Chapter Ten
Morgan
Jude dropped to his knees and groaned. He hadn’t said a word—not that he could, writhing in pain and gasping for breath on the floor. I crossed my arms over my chest and waited.
Earlier, I’d been afraid that my delusion would bring tears when I woke up from whatever dream I thought I was having. Now, instead, it brought anger as I stared at the man I loved and fumed.
I wanted to kick him again.
I wanted to twist his dick until it popped off.
Okay, that wasn’t true. I liked his dick right where it was. But I wasn’t above putting it through the wringer again. I couldn’t hurt him permanently; that would mean I couldn’t use it anymore.
And despite how fucking pissed I was right in this moment, I still loved him. I still wanted him. He just didn’t need to know that.
I wasn’t stupid. I knew I’d forgive him. He was everything to me, and the only thing I wanted for the last seven years was to have him alive. To have him in my life.
Him and our son.
“I hate you!” I snarled.
“No... you don’t,” he wheezed.
No, I don’t.
“Morgan... baby...” he coughed out as he tried to breathe deeply. I felt bad, but I wouldn’t tell him that. He didn’t deserve my sympathy. “Let me... explain.”
“Explain?” I shouted. “Explain what? That you didn’t die? That instead you just decided not to come home?”
Jude rolled over on his back, his knees still pulled up and his hands cradling his balls. He stared at me, and I saw it all on his face. Every emotion. Guilt, fear... love.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath before stepping over him and sitting on the couch. I studied him as questions ran through my head.
Why did he leave?
Was it because I lost the baby?
Did his brother know he was alive?
Did King?
“Son of a bitch!” I cursed.
I stormed back to my bedroom and grabbed my phone. Dialing the number as I went back to the front of the house. It rang three times before a gruff voice answered, “This better be fucking important.”
“Did you know?” I asked.
“Morgan?” King asked with a sigh.
“Did. You. Know?”
“Sweetheart, listen,” he pleaded. I heard a woman in the background ask who he was calling sweetheart. He’d always called me that.
The tears came then. He knew. My brother knew, and he didn’t tell me. Sure, he didn’t know he was my brother. But he knew he was my friend.
“Fuck you, King.” I disconnected the call and threw the phone against the wall, watching as it shattered into pieces. My shoulders slumped in irritation.
“You need to leave,” I said as Jude’s phone began to ring.
He pulled the phone from his pocket as he lay on the floor. Placing it against his ear, he grunted, “Yes, I fucking told her, asshole.”
He eyed me from the floor as he tried, unsuccessfully, to sit up.
“Well, currently, I’m lying on the floor with a broken nose and busted balls.”
Jude pulled the phone away from his ear and I heard King laughing boisterously. I turned away and swiped at my cheeks.
“He wants to talk to you, baby.”
I winced at the endearment. “I don’t want to talk to him.”
“Morgan?” I heard King’s voice on the speaker, but I didn’t turn around. “Sweetheart, I didn’t know. Not until a few weeks ago. I would have called you, but with everything going on, it wasn’t the right time.”
He was right. He’d been up to his neck in biker shit.
“And after?” I asked. “It’s been weeks, King.”
King let out a heavy sigh. “I was giving him the chance to do the right thing,” he answered earnestly. “If he’d gone home without telling you, I would have called.”
I didn’t respond. There was nothing to say. I could feel Jude’s eyes on me, burning a hole in my back. Silently begging me to turn around, but I couldn’t.
“Jude?”
“Yeah, brother?” Jude sighed.
“Make it right.”
The call disconnected before he could say anything else. I wasn’t sure he could make it right.
“Who else knows?” I asked, standing at the sink, my hands clenched on the edge. My knuckles turned white from the force of my grip.
I heard him moving, trying to stand again. Then he answered, “Everyone.” He was right behind me. His hands covered mine, caging me in. He pried my fingers from the sink and turned me around.
“Baby, I’m sorry. Will you let me explain?”
I looked up into his blue eyes. Eyes that haunted me every time I closed mine. Eyes I’d prayed our son would have.
“No. You need to leave.” I didn’t have the courage to hear it tonight. I didn’t have the strength to hold out. To lock my heart down. I would forgive him… eventually.
But not yet.
Not tonight.
Tonight, I wanted to let the hurt consume me. Tonight, I wanted to be angry. I wanted to fight, but I didn’t have the energy.
“Morgan, please.”
My hands pushed against his chest. I felt the puckered skin beneath his shirt, and my heart broke for what he must have gone through. He took a step back, and I slipped past him down the hall.
I closed my bedroom door and locked it before crawling into my bed and crying myself to sleep.
The knock on my door woke me from my sleep. I opened my eyes and quickly realized I’d never closed the curtains. It was definitely morning.
The knock sounded again, and my mother called out softly, “Morgan? Honey, are you okay?”
It was Saturday. My mother came over on Saturday mornings, and we made breakfast together like we did when I was a kid. I rolled out of bed, still in the clothes I wore last night. I twisted the lock and opened the door to my mother’s worried face.
“Morgan,” she whispered. “There is a man sleeping on your couch.”
“Of course there is.” I groaned out my frustration and walked into the bathroom. Grabbing the glass I used to rinse my mouth after brushing my teeth, I filled it with water.
I walked to the living room, my mother trailing behind me quietly. I paused for a second to mourn the stain this would likely leave on the couch, then I poured the cold water on my husband’s head.
Jude jumped and rolled off the couch, sputtering as he hit the floor.
“What the fuck, babe?!”
“I told you to leave.”
He looked up at me from the floor, and I remembered him rolling around in pain. My eyes focused between his legs and I smiled. Jude quickly covered his dick and pulled his knees up.
“I want to explain.”
“There is nothing to explain. Leave, or I will call the sheriff.”
I turned my back on him and came face-to-face with my mother’s confused and wary expression.
“Morgan, who is that man?” she asked, her hands on her hips. It was a look she’d given Devlyn and me many times over the years. A look that said I’ll know if you’re lying to me.
I looked over my shoulder and glared at Jude. Turning back to my mother, I told her the truth.
“My dead husband.”
My mother’s mouth opened and closed like a goldfish, and I left her by the couch as I went to start the coffee. No one spoke a word until I turned the coffeepot on and said, “I need to change.”
As I walked down the hall, I heard Jude saying, “You must be Bernadette. It’s nice to finally meet you.”
I slammed my bedroom door, not wanting to hear my asshole husband charming my mother. And I knew he would. There was one thing Jude was good at, and that was charm. He used it to lower your defenses.
It was why I knew I’d forgive him eventually. That and I loved the son of a bitch.
I quickly showered and got dressed. When I stepped back into the kitchen, Jude was leaning against the counter with a cup of coffee in his hands and my mother—the traitor—was sitting at the table smiling at him.
The smug bastard handed me a cup of coffee with a grin on his face, and I eyed him as I took a sip. It was perfect. He remembered how I liked my coffee.
I set it on the counter, determined not to drink it, and opened the refrigerator to pull out what I needed for breakfast.
“Jude, will you be having breakfast with us?” my mother asked, her voice as sweet as the tea they drank in the South.
“No.”
“I’d love to.”
I glared at my husband.
My dead husband.
The one I’d been missing for the last seven years.
The one I’d been pining for, trying to make deals with God to bring him back.
The one who had left me without a word.
The one who wasn’t there when I lost our son.
“I told you to leave.”
“And I told you we needed to talk. I’m not leaving until you listen to me and let me explain.”
I stomped my foot like a three-year-old. “There is nothing to explain!” I shouted. “You didn’t come back! You weren’t there!”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. When I opened them and looked at Jude, I said, “Losing you was the worst day of my life. Until a week later, when I lost our son.”
He took a step closer to me, and I held up my hand.
“If it hadn’t been for King, I would have had to go through both of those things alone. He was there for me when you weren’t.”
Jude’s eyes turned from guilt to anger when I mentioned King.
“Not being there for you, for our child, will always be my biggest regret. It’s the one thing I would change if I could.”
It’s the one thing I would change if I could.
“The one thing you would change?” I whispered, slow and quiet. “There is nothing else you would change? Like coming home to me? If you could go back, you would make the same decision?”
Jude’s eyes hardened. He crossed his arms over his chest and broke my heart all over again when he said, “Yes.”
“Get the fuck out of my house,” I ground out through clenched teeth. “NOW!”
“Morgan...” He took a step closer, his hands reaching for me, and I backed up. I couldn’t let him touch me. Not now. Not after knowing he’d left me on purpose. “Baby, just let me explain.”
“Jude, you need to go.” She used her ‘mom’ voice, and I saw the moment he realized my mother was no longer on his side.
Sighing heavily, he said, “I’ll go. I’ll give you some time, but I’m not leaving. Not without you.”
He paused and kissed the top of my head as he walked past me. My mother pulled me into her arms, and I held on to her while I cried.
He didn’t leave me because I lost the baby. He left me because he didn’t want me. He didn’t want us. For the first time in seven years, a tiny part of me was glad my son had never been born.
Jude made me feel that way, and I hated him for it.
But I was glad our son would never feel what I was feeling right now. Never know the pain of being rejected by his father, the pain of not being wanted. He would never know the fucking hypocrite his father was.
He’d made promises to me. To our son. To be a better father than his was to him and his brother. To be there for our son. Be there for me.
And when the time came, when he had to make a choice—a choice to come home and face whatever life threw at us or run away—he’d chosen the cowardly option.
And he would choose it again.
And for that, I was no longer sure I could forgive him.