“Stay there. We need to talk,” he commanded, and Lottie stood beside him with her hand on his shoulder, trying to calm him down.
“It was Tommy’s, wasn’t it? You know, the guy you were supposed to be working with professionally. The older guy, who is my fucking age. He got you pregnant, didn’t he?”
I’d had enough of this. I wasn’t a high school girl. I was an adult and none of this was his business.
“What went on between me and Tommy is my business. He doesn’t know about any of this and if you must know, he put a stop to it. And I’ll thank you to stop referring to my dead fucking fetus as ‘it’.”
“Well he knows now, Lacey, seeing as I exploded when I realized you’d borrowed my wife’s shoes to fuck him in.” I looked down at Lottie’s feet and felt shame and embarrassment coloring my face.
Looking away from her feet quickly, I tried to get this under control. “We’re both adults. We didn’t do anything wrong,” I protested.
“He’s my fucking age. Shit, he was my friend,” he shouted back.
“Don’t throw that crap at me. If we’re talking about relationship fuck ups then let’s talk about yours. You know that whole fake dating crap. Oh no, wait, let’s go one better. Let’s talk about foster brother and sister hooking up.” Lottie sucked in a shocked mouthful of air. “Don’t you dare judge me.”
After I finished my tirade, I stormed from the living room, up the hall and grabbed my car keys from the wall hanger. Shoving my feet in my outdoor boots, I headed outside to Tula, still dressed in my PJ’s and robe.
I needed to get to Tommy and make sure he was okay. This whole thing had gotten really out of hand and the least I could do was explain it to him and finally put an end to all this shit, close that door and put an end to the past.
I wanted one thing and one thing only—closure.
Tommy Sevens
I was nursing a bottle of JD when the knocking started at my front door. I ignored it until it grew louder and more persistent.
“It’s fucking open,” I shouted.
Lacey rounding the corner from the hallway was not what I was expecting. She wandered in and perched nervously on a chair next to me.
“Tommy, I’m sorry about tonight.”
“Just tonight? Honestly, I am not in the fucking mood for this.”
“Yeah, well you weren’t in the mood the other night when I tried to tell you either.”
“Did you know?” I needed to understand.
“No, not until it was too late and I had already lost my baby.”
“Your baby?” I questioned, piercing her with a look that should have made her shake in her boots.
“Well, you didn’t want me so I figured the same rules would have applied. I would have done it on my own.”
“Nice. You thought you’d let some other schmuck take the heat for getting you pregnant. Would you really have done it on your own or would you have kept up the lie if you hadn’t lost it?” I silently begged for an answer that wouldn’t gut me, but her response took all too long.
“You’ve made it clear I’m not good enough for you, so why would I want to force you into being part of an unwanted baby’s life, too.”
I looked over at her, trying to place what the fuck was going on in her head.
“You honestly believe that? You’ve seen what missing out on one child’s life has done to me. You seriously think I wouldn’t have wanted to be involved? You are fucking deluded,” I said, shaking my head.
“You’re right. You and me, we’d never have worked out because you see me as some little fragile girl. Well I’m not. I would have loved my baby like I wanted to love you and Carly, but now you can be relieved that the situation resolved itself before you had to get involved.”
With tears streaming down her face, she got up and walked out, leaving me with a bruised face, a bottle of JD and a big fucking hole in my heart.
An hour later, I was steadily doing a magician’s act on the JD. I heard boots coming down the hallway and was more than surprised to see Jonas Drakeson sit his ass down in the chair not long vacated by Lacey.
“I wish I’d locked the door but I doubt that would’ve kept you out.”
“Probably not,” he replied, crossing a booted foot over his knee and sitting back.
“Your baby brother already took his shot. Seems he is old enough to deal with punishment.”
“I know. I’m not here for that, although I probably still owe you a punch to the head for Dolly.”
“Still with the Dolly shit.” I laughed. “You fucking got your woman and you got your kids. Hook line and sinker, my friend,” I said sarcastically. “You hit the jackpot.”
“Ah, so we’re drowning our sorrows about what we’ve lost. Makes sense, but which loss are we referring to?”
There were times it was blindingly obvious why nearly everyone misunderstood this fucker. He was always seen as a rebellious teenager growing up, but he never did anything without a purpose. It had been his ability to share his purpose so that others could understand that caused him problems in the early days. Imagining him on some covert operation wasn’t hard. He would have been given the desired outcome, come up with a plan and executed it. He would have worked on a need to know basis and done it with pure shock and awe. That was exactly what this guy was—shock and awe—and that was why he was here now.
“I lost my family once and finding another one was like a gift from the Gods. We’re not that different, you and me.”
“Is that so?” I mumbled, waiting for the point to his impromptu visit.
“Yeah, we both had shitty childhoods and we both made the most of our lives. We both fell in love with someone we shouldn’t have.”
I snapped my head in his direction. The fucker was daring me to deny it. Was that what was really going on? Had I been so consumed by denying Lacey because of the way we got together that I didn’t see it?
“You’re not denying it, Tommy.”
“I haven’t fucking agreed with you either.”
“The way I see it is probably a little more extreme than you. I’ve seen the worst of the world and questioned humanity more times than I care to think of, but the one thing I always expected to be there and shine through the darkness of my life was Dalton. Whether she was mine or not, I expected her goodness to bring me home. I nearly lost her. Some skank I let into my life nearly took hers and that of my girls. So I get where you’re at now. You love someone you shouldn’t and you lost something you would have cut your own arm off to love and protect. What you do about it now, though, is on you.”
I looked back over in his direction, letting my mind follow the possibility that this ass who usually hated me could be right.
“The question is, are you prepared to lose someone else you love? From what Jake has told me, she was in a mess and that shitty thing called fate could have made the decision for you, but for some reason you’ve been given a second bite of the cherry. If you want something, fucking take it. Don’t be like me and wait until she almost starts to believe she can live life without you. If you let her have those thoughts, you’re already nearly too late. Fuck what the world thinks. You’re here once—you should have the right to be with the person you love.”
When I looked at him, he was slightly blurred. I chugged the bottle back to try to hide some of the emotion I was feeling and didn’t answer him. Jonas knew our conversation was over. He’d made his point, and I felt him get up and walk off.
I thought about Lacey and all that she was—young and vibrant, caring and compassionate, and not least of all, genuine with her emotions. To know that we’d created something that would have been a part of her was equal parts beautiful and devastating. It happened but it wasn’t meant to be. I’d broken her and sent her on her way when all she wanted to do was try to be with me. She’d tried to talk to me about our baby twice and I was vile to her both times. To know she’d been lying on a floor somewhere bleeding out the magic we’d created was upsetting
for me so I couldn’t imagine what she was suffering through now. The times I’d spent in her company had been electrifying and I never knew what was around the corner, what words would come out of her mouth next and what feeling she’d drag out of my body.
Seeing her devotion towards Carly was just another simple indicator that she was a good person. My girl had been raised in some shitty conditions and instincts had become second nature. I remembered that feeling well. At those times in your life, your gut feeling is all you have to survive on. Understanding the bond my daughter had formed with Lacey should have told me everything I needed to know. Lacey loved her with her whole heart. It was pure and she’d formed that bond of trust with Lacey before.
The way we’d discovered each other was wrong, but that didn’t mean that what we had wasn’t right.
I thought back to her actions tonight. Empty in both body and emotion, she’d come here to say that she was sorry.
She. Was. Sorry.
What the fuck did she have to be sorry for?
I’d let her down. I’d had my fill of her, sucked her dry during our sexual adventures and then kicked her to the curb. I’d been man enough to plant my seed in her, but she hadn’t seen me as man enough to stand up and be counted when she needed me most. She saw some jock—Jake, a college playboy—as more of a man than me. That itself spoke volumes.
Looking back at our brief encounters together, we’d never lied to one another, but still, I knew I got all of Lacey while I had definitely been holding back. I’d never felt as connected to another person as I did to her. Having her here with Carly made the house come alive. She made it feel like a home. They weren’t just walls and sticks of furniture; they were comfort and security, and they were breathed into this place when she became a part of it. When fate delivered me Carly, Lacey became part of that package.
To accuse her of intentionally keeping me in the dark was wrong. I knew Lacey didn’t have that in her. The purest of souls could never be that callous, but the words that haunted me the most from her apology were when she’d said she wanted to love both Carly and me. She saw us as a unit, a family, and was willing to throw herself into that to be with me. Lacey knew the challenges we would face and didn’t care. What mattered to her was that we were both in it. It was me who held her back from that, me who couldn’t see the light through the darkness like Jonas had mentioned.
All. Me.
I made a crazy decision, a fucking impulsive one that was going to take some serious effort to follow through on. I was going to go for it. I was going to fucking take it and get the only girl who had ever made me feel like I was worth something. I was desperate to see her, right then. I needed to tell her that I’d made a mistake and changed my mind. The desire to look her in the eyes and let all the doubt bleed out of my system was immense, but I couldn’t go over there right now. I wasn’t fit to drive, and losing my license through a DUI would mean the loss of my business and my home. I reached for the only option available to me because I just had to do something to calm the need I had to communicate with her.
Me:
As sick as it sounded, I prayed that she was still upset. If she was, she’d still be awake and she’d answer. Knowing that she was in pieces over everything that had transpired between us was bittersweet. I hated that I’d done that to her and I loved that she cared enough to be that distressed by it.
Lacey:
Shit.
Me:
Lacey: < That’s the thing with you, Tommy, you don’t get that sort of thing wrong. Let me be. I need to move on.>
I was right. She was hurting and I had no right to expect anything less, but her moving on wasn’t a fucking option.
Me:
I gripped the phone in my paws like it was a hand grenade with a missing pin. The anticipation of her response was like a bomb and the response was going to be explosive either way. I was praying she’d forgive me, at least give me the chance to see her, rather than the other kind of explosion, a final ending. When the phone vibrated in my pocket, I blew out a stressed mouthful of air and pulled my shit together, just so I was brave enough to read it.
Lacey:
I read it over and over. It was the bad kind of explosion, the one where you know you need to do something, but doing the wrong something could bring the house down further. I knew then I couldn’t continue this by text, but I would continue it.
I just needed a little help.
Tommy Sevens
“Did you have fun at Tara’s?” I asked Lacey as she came through the front door. Tara had just run her home.
I didn’t reply to Lacey’s last text. I left her alone and went and got my head down for a few hours. If I was going to bring my A game, I needed to do it with a level head, not looking like some street corner wino. My head was bumbling with how the hell I was actually going to pull this off, though. I’d hurt that girl deep and wasn’t really known for winning over girls I’d used, knocked up and then coldly kicked to the curb. Call me stupid, but I only had two things going for me. The first was that I thought we both still had the same feelings for each other. Jonas had opened up a thought process that I was refusing to ignore. And secondly, my main advantage, I had Carly. She was the ace up my sleeve, the one thing I knew Lacey wouldn’t refuse, and I was desperate enough to go there.
The only stumbling block would be if Carly wasn’t down with my feelings for Lacey. After all, they were friends and I knew teenage girls could be protective over that shit, so running with the theme of honesty Carly and I had begun our relationship with, I planned to spell it out for her and ask for both her approval and her help.
“The night was good. She introduced me to a Tara special. You know…”
“Yep, the double burger with a layer of slaw in between and an outer layer of grilled cheese on each burger bun. You ate that?”
“I did, and then we polished off a tub of peanut butter cup ice cream while watching reruns of Happy Days,” she told me, throwing some of the dirty clothes from her overnight bag into the laundry room. “How was your night?”
“Enlightening. Can we talk?”
I watched as she slowed down her activity and looked at me with concern. “Sure.”
I took a seat on the sofa and waited for her to join me. “This is gonna be awkward, but firstly I need you to know where my head’s at and then I’m hoping you’ll help me.” Was I really about to do this, have a heart to heart with a teenager? “I’ve kind of been avoiding someone lately. Our friendship got blurry and out of control, then I messed it up even more, then some other things happened and I think I’ve made a huge mistake.”
“Would this be why your face is bruised?”
“One of the reasons. Although, just to clarify, I hate fighting and I deserved it. So here goes…” I took a deep breath. “I’ve got feelings for someone and that someone may or may not feel the same way. I think I’ve messed it up and I want them back in my life, our lives.”
“And Lacey doesn’t feel the same way?” When she replied with those words, a feather could have taken my feet out from beneath me. “Don’t look so shocked, Dad. I’ve been taking notice of people’s feelings for a while. You saw where I lived. It helped keep me safe.”
“God, I hate that you went through that.” It was just another despicable reason to add to the ‘I wish Gloria and Maisie were dead’ list. The beauty of youth was the ability to love and trust unconditionally, yet it seemed both of us had been robbed of that innocence by the same monsters. “I never meant for it to happen, truthfully. Lacey and I barely acknowledged each other before you came along.”
“So I can take all the credit for helping you find true love? It was fate.” Carly had a dreamy look in her eyes and it was going to be hard to calm that down.
; “Well… I think… you know… maybe you’re jumping the gun a bit.”
I watched as Carly burst out laughing. She continued to chuckle and hug her sides for a few seconds before gathering herself.
“Really, I see the difference in you when she’s around and then I saw the difference in you when we met her at the mall. No one reacts like that if they don’t care deeply about somebody.”
“Care deeply. Yes, let’s go with care deeply. I can work with that compromise. The thing is, there’s a little bit more. I haven’t been able to get over the age difference between us, so I probably didn’t treat her the best way. She’s been poorly, which is also my fault. I feel like I’ve let her down and the bruising is courtesy of her best friend and one of my good friends letting me know that. Are you okay with hearing this?”
“Yeah, but no icky details. Grown ups…bleh. Dad, you know I care about Lacey. She’s been the best mother figure I’ve ever had, so if you want her in our lives, I’m not going to protest.”
I knew she spotted my sag of relief. “Cool. Step one hurdle sorted. Step two is going to be a little more of a challenge.”
“Why? What’s the second hurdle?”
“Lacey,” I replied and shrugged my shoulders.
* * *
Lacey Talbot
Obviously, I did not sleep well. I was dreading facing Lottie and Oli, and with Jake clearly in the know about my sultry affair gone wrong, I could add him to the list of dread, too.
Tommy’s texts did not help either. He’d made everything perfectly clear from the start. It had always been me who hadn’t understood the full picture. Unfortunately that full picture had finally slammed into me at warp speed, coupled with a broken heart and a hospital stay. If Tommy was the adult and I was the immature little girl then I shouldn’t have needed to tell him that we were better off letting things stay as they were. He should have seen the pass he was being given and swallowed it up whole.
I got dressed and wandered downstairs. The atmosphere in the kitchen was oppressive and I could feel it before I actually got in there. As I went to amble through the doorway, a knock at the front door redirected my path.
Deserved Page 17
