Altered: Carter Kids #6

by Chloe Walsh

  "Not his fault?" Derek snarled. "No. This is on the both of you."

  "Princess!" Kyle's voice boomed through the house then, distracting everyone. Moments later, he appeared in the doorway with a furious looking Cameron in tow. "We have a big fucking problem."

  "Yes," Lee choked out, dropping her head in her hands. "We do."

  "This fucker," Kyle growled, gesturing wildly at Cameron. "Got his girlfriend pregnant!" Oblivious to the tension he had just walked into, Kyle continued to rant. "But wait, it gets better." Pulling at his tie to free it, he ripped it over his head and tossed it on the counter before shouting, "His pregnant girlfriend is a Grayson!" With his tie gone, he unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt and snarled. "Rachel's niece to be exact. He's gone and tied himself down to that crazy fucking woman's blood."

  Lee, who looked like she was tittering on the edge, burst into tears then, resulting in Kyle smacking Cameron around the back of the head. "See what you did?" he growled, glaring at his son. "See what your dick has done to your mother?"

  "How many goddamn times do I have to say it? Tillie is her own person," Cameron shot back, looking just as pissed as his father. "She had nothing to do with any of the shit that went down between you and Rachel. But you had to judge her, didn’t you? You had to scare her away." Cam ran a hand through his dark hair in pure frustration. "She's gone, Dad. Back to Seattle. With my kid. Because you couldn’t get over your own goddamn past and support me!"

  "Support you?" Kyle strangled out, eye twitching. "You can't drop a Grayson bomb on me like that and expect me not to freak out."

  "Well, your 'freaking out' just screwed everything up for me," Cam roared. "Thanks a lot, Dad."

  "Where are you going?" Kyle demanded, when Cam moved for the door.

  "Seattle," Cam snarled.

  "When are you coming back?"

  "When she's with me."

  "What about work?"

  "Fuck your job. I quit," Cam roared back. "And if you can't accept the mother of my unborn child, Dad, then fuck you, too." Cam slammed the front door behind him with such force a photo frame crashed to the floor in the hallway.

  "Well, shit," I muttered, glancing down at Hope.

  "Yeah," she whispered, looking up at me. "Shit."

  Kyle, who up until this point had been wrapped up in his own personal crisis, finally took notice of the scowling faces sitting at his table. "Oh Jesus," he groaned. "What else is wrong?"

  ****

  Chapter Fifty

  Hope

  My mother was disappointed in me.

  It was written all over her face.

  She couldn’t even look at my face as she quietly wept into her hands.

  But my father wasn’t crying. He was standing beside me like a lion with his cub, protecting me just as fiercely as he had when I was a child.

  I looked to Hunter, unsure of what to do, as my father and Derek squared up to each other.

  Hunter winked down at me, and even though it was an entirely inappropriate thing to do given the circumstances, it made me breathe a little easier.

  I was safe with this man.

  He laughed and joked and played around, but he was serious about me.

  "She might have made a mistake," Dad snarled, once Derek had filled him in on what a cheating whore I was. "But you did, too, by walking into my house and speaking to my daughter like that."

  "A mistake?" His eyes bugged in her head. "She's a fucking cheat, Kyle."

  "She's my daughter," he corrected with a snarl. "It doesn’t matter if she's eight or eighty, she's still my baby. My child. My first born. She always will be. And nobody, and I mean nobody, is gonna talk about her like that. Not while I have air in my lungs."

  "Then she's learned it from you," Karen hissed, coming to stand beside Derek. "Must run in the family."

  "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Mom demanded, snapping her head up.

  "Well, let's just say your daughter has a lot more of Camryn Frey running through her veins than you, Lee," Karen stated coldly.

  Ouch.

  "Well aren’t you mother of the fucking year," Dad hissed, jumping to Mom's defense. "Throwing in your two cents about twenty years too late."

  "Kyle!" Derek warned.

  "Kyle nothing," my father shot back angrily. "She wants to talk about parenting fails then she needs to take a good fucking look in the mirror."

  "Like you're perfect, Kyle," Jordan's mom choked shakily.

  "Never claimed to be, sweetheart," Dad countered. "I've made a lot of mistakes in my life, but I love my children. Every single one of them from the tops of their heads to the tips of their toes."

  God.

  My dad.

  I knew he had to be feeling angry and confused, but he was here, defending me, letting the whole world know he loved me just the same as always.

  This was the definition of unconditional love.

  Loving despite the disappointments and hurt.

  My mother loved me just as much, I knew she did, but she was fearful and worn down.

  Dad was the strength in this family.

  In that moment, as I looked at my father, I was reminded of the man who I'd spent my life adoring.

  The man who had been my hero.

  The man who was still my hero.

  "And I made a promise to each one of them the day they were born that I would protect them from the moment they took their first breath to the moment I take my last," Dad continued to rant. "And I'm sure as hell not stopping now."

  "Fine," Derek barked. "You handle your family, and I'll handle mine."

  "Damn straight I will," Dad growled.

  They stared hard at each other for the longest time before Derek shook his head and said, "I'm out." With that, he stalked past my father and straight out of the house with Karen following close behind him.

  "I saw this coming twenty years ago," Dad muttered. "Always knew it would end in tears, Lee." Shoulders slumped, he walked over to the table and slumped down on the chair beside my mother. "Fucking told you all then, the two of them getting together was a recipe for disaster. But of course, no one ever fucking listens to me."

  Mom reached over and placed her hand on Dad's hand. And then she looked up, eyes locked on Hunter, and said, "You are no longer welcome in my home."

  ****

  Lucky

  "Lee, sweetheart, just take a moment here –"

  "I want him out of my house, Kyle," she hissed, eyes locked on me, glaring at me like I was a fucking parasite. And hell, maybe I was. "Now!"

  "You can't just kick him out, Mom," Hope was screaming. "You don’t know the full story."

  "I know enough," Lee snapped. "Enough to know that I want him out of my house and far away from my family."

  "Mom!"

  "Please leave my house."

  "Mom, you can't throw him out."

  "I've invited too many wolves in sheep's clothing into this house, and it turns out that you're just another. I want you to go."

  "Let's all just hold the fuck up here," Kyle interrupted. Turning to his wife, he said, "Princess, come and take a walk with me and calm down. There's some stuff going on here that you need to know –"

  "Don’t," Lee snapped, turning her glare on her husband. "You must all think I'm stupid. Well, I'm not. I see things too, Kyle. Like the marks on our daughter's face since she started messing around with him. Every bad thing that's happened lately? He's always in the middle. Always. And the lies? Jordan in the hospital? The secrets?" Lee shook her head. "I'm not going to allow myself to be sucked into another web of lies." She turned back to me and pointed a shaky finger in my direction. "You have one minute to get off my property. One second over that, and I'm calling the police."

  This wasn’t the first time I'd been told I wasn’t welcome in somebody's home.

  But it was the first time that it hurt.

  And it hurt something fierce.

  "Jesus Christ, Lee!" Kyle was shouting, but I shook my head,
letting him know there was no point.

  "Don’t worry about it, Kyle," I told him, ignoring the biting pain of betrayal. "I'm already gone, man."

  I faced Lee then. "I'm sorry for what I've done, but I'm not sorry for loving your daughter," I told her, before turning around and heading for the door.

  A small hand caught a hold of mine, and then Hope was beside me – standing right there beside me. "If you put him out, then you're putting me out, too," she warned, tightening her hold on my hand. "I'm dead serious here, Mom. If he walks out that door, I'm going with him and I'm not coming back."

  I couldn’t do this.

  I couldn’t fucking stand here and cause this friction between them all.

  And I wasn’t going to force her into a position where she had to choose between her family and me.

  "You should talk to your parents, sweetheart." Freeing my hand from hers, I pressed a kiss to her forehead and said, "I'll wait in the truck," before leaving the room.

  ****

  Hope

  "I don’t know what to say to you," Mom said, her voice little more than a whisper. "I don't understand this, Hope." Her hands were shaking as she slowly pushed her chair back and stood up. "I love you. I do. I love you more than you'll ever know. But this?" She whispered the words like they were tainted. "What you've been doing is wrong."

  "Lee," Dad called out, his voice almost pained as he looked between his wife and his daughter.

  "Don’t, Kyle," Mom whispered, physically flinching away from his pleading tone. "Please don’t try to defend this behavior to me."

  "Mom!" I barked, and the word came out like a choked sob. "Mom."

  She looked down at me with the saddest gray eyed expression, and that's when I saw it.

  For the first time in my life, I could see the disappointment in my mother's eyes as she looked at me like she didn’t know me.

  Like I was a stranger to her.

  And maybe I was.

  She didn’t know this version of me.

  The real me.

  Tears filled her eyes and she gently shook her head. "If you didn’t want to be with Jordan, there were other ways of doing it. If you wanted to be with him, there were other ways of doing it, Hope!"

  When she left the room, I looked down at my hands in despair, though I couldn’t make them out through the tears that were blinding me.

  "I'll talk to her," I heard my father say.

  "Don’t waste your breath," I replied wearily. I walked over to the table and slumped down on a chair. "She'll never understand."

  "I do," he surprised me by saying. "I understand."

  My head shot up. "You do?"

  Dad nodded. "Where you are right now? I've been there. I've been in your shoes, sweetheart, and I know your pain."

  "You cheated on Mom?" I exclaimed, horrified. "When?"

  Dad cocked his brow at my remark – at the accusatory tone in my voice – and I balked.

  "Sorry. Pot kettle black, huh?"

  "No, Hope," he finally replied. "I did not cheat on your mother." Pausing, he added, "I did something far worse."

  "What?"

  "It's complicated."

  "I want to know." When he didn’t respond, I added, "Please, Dad. I need to know."

  "Let me tell you a story," he finally said. "About a guy I used to know. This guy was backed into a corner, saddled down with more responsibilities than he knew what to do with. This guy was screwed up, Angel. A fucking mess. He had the weight of the world on his shoulders and the guilt that came with a life of terrible choices. There was this girl," he added before running a hand through his hair. "And the guy, he was so fucking starved for love that he believed the girl when she told him she loved him. What he felt was lust, but he didn’t understand that at the time."

  I watched my father as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

  "Turned out she was a bad fucking woman," he continued to say. "And when the guy found out, he did something that would haunt him for the rest of his life."

  "What?" I asked.

  "He got in a car wreck with the girl. She was pregnant at the time, or so he thought, and she lost everything that night – her chance at having a future family, everything. And so did he. Because he blamed himself for what happened to her, for not being able to protect her."

  "Jesus," I muttered.

  "She was a broken girl now and he felt it was his fault," Dad added. "He took her pain and promised her he'd stay. He promised her he'd never leave her. But then something happened –" He paused and smiled almost reverently. "A different girl walked into his life, into his house and threw everything off kilter. And that new girl made him reevaluate everything in his life. The guy didn’t expect her, he didn’t want her there, wrecking everything he had built." His voice broke off and he exhaled heavily before adding, "But she stayed. And without even realizing it, the new girl brought the boy back to life, showed him a different way of living. She was like a breath of fresh air in his lungs." He smiled as he spoke. "They became friends, best friends, but he couldn’t stay away from her. He wanted more and he took it every chance he got. He felt trapped and torn between the right thing to do and the right thing for him."

  "What did he do?"

  "Nothing," Dad whispered. "And because he did nothing, he ended up breaking that girl just like he had broken the other girl."

  "What did he do?"

  "By then he was in so deep, he was drowning," he replied. "But then he decided which one he wanted to go down with, and he worked harder than he had for anything else in his life. The end."

  "The end?" I cocked a brow. "What the hell kind of bullshit ending is that?"

  "The real-life kind." Dad laughed. "You're the storyteller in the family, Hope. I'm just a man reminiscing about three people I used to know."

  "What happened to the women in the story?"

  Dad sighed before saying, "The first woman ended up where bad fucking women end up."

  "And the second?"

  Then he smiled. "The second one is upstairs in this house, Hope. Your mother."

  "So you chose mom?"

  "Not exactly," he replied. "Once I opened my eyes and my mind, and forgot about all of the bullshit and judgment, I realized there had never been a choice to make at all."

  "You know? I think that's the first time in my life I've heard you talk about this."

  "I prefer actions over talking," he shot back with a smirk. "I'm working on making her happy. I made a promise to myself a long time ago that I'd never stop working for her, fighting for her. I'd never take my foot off the gas when it came to making that woman fall in love with me."

  "Dad, I think you're pretty safe. She married you and had like a half dozen of your babies."

  "Taking her for granted is something I won't ever do, Hope. It's a feeling only a man who has come to the brink of losing his lifeline can understand. When it's real love, it hurts and it's hard, sweetheart. It's an uphill struggle, filled with hard decisions, second guessing yourself, and if you're lucky, moments of pure fucking heaven. Doing what's right and what's right for you are two entirely different things. Remember that."

  Silence fell over us as I thought about everything my father had just told me.

  "Dad?" I finally said, breaking the silence.

  "Yeah?"

  "Don't push too hard with Cameron."

  My father's brows shot up in surprise. "Cam?"

  "Yeah." I nodded, thinking back to the earlier episode. "I've seen them together, and it's intense…" Pausing, I shrugged before adding, "Reminds me a lot of you and Mom."

  Dad's brows furrowed at my words. "How'd you figure that?"

  "She's broken, and he's hell bent on putting her pieces back together," I explained with a small smile. "He's all in with that girl, Dad. If you force his hand, he will walk away from us."

  "Would you?" Dad asked. "Would you walk away from your family for Luck?"

  My automatic reaction was to say no, because I knew that's what he w
anted me to say, and I wanted to please him, but I stopped myself. I was trying this new thing where I was honest. "I wouldn’t want to," I said carefully. "But I absolutely would – if it came down to it."

  Dad stared hard at me for the longest time before smiling. "That's how you know you've made the right choice for you."

  "Dad?" I asked after another long pause of silence.

  "Yeah?"

  "There's something I need to do," I confessed. "Something I have to tell him… something bad."

  "Lucky?"

  I nodded and swallowed down a huge swell of fear. "And I'm terrified of what will happen when I do."

  I couldn’t keep it from him any longer.

  He needed to know about the pregnancy.

  But I was so scared.

  I was petrified of what would happen when I told him I didn’t know if the baby belonged to him or Jordan.

  Would he believe me when I told him I said no?

  Would he think I was lying to save my butt?

  God, the thought of him not believing me was devastating.

  "What do I do, Dad?"

  "You tell him, Hope." Exhaling a heavy sigh, my father leaned back in his chair, blue eyes locked on my face. "That man loves you. Whatever it is, you'll figure it out together."

  "Are you sure?"

  "He's a tough guy, Angel," Dad replied. "Whatever it is, Luck will handle it."

  My father was right about Hunter being a tough man.

  He was crazy strong, both mentally and physically.

  The only problem was, handling it was exactly what I was afraid of him doing.

  ****

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Lucky

  She was quiet the whole drive home from her parents' place.

  At first, I'd put it down to all the shit that had been thrown at us today.

  But the way she was looking at me when she thought I wasn’t paying attention told me different.