re better off without me. You have to see that,” he says calmly, like I’m still some stupid teenage girl with a crush.
Tears burn my eyes, threatening to fall even after I promised myself I wouldn’t cry. God, how could he be so callous? He’s nothing like the man I thought I knew so well. It doesn’t make sense for him to not even at least mention Adalyn. Unless…
“Did you read any of my letters?” I ask him.
“No,” he says immediately with a shake of his head. “When the guards brought them to me, I told them to send them back…"
“You never read them? Not even one?” I repeat.
“What was the fucking point?” he asks.
“The fucking point was to maybe see what I was going through!”
“I know I hurt you. That’s why I didn’t think I deserved your letters,” he replies.
Is he serious? He doesn’t know?
Well, there’s one way to find out.
“Just open one of them, any of them, so we can be done, and the court can take care of the rest,” I tell him.
“Sam –” he starts.
“Please!” I interrupt whatever protest he was about to make, closing my eyes tight to prevent them from leaking.
With a heavy sigh, I finally hear him rip the paper. Needing to see his reaction, I glance over and watch as he pulls out the single sheet of notebook paper. It’s the letter from the top of the stack, the first one I sent him the day after he was sentenced. I didn’t get to talk to him in court before he was taken into custody.
I watch his handsome face, admiring him for a few seconds before I hope to never have to talk directly to the bastard again. Hearing his audible gasp, I know he’s reached the important part. A single tear streaks down his unshaven cheek, melting my glacier of a heart just a little since it’s obviously the first time he’s read it. More silent tears follow, but I look away and hold on to my resolve. He doesn’t deserve my sympathy. I loved him more than anything in the world, and he ignored me; he ignored us, for months. My life was destroyed at the same time his was; and instead of finding our way through this together, he abandoned me.
“Is-is this true?” he asks through sniffles still clinching the paper in his hands. “God, Sam. I’m so fucking sorry I -”
“Your apology isn’t worth a shit now,” I tell him because he obviously didn’t think I was worth a second thought. “Get out.”
“Wh-what?” he asks in surprise. “Just let me explain.”
“Like you let me explain for ten months?” I ask. “No. Get. Out.”
“Do we…do we have a son or…or a daughter?”
“Daughter,” I say, causing my chin to tremble.
“A daughter. We have a daughter,” he repeats in awe. “What’s her name? Are you gonna at least let me see her?” he asks.
“Adalyn, and that’s for the court to decide now,” I reply coldly, angry at him because he made the choice to avoid me. Despite whatever remorse he has now, he can’t ever take that back. “I kept trying, hoping you would want to be a part of her life…” I start. “But I gave up on you months ago. You wouldn’t even let me visit you! In three hundred days, all I wanted was for you to read my letters and write me back. You didn’t give a shit about us then, and now it’s too late.”
“Sam, please,” he starts and reaches for my bare arm.
“Don’t!” I scream at him when I jerk away. “You can’t change the past, and I’m not gonna let you ruin our future. When you told me that you regretted the day you ever met me, well, believe me, the feeling is mutual! Now get out of my car, and don’t contact me unless it’s through your attorney.”
Taking the stack of letters with him, he finally climbs out of my car and shuts the door. I drive away quickly, leaving him standing on the sidewalk, unable to resist one last look in my rearview mirror. While there was a time I would have given anything to be with him, now I’d give anything to stop loving him.
Maybe if I had been honest with him the first day we met, none of this would have ever happened. And while I feel incredibly guilty about being responsible for him losing his license, and every second of every day he was stuck behind bars, I lied when I told him I regretted meeting him. I wouldn’t do anything differently if given the choice to go back in time, because I love my daughter that he unknowingly gave me. I just hate that we’ll never be able to give her a real family.
Chapter One
Samantha Elliott
THE PAST
February 14, 2015
“The physical therapist will be right with you once he’s had a chance to review your x-rays,” the young girl from the radiology center across the street says after she wheeled me over and helped me onto the exam table in the physical therapy office.
“Thanks,” I mutter as the door shuts, swiping away another silly tear from my cheek, not because of the pain in my ankle, but because my season may be shot before it even starts after one stupid, leftover patch of ice on a beautiful, sunny day.
Shoot!
I need a tissue, but after hobbling back to my car and driving myself here, I’m too much of a wimp to jump off the exam table and limp the additional steps to the dispenser across the room. Instead, I just use the sleeves of my bright pink Aero sweatshirt to dry my face.
Looking down the length of my outstretched legs, both of my knees look like shit, all scraped up and bloody, with pieces of gravel still imbedded in them. Damn black ice hiding in the dark shadows on the asphalt! My mom tried to get me to skip my run after school and go to my sister’s middle school Valentine’s dance. Now I wish I would’ve listened to her.
Startling at the knock on the door, I dab at my face again with my sleeve and inhale a shaky breath to try to compose myself.
“Miss Elliott?” the man asks as he steps into the room, his index finger pushing the center of his black-rimmed glas
ses up the bridge of his nose.
Whoa! I had no idea Clark Kent was moonlighting as a physical therapist. Crime must be at an all-time low.
“Miss Elliott?” Superman’s doppelganger asks again, but I’m too dumbstruck by his iridescent sapphire eyes behind the glasses to respond. The fluorescent light above us is participating in an incessant dance with the blue orbs in a way that’s completely hypnotizing. “Samantha Elliott?”
“Uh-huh. That…that’s me.” I finally force the highly-intelligent response past my parted lips. Blinking several times to dispel the remaining tears, I try to figure out if this man is actually movie star handsome or if I banged my head on the asphalt and am hallucinating that the graying Dr. Draper pulled a Benjamin Button, aging backward in time to his twenties.
Shutting the door behind him, the man in khakis and a white button up walks toward me and offers me a handshake with a polite smile. “Hi, I’m Grant Matthews.”
“You’re my doctor?” I ask in disbelief as I take his hand.
“Well, I have a doctorate in physical therapy but you certainly don’t have to call me Dr. Matthews.”
“Wh-where’s Dr. Draper?” I stutter, glancing around to make sure the radiology girl brought me to the right office.
“Oh, a letter went out to all of his patients at the end of last year. Dr. Draper retired, and I’ve taken over his practice,” the gorgeous man answers with a grin so stunning I almost swoon right off the edge of the table.
“Good for him, I guess,” I mutter while continuing to stare at the young doctor like he might disappear if I look away. He may not insist on the doctor title but I can’t just call him “Grant.” That’s way too casual for the sophisticated man standing before me.
“So, you had quite a bad fall today?” he asks the obvious while glancing down at my bare and bloody knees.
“Uh-huh.” The ability to speak in complete sentences eludes me.
“Twisted your left ankle?” he asks, and I nod. He reaches for the grapefruit size body part; and as soon as his warm fingertips touch my chilled skin, my body gives an involuntary shiver. Goosebumps ripple up and down my arms and legs and all of my body heat seems to be suddenly gathering in my clenching stomach.
