by Simone Elise
“And you? You aren’t fine, Abby.” He walked toward me. “I know you.”
He was right. I wasn’t fine. “One day I will be.” I couldn’t handle being touched by him so I headed down the hallway to my room. I had set up the crib there. Funny thing was, it was actually mine and Kim’s. Dad had kept it.
Reaper always said I ran when I didn’t want to face something. I guess right now I was doing just that. Running.
But I couldn’t face the truth. Not when it hurt so much.
“Abby, I’m not leaving.”
He followed me. I clenched my eyes shut. Why couldn’t he just let me go?
“I wasn’t angry with you. You have to believe me when I say that.”
I scoffed. “Sure, you weren’t.”
“Were you ever going to tell me?”
His reaction had been exactly what I expected. I put Tyson in his crib and then turned and looked at him.
“What do you think?”
He glared down at the carpet. “I’m sorry.” He looked up. The expression on his face told me he genuinely was. “I’m sorry that you couldn’t come to me.”
I had never felt more alone than I did right now. Even when I was with Jake, I still had this invisible connection to Reaper. But now I felt like someone, no, not someone, him, had cut that connection.
“I can’t be with you anymore.” For once I was going to fight the pull toward him. I had always been the one chasing him or waiting for him to take me back. I had always turned to him and, by doing that, I think I had written our ending. Because how could I be with him when everything in my body was telling me to run and run as far as I could?
Away from my need to be near him.
Away from the love I had for him.
Run from it.
That look in his eyes when he found out, that would never go away.
“You can’t say that.” He stepped closer to me and my arm shot out. I couldn’t handle being touched by him. I saw the panic in his face, heard the panic in his words. “You said you love me unconditionally.”
My face softened. “I will always love you. But I can’t be with you anymore.” I shook my head. “I just can’t do it anymore, Reaper.”
“Because of what happened? What I put you through?” He was switching gears now. He knew I was serious.
“No, because I saw the look on your face when I told you. The disgust. You won’t ever come to terms with that. And I can’t be with you while you struggle with it.” I took a staggered breath in. The hand I had on his chest to keep him away from me was burning. Unable to take it anymore, I pulled my hand away from him and hoped he got the hint that I didn’t want him touching me.
He shook his head. “I wasn’t angry with you. I was disgusted in myself for putting you through that. Me, Abby, I was disgusted with myself, not with you.”
“I still can’t be with you.” Run. That was what I needed to do. Run from my feelings for him. Run from a future with him. Run from the need to always be with him.
“Abby, don’t.” He looked like he was physical pain. “Stop saying that.”
I didn’t know what to do to ease his pain. The truth was, I had reached a fork in the road and facing a life with him scared me. Because I knew I would do anything for him, be anything for him. And knowing you loved someone that much, well, it was frightening.
“I’m sorry, Kade.” And I was. I really was. But running meant I didn’t have to face my feelings for him. “I will always love you and I’ll never keep Tyson from you.”
Those two things I could promise. But I couldn’t stay with him.
He ignored the fact I didn’t want him touching me and cupped my face. “If you love me, hold on to me. Don’t push me away.” His words were panicked. He was scared. He didn’t need to be. He would be fine without me.
“You’ll be OK, Kade, without me. You’ll be OK.” I felt like I needed to reassure him.
“NO. I WON’T BE!” Tears welled in his eyes. “My life revolves around you. Don’t you get that? When I don’t have you, I’m nothing. I don’t give a fuck if I’m breathing or not. I need you. If you love me, don’t let go.”
I remained quiet. But it was a natural reaction to wipe the tears off his cheeks. I didn’t want him crying. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him cry before. He was panicking. He was scared. He would be fine.
“Abby, please don’t let go of me. I need you to hold on to me. I need you. Please.”
He was pleading with me, begging. Hoping I would change my mind.
“I’ll never bring the rapes up again. I promise you that. I’ll do anything. Just don’t give up on me. Not now.”
I had come to the fork in the road: leave him or stay with him. A future with him meant my life wouldn’t be crystal clear. If I left him, I could bet my life would be less complicated. But a life without him, well, that scared me nearly as much as how much I loved him.
“Just tell me what you need to hear from me for you not to leave me? Just tell me, Abby. Because I’ll do fucking anything.”
Was there anything he could promise that would help me make a decision? Maybe there wasn’t anything he could promise me. But there was something I could do to make him see the girl he’d loved died in Jake’s house.
I pushed his hands off me and took a step back, gripping the bottom of my dress and lifting it up. He frowned at first, and then he saw them. Some still bleeding, some just healing, some faded.
“The girl you loved died in that house, Kade. You mightn’t realize it but you lost me a long time ago.”
His eyes were glued to them. I saw the flash of anger. But, as if he knew he couldn’t be angry right now, he reined it in.
His fingers went to them, barely touching them, but checking to see if that were real. They were real and they would be on my body for the rest of my life.
“Do you still do it?” he said. His eyes came back to mine. “Self harm, do you still do it?’
“Every time I think about what Jake did to me. Yes.”
He nodded his head. “We will find another way for you to cope. Counseling or something. But I’ll personally be making sure there isn’t a razor in the clubhouse. You won’t ever get your hands on another one.”
I clenched my eyes shut. Did he miss the part where I said the girl he loved had died?
“It doesn’t matter anymore.” I opened my eyes and lowered my dress. “I’ll handle it somehow. It’s not your problem.”
His hands took mine, as gently as if I were made of glass.
“If it affects you, it affects me. Your problem is my problem. You should have told me you were doing that to cope.”
Wasn’t this what every girl dreamed of? To have a man who would stand by her in the toughest times? To take on her problems and make sure she didn’t have to face them alone?
I guess that was all I ever wanted, just to have Kade. That was all I’d ever wanted.
“I’ll help you get through this, Abby. It’s my fault you went through it to begin with.”
“I don’t need pity,” I wanted to snap at him, but stopped myself. “And I don’t need you blaming yourself more.”
He already felt bad enough for what happened to me. That guilt he felt was what was pushing me away, what had me wanting to run. Because how could he ever look at me with love and not guilt? Maybe I should just tell him that was the problem.
I wanted to run as soon as I saw more guilt in his eyes. He didn’t realize that was the problem.
“The guilt, Kade, that you keep looking at me with. That’s what’s making me want to run. So if you want me to change my mind, you need to stop it,” I blew out, running a hand through my hair. I couldn’t handle the look in his eyes. “Please leave if you are going to keep looking at me like that. I can’t take it, Reaper. Go!”
His expression changed immediately. It was blank at first and then changed to a look he had given me numerous times. It used to be painted on h
is face when he looked at me. Love. It was the same look he gave Tyson every time he looked at him.
“You know we never got a honeymoon.” His hands linked with mine.
I frowned. “So?”
“So, maybe we should have one now.”
“Kade, did you not hear me when I said I was ending us?”
Hurt covered his face immediately. And then it was wiped away and he was looking at me with love again.
“I think we should take one.” He pulled me to him. “Somewhere hot.”
“You don’t take vacations.”
“I’ll make an exception. You need to get away from here and I want to take you.”
“A vacation isn’t going to make me go back to normal.” I knew even leaving here, leaving him, wouldn’t bring me back to myself. If anything, leaving him would put me further away from myself because I always found myself when I was with him.
Things just came naturally when I was with him.
I didn’t overthink it. When I was away from him, when I was keeping secrets from him, it was hard, so terribly hard to do.
He cupped my face, bringing it to his. “It’s a start.”
“What about Tyson? What about your commitments to the club? The mother charter president doesn’t get a break.”
“We can take Tyson with us. Or we can leave him with Kim. As for the club, I told you once before, it comes second.”
I was chewing my bottom lip. I had been planning on running from him, not having a honeymoon with him.
He pulled my lip from my grasp. “A break will do you good. And if you still want to leave me afterward, I’ll let you go.”
I knew what he was playing at. I knew it as soon as those words left his lips.
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t lie to me. You are never planning on letting me go even if it is something I want.” I knew him too well. I saw the determination in his eyes. I saw the passion. I saw that his heart was on the line and he wasn’t about to let me slip past him. Even if I begged him to let me go, I doubted he would.
But still, I had to make a decision.
Stay or go. Flight or fight.
“You’re right.” He smiled for the first time tonight. “You are my world, Abby, and if you think I’m letting you leave me, you’re wrong.”
“But I can’t keep seeing that look in your eyes.” I clenched my eyes shut, the look he had been giving me crystal fucking clear in my mind. “That guilt that is eating you up, I can’t take it. I just can’t.” I went to push his hands off me but he just gripped me tighter.
“I didn’t even realize I was doing it.”
“Well, you have been all the time. And now that you know about the rapes, I’m doubting you will ever be able to look at me the same way.”
He shook his head. “I’ll stop, Abby. I promise. I only see one thing when I look at you and that is my world. I’m sorry if I’ve been looking at you like you aren’t that. Because you are my world, Abby.”
“Cut, raped, abused and neglected, and you still want me.” I shook my head. “You must be crazy.”
“In love, yes.”
I let go of his hand and ran my finger across his jaw. He wanted me to hold on to him. I guess when it came down to it, I never wanted to let him go to begin with.
“I love you too, Kade.” And it was the honest truth.
“But?” He arched his eyebrows, expecting me to have something else to say.
I shook my head. “No buts.”
“So you’ll come home with me?”
I nodded my head.
“You aren’t leaving me?” There was panic in his voice as he said it. As if there was still a chance he was going to have to perform a miracle.
“I’m not leaving you.” I knew it then. That there wasn’t a chance in hell I could ever leave him because he had the other half of my heart. He had since I was sixteen and he would always have it. I knew wherever I was, he would be right there beside me.
Epilogue
Five years later - Reaper
I lit up a cigarette and watched Tyson. Any minute, Abby was going to be out here screaming. I knew that but I couldn’t break the kid’s heart by not letting him on.
“REAPER!”
She must have heard it.
The porch door burst open and out walked my furious blonde. It wasn’t a surprise to find her shadows following her. Our two daughters. Twins. Eve and Hannah. They were too fucking perfect for their own good.
I knocked her up on our honeymoon. While I was happy for one baby, I was over the moon that we got two. They were identical, and double trouble. They were only four and already had me on my toes trying to keep up with them.
“I told you over and over, he is not allowed on it!” She stormed down the porch. “He is too young to be on a motorbike!”
“It’s a dirt bike, Abby. It doesn’t even have gears.”
“I told you and him no!”
“I’m watching him and he is fine.” I reached out for her, pulling her onto my lap. “You worry too much.”
She had an angry pout on her face as she searched the backyard for him. “Did you and him make that track?” she asked, still sounding furious, while watching Tyson whiz around the track we had made this morning. “You even did fucking jumps!” She looked me in the eye. “Is it your mission and his to give me a heart attack?”
“Calm down, sweetheart.” I kissed her arm. “He is fine.”
“If he falls off, I swear to god, Kade, you will have a slow death.” She meant it too.
“He is a natural.”
“I always knew he would take after you.” She crossed her arms. “You and fucking motorbikes.”
I smirked. When Tyson wasn’t testing Abby’s patience, he was in the garage pulling something apart or helping Brad. He would be five this weekend and Abby was hating him getting older.
I didn’t know how she was going to cope when he actually did grow up. People always mistook him for being older than he was because he was so tall and switched on.
Still, he was closer to Abby than ever. So were the girls. The four of them made it their mission to get paint everywhere whenever they used the art studio. How many times had I told them paint stays in the art studio? Still I would find it on walls, on the carpet, in my study. Just this morning, the cash flow chart, which had been safe in my study, had gotten a handprint on it.
Eve or Hannah, by the looks of it, had gotten to it.
But I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
“Don’t you have a board meeting to get to?” Abby said, her eyes on the girls, who were jumping on the trampoline. Abby saw the trampoline as a death trap. She hated it. It didn’t help that the girls were always seeing how high they could jump.
“Brad can handle it. I’m staying here.”
She looked at me. “Since when do you blow off board meetings?”
“Since I would rather spend time with my family. I’ve been busy with the club lately. Brad can handle a meeting.” I moved her on my lap. “Plus I told Tyson I would show him how to pull the motor out of his bike as soon as he is finished riding it.”
She groaned. “Great, more grease stains!”
I laughed. “Come on, babe. You wouldn’t have it any other way.”
She looked me in the eye and smiled. “You’re right. I wouldn’t. I might see if Kim and Trigger will come over, then. She is panicking, coming up to labor.”
“She’ll be fine.”
“I told her that. Still, can you imagine Trigger and Kim as parents?” She smiled. “It’s going to be one eventful summer.”
“You’re just excited to be an aunt.”
“Yep.” She linked her hands around my neck. “But not nearly as excited as I was to become a mom.”
I smiled at that. Then I kissed her and, like always, it sent a rush of excitement and lust through my blood. I never thought I would get a wife and family. I always thought I would be by
myself for the rest of my life.
Then I met her.
And I didn’t know what I was missing till I got her. Now she had given me three perfect children and I still loved her more than humanly possible.
The End.
