Fight for Me: The Complete Collection

by Jackson, A. L.

  After everything we’d shared? After everything I’d told him and he’d told me? And he’d failed to mention this?

  My mind flashed through a barrage of memories. The things Rex had eluded to. The way he’d first reacted when we’d met. The fact he’d never been with another woman after Janel left. Not until me. He’d kept warning me and warning me he didn’t have anything to give.

  Horror flooded the words. “You were waiting for her. The whole time, you’ve been waiting for her to come back.”

  Tears streaked free, and I struggled to break out of his hold. “We never even had a chance, did we?” It barely made it out over the sobs that clogged my throat. The grief that clenched my chest, making it hard to breathe. “You were always waiting for her.”

  Now she was here.

  Janel.

  Oh God.

  I pressed my hand over my mouth, trying to keep it all in. To keep from spewing the hatred that had blazed back to life the moment I’d seen her standing in his door. Tell him who she really was. What she’d done.

  But she was Frankie’s mother. How could I do that? I couldn’t be that person. One who maligned Janel’s name because she had what I wanted. Who was I to know if she’d changed? Like I’d told Rex, it’d been more than ten years.

  My spirit thrashed, rejecting that notion, convinced I knew exactly who she was. But was that because of my jealousy? Was it because she was Frankie’s mother? Because she was Rex’s wife?

  Wife.

  Nausea crawled through my senses, a sickening poison injected straight into my veins.

  Rex fumbled to get his hands back on my face, eyes so intense, his presence powering straight through my body. It only ruined me all the more. “No, Rynna. No. Fuck. Of course, we have a chance. You and me? We’re supposed to be.” His tone was despairing.

  I blinked at him, trying to make sense of the situation. To sift through every horrible emotion. My anger. My hurt. The love that shined far too bright. Trying to look inside myself and find what was right.

  But the betrayal glared, blinding. Both Janel’s and Rex’s. How could I make sense of the two? “You lied to me.”

  “No, Rynna. I was going to tell you. I promise, I was going to tell you.”

  “You had plenty of time to tell me last night. You’re married, Rex. Married, because you chose to be. Because you were waiting for her to come back to you. Oh God.” A whimper burst from between my lips.

  “I swear, Rynna, swear to you.”

  Frantically, my head shook. “You need to figure out what you want from your life, Rex, because I can’t be with you. Not when you’re with her.”

  “No,” Rex grated, shaking his head. “There’s no chance of me bein’ with her, Rynna. Not when it’s you I want.”

  “I can’t—” He cut me off with a kiss. A kiss so desperate I nearly got lost in it. I wanted to let go. Let him take me and love me and capture me. Pretend it was real. Pretend this man wasn’t married and his wife wasn’t waiting for him back at his house.

  Hands still on my face, he pulled back. “Please.”

  I gripped him around both wrists, staring at him through bleary eyes. Hot tears streaked down my face and into the webs of his fingers.

  This beautiful, intricate man who wasn’t mine.

  Misery.

  Agony.

  So much hurt.

  It whirled around us. A tornado that screamed.

  “I can’t keep you when you never really belonged to me.”

  A moan pulled from his throat, and he gripped me. His voice was a rasp. “Don’t do this, Rynna. You promised me you wouldn’t run. That you wouldn’t leave. You promised.”

  Janel’s face taunted me. The idea of her touching him. Of him touching her.

  “I can’t,” I whispered my heartbreak against the top of his head.

  He made a choking sound, as if I were causing him physical pain, before he turned and walked away. He pulled open the door, paused to look back at me, grief scored across every line in his face. “You promised you’d stay.”

  My head shook. “And I trusted you not to lie to me.”

  His throat bobbed as if he were swallowing the reality down.

  He was married, and he’d never thought it important enough to tell me.

  What did that make us?

  Then he turned and was gone.

  34

  Rex

  I had to pry myself from her, force myself to walk out her diner door when it was the last thing I wanted to do, fucking agony clamoring along behind me the whole way.

  She’d promised me.

  I stalked out into the blazing day, squeezing my eyes against the harsh reality, wondering if this was what it felt like to be eaten alive. If you could feel every part of yourself being devoured and destroyed, helpless to do anything but accept that you were getting ready to die a slow, painful death.

  Bit by bit.

  Because I was. I was fucking dying inside, all those pieces I’d offered into Rynna’s hands shriveling into nothing.

  It just left more room for the bitterness.

  More room for the anger and hate and questions to flood and inundate.

  In a daze, I climbed into the cab of my truck, slammed the door, and turned over the ignition. The engine roared. I pulled out onto the road.

  Torn.

  Wanting to turn right back around and beg Rynna, when instead I headed in the direction of my house.

  I still couldn’t believe my wife had shown up at my door.

  Fuck.

  My wife.

  I scrubbed a hand over my face like it might give me some kind of clarity when nothing had ever looked hazier.

  She was back and she wanted Frankie and me and I had no idea what to do with that.

  Reject it was what I wanted to do. Send her fucking packing so Rynna and I could get right back to where we’d been last night. Tangled and bound. Perfectly tied.

  Memories of the pledge I’d made pressed in, taunting me in the periphery of my mind, that vow I’d stood and taken.

  Could I just disregard it? Shun it? The commitment I’d made? And why did I feel even an ounce of it when she’d been the one to up and disappear?

  Motherfucking loyalty.

  She was the one who’d broken the vows we’d made. Betrayed and abandoned and deceived. I mean, fuck, I had no clue where she’d even been for the last three years. What she’d been doing. Most sickening was realizing I really didn’t care.

  But it didn’t matter anyway, did it? Rynna had made her decision. Pushed me aside just like I deserved for her to.

  God. What had I been thinking would happen when I didn’t tell her? Those words locked on my tongue like some dirty secret. Rynna had been right. I’d waited. I’d waited for years for Janel to come back. But the part Rynna was missing was she’d changed everything. Once she’d shown up, the hole Janel had left behind was no longer vacant. Not when Rynna had inhabited every inch.

  Now that space was a pit again—deeper, darker, suffocating. Nothing but a hollow chasm, sucking me down where I’d be forever falling in an endless black hole.

  I made a left onto my street. I drove passed the rows of happy houses shaded by towering trees, the perfect family neighborhood.

  Slowing, I eased into my drive, flinching at the sight of the same beat-up car Janel had taken off in three years before still sitting there. Grim and foreboding beneath the cheerful rays of summer light.

  Everything that should have been right was nothing but a contradiction.

  Because Janel returning was a prayer I wished would have remained unanswered.

  Dropping my forehead to the steering wheel, I exhaled a heavy breath before I forced myself to man up and climb out. That didn’t mean I didn’t hate every step that brought me closer, my footfalls slackened with dread.

  I slid the key in the lock and cracked open the door. There wasn’t a whole lot left but resignation when I stepped inside.

  Janel was in the kitchen, and
she whirled around, wringing her hands together and looking at me expectantly.

  I tossed my keys to the small table by the door. “You can stay,” I told her, voice hard.

  She exhaled a relieved breath and started for me. Repulsed, I gave a harsh shake of my head and took a step back. She stumbled to a quick stop. Was she actually so clueless she didn’t get why I’d push her away? Did she not grasp what she’d done?

  “You can sleep in my room, and I’ll sleep on the couch.” Might as well have spit the words at her. But I couldn’t help it. That anger was slipping and sliding, sinking in deeper, the freedom I’d found in Rynna binding me in chains.

  Disappointment flashed across her face, and she went back to twisting her fingers. I kept on, giving her what I could, feeling like I didn’t have another choice. “I don’t want you alone with Frankie.”

  “But—”

  “You don’t get a say in this, Janel. You left, and if you want to see Frankie, then it’s gonna be on my terms. Or else you can walk right back out that door.” I pointed at it, hoping she’d take it as an invitation.

  She gulped, nodding for me to continue. “Okay. I told you I’d do anything.”

  “She’s going to be confused, so you need to be respectful of that. Let her get used to you. And you’re going to have to prove to me that you actually want to be here. That you’ve changed before I can trust you with her.”

  Her blue eyes widened in sincerity, her blonde ponytail swishing as she took a surging step forward. “I will. I’ll do whatever it takes. Maybe . . . maybe I can go to work for you in the office. Do something with my hands. Show you I’m responsible. I’ve changed, Rex. I’ve changed.”

  Mine widened in disbelief. “I think you’re getting ahead of yourself, don’t you?”

  “I just want to make things right. What . . . what about us?”

  “There’s no us, Janel.”

  She stumbled over a whimper. “Because of Rynna?”

  Pain pierced me, a straight shot right through the center of my heart. I tried to hide it, but I knew Janel saw it. “It’s none of your business what I’ve got going on with Rynna.”

  “You’re my husband, Rex.”

  I stalked passed her and into the kitchen. I grabbed a beer from the refrigerator, doing everything I could to keep myself in check. “Who you left.”

  “And now I’m back. I came back to you because I missed you so much. Every single day,” she begged.

  I cringed. Didn’t want to hear it. It didn’t matter what she had to say. “It’s too late.”

  Her voice was a plea behind me. “It’s never too late.”

  35

  Rynna

  I’d thought I’d timed it right. I’d mastered peeking out the window to make sure the coast was clear before I raced from my door to my car. Making sure our paths didn’t cross.

  But there they were, Rex stepping outside and turning around to lock his door, Frankie bounding down the steps, calling my name. “Rynna, Rynna! What’s you doing? We’s goin’ to the lake. You wants to come?”

  Janel was between them, at the top of the steps. Arms crossed over her chest. A sneer on her face when she met my eyes.

  I gulped around the agony. Fumbling, I tried to hurry and unlock my SUV. I had to get away. Escape. Instead, my hands were shaking so badly I dropped my keys. They clattered to the ground. The only thing I managed was to draw more attention to myself.

  I snatched the key ring up, trying to steady myself, my heart and my hands and my voice. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Frankie.”

  “Ah, man. But I misses you.”

  I miss you. I miss you. I miss you.

  The world spun around me. A circuit of torment. I inhaled, blinked, my words barely a whisper. “I miss you, too.”

  So much.

  “Does Milo wants to come and play?”

  Behind Janel, Rex slowly turned around. His entire being flinched when he saw me, and instantly, he cast his eyes to the floorboards of his porch. As if I’d broken him every bit as much as he’d broken me.

  The hate in Janel’s expression shifted, and she looked up at him, beaming, before she set her hand on Frankie’s shoulder. “Come on, sweetheart. We’d better go before it gets too late.”

  I floundered to get into the driver’s seat before slamming the door shut. I choked back tears as I pulled out of my drive, refusing to let her see me fall apart, my teeth clenched as I took the three quick turns to get out onto the main road.

  I lost it just down the street, my eyes blurring over. I pulled into a convenience store parking lot, whipped into a parking spot, gripped the steering wheel in both hands. Head dropped. Gasping.

  He lied to me.

  Maybe this was the way it was supposed to end, anyway.

  Maybe Janel had changed. What if she was exactly what they needed? The one who would make them whole again? Who would chase away the darkness that lingered in the depths of Rex’s eyes?

  Every part of me rejected it. The fact she was Rex’s wife. That he belonged to her. Not when my heart screamed he was mine.

  * * *

  I jerked when the diner door swung open. But I wasn’t struck with the presence I’d been aching for over the last five days. Instead, I was slammed with a stark, radiating anger.

  I’d been sweeping up some of the mess left behind by the resanding of the long countertop, again looking for something to keep my idle hands busy.

  Knowing if I kept still for too long I might go insane.

  My mouth dropped open when a woman stormed into my restaurant. All bristling fire and animosity.

  She wore jeans, boots, and a flowy, whimsical blouse. Her blonde hair had been darkened underneath and curled into long waves, the woman beautiful in an earthy, natural way, aged by the faint traces of smile wrinkles at the edges of her mouth.

  But her eyes.

  Her eyes were warm and sincere, even though they were raging mad.

  Sage.

  My heart clutched.

  This was Rex’s mother.

  She crossed her arms over her chest and looked me up and down. “Well, you must be Rynna Dayne.”

  I set the broom and pan aside. I tried to straighten myself out, to keep myself from falling apart, my voice shaking when I finally spoke. “I am. You must be Jenny Gunner.”

  Still, her name tripped on my tongue.

  Standing there, she seemed to war with something, and she blew out a strained breath from her nose and lifted her chin when she came to whatever conclusion she’d been looking for. Some of that anger slipped away. “I wish we were meetin’ under different circumstances,” she said. “Honestly, I came over here thinking I was gonna knock a little sense into you for breaking my boy’s heart, but from where I’m standing, looks to me like you’re suffering from that breaking, too.”

  I choked out a laugh. Wow. She was . . . something. Confident and brazen and sweet. Country to the bone. So much like the women I’d been surrounded with all my years growing up.

  I forced myself to smile, though it came out weak. “Yeah . . . I think I’m dealing with a bit of a heart breaking.”

  A bit.

  My stomach tumbled with the shards of jagged, broken glass that coated my insides, gouging into my flesh. Deeper and deeper with each breath.

  It was a constant, excruciating pain.

  She cocked her head. “So, what’s the problem then?”

  That choked laugh turned into a cry. “What’s the problem?” My head shook, and I blinked at her through the motes that floated through the haze of light streaming in through the windows. “Rex is married. His wife is at his house right now. What kind of person would I be if I stood in the way of that?”

  I went back to the same justification I’d been trying to feed myself, the rationale that they might be better with Janel. All week, I’d been trying to persuade myself maybe it was meant to be. That it was best if I walked away.

  But I was beginning to wonder if I wasn’t trying to
cover the hurt, the fear of finding her there, and what that would mean for Rex and me. If I could ever rid her face from my mind if I ever allowed him to touch me again. Or maybe I was just afraid of facing that same kind of rejection that had chased me away in the first place.

  Jenny Gunner didn’t even hesitate. “Just the fact you’d even consider it proves to me that you are the exact kind of person he deserves.”

  For a beat, I turned away, gathering myself, before I turned back to her. “She’s Frankie’s mother, Jenny. I—”

  “You love them.” It wasn’t a question. It was a solution.

  My hands pressed against my chest. “So much. Which is why I’m willing to let them go.”

  She turned away from me and began to wander around my restaurant, her fingers tracing across the new tables that had been installed this week. Her voice dropped into a slow musing, “You know, I raised my son to be good. To respect whoever crossed his path. To honor his promises. Maybe it was because his father up and left me the second I told him Rex was on his way, but I drilled that loyalty into him so deep. And I won’t ever regret that. The man he became.”

  She turned to gaze at me from over her shoulder. “He’s a good, good man. Honorable and noble. And when he loves, he loves with all he’s got. And that love has come back to bite him in the ass time and time again.”

  She looked toward the ceiling. She inhaled deeply and a tremor slid down her spine. “When Sydney disappeared, I was terrified I wouldn’t ever see my son again. Physically, sure, he was there. But the rest of him? His amazing spirit? His smile so wide and his belief so big? It was gone. And then there was Frankie . . . Frankie Leigh. She rekindled a part of him that’d gone dim. Lit him up. He’d sacrifice anything for her.”

  She glanced back at me. “And Janel? She’s always been a sacrifice. He chose to love her because he should. And I won’t diminish that. Say it was wrong. Not when my son was tryin’ to do what was right. But the bad seed in that equation was Janel. She’s always been nothing but a leech.” She looked around the restaurant, shaking her head. “Honestly, can’t believe your grandma tolerated her so long.”