Secrets and Lies

by Khardine Gray

  His father was another story. That man was the devil himself walking on Earth. He had no respect for his wife and none for his children.

  Wade’s biggest fear was to become him. He didn’t want to raise a child where his family or his family name would have any influence. And, he didn’t want anyone making Merissa feel like she was inferior. She came from a family who had struggled a lot to have the little comfort they had now. Her father was a vet and her mother a librarian. They were normal people who lived ordinary lives. Not like him, who’d always had his life in the spotlight or in some newspaper or on TV.

  He hated it.

  “We can go anywhere you want, baby.” He just hoped she wanted to go somewhere far, far away. Like other-side-of-the-country far, or the other side of the world.

  They could up and leave L.A. just like Chloe’s parents and head to a small village in France or Europe somewhere.

  Chloe.

  Shit, why the hell did he have to go and think about her? Maybe it was the effects of the drugs. She was someone he shouldn’t think about because the answer was plain and simple: he couldn’t have her.

  He couldn’t have her when she all but offered herself to him, and it was out of the question now.

  She was on the list of nevers, because she was too good for him.

  “Wade.” Merissa brought his thoughts back to her.

  “Yes baby.” Immediately he eradicated all images of Chloe with her long, silky, blonde hair, and warm, autumn-colored eyes out of his mind.

  “Will you try to stop taking drugs? Will you try?” He glanced across at her and saw a lone tear run down her cheek.

  “Yes,” he told her with a firm nod.

  “You promise me?”

  Promise—to do that he’d have to get rid of the sachet in his pocket.

  He’d have to cancel his order with George and vow to never see him again. He looked at her again, held her gaze and looked down at her stomach, which looked like it shifted a little. She straightened and shifted.

  “The baby’s moving around again.” She grimaced, but then she smiled.

  He touched her stomach again and felt the soft press of their child against her. It was unreal and definitely the best feeling he’d experienced in his life. Even with the stupid buzz he could feel the joy that surged through him at the thought of a child that would be his. He basked in the contentment that filled him.

  “I promise,” he said. She looked over at him and in that moment as he saw the hope that filled her eyes. He took the sachet George had given him out of his pocket, opened it and emptied the contents out the window. The powder drifted away in the wind as they drove on.

  Her eyes never left him, and when he turned back to her more tears streamed down her cheeks.

  “Thank you,” she said just louder than a whisper. He saw her heart reflected in her tender gaze and it made him stronger.

  “No, thank you.” He’d call George later and cancel his order. Then he’d have nothing to do with the stupid jerk. Full stop.

  It would be difficult for him to just go cold turkey because he used most days, but he’d try to manage.

  They were approaching the intersection that led to the next town. He’d pull over at the next junction so Merissa could take the wheel. Or…sooner.

  Suddenly he felt really dizzy and the road seemed to jump away from him. His hand slipped off the wheel and started to shake.

  “Wade, are you okay? Your nose is bleeding.” Merissa sounded panicked but so far away, which was odd because she was sitting right next to him.

  The car wobbled in the road and nearly smashed into a truck. Wade just about managed to steady the wheel with the side of his hands.

  Merissa started screaming when the car swerved in and out of their lane.

  That damn George. What did he give him? What the hell kick did George mix up?

  It wasn’t heroin. That was a terrible drug, but it would never make him feel like this. Like he needed to pull the skin off his face and scream.

  “Grab the wheel, baby,” Wade cried, but it was too late. He just managed to miss another truck before he blacked out and felt his body go limp.

  Smoke.

  That’s what that smell was. It burned his nose and his eyes as he pried them open. Wade looked beside him and jumped with fright at the sight of Merissa.

  “No,” he cried. His voice was choked and strained, desperate.

  The car had driven off the road and into the woods, then crashed into a tree. But the damage was mostly on her side. His side was smashed up, too, but not as bad as hers. She’d taken the impact full on and was crushed against a deflated airbag and glass from the windscreen. Blood was everywhere. All over her face, mixed with glass, and running down her shoulders.

  “Merissa,” he cried. Wave after wave of terror slapped him and he wanted to move her, but didn’t know if he’d do more damage.

  Quickly he grabbed his phone from his back pocket and called for an ambulance.

  “Is she breathing?” the emergency services operator asked.

  Wade stupidly hadn’t checked. He moved over to check her and saw that she was, but there was so much blood.

  “She’s breathing. Please hurry, she’s pregnant.” He was trying to see her stomach, hoping against hope that the baby was okay.

  He placed his hand there and almost died when his hand came away with blood.

  “Please, her stomach’s bleeding.”

  “The paramedics are on their way,” the operator assured him in a calm voice. “Keep talking to her and look out for the ambulance.”

  Before the woman could say another word, Wade heard the paramedics. He got out of the car, forcing the door open. They pulled up near the car and jumped into action. One came to him but Wade’s focus was on Merissa.

  “She’s bleeding,” he kept saying.

  Dark dread filled him as he watched them and saw their faces. They didn’t look like they thought she or the baby would be okay. They had the look of people that were doing their best.

  They managed to get her out of the car and that just revealed more blood. She continued to bleed all the way to the hospital.

  She was taken straight to the emergency room when they arrived, where they delivered the baby by caesarian section.

  A boy.

  Wade had a son. Born far too early, he was placed in the neonatal facility where the only hope they had were prayers.

  Merissa had a few broken bones and was in a real bad way, but the minute she regained consciousness she found the strength to get down to the unit to be with their baby.

  While she bawled her eyes out Wade said nothing. He sat next to her in mute wretchedness with the nauseating, sinking feeling of despair as he kept his focus on the extremely tiny baby before them in the incubator. All sorts of tubes were attached to his little body.

  This was the little life that had depended on him. The little person who was unlucky enough to have Wade as a father.

  Why couldn’t Wade have told George to go to hell when he first saw him?

  He shouldn’t have gone with him.

  He should have listened to Merissa and stayed with her. Now look, his son’s life was at stake. Because of Wade, his son’s life was at stake.

  How could he have done this?

  He looked over at Merissa and reached for her, but she brushed his hand away and slapped him hard in his face with the hand that wasn’t bandaged.

  “Don’t touch me!” she cried. “You selfish bastard! Look what you did to my baby.” She was beside herself and could barely talk. “You did this.”

  Her words pained him to his soul. It plucked his heart from him and squashed it before him.

  He didn’t know how long they sat there, how long she cried, how long he felt like his world had shifted around him.

  But, a beeping sound drew both their attention to the machine above the baby. The one that monitored the baby’s heartbeat.

  “What’s happening?” he asked as the doct
ors and nurses rushed in.

  Everything happened so fast—too fast—as if he was watching a scene from a movie play before him, because this nightmare couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be real.

  Wade watched, feeling hopeless and useless. The shock of defeat holding him immobile. He stared on, horrified, as the doctors tried to resuscitate his baby. His soul ripped from his body as the monitor’s beep faded away, eventually flat lining.

  A cry of deep distress poured out of him and he rushed over to the incubator. Someone held him back, but he couldn’t see who. He didn’t care who.

  “My baby!” he wailed, shaking his head, hot tears pouring from his eyes and blinding him as deep sobs wracked his insides. The doctors around him were saying something he couldn’t hear, and then Merissa appeared at his side. The punch she gave him in his chest turned his attention fully to her.

  “Selfish bastard!” she screamed. “You should have listened to me! You did this! Go away! Get out of here!” She continued screaming. She was going on so badly that two nurses had to hold her back. “Go away.”

  Time froze, standing still, and he felt numb.

  Go away. Yes, indeed. He needed to.

  Wade didn’t deserve to be here. He didn’t deserve her, and hadn’t deserved the precious baby who he failed miserably. He failed them both.

  One last look.

  That’s all he took. One last look at his son. Then at her.

  With his body feeling empty and weak, and his legs hardly able to carry him, Wade left.

  He stopped at his apartment, packed a bag of basic things he needed, then he went to his parents’ house to grab a few more things.

  His father was the first to confront him because he found out about Wade quitting rehab.

  Of course, no one knew what he’d just gone through. No one knew, and he couldn’t tell them. When his mother tried to talk to him he smashed up the place and stormed past Taylor, who also tried to talk to him.

  He left them too. Left them to think whatever they wanted and headed to the only place that could give him the relief he needed.

  The airport.

  Present day…

  Wade relived the pain of that final scene as he looked at Merissa. The events of that awful day ran through his mind in its entirety with every raw emotion.

  He’d never forgotten and still blamed himself just as much as he did that day, still wishing he could have done something different to change what happened. Every day the pain was there, some days worse than others.

  In the beginning, he wanted to die too, and he was tormented by the guilt he felt. He didn’t know how he managed to get through it all by himself, but he did.

  While he still blamed himself just as much as ever, he learned to accept that he couldn’t change things. He couldn’t change the past. It took him years to see it that way and to remember all that had happened in its entirety.

  In those moments, he remembered the plans he had wanted to make for his life with Merissa and their baby, the plans he had to change, and his attempts just moments before the accident. Most of all he had to will himself to remember that it was George that blew the powder in his face.

  To this day Wade didn’t know what the hell George had mixed up, and he’d never find out, either, because he had heard that George was found dead in his apartment that same night. It wasn’t a surprise since the trace of what Wade inhaled had been powerful enough to make him lose control and knock him out once the drug took complete effect. With the amount George had consumed he’d basically signed his death certificate.

  “Well, well. I certainly never took you to be the silent type,” Merissa said with that sassy tone that had hooked him when he first met her. “A little bird told me you were back in town. Boy, were they ever right.” Her large brown eyes held him in place and Wade found himself unable to move.

  He didn’t know what to say to her, and his anxiety was made worse with all that had happened in the last 24 hours. With Taylor in the hospital fighting for her life and the confrontation he’d just had with his father, Merissa couldn’t have picked a worse time to present herself, and the way that she looked showed she was ready for some kind of battle.

  He’d heard she’d moved out of state, which was understandable after what he had put her through. He didn’t think he’d ever see her again and never factored in that there was a chance he might.

  She smiled, straightened up, and hopped off the hood of the car so she could come closer to him.

  “So that’s it? You’re just going to stand there and look at me?” She folded her arms across her chest and glared at him.

  He released a slow breath and tried to steady himself. “Merissa, I don’t know what to say to you. I just don’t, and if you’re looking for a fight you won’t get one.”

  She grimaced with mock sarcasm and set her shoulders back. There was something different about her. The woman he knew had that air of confidence he liked in a woman, but this poise she demonstrated had something menacing about it that wasn’t her.

  “When’d you get back, Wade?” Her tawny brown eyes burned into him, stony with anger, filled with contempt.

  “Weeks ago.”

  “Weeks… As in more than a month, or less?” She arched her brows and folded her arms across her chest.

  “More.” He continued to observe her.

  “That’s what I thought, and in true Wade style with the self-centered selfishness, you never thought to come and find me. Maybe see how the mother of the child you killed was doing.” Her voice hardened with bitterness.

  Once again her words ripped at his soul. Ripped at his heart and crushed it.

  “I didn’t kill him,” he retorted, even though he didn’t believe that himself.

  “Right, I totally disregarded the fact that you’re the great Wade Vanderville. A Vanderville is never to be blamed for anything, not even when the truth speaks for itself. A normal person would have felt something, some form of blame. But not you.” She snarled and motioned her hand over him.

  “I blame myself every day, Merissa. Every day. You have no idea.”

  “Just stop,” she silenced him. “Don’t tell me I have no idea. I was the one who stayed and dealt with the aftermath. I signed my baby’s death certificate, and I buried him. And you, God, where were you? You just left.”

  His skin tingled and his legs felt like they would crumble beneath him. “You told me to leave.”

  She did, and at the time leaving seemed like the only option to stop himself from going crazy.

  “Yes, I did, but If you cared you would have stayed. You would have been there for what came after. You would have come to see me. You wouldn’t have thought about yourself. But it’s so typical of you.”

  The wealth of pain that filled her eyes pulled at his heart and he wished he could say something to make her feel better, to fix the situation, to do something. But he didn’t know what that was.

  “I’m sorry, Merissa. I really am so sorry, and yes you have no idea how much I blame myself. I feel so bad for what happened.”

  “You feel bad.” She narrowed her eyes with disbelief.

  “I do.”

  The menacing smile returned to her face. “Well…good. Keep it up. Bad is just the beginning of what you’ll feel. Rest assured, you haven’t begun to feel anything yet.” She eyed him dangerously then yanked open the car door, jumped inside, and slammed the door shut.

  With the engine revved, she took off down the drive at such a speed the ground shook.

  Wade stared after her, wondering what her threat meant.

  Shit, this was all he needed now. All he needed to add to the disaster everything was becoming.

  Chapter 2

  Regina

  Her body was now numb. Numb of thought, numb of feeling. Regina had cried herself empty of everything.

  She kept expecting Taylor to wake up, slide off the hospital bed, and go straight for her hand bag to grab her hair brush. Her hair was the very first thing s
he took care of when she woke. Every day for as long as Regina could remember. Or, at least while Taylor had lived with her. She couldn’t imagine that things would have changed with her getting her own place.

  In fact, she supposed she could have gotten worse because Regina always got annoyed with the daily hair brushing sessions. Taylor had to brush her hair approximately 150 times, 75 times on each side. On top of that, she did a nightly conditioning mask and went to the salon at least twice a week for a deeper conditioning treatment. Three times if there was a special event.

  And that was just the hair. Her skin was another story entirely. The daily routine for that took even longer, so to make sure Taylor had enough time to do everything she woke up at six a.m. and took a good two hours to get ready. Every day, it didn’t matter if she was leaving the house or not.

  The sight of her motionless body lying in this dreadful hospital bed was pitiful and heart rending. Regina couldn’t believe that someone that was filled with so much life and spirit could look so lifeless.

  Worse, she couldn’t believe that this was her Taylor. Her beautiful baby girl who meant everything to her.

  Attached to all these machines with tubes going into her skin, Taylor looked barely alive. Regina wished with all her heart that Taylor would just pull through and wake up. She wouldn’t know what she would do if something happened to her. She didn’t know if she could live.

  She sat back against the chair and pulled the blanket the doctor gave her closer to her chest. Her eyelids were heavy and her brain felt fuzzy from the lack of sleep, but she dared not close her eyes. She was too scared she’d miss something. That Taylor would wake up and need her and she’d be sleeping.

  Last night she saw the missed calls on her phone. Regina felt terrible that Taylor had needed her and hadn’t gotten her. When she thought of what she was busy doing, it made her sick.

  With all the meetings she had yesterday at Runway, everything was backed up and she didn’t really want to carry any extra work over into the week. As such, Regina had stayed back for hours going over the new contracts that had come in and creating the plan she wanted to hand over to Chloe for the creative team.