Chapter Four
Morgan
I sat at my desk, going over the accounts. I hated bookkeeping; it was why my mother worked for me when she didn’t have to. And yet, I was the one going over the numbers because she was having lunch with Beth Brewer, owner of the Main Drip coffee shop.
I dropped the papers on my desk, crossed my arms, and laid my head down. I didn’t need to do this; the paperwork could wait until my mother came back, but I was restless.
I loved Rosewood. It was an idyllic little town where everyone knew everyone else. Rosewood didn’t have strangers. We occasionally had visitors, but everyone in town was a friend.
Rosewood was safe, like an old blanket you cuddled under during a storm, or your favorite coffee cup. Everything was comfortable and familiar.
And yet, I wanted something new.
Something different.
I looked up at the knock on my door. Cynthia popped her head in.
“Are you okay in here?”
“No.” I sighed.
She stepped further into the room and said, “Why don’t you put that away and let your mom take care of it. Let’s go have lunch.”
For a moment, I stared at the paperwork in front of me. I closed my eyes and tried not to think about him. I hadn’t missed the date. I hadn’t forgotten the day my life changed forever.
“Okay,” I relented, before standing and grabbing my purse.
There were days in our lives that stood out.
Birthdays, of course. Our own, and those of the people we loved.
The day we graduated from high school and college.
I’d experienced both of those, my parents there cheering me on.
My mother screaming from the bleachers as I walked across those stages; my father silently cheering from the shadows.
Then there were other days that had more meaning. Days that were more important than anything in the past. The day you married the person you loved, and the day you gave birth to a child.
And the day you lost them both.
That day was today.
My phone rang, and I looked down and smiled.
“Sorry, Cindy, I have to take this.” I looked over at her with an apologetic smile. “Rain check on lunch?”
“As long as you promise to leave the paperwork for your mother,” she ordered. I nodded, and she slipped out of my office, closing the door quietly behind her.
“Hello,” I said, placing the phone against my ear.
“Bitch, you thought I forgot, didn’t you?”
A chuckle slipped out as tears filled my eyes. “I knew you wouldn’t forget, but you have a lot going on with those babies.”
“Babies you still haven’t met,” she grumbled.
“Soon, I promise.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she snorted, and then her voice turned serious. “How are you, really?”
“I’m okay,” I lied.
“Liar,” she accused, and I smiled. Leave it to Devlyn to always know when I needed her. Even when she was states away. “You ever going to tell me what happened?” she asked carefully.
Devlyn Never and I had been best friends since kindergarten. She knew everything about me. Well, almost everything. I’d kept a few secrets from her. The most important ones. The scariest ones. The painful ones.
And she let me keep them.
She didn’t push me to share my hurt, knowing that the day I was ready to speak, she would be the first person I told.
“Someday, maybe.”
After I graduated from the University of Arkansas, I hadn’t planned on coming back to Rosewood, not to live anyway. My life was supposed to be there, with Jude.
With our baby.
But everything changed in an instant, and I came home. That was seven years ago. September was always a hard month for me. I’d lost my husband and my son in the span of a week and was left feeling so alone.
Devlyn picked up on it right away. That first year after I came home, I was quiet. Subdued. I’d tried to put on a brave face, but Devlyn knew something wasn’t right. She’d asked me about it, and I told her it was nothing.
She didn’t press. But she never held it against me.
She stood by my side, helping me learn to live again without ever knowing why I didn’t want to.
On the first anniversary of my husband’s and son’s deaths, Devlyn held me in her arms as I sobbed on my kitchen floor.
Every year since, she planned something to keep me busy.
Getting me through my grief and never asking what caused it.
That was what a best friend did.
“You know I’m here for you. Only a phone call away, day or night.”
I laughed out loud then. “I’m sure Gator would love it if I called in the middle of the night because I couldn’t stop crying. Or worse”—I lowered my voice—“during sex.”
Devlyn cackled out a laugh. “Girl, nothing will stop that man once he gets going. Even while on the phone, listening to my best friend pour her heart out.”
“Eww.” I scrunched my nose and shivered at the thought of talking to my best friend while she was having sex with her man. “How is he surviving the healing period?”
Devlyn and Gator had triplets that were only a few weeks old. They’d been born early, but not too early as to leave us worried about their health.
Devlyn laughed again. “He’s enjoying the reprieve. I swear, pregnancy hormones are no joke, then times that by three. I don’t know how his dick hasn’t fallen off.”
I’d never experienced that. I hadn’t been pregnant long enough for the hormones to really kick in. Not that I would have had someone to maul, anyway. Jude was already gone by the time I’d lost our son.
“How are you really, Morgan?”
“I’m okay. Every year it gets a little easier.”
It was true. Every year I held it together a little stronger. Every year I made peace with my loss. The loss of my husband, the loss of my son, and the loss of the future I’d envisioned.
“This is the first year I’m not there with you,” she said quietly.
Devlyn didn’t do serious. It was why she and Gator were such a great match. They both loved to have fun and experienced life to the fullest.
I was that way once.
I shook my head. I refused to break down. Not this year. This year I would be stronger. This year I would let go of my grief a little more. I’d never forget Jude, or our baby. But I had to let them go. I had to find a way to be content with what my life was now.
“I’m okay, Dev. I promise.”
“I don’t believe you, but...” I heard the cry of a baby in the background, and my stomach clenched. My son would have been six years old this year.
“Go take care of that baby. I’ll talk to you later.” I hesitated a moment before adding, “I love you, Dev.”
“Love you too, Morgan.” Her voice was sad. I knew she’d heard me sniffling. The tears fell unbidden now.
I disconnected the call and looked out the window of my office. School had started back a week ago. He would have been in the same class as Sugar’s little boy, Sean.
Losing Jude was hard. It was a pain I wasn’t prepared for. One I never thought I’d experience. But losing my son... that ripped out my heart. A heart I no longer had.
I lived a life of fiction. Always the fun one, the one ready for a night of drinking and dancing. It was all a ruse. A mask I wore so no one would ever know what was really going on inside me.
Despair so deep I thought I’d never crawl my way out. Devlyn tried; she threw me a lifeline to hold on to, but it wasn’t enough. Nothing short of a time machine would ever be enough to heal the pain and sadness.
So I played the part of the carefree businesswoman. My mother was the bridge, the only one who truly knew what I had been through.
Except my brother knew.
A brother who held me while I cried at the loss of my husband, his best friend. A brother who saved my life when he found me unconscious and bleeding on the floor. A brother who once again held me as I cried at the loss of my son.
The last thread that held Jude to this world.
Gone.
I couldn’t protect him. I couldn’t save him. He followed his father into the afterlife. Leaving me here to pick up the pieces of my shattered heart. Some of those pieces were still in Arkansas.
Maybe that was the reason I’d never been able to move on. My heart wasn’t whole; it never would be again. I’d tried, well, sort of. I’d slept with Gunner a few times, the well-named whore of Rosewood. He was older, safer because he wasn’t looking to settle down.
Not until Sarah came along.
They were well matched, despite the ginormous age gap. Jude and I had an age gap. It was only eleven years. Sure, I was twenty-two when we married, and some people might think that was too young, but I was in love.
I was still in love.
So, I’d had a fling with Gunner, knowing there was no risk of catching feelings. No risk of giving up the love that was held so tightly by a man I would never see again.
Grabbing a tissue, I blew my nose. Then I gathered up the papers and walked to my mother’s office, leaving them on her desk. I needed to get out of here. Go somewhere quiet; somewhere I could cry and grieve.
I drove out to Rosewood Lake and parked my car. I sat there for a few minutes and stared out the windshield. There were so many things I’d wanted to do with my little family. The excitement at showing Jude my hometown had faded quickly when King stood in our small apartment and told me he was gone.
The apartment the club didn’t know about.
Because the club didn’t know about me.
I watched the breeze ripple across the water, and I cried for the days that would never come. Walking along the water’s edge, Jude and I holding the hand of a little boy who squealed when we lifted him in the air. Hearing his tiny voice yell out, “Again!”
Spreading a blanket out on the ground, a basket filled with sandwiches and drinks. Jude and I snuggled on the blanket as we watched my mother play with her grandson.
I could see it all so clearly. Our life would have been in Arkansas, but vacations would have been in Rosewood.
Summers swimming in the lake, winters skiing the slopes.
Sitting by the fire in the Rosewood Lodge, talking with friends.
Sharing memories of my childhood with him.
Then retiring to our room, spending the evening in each other’s arms.
Maybe by now our son would have had a little brother or a sister. It was a fantasy. One I’d clung to for so long. One I’d held in my hands for a few short months. A fantasy that had vanished in the blink of an eye with an explosion, and a life-threatening complication no one could have predicted.
Seven years.
Two thousand five hundred and fifty-five days of grief that never faded. Pain that never receded, and wounds that never healed.
Healing that would never come.
How did you heal from losing the love of your life? How did you heal from losing a child you never got to hold? How did you go on living after your life ended?
These were questions I’d been trying to answer since I left the hospital. Since I’d come home to Rosewood. I tried; I really did. I started my business; I spent time with friends.
But the pain was always there. A reminder of everything I’d lost overshadowing everything I was trying to build.
Because the truth was, I was living in a fantasy. Just not the one I dreamed of as a child.