Chapter 1
Letters
Lucy
My Dearest Lucy,
This is the final one, love. I feel it in my bones. When I go out there this time, I don’t think I’ll make it back to you. I need you to be all right with the sacrifice though because I owe it to Ever. I owe this to our baby girl, the one I failed for too many years. I owe it to you too, sweetheart. You should never have had to watch me fail at being a man, a father, a husband even. You did though. You not only witnessed my ultimate failures; you were there to pick up the pieces and to keep me together for all the years after, when the weight of my guilt threatened to pull me under.
I never want to be one to rush you, but I’ll be waiting somewhere beyond all of this, for you to join me once more. You take your time though, babe. Spend every minute you can soaking up those moments you cherish with our grandbabies. Hug my girls a little tighter for me since I won’t be there to do it any longer. Give them all the rest of what you have left before you come to me. I will be waiting.
I will never be done loving you, my beautiful Lucy! Never.
CJ
The paper was tracked and stained by tears before I was done reading it. I knew I wasn’t meant to read it yet. We hadn’t heard anything. When Merc told me about the boxes that were hidden in the garage, I couldn’t help myself though. I had to go take a look. He had written to me. Oh, my God, but the man had written boxes worth of letters to me that I had never read. Not a single one. I had been curious about what they all said right up until I read the first line of the last letter he placed in this box. He didn’t plan on coming home. My heart squeezed painfully in my chest as I tried, and failed, to catch my breath.
“You can do right by her without dying, CJ,” I called out into the echoing darkness of the garage I was sitting in. My husband thought he had to be a martyr to finally earn his daughter’s approval. He didn’t understand that if he was, he would never know how she felt about him because he wouldn’t be here any longer to gain that closure from her. It was a closure he didn’t really deserve. He had screwed up with her for years. I often wondered if things would have been different between them if I hadn’t changed my ways so early on. If I hadn’t realized she was innocent in everything her mother had done, in the circumstances that led my love to having a child with someone else, would he have continued to protect her from me and formed the bond that they needed so desperately to form?
I had no way of knowing that. It did none of us any good to think about it anyway. I knew my own heart. There’s no way I could have continued to be the evil stepmother in that child’s life under any circumstances. Besides, I was sure that my initial reaction had been the reason CJ pulled away from her. Then the crap his brothers spouted about her being from that evil bitch’s loins didn’t do any favors. It was my one regret for sticking by his side where the club was concerned. It was the only time I understood why my mother had chosen the life she did. The club, for all it’s good, was capable of great evil too. I tucked the letter back inside the box, knowing this was not where I needed to start. I moved them all around and pulled out the one that appeared to be older than the rest. Each letter had been dated on the outside. I found what I was looking for easily enough. They were the letters he wrote me when I left for Florida to take care of my grandmother, and to hide from what I thought he’d done.
“What are you doing?” The voice that I knew belonged to Merc caught me by surprise so much that I nearly dropped the box. “You shouldn’t be reading those,” he admonished.
“Why not? According to his last letter he doesn’t expect to come home. Seems the perfect time to read them to me.”
“Lucy, he’s coming home, I promise you that.”
“You can’t promise me that! You can’t know! If you could know things like that, then my boy would still be on this Earth.”
“Luce,” he whispered quietly as he came to me and pulled me into his arms. He held me tightly to his body as I sobbed my grief, both old and anticipated.
“We’ve already lost so much,” I whispered.
“That’s how I know we’re not losing any more.” Merc took my cheeks into his hands and tilted my face so that I had no choice but to look him in the eyes. “I’m going. I’ll bring back your man and my boy. We aren’t losing anyone else.”
“You can’t,” I whispered, unable to find more of a voice through the glut of emotions trapping the words inside me.
“I can. I am. I will do what I’m promising you. I’m bringing my boy back to Ever. I’m bringing your man back to you. You’re right, you’ve lost too much.” He glanced over his shoulder then toward the door that led to the house. “J-Bird is here, and he brought his woman with him. She brought her new family to take our backs.”
I realized who was standing in the doorway to my house then. Jamie Murdock, the President of the Sierra High Evermore Motorcycle Club. I grinned. “You know it’s bad when they let the women come in to save the day,” I managed to get out. I tried for a teasing tone, but failed miserably, ending in a hiccup of emotion that startled both Merc and I.
“Come on, let’s get you inside,” Merc told me as he started to tug gently on my arm, while his other wrapped around my body to hold me together as we moved. I kept the box clutched tightly to my chest and refused to put it down. Luckily, Merc gave up trying to dissuade me from reading the letters.
Chapter 2
Missing
Ever
My baby girls stood there watching me as I leaned over the sink trying my best to unclog the drain. “Momma, when is Daddy coming home?” Amber asked me in her sweet little voice.
“I’m not sure baby, he’s off doing something for the club.” I hated telling them I didn’t know because it was club business. Truthfully, I didn’t know because Deck hadn’t been sure how long it would take. Normally, he wouldn’t have gone on a run like this for the club at all. It was a special deal though, and the club decided unanimously, on a national level, that the Presidents of each chapter would handle the last run they had for some mob-like organization known as The Trinity Group. No, I wasn’t supposed to know anything about that. I did though, because Deck and I didn’t have any secrets. It was our one rule. We would not allow the club to destroy us the way it had ruined or disrupted our loved ones lives over the years.
I grunted as I tried again to loosen the damn piece holding the pipe in place. “Jesus,” I grunted loudly. “This thing is really on there.”
“Maybe you should wait for Daddy,” Ashton called out.
“Yeah, well, I told you girls not to use this sink until he got home and since you didn’t listen, I have to find a way to fix it so that it will drain.” I turned in time to see Ashton’s face turning red, a clear indication that she was the guilty party. She didn’t say a word, but her sister’s laughter further drove the point home about who was guilty of using the sink after I told them not to.
“You know what?” I asked the girls as I stood and brushed my hands off. “I’m going to get your Aunt Anna over here to sit with you while I go to the clubhouse and see what’s taking your daddy so long. If I can’t find him, maybe I can get Uncle Joker or Uncle Tank to come by and fix this for me.”