Page 10 of Everlasting

I still can’t believe you’re gone, again. They managed to drive you away and I’m here holding my heart in my hands and the damned thing is bleeding out before my eyes. The things they did to me… it’s probably best I only have a foggy recollection thanks to the drugs they pumped me with. I wish you had waited around just a minute for someone to explain what happened. Can’t say that I blame you for your instant reaction though. It had to be heartbreaking to see me with someone else. I swear to you though, it wasn’t by choice, baby.

See, I had something planned for you that night. I had a kutte done up for you with my property patch and a ring…

I wanted you to be mine in every way, Luce. Kids. Dreaming of kids with you, and watching your body grow with a little person we made together, had become one of my driving forces. Hell, it was all I could think about. We were going to have a boy first so that he’d be the oldest and be able to protect the little sister we’d give him later. That would round out our perfect little biker family. Hell, if you want more, I’ll give you all the kids you want. We don’t have to stop at just two. I’d do anything just to see you happy and glowing and by my side forever.

I have dreams about holding your round tummy and in them, you’re so fucking beautiful. So, goddamn beautiful it makes my chest ache with wanting the dream to come true.

Now, you’re gone again. I can’t get anyone to tell me where you are, or how you’re doing. We told your dad what really happened, but something in my gut tells me he won’t inform you of any of it. Not sure he believed us, even with evidence from the hospital that I had been drugged.

Baby, I’m not even sure I believe in God, but I’ve been praying every night. I need him to send you back to me. When you get back, we’ll start that family. Our boy is going to be the happiest little man on the planet because he’ll have you for a mom. I just know it. He’s going to flourish with you, and hopefully he’ll learn a thing or two from his Pops too. We just need you to come back for us. It’s the only way he’ll get made. It's the only way our family will become what I always dreamed of. Please, baby, be angry at the situation, but then come home to me because I didn’t do anything. Shit was done to me. I’m trying to deal with what happened.

I won’t admit this to anyone else, but I feel dirty, filthy inside and out, like I can’t get clean. I used to joke and laugh about men who claimed they were… well, who claimed certain things happened to them. “You can’t rape the willing,” I used to say. You can destroy a man who is not willing when you take that from him though. I wake up in cold sweats and I reach for you, but you aren’t there and all I can think is that it’s my punishment for being unclean now.

Maybe, even if you knew the truth, you wouldn’t want me anymore because you’d see it. The filth that stains me. I try to scrub it away, I pray, I fucking shout down the town looking for where you may have gone. I torment the fuck out of your parents, but no one will answer me. Missing you is an ache I think might just do me in some days. Knowing you may never come back to me. God baby, it fucking kills me.

Please, come home. Our boy needs us. Our daughter needs us. The family I pictured with you was so close. I could fucking feel it in my guts. I can’t lose that. I can’t lose the promise of them, but I definitely can’t lose you, my love. You’re my only, Baby. The only woman to have my heart and the only who ever will, aside from our daughter one day. I’ll keep on loving you and waiting for you to come back, Luce. No matter how long it takes. I’ll be here.

Always yours,

CJ

I set the letters on my lap and just leaned my head back and closed my eyes for a moment. There were plenty of times I felt like CJ had let me down over the years. Let the kids down even. It never really sunk in just how much my leaving had damaged him though. He went through being raped and having to deal with the aftermath and everything it cost him, and I wasn’t there to help make it better. I was part of the cost, part of his suffering instead. My heart hurt for the younger CJ. The one who wrote that letter was devastated, distraught, and from the sounds of it, barely hanging on.

Maybe he would have spiraled even if I had stayed. There was no way of knowing. It did me no good to think about it either. Everything in that letter was the past.

“He dreamed of you,” I said aloud. “You were the first thought he had when it came to raising a family. A boy. His boy. The boy who would protect his sister.” I smiled as I talked to Toby. It was something I did once in a while when I was feeling lost. “You were always a part of his plan, even when he didn’t know about you.” A feeling of warmth and love swept through me as I spoke to him, and as happened sometimes, I attributed it to Toby being there, listening to me. Maybe I was just crazy or having some kind of post-menopausal hot flashes, but I chose to believe instead. My boy heard me. He knew.

“I know it’s not right to ask anything of you, but if there’s anything you can do, I need you to help your sister again. Bring Deck home to her, and if it’s not too much in the end, make sure your father makes it back to us too. We still need him. We need both of them, especially since we can’t have you.”

Chapter 10

Two Months

Ever

One glance down at my belly as I waited to be called back to my appointment had me damn near in tears. When we had the twins, Deck never missed a single appointment with me. He was so excited about getting updates about our girls that he was usually rushing me out the door and damn near giddy with excitement. This time was different. There was no Deck and I hadn’t asked anyone else to go with me, unlike the last time when I still had more hope that he would be found before he missed more than the one appointment. Two months had gone by. This was the second one without him there with me, and holding back the tears was becoming harder and harder. Holding on to hope that we would ever recover him was just as difficult a task.

“Your blood pressure is a little higher than I’d like for it to be,” Doc Middleton mentioned as he glanced from the chart where the nurse had written that information and then back up to me. Doc was a trusted extended family member of the club considering he was Trunk’s uncle and he had also delivered most of the club’s babies. I liked him because he looked like a damn biker when not at work. His dirty blond hair hung past his shoulders normally, though he wore it pulled back in a ponytail or man bun while at work. The soulful green eyes that sat behind a pair of sturdy black-framed glasses noticed everything too. Hell, he noticed too much.

“I’m fine,” I insisted.

“Is Deck still…” Doc left his words hanging in the air as if speaking the truth out loud would make it hurt more. While he wasn’t privy to everything going on with the club, he knew enough, and I was comfortable with talking to him about it too.

“No word. None that’s real or that matters anyway,” I amended thinking back to the package that had been waiting for me on the front steps of my porch when I left for my appointment. It was probably also the reason my blood pressure was slightly elevated. I was pissed the hell off and saddened by the fact that my husband couldn’t be here with me once again because some psycho woman seemed to think she had a fucked up claim on him while he was a prisoner of The Trinity Group.

In the latest round of pictures that had shown up, the woman was lying naked next to Deck. He was also naked, though I could see bruises on his body. The words written across the image this time, “I told you he’s mine. Stop looking!” Never in my life had I wanted to hurt a bitch to the point of caving in her skull. Even when we found out about Seneca and what she’d done, I had felt that revenge was owed to Gretchen more than me. This was beyond personal though. The woman was taunting me with these photos. She was trying to tear down our relationship so we would give up on him. What she didn’t realize was that she was kicking the hornet’s nest and I was coming out ready to sting.

Deck’s eyes were barely even slits in the photos and it hadn’t escaped my notice that there were marks in his arms. Marks that meant he was probably being drugged up. He was also a lot thinner. The images were clearly in a different room than the others had been taken in, and it made me wonder if he had been moved or if they were just in a different room in the same place. Either way, once my appointment was finished, I would be headed to the clubhouse to get some fucking answers from someone. I would also be turning the images over to the women of the S.H.E. MC. I’d given Deck’s club all the leeway I was planning on giving. They hadn’t kept their promise to me to bring him home, and two months was two months too long in my opinion. There was no telling what was happening to my husband while he was a prisoner of those people. It was obvious he wasn’t being cared for well. He was being drugged. He was obviously being manipulated and manhandled by this woman, whoever she was. I didn’t even want to think about what else she might be doing to him. The pictures were clearly staged, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t taking advantage of his drugged-out state. My stomach lurched and churned at the thought.

A warm hand gently squeezing on my forearm brought me back to my current reality. “Ever, I asked if you wanted to know today?”

“I don’t.”

“Still hoping he’ll be back to find out with you?”

I nodded my head in the affirmative. If Deck couldn’t find out the sex of our child, then I didn’t want to do it without him either.

“Okay then. Everything is measuring to date. You need to get plenty of rest and try to get that blood pressure down.”

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