Chapter Thirty
Morgan
It’d been three days since Jude took my phone and walked away while speaking to my father. I still didn’t know what he said, but my father hadn’t shown up in Arkansas.
Yet.
I did call my brother and reem him out, though.
“Why did you call Dad?” I growled into the phone the second my brother answered.
“Hello to you too, little sister.” I could hear the smile in his voice.
“King!”
“I called him because I knew you wouldn’t.”
“How did you know? If Gator called Romeo again, I swear that Cajun bastard will be sleeping in the swamp, permanently.”
“Gator didn’t call Rome,” my brother confirmed. He lowered his voice. “Jude called me.”
I clamped my lips closed.
He called my brother?
My eyes watered at the thought of Jude calling my brother, his best friend, to tell him he was having a baby. After the way he spoke about King in the truck after my appointment, it didn’t sound like their relationship had mended.
“He told you?” I asked cautiously.
“He did. He also asked for my help in winning you back.”
Winning me back?
“I told him no.”
That surprised me, though I wasn’t sure why.
“Why?”
I heard my brother sigh, and I could picture him running a hand over his face.
“Because I don’t think he’s good enough for my little sister. I never did, even before I knew who you were. And I told him that, Morgan. I tried to talk him out of marrying you.”
I didn’t expect that.
I thought King liked me. He’d been great when he came to Rosewood and helped me get to New Orleans.
I swiped a tear away and King must have heard me sniffle.
“Morgan, don’t misunderstand. I love you. I loved you before I knew you were my sister. And I love Jude. He’s my best friend, but...”
I bit my lip, anxiously waiting for him to finish that sentence.
“He was fucking selfish. When he married you, when he left you.” He paused again before saying, “When he went back to you only to leave you again. And now you’re pregnant. And I get why you’re there. I know you want him to be in the baby’s life, but I don’t want to see you hurt again.”
“I love him, King. I wish I didn’t. I wish I could walk away.”
Bailey would probably kick my ass if she heard me. She’d never let me get away with giving in so quickly.
“I understand that more than you know,” he said, and I thought about Grace.
I’d talked with her a few times over the past few weeks since we met, and she told me about her relationship with King—how it started and where it was now.
Despite what she did, you only needed to hear her talk about him to know how much she loved my brother.
“But you told Dad,” I whined.
King chuckled on the other end. “I did.”
“Think you’ll ever forgive him? Dad, I mean.”
King and I talked about our dad, about why he was so hurt by him. And he wasn’t angry that he hadn’t been a father to him. He was angry he hadn’t been a brother. I still hadn’t met my uncle Declan, but when I asked King why he wasn’t mad at him, he said...
“I was. I knocked him on his ass when I found out that he’d kept it all from me. But he’d always been there. He raised me when our parents died. He didn’t have to do that. He sacrificed his own happiness for me. Missed out on knowing his daughter. I owe him my life.”
I understood that. It was how I felt about both my parents. My dad could have walked away. Could have been absent and only sent money. My mom could have moved on, married someone else. Maybe someone who would have been a jerk to me. She could have had more kids and put me on the back burner.
Instead, they did everything they could to work together and raise me with love and attention. I didn’t want to disappoint my dad. I didn’t want him to be angry with me. But I also didn’t want him to hate Jude.
I stood in front of the mirror in my room and rubbed a hand over my rounded stomach. I was barely starting to show, and I couldn’t stop staring at the place where my baby was growing.
I also couldn’t stop thinking about the son I’d lost. Wondering what he would look like. What kind of personality he would have had. It was probably something I’d always wonder.
Something I’d never have the answer to.
I shook my head, trying to loosen the melancholy before it dug in too deep. I had some new mixtures to work on today. I’d ordered some new herbs, things I’d been afraid to work on because I couldn’t afford to waste time on lotions that wouldn’t work.
Now all I had was time.
My mother had left Cindy in charge, and I agreed with that decision. She had been invaluable as a manager. I’d spoken with her every day for the first two weeks I was in Louisiana, until she finally stopped answering my calls.
Now, I only called once a week, unless I was really stressed, but now she humored me.
I threw on a shirt and pulled sneakers on my feet.
My back was starting to ache when I stood too long, and I immediately called Dr. Adams. He never made me feel like a crazy woman when I called about every twinge.
He patiently answered my questions and reassured me everything was on track the way it should be.
Jude had been preoccupied lately. Even before he spoke to my father. He felt distant. He asked about the baby, and how I was feeling, but he wasn’t trying to win me back like King said.
He mostly ignored me.
I stepped out into the hall and realized why.
Jenna was coming out of his room, her hair disheveled, clutching her top against her breasts. The strap was broken, as if it had been ripped from her body.
Her eyes widened in shock for less than a second before she smiled a smug grin.
“I told you he was mine.”
“I told you that you could have him.” I shrugged and walked past her toward the stairs, holding my head high.
What I really wanted to do was turn back into my room and crawl into my bed until after the baby was born. Then I could go back to Rosewood and back to my life.
I could be a single mom.
I had the best role model there was.
I walked into the kitchen and found my mom at the stove making breakfast. She’d been enjoying the club life a little too much. She was made to be a mom, and the one thing these men needed was a mother. Someone to cook for them and keep them in line.
I stood in the doorway and watched as Venom, Cobra, Keno, and Crater all passed by her with a plate of food, giving her a kiss on the cheek and a murmur of thanks. She beamed at them, while Smokey growled at the table.
I sat down next to him and leaned over. “She’s happy here. It’d be a shame if she didn’t have a reason to stay after I left.”
“It’d be a shame if you left,” he said without taking his eyes off my mother.
“I don’t belong here,” I whispered.
“Bullshit. That boy loves you.”
“Then why was Jenna coming out of his room half naked this morning?” I asked without thinking.
Smokey looked at me then. “What?”
“Never mind. It’s none of my business.”
“Well, it is mine.” He stood, and I tried to grab his arm and stop him.
“Smokey, don’t.”
He shrugged off my hand and stomped out of the kitchen.
“Morgan, what’s wrong?”
I looked over at my mother and sighed. “I said something stupid.”
“What did you say?”
I bit my lip, but before I could tell my mother what happened, I heard yelling in the common room. I dropped my head into my hands and blew out a breath. I should have kept my mouth shut.
“Morgan.”
I looked up and found Jude standing in the doorway. His eyes were hard as he stared at me. “Can I talk to you?”
“Sure,” I said with a heavy sigh.
I followed him into church; it was still strange being in here. I sat in a chair and waited for the lecture he was going to give me about how what he does has no bearing on me and how I had no right to say anything.
But Jude didn’t do that. He didn’t stand over me and berate me for being jealous. Because I was. I could admit that—well, to myself anyway. Inside my head I could admit a lot of things that no one else would ever hear.
Jude sat in the chair beside me and turned to face me. He grabbed the chair and spun it around so our knees were touching.
“I have never fucked Jenna.”
“Jude—” I started, and he placed a finger over my lips.
“Let me talk.” He rested his hands on my knees and the skin burned beneath the denim I wore. “I haven’t fucked Jenna, or any of the whores. I haven’t fucked a single woman other than you, since the day I saw you sitting in that coffee shop.”
He had alluded to that before, but I ignored it. I didn’t ask him to clarify because I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want to know that he had been faithful when I hadn’t.
Logically speaking, I knew you couldn’t be unfaithful to someone who had died, but he wasn’t dead.
It didn’t matter that I didn’t know that at the time.
Part of the reason I hadn’t continued with Gunner, or been with anyone else, was because even though I believed he was dead, it felt like cheating because I loved him so much still.
Death didn’t make love just stop. If anything, it made it stronger. It made the pain harder to live with.
“We aren’t together, Jude. We aren’t married.”
“You are my fucking old lady, Morgan. Nothing is going to change that. I’m not my fucking father,” he growled.
“I never thought that,” I said softly. “But you are free to live your life however you want.”
“I choose to live it with you.”
I shook my head. “That’s not an option. Not anymore.”
I went to stand, but he held me in place. “I’m not done.” I nodded and waited for him to continue.
He rubbed a hand over his chest, and I remembered what he’d said about the phantom pain and it being worse when he was emotional. Before I could think about what I was doing, I grabbed his hand, pulling it into my lap.
He stared into my eyes, and I saw something there I couldn’t decipher. I saw everything that was there before: the pain, the guilt, the love. But there was something else. Something I couldn’t quite name.
Regret maybe.
Resignation.
Whatever it was hurt my heart. I didn’t want to see him like this. In an instant, it was gone. Replaced with something cold, hard.
“Smokey said you saw Jenna coming out of my room.”
I nodded.
“When?”
“About twenty minutes ago, right before I came downstairs.”
He nodded but didn’t explain. Then he stood up and moved around the table.
“Jude?” He looked at me over his shoulder. “What are we doing?” I asked. “Why are we torturing ourselves like this?”
Jude bowed his head before answering, “Having you here isn’t torture, Morgan. It’s salvation.” He took a deep breath and then turned fully toward me. “The day I saw you in Rosewood, the first day I went to watch over you and make sure you were okay, that was the day I came back to life.”