Page 3 of Everlasting

“And you didn’t think to tell her yourself?”

“It’s club business,” Trunk argued.

“It’s something, all right. Why don’t you just admit to her that you don’t know where Deck is, but that we’re looking for him?”

“What?” I cried out as my father finally made his way beside me.

“Double-D,” Merc hissed out in warning as he and some of the other men gathered around me. It was almost as if they were forming a protective circle to keep everyone else in the clubhouse from seeing my reaction. “Do you really think it’s wise?” He glanced toward my stomach, as if to indicate that me being pregnant meant they needed to hide the truth. I wanted to kick my father-in-law so hard in the nuts in that moment.

“I think if we just tell her it’s ‘club business,’ her mind is going to go even crazier with worry for every minute he isn’t here to calm her fears,” my father admitted before turning back to me. “We’re working on getting him back.”

“Getting him back from where?” I asked as I took in the faces of all the men that surrounded me. It should have hit me sooner that all the officers were here with the men who had retired from the club years ago. That did not bode well for my husband or my family.

“He was captured two days ago,” my dad explained.

“Captured? By whom? What the hell does that even mean? Why?”

“It was the Tallahassee Chapter’s last run for a mob-like group running guns in and out of Canada,” he whispered the information to me so that his answer wouldn’t carry beyond us. “They’re known as the Trinity Group.”

“Their last run? Why would they do something like this on the last run?”

“We think maybe to force the club to continue with their arrangement since we’ve never had a trail on our people in the ten years we ran that pipeline for them.

“Is he dead?” I asked while I tried to wrap my arms around my middle, protecting my unborn child from the news that Daddy might not ever get to meet him or her.

“NO!” My dad’s answer was adamant just as Irons popped up with, “We don’t know anything for sure.” Kane, or Irons as the guys called him now, had been with the club for several years, and had been promoted to Enforcer for the club about two years ago when the old one stepped down and retired to Florida with his ailing wife.

I glanced between the two men, waiting for one of them to clarify that statement. “We were about to meet and discuss everything,” my father admitted.

“I thought you were retired?” I asked him and glanced toward Merc then too. “The both of you.”

“Not when it comes to family,” my dad leaned in and placed a kiss on my head as he spoke the words. “We’ll bring him home to you, sweet girl, I promise!”

I scoffed a bit. There was only one person on this earth whose promises meant much to me, and that was Deck. “Find my husband,” I demanded. “You bring him home to us, no matter what.” The men standing around me all nodded their heads before they took off to the room where they held their club meetings. It’s funny that they called it church, because suddenly, I found myself praying to whatever god would listen. It was something I never did, and yet, I had this bubble of dread brewing in my belly telling me that only divine intervention would bring my man back to me this time.

Chapter 3

The First

Lucy

Instead of going backwards through CJ’s letters to me, I quickly sorted through the boxes and found the first. Then I dug down to find where it all started. I had no clue that he had been feeling the same way about me that I had about him. Not for the first time, I cursed the boy I had grown up with because his lies had kept CJ and I apart for years, and then tore us apart a second time too. I still didn’t know why a person would stoop to ruining another’s happiness like that. Jealousy was a strong motivator, I supposed. Not that it mattered. CJ and I had a lifetime together, despite the bumps in the road. That was what mattered in the end.

Lucy,

After I dropped you off that night, I went back to the clubhouse and crawled in bed with thoughts of you swimming in my head. I wanted nothing more than to wake up and go make you mine. The rules about ages be damned. We’re not that far apart. Everything about you captivates me. Your beauty, for sure, but your heart and the way you see the world around you is something else entirely. Never before have I found myself just wanting to dive into another person and never come up for air. Does that sound crazy? I’m sure it does.

The crazier thing was seeing you packing your stuff and leaving me behind without a word. What happened to send you away from me? What did I do? Was it even me? I know we haven’t been in one another’s lives very long but there’s this insane connection we share, and I felt like I lost a piece of myself as I watched you leave.

I will get to the bottom of this and I will bring you back to me. I’m embracing the crazy, baby. There’s no one else I want to spend my life wrapped around. It’s you. I knew that from the moment I saw you with your little grease-stained nose as you were tinkering around with my bike. Please, come back to me!

Yours,

Double-D

My heart ached after reading the very first letter my love had ever written for me. I wished he shared his letters with me sooner. It might have helped solidify our relationship earlier, and then maybe he would have been there to help me bring Toby into the world. I almost felt ashamed of myself for the thought, because I knew better than anyone else that we couldn’t wish the past to be different. If I did, then I was basically wishing Ever away and I couldn’t do that. She may not have been my daughter by blood, but she was mine in every other way that counted. I just had to keep reminding myself that inevitably, the bumps in mine and CJ’s road brought her into our lives. Without them, she wouldn’t be here, and I couldn’t imagine a world where she didn’t exist, or my grandbabies, for that matter.

Chapter 4

---