Page 46 of Everlasting

“What?” What the fuck did he mean by that? The day Ever stopped begging to see me… I couldn’t even grasp that concept.

“You heard me. A woman, even as in love with her man as she seems to be with you, has limits. You’re testing her right now and she’s eventually going to break.”

“Ever is a strong woman. I’m sure she knows, deep down, that I need time.”

“Have you stopped to consider what she needs?” He asked me and for some reason it made me angry.

“What she needs?” I asked, and there was venom in each word. “She wasn’t the one held hostage, drugged, abused, and…” Shit! I couldn’t say the last part. I only had vague nightmares of it actually happening, and I wasn’t sure if that was all it was or if they were memories trying to surface. “She was tucked up here, all cozy like, while those things were happening to me. If anyone should have some goddamn understanding in this situation, I’d think it should be her.”

“Really? That’s interesting because I would think that it should be the both of you. The fact that she leaves here every day, devastated, disappointed, and heartbroken means she’s been understanding. The fact that you’ve sent her away without even being able to see you, the fact that you’ve been given a cell phone for a means of communication and haven’t used it to reach out to her means you’re the asshole here, not her.”

“Are you fucking serious right now?”

“As a damn drug addict in a room full of blow!” He shouted at me. “You don’t think she suffered while you were gone?” I just glared at Durbin as his bald head turned a slight shade of pink. “I’m guessing your little MC brothers are protecting you from what she went through. Well, I won’t. Nope. I’m not giving you excuses to pity yourself because no one is giving her that option. She hasn’t curled up in a dark room and refused to look life in the face again. That’s all you.”

If I had a gun in that moment, I would have shot the fucker between the eyes.

“Let me tell you what happened while you were away. Your wife, the one you left behind with twin daughters and a baby in her belly, had to explain to those daughters that their daddy was working and couldn’t come home. While she was worried about you and losing her mind over what you might be going through, she was being questioned by those sweet girls. Every. Single. Day.”

I didn’t say a word, just pictured Amber and Ashton asking Ever over and over where I was, and my heart ached with the sound of it.

“She was pregnant too, so her emotions were in overdrive while that was happening. Then, she had to go to doctor appointments without you. She refused to learn the sex of your baby without you. She waited, hoping every day, all the way up until the birth of your son that you would make it back in time to find out with her.” I swallowed at the lump in my throat, trying to get it to go down, but Durbin pressed on. “Your wife received pictures from Sasha while you were away.”

“What?” I asked, panic settling in my bones.

“Yeah, the boys didn’t tell you?” He asked in that assholish manner Durbin had when he had a fucking point to make. “She received pictures of you and Sasha in bed together. Those first shots were easy for her to blow off though. They could see that you were beaten, possibly drugged out of your mind, and from what they told me, she didn’t let it rattle her. Make no mistake, asshole, your wife was rattled seeing those pictures. How could she not be? Even if her brain allowed her to take the woman out of the equation, she wouldn’t be able to unsee the way you were obviously suffering.” He turned then and opened an envelope, searched through it, and then tossed a couple 8x10 images on the bed beside me. “That’s what she saw, the first-time pictures showed up.

I wanted to fucking cry, kill someone, hell I wanted to punch myself in the fucking face for ever ending up in a situation where Ever had to see something like that.

“It didn’t stop there though. Three more times she was sent pictures of you with another woman. In some of them, it was obvious you were still being treated poorly. After I cleaned you up and Sasha got a hold of you again though…” he shook his head as he slid the rest of the images out and handed them over to me.

I shuffled through them, looking at them as if I were Ever. As if I were the woman worried her husband might come home in a casket. Then I realized that she probably had at least a moment or more where she debated whether I’d choose to stay away and she’d have to live with the fact that I was out there, still alive, and had simply fallen for someone else. On first look, there was one image that stood out. I was sleeping in a bed and my hand was stretched out, cradling another woman’s pregnant belly. That one. That one image had to have broken my wife in some way. I knew that as surely as I knew I needed to breathe air to live.

“It doesn’t end there, with those pictures though, Deck. Her suffering?” He questioned and waited until I glanced up, eyes barely able to focus on the man because of the tears swimming in them. I didn’t care if he saw them or not though. Durbin had seen me at my absolute worst. He could have my emotions too. “She gave birth to your son without you there.” He cued up a video that was shot from the door of the birthing suite. Whoever had taken the video, she hadn’t known they were there. She was begging Lucy, the doctor, nurses, anyone who would listen to please make it stop that she couldn’t do it without me. My heart fucking shattered listening to her, begging for them to stop her labor.

“I get it!” I shouted at Durbin as I swatted the phone away from my face.

“Not yet, you don’t. Because your wife? She wasn’t done suffering.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Your son spent his first two weeks without a name, did you know that?”

“What the hell?”

Durbin nodded his head at me. “Yeah, poor girl, refused to name him until you were here to agree to whatever she had picked out. I guess you guys hadn’t agreed on names yet before you were nabbed. When her family finally convinced her to name him, she did, and just a month and a half later, your wife had to bury her mother, the one person she leaned on the most. Your girls understood loss then and started asking her all the time if they had to put you in the ground too or if you were really coming back.”

“Lucy?” I questioned. “Lucy’s gone?” Durbin nodded. “No one said anything to me.”

“You’re not exactly taking a whole lot of visitors, now are ya? Your woman, the one you keep turning away because you think you need to suffer alone with what happened to you? You’re still putting her through this shit. In her world, you’re still out there, lost, and she’s still concerned you’re never coming back to her.” He stood and pointed to the door, but that wasn’t enough, so Durbin moved to it, opened the damn thing and there stood an angry, red-faced Kane staring at me. It was obvious he was listening to everything. “You know why he’s here, standing outside your door?” He asked and all I could do was shake my head. “Because someone in this fucking club of yours is a rat and the same woman you keep tossing away, the same one you keep forsaking in favor of your own misery, she set up a goddamn security watch for you with people SHE trusted. They’re here to make sure no one comes in and tries to steal you away or off you in retaliation for the club taking Sasha and killing her little brother.”

I knew the club had Sasha hidden away somewhere. They were waiting to make her pay until she could deliver the baby. It made my stomach roll to think that the reason they had to wait was because that kid might be mine. “You need to pull your fuckin’ head out of your ass, and soon!” Kane seethed the words through his teeth, but before I could respond, Durbin had shut the door again.

“Your brothers love you, but right now, they respect your woman more,” he told me and then he threw some fresh clothes at me. “Get yourself cleaned up, and do yourself and your family a favor, when she comes back today… If she comes back today,” he amended, and that alteration broke something loose inside of me. “Be prepared to face your cowardice and let her in.

Chapter 28

The Test

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