I wasn’t stupid. The change in seasons again signified I’d been gone from them a long time. Would I go home to find they had mourned me and moved on already? The thought that they all considered me dead at this point was something that continuously filtered through my thoughts. There might not be anyone coming to save me from my prison.
After exhausting myself, and developing a worse headache, I fell into the bed and drifted into a fitful sleep that was only disturbed by a moment of pure bliss as warmth shot through my veins and life as I knew it, again, took a turn for the worse. Sasha was back, and she had the drugs with her that she knew could help control me. It was too late, after all.
“Wake up, lover,” a woman’s voice cooed in my ear. Her voice hadn’t been what woke me though, it was the chill on my body. I had gone to sleep with sweats on, but as I turned and stretched, it was evident that the sheets were scraping against my naked flesh. That startled me awake, and once I opened my eyes, I wished I hadn’t.
She was there, just as naked as I was and my hands were on her belly and one of her tits. Sasha had a blissful look on her face while I felt as though I might be sick. No! No! No! The one word was a mantra in my head. This could not be happening again. I jerked back and scrambled out of the bed so fast that I forgot the fact that I was naked and now my body was available for her scrutiny.
“I have to admit, I do like seeing you look healthier like this. Don’t worry, I talked to a doctor and we came up with a cocktail that wouldn’t make you lose so much weight like last time, but it will keep you at the ready,” she grinned evilly as her eyes travelled down to my cock, one that was indeed at the ready. I’d like to blame it on the fact that I must have been dreaming and had my hand on a woman’s breast before I was fully conscious, but even in my panicked state my hard-on wasn’t subsiding.
“You fucking drugged me?” I growled out to her.
Sasha did that thing where she poked her lip out in a pout again. “Aww, come on lover, you know you used to love it before.”
“No, you fucking kept me chained to a bed and turned me into a starving, wasteland of a junkie before.”
She couldn’t hide the anger that swept across her features. “I told you, I checked in with a doctor and fixed it so that wouldn’t happen again.”
“Why the hell can’t you just leave me alone?”
“Because you’re mine!” She shouted as she stood, also fully nude, and planted a hand on her hip as if she had the right to be upset. “You have been mine since the first time we were together,” she told me.
“Yeah, Sasha? Well, you haven’t been mine since I found my best fucking friend balls-deep inside your used up cunt! So you can just fuck right off. What the fuck happened to you that you’re this mixed up in the head? I don’t want you. Never loved you! And this shit you’re pulling, the things you’ve done, they make me sick. I get physically sick when I see you.”
She pointed at my still-hard dick. “You don’t seem so sick right now.”
“You had to fucking drug me to get that response! How many times did I get it up for you before you started that? Hmmm? How many times did you try and fail to turn me on before you resorted to drugs? I don’t honestly remember, because I don’t have all those memories back. Guess what? I don’t fucking want them back either. If I was forced to be with you, and that’s called rape by the way, then I don’t want to remember.”
“You don’t mean that! Take it back!” Her voice was shrill as she shouted at me just before she picked up the closest thing to her, a lamp on the bedside table. Only, she couldn’t actually pick it up because the fucker was bolted down. When her rage wasn’t quelled by being able to throw something at me, she attempted to launch herself at me. Immediately, I put myself into a fighting stance and it brought her up cold. “You would hit me while I’m carrying your child?” She rubbed her distended belly and tried for a sweet, shy smile. It really did turn my stomach.
“You come for me, I will fucking end you. I am not going to end up like before.”
“You’ll end me?” She asked in complete disbelief. “You would end the mother of your child? What about the baby? What about your son?”
I pointed at her belly. “That is not my baby. If for some reason, you managed to get me to completion in the state I was in before, and you raped me to end up in that condition, I would hope the baby died at birth to spare it from having to share a single moment with you as its mother.”
She screamed bloody murder then, and it wasn’t long before a couple of guards barreled through the door. “He was trying to rape me!” She yelled the moment she noticed she’d drawn other people’s attention. I was in the corner of the room, huddled in on myself and she was standing by the bed looking unbothered by the fact that they were both seeing her completely nude body. One of the guards sent a look my way that signaled he understood exactly what was going on. While I was happy that they didn’t believe her, the pity in the man’s eyes was too much to bear so I looked away as one of the men escorted her from my room while the other collected her things.
“Can you keep her away?” I asked before he was out the door.
“I wish we could,” he answered before leaving me to wonder just how far she had managed to get with my body before I crawled out from under the stupor her drugs had dragged me into. I knew it was more than just something to get my dick going to because that old itch had already settled in and I didn’t have a way to scratch it.
Chapter 23
No More Holidays
Ever
Christmas was right around the corner and I didn’t know what I was going to tell my children. Archer wouldn’t care. He was too young to even know what Christmas was. The girls though, how could I keep the girls from experiencing something their father and I had made special for them every single year of their life, including the last, just before Deck was taken from us?
Just thinking on the fact that we were coming up on the year anniversary of Deck’s disappearance made my stomach tumble. My father had asked me to give him until the end of the year. Actually, he had asked for ‘as long as it takes’ while I had insisted on revisiting his stay away at the end of the year. I had a decision to make soon. One that I wasn’t looking forward to because truth be told, I was running out of hope. I was also running out of excuses to tell my girls and I had finally sat them down and told them that their daddy was taken by bad men and that we had been trying to get him back this whole time.
They already knew. I hadn’t broken any news to them. My girls were smart. Much like Toby, Jay, and myself when we were just a bit older than them, they had been routinely listening in on conversations they were not supposed to overhear. I felt like the world’s biggest failure as a parent that I hadn’t been able to shelter them from what was really happening. Then I remembered my Momma Luce and doing the same thing to her all the time, so I just smiled up to the heavens and asked for her help and guidance in getting through everything with some sort of sanity intact. My kids needed me. They didn’t need a basket-case who couldn’t pull her shit together.
I was trying to figure out what to do about Christmas when I pulled a manilla envelope from my mailbox. My hands started to tremble immediately because I recognized the writing on it. “No, please God, not today,” I hummed to myself as I took it, along with all my other mail, into the house with me. Then I sat down on the couch and opened the damned thing. Yeah, I really wished I hadn’t done that.
Inside were pictures of Deck and the woman. He was obviously asleep, though he appeared much healthier than he had in previous photos we received all those months ago. His hand was on her belly and she was smiling at the camera. Once again, it was obvious that someone else was there taking the picture, which took away from their intimate little love-fest set. Still, He looked healthy, no visible bruising, and his hand rested gently on her very pregnant belly. I dropped the photos and ran to the guest bathroom where I lost everything that I had been able to eat that day.
“
Ever?” I heard my sister calling out to me, but I couldn’t respond as I was mid-heave. “Oh my gosh, Sis, are you okay?”
I waved her off, and only moments later, I heard her gasp. I knew, without a doubt, that she had just discovered the pictures that had sent me running in here to be sick. She was immediately on the phone with someone, though I couldn’t make out the words she was saying. It didn’t matter. Pretending he was coming home to us became so much harder now that he didn’t look like he was wasting away and being beaten regularly. My brain and my heart were on the same page before. They knew he wasn’t there of his own free will, but these latest images? They were heartbreaking because he looked healthy. They were devastating because of the implications that he’d moved on, that he was expecting a child with another woman. What would happen if my father did find him? Would he bring her home too? Would he choose to stay? Would I have to introduce my children to their newest sibling? One he had with another woman? My thoughts spun out of control, making me feel sick again, though there was nothing left to bring up. For one fleeting moment, I finally understood Momma Luce’s original reaction to me being introduced to her family. The horror of knowing the person you love most on the planet made another child with someone else, the devastation over the loss of that distinction. I used to be the only mother to his children. The rage I felt towards the woman, Deck, and even their child. I got it. Not only did I get it, but I understood my dad’s point of view finally too. He had to know what Lucy was feeling. They didn’t hide things from one another.
He had to be devastated, considering how I was conceived, and then to think he might lose the love of his life as a result, I finally understood the animosity that he must have started with when it came to me.
“Stop!” Anna finally got through to me with a light smack to my face. “Stop it, right now! I know what that looked like, but you know the crazy bitch enjoys playing games. We don’t know anything for sure. So stop whatever you’re thinking.”
“Anna, he looks healthy. No bruises.”
“You don’t know what kind of internal damage he’s taking though, do you?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if they threatened you and the kids? What if they took pictures of you and showed them to him to gain his cooperation? You saw the pictures from before. He was in bad shape. If she is pregnant, if it is…” even my sister couldn’t bring herself to say the words out loud. “It would have happened back then, when he was looking for all the world like a junkie in a back-alley drug deal gone wrong.”
“What if it is his and they bring him home? Does that mean we have to raise that child together? A child that may have been made in a rape? A child that another woman stole from him, basically?”
“Isn’t that what you were?”
Well, she had me there. What my mother had done might as well have been considered rape. She took my father’s choices away, that night, and every night after that she kept me a secret. Anna put her arms around me and gave me a hug before she led me back to the living room and helped me get seated on the couch.
“I’m not saying that woman is even pregnant with his baby, but if she is, and if they end up bringing Deck home with another little person in tow, I know that you will figure things out quickly, just like Mom did. Whatever happened out there, it wasn’t that child’s fault.”
That was when I broke. “Anna!” I rasped my sister’s name out and leaned into her shoulder and just let loose. “How can I? I don’t know what to do anymore. I don’t have anything left inside.”
“Yes, you do. I know you’re exhausted. The constant worry, stress, caring for a new baby along with the twins, and still having to work some too… Sis, we all see it. We’ve all begged you to let us help. You can’t keep doing everything on your own. Those kids of yours need you, but you’re not going to be any good to them if you’re completely broken.”
“Anna, I already am,” I admitted the defeat I had already been feeling before the picture arrived.
“No, you are most definitely not, my beautiful sister. You’re just run down and losing faith, and no one can blame you. It’s been so long. Until today, none of us were even sure he was alive still, honey. This, while coming hand-in-hand with possible crappy news, is a good thing. You know he’s alive. He’s still out there. There’s still hope.”
“Ever!” I heard a woman call out from the front door.
“You called Erin?”
“She’s your best friend, I figured I needed backup.”
“Ev?” That time it was a man’s voice.
“And Zeke?” I asked.
Anna shrugged. “I guess they were together,” she explained as the two people in question rounded the corner and took in the state of things.
“What the hell happened?” Zeke asked. Anna stood and took him the photos that had been delivered. “Fuck!” He hissed out when he saw what had upset me. “Little Sis, I’m taking these to the clubhouse.” He turned to his wife then, “Erin, stay by her side until I get in touch again, oaky?”
“Like you had to ask me to do that,” she huffed. “Go on, big guy, get out of here. I’ve got this.” I stared at my best friend for a minute. She had been through some shit over the years too, and I felt horrible for not being a larger part of her life when she went off to college and got into all sorts of things she regretted. One of those things was getting pregnant by the wrong man. Knowing that Zeke stepped up and has given my bestie and her son the best life after everything she went through still warms my heart to this day.
“Where’s Josh?” I asked.
“Big Brother Kane has him today,” she told me with a wide grin plastered on her face. “We were going to head out Christmas shopping and then see if we could hide the presents somewhere clever. Erin flip-flopped her head from side to side in one of her crazy-quirky gestures and then shrugged her shoulders up and down once. “We ended up having hot sex in the shower instead. Also, on the balcony, and then…”
“We get the dirty little picture you’re attempting to paint,” my sister told her. Anna wasn’t a prude at all, she just never cussed. It was her thing. She always told me that if you couldn’t come up with better words, you weren’t using all of your creativity or your brain. My sister was an author though, so she had all the words at her disposal. I usually just had my middle finger.
“Oh Anna!” Erin sighed. “Do I need to have a talk with Joker about how to sex you up really good so that you’re less judgy when other people are enjoying it?”
“I’m not judgy, but Zeke is like my long-lost brother. There’s no way I want to hear about him taking you to pound-town all morning long.” Anna shivered. “Now, if you want to hear about what Joker and I get up to, I’ll let that marinate on your brain for a while.”
“Nah!” Erin hurriedly responded. “You’d take all the fun out of it without the dirty words. I can just imagine it… ‘Joker! Oh, wait! What is that? Do you have a Mag Light in your pocket, or are you just excited to see me!’ Then the scene fades to black and we never know if he threw you up against the wall, tossed you on the bed, fucked you dirty in the shower just so you could conveniently get clean again.” She waved the thoughts away. “No, you keep your fade to black sex to yourself, thank you very much.” I couldn’t help but laugh at the two of them. They had always gone back and forth with one another that way since Erin came back from college and Anna and I had grown so close.
“She’s laughing,” my sister announced.
“That’s a good sign,” Erin agreed with her.
“I’m sitting right here, you nuts!”
“We know,” they both said at once, which sent them both into a fit of giggles. I knew what they were doing and thank fuck! It was working.
“I was thinking that I could use some fresh ink from my bestie,” Erin blabbed out of nowhere.
“Won’t your husband, my former mentor, be upset that I’m adding to your collection?”
“Um, no! Besides, it’s my body. I can hav
e anyone I want to ink me!”
I laughed at that. Zeke may not have started out in the MC, but he was just like those guys and fit right in once he joined. He was a possessive as fuck asshole. There was no way he’d allow just anyone to tat up his wife. Then again, I wasn’t just anyone. “You know what? Let’s go. I need to get out of this house for a bit anyway.”
“Are you bringing the kids with you?”
“No, she’s not,” Anna told me. “That’s what I was coming over here for anyway. I was going to offer to babysit for a while so you could get out. Turns out, I just had better timing than I thought.”
“Thanks, Sis.” I pulled Anna in for a hug. “I owe you.”
“Nothing. You owe me nothing. Now, go with Erin and enjoy the day.” I turned to head to my bedroom to go get dressed, since I was still in a pair of Deck’s boxers and the tank top that I’d slept in. “Wait, do you have plenty of Moo Juice stocked up in the fridge?”
Everlasting (Aces High MC - Charleston Book 6) Page 12
