Page 37 of A Love So Hard

I chuckled at that. “I’m better than batman,” I told him. Fuck if that guy in tights was gonna steal my heroic thunder from my kid.

Toby looked thoughtful for a minute before he turned to gently pat his mom’s damaged cheek. “Jorwa powed my mom right hewa.” At my puzzled look Lucy translated. “Jordan hit me right here,” she managed with a sad smile.

“He’s never going to do it again,” I promised. “Should have never had a chance to do it to begin with.” I flash of guilt swam across Lucy’s face, and I didn’t want that for her. “I don’t blame you at all considering what you thought sent you running and what you were told after. I do blame some other people though.”

“I can’t believe he’s not my real father. No one ever said a word to me. I could maybe understand when I was younger, but I’m 24 years old. How could they not tell me?”

“These are the same people who worked pretty damn hard to keep our family apart, babe. I don’t think there’s an answer in that mess that will make any sense at all.”

“What happens now?”

“We get you out of here, pack up the necessities from your house, and get you back to South Carolina. I’m going to have to leave you for a bit though. I’ll need to track down a rental truck big enough to hall my bike back along with your stuff, and seat all of us up front too.”

“You brought your bike down to pick up two people?” She laughed as she asked the question, thinking I was ridiculous.

“Babe, I brought the bike down to bring you back, but honestly, I thought you’d be riding with your dad in his truck on the way back. Never new there would be an extra person.”

“You didn’t know anything about me having a child at all?”

“They wouldn’t even tell me if you were still breathing out there somewhere until they decided to taunt me with the fact that you had moved on with someone else, and hell, that had to have been while you were pregnant.”

“I didn’t meet Jordan until after Toby’s first birthday. He moved in next door to me when my friend moved out.” I nodded, because what could I say? I’d been with another woman once since she left, and I honestly couldn’t remember much of that interaction beyond the guys ribbing me about the fact that I apparently busted up a marriage in doing so.

PeeWee’s brother got a divorce and got shy of that woman as quickly as he could after coming to collect her from the clubhouse. I hadn’t heard anything from or about the woman since. Hell, I didn’t even know her name since PeeWee wouldn’t call her anything but ‘that cunt’ when she was brought up. It gutted me that while that was the extent of my post-Lucy sex life she had been in a relationship with another man. Knowing that they lived next door to one another and so might as well have been living together for all the access he probably had to her was seriously fucking with my head. If I didn’t already want to kill him for laying a hand on Lucy – I’d definitely want to kill him for thinking he could touch what was supposed to be mine all along.

Lucy had to stay in the hospital for another night, and I called in some favors from our Tallahassee Chapter to have them sit on her house and wait to see if the asshole showed up since Lucy said he had a key. My brothers were instructed to detain him if they found him, but also to ensure the fucker didn’t mess with any of Lucy’s things. It turned out that it didn’t matter, because the police showed up in the morning wanting to talk to Lucy. They attempted to kick me out of the room for the discussion, and I wasn’t having it. When Lucy explained I was the father of her little boy they quieted down a bit.

“Ma’am, Jordon Ashburn is currently under arrest, though he has a room on the floor below this one currently. He was found beaten, near to death, though the person responsible was not apprehended.” They both glanced at me then, as if I was going to incriminate myself.

I just grinned at them. “Wasn’t me. You can check the cameras. I haven’t left this room all night.” They both ducked their heads in acknowledgment of my statement and turned back to Lucy, but I interrupted them before they could get started again. “If you find out who did beat his ass, let me know so I can congratulate them on a job well done, yeah?”

The younger cop had a hard time swallowing the laugh that had almost spilled forth while the other just gave me a look that said he was tired of my shit already. Oh fucking well.

“Is she going to have to come back to testify?”

“It shouldn’t be necessary, but make sure the District Attorney has her information for where she can be reached in case things change. The man was mumbling about how he didn’t mean to hurt her, he even named Lucy, so that will be used as a statement of admission.

The younger cop showed me something strapped to his chest. “Our department is doing a flagship testing of these body cams. It’s a bit clunky, but Mr. Ashburn’s statement was recorded with one.”

“Good to know,” I insisted. The cops wrapped up what they had to say to Lucy and left just as quickly as they’d arrived.

“I guess that’s good news. I shouldn’t have to worry about him coming to look for me any time soon.”

“Sweetheart, you don’t have to worry about him coming for you ever again. I promise the minute he’s released from jail – if he makes it out of the hospital – he’ll be watched.”

She nodded her head and then tears fell from her face. I wasn’t sure what those tears were all about, but I didn’t like seeing them. “I didn’t know,” she finally sobbed out.

“Didn’t know what? That he was a dick who had no problem beating on a woman? Most women don’t know until something like that happens.”

She shook her head in the negative though. “No, I meant, I didn’t know about you. I didn’t know that you hadn’t wiped your hands clean of us. This,” she offered up her face in a quick gesture, “doesn’t hurt near as much as feeling like I was the one who moved on. I didn’t do more to check for myself. I thought I could trust my father.” She choked back another violent sob. “I thought he was my father. I thought I could trust him. I loved him so much and he took everything from me.”

“Fuck!” I hissed out. What was I supposed to do with that kind of hurt and betrayal? Sure, I wanted to kill the man for the shit he’d done, but she just learned her entire life had been a lie and that she had in fact met her real father before and he’d continued the lie too. Then top all that off with the bullshit done to keep us apart, and yeah, it was a lot more than a beating she took. That was physical. It sucked, but it would heal. The shit her father had put her through, the lies her family told, and that was the kind of thing that damaged a person at a soul-deep level.

Once back in South Carolina I hesitated momentarily, unsure of where to take Lucy and her son. My son. Jesus. That was going to take some getting used to. I obviously couldn’t take them to her parent’s house. The clubhouse was nothing more than shitty reminders of how our past got so fucked up, and then there was…

I turned left instead of right going in the opposite direction of the clubhouse. Lucy eyed me warily for a moment. She must have thought I was taking her to her parent’s house. I didn’t say a word otherwise, just continued on until we turned again, in the opposite direction from the home she’d grown up in. “Where are we going?”

“Somewhere you won’t be found unless you want to be,” I explained without really explaining. It only took about fifteen more minutes and we pulled up to the driveway of a four bedroom, two bathroom house in North Charleston that I had purchased almost four years ago. I got it for a steal considering it boasted almost 3,000 square feet of living space. It was a gorgeous modern design with the strange angles that Lucy seemed to love the few times I’d taken her out looking at places.

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