17. Jason
My hands slip from her neck, and I sink to my knees at her feet. “Our baby?”
My girl — my poor, precious girl — young and alone, without support. And I was so filled with self-pity and loathing, I failed her worse than I could ever have imagined.
How could I let it happen? How did I not see through the lies? I believed them so easily. Wanted to believe. She deserved the golden yarn her mother had spun — the life she needed, to thrive — and I couldn’t give it to her back then, so I didn’t fight.
Instead, I kept my head down and worked my fingers to the bone, striving to create something better I could offer her, so she might consider staying if she ever chose to enter my life again.
I look up at my beautiful, miserable girl, my heart breaking for all the pain I could have kept her from, if I’d only stolen her away before they could have.
“I’m so sorry,” I manage in a strained whisper. “Sorry it happened. Sorry I wasn’t there to stop it. Sorry I left you feeling abandoned. All this time… The pain you were forced to carry… I should have protected you. Should never have let it touch you.” A husky roar of frustration rips from my throat. “I should have known.”
“How could you?” She runs her fingers over my short hair. “I didn’t even know I was pregnant. Didn’t know my mother still had use for Melvin, or that she could be so cruel in her intentions. I didn’t know the shame I could be made to feel. Had no idea how to make anyone listen.”
“I should have known,” I say again, more quietly.
To say I’m angry with myself would be an understatement. I’m fucking livid.
How did I not go to the ends of the earth, to see her one more time? I would have known, then. Seen that she needed me, despite my imperfections. I would never have given her up if I thought I was what was best for her.
How could she ever forgive me? No wonder it took her twenty fucking years to seek me out.
How in the world do I make this up to her?
I press my forehead to her soft lower belly and squeeze my eyes shut tight against the threatening tears. “Boy or girl?”
“Boy.” The word is so quiet and strained, I can hear the difficulty it took for her to say it.
My fingers curl into fists, and I look up at her face. “Did you get to see him? Touch him?”
“He was perfect.” She closes her eyes. “I got to hold him. He stopped crying when I did, and I felt so much love for him, Jason. I can’t even describe it. He was so tiny.” She sniffs softly, as tears stream down her cheeks. “They let me feed him.” Her hand trembles when she lightly sweeps it over my hair again. “I didn’t know it would only be the one time.”
She breaks, and I catch her as she collapses. I fold the blanket snugly around her, collect her into my arms, and carry her over to the fireplace, to sit in my lap. “When you’re ready, I want to hear everything.” I press my lips to her ear and stroke her shuddering back. “All twenty years of it.”
“Nineteen,” she whispers, brushing her fingertips over my scars.
“Feels like more,” I whisper back, kissing her soft hair. “I’m so sorry it wasn’t less. I never stopped loving you. Everything I am, have, and do, is with you in mind. I wanted to be better, so you’d come home to me. I didn’t think for a second that maybe you wanted to and couldn’t. That they’d locked you up and stolen our fucking life away.”
Her sobs grow thicker, and she turns into my chest.
“I’ll find him,” I promise, pulling her closer. “Make sure he’s okay. I’m going to need details. Names. Addresses. Anything you can remember about your time in that place. Your mom’s current whereabouts. She and I are going to have a serious chat. How long did she keep you there, Princess? Why didn’t you come to me after they…?”
She sniffs and shudders and wipes at her face before snuggling back in against my chest. “I wasn’t well,” she says, before her voice cracks.
I hold her with all the love I have and soothe her as best I can before I ask for more. “Tell me.”
“Mentally,” she utters so quietly, I can barely hear — like it’s the most shameful confession she’s ever made.
“As would be expected when your fucking bitch-cow-whore mother locks you away and steals your baby,” I growl through my teeth.
Mandi hunches smaller, and I immediately regret spilling my rage so close to her. I rein it in and strap it down hard. “I’m not angry at you, Princess. Sorry if it sounded that way.”
She pushes herself back, until she can see my face, and her eyes are so fucking sad, I want to kill people three times worse. Her eyebrows knit together, as she searches my face. “You’re going to hurt them.”
It’s not a question. It’s a resounding truth.
“Are you going to tell me not to?” I ask. “That there’s someone I should go easy on, because they felt guilty for their crimes and went out of their way to show you kindness and help you?”
She stares at me blankly. “There was nobody like that.”
“Then they will all suffer,” I say frankly.
Her lips twitch at one side, and she settles back against me. “Okay.”
“Okay.” I kiss her head. “How long did they keep you there?”
“Six years,” she says with a sigh. “It took that long for them to rehabilitate me.” She snorts softly. “I was buried so deep inside, I barely remembered who I was by then. They’d filled my head with who I should be, until I was brainwashed enough to actually believe them. All that was left of me was my desire to leave, so I did whatever it took.”
“Six years.” I exhale long and roughly. “And the other thirteen?”
Mandi lowers her head. “Drinking. Drugs. Rehab. Psych wards. Anywhere Mom and Dad could keep me, so I wouldn’t bother them with my problems. If they weren’t disappointed in me before, they sure were by the time I got my shit together and tried to forgive the past and make amends.”
“Why the fuck would you want to forgive those assholes?” I snarl.
She gives me another flat stare. “For my own sanity and recovery.”
I hold her gaze for all of three seconds, before I surrender. “I should have thought. Sorry.”
She nods and gives a long, shuddering sigh. “So I tried to do better. Hoped I’d have something decent to present you with when I could eventually work up enough courage to face you and beg your forgiveness, and being a selfless surrogate seemed like a good start, but that didn’t turn out so well, as you know.”
I lift her chin and look into her eyes. “There’s nothing to forgive, Mandi.”
Her eyelashes flutter, and she glances away. “I let you down,” she says. “More than once.”
I swallow hard, my stomach knotting at her tone. I shake my head and release her chin. “You didn’t.”
“I did.” She faces the fire. “I wanted to come to you sooner,” she says in a shaky tone. “I’ve spent more time falling off the wagon than I’ve spent on it; I hated who I was, I couldn’t sleep, and I wanted the pain in my soul to stop. Only you had ever made that happen, but I couldn’t bring myself to face you when I was such a huge waste of a life. So I drank until I was numb, and then I got behind the wheel of some guy’s truck at a bar. The keys were inside.”
“No.” The sudden slap of grief and family trauma knock the wind out of me. Mandi knew my sister was smeared across the highway by a drunk driver. She swore to me she’d never drink and drive. She understood it was unforgivable. A deal-breaker. I shake my head. “Stop.”
“I was drunk, but I knew the consequences,” she continues anyway.
“Mandi, no.” I say it as if she can hear me in the past — like I could have stopped her in her tracks, so she’d never get in that truck.
“I knew you’d hate me, and I knew it was deadly, and I didn’t want to hurt anybody” — her voice breaks — “but I still did it.”
I can’t hear any more. Can’t hear that she hurt or killed someone. I don’t want to be angry with her ever again, but I won’t be able to help it. She has to stop. “Dingle-hammer,” I blurt out.
“I drove straight at the wall,” she says at the same time. Eyes wide, she clamps a hand over her mouth. She lifts three fingers to speak. “I was already saying it. I’m sorry.”
She tried to kill herself by drunk driving? Was it a way of doubly punishing me, for not being there for her when she needed me most? I stare at her. At the scar near her hairline.
What if she’d died?
I ease back against the couch, wanting to strangle her and cuddle her all at once. “Are you sorry you lived?” I ask, choking back the thick emotion so I can speak.
She watches me a long while, and then sighs. “Depends on the day.”
“Today,” I say without pause. “Are you sorry to be alive today?”
She shakes her head. “Today has been the best day I’ve had in a long, long time.”
“Twenty years?” I give her a small smile.
“Nineteen,” she says, returning it. “Will you forgive me?”
“For driving drunk and nearly killing yourself?” I let my tone denote how angry I feel about it.
She abandons eye contact and swallows hard. “If it makes you feel better, that incident is what got me sober and focused on reasons for living.”
“That does make me feel a little better.” I pull her close and rock with her. “You’re telling me that you drank and drove, and it saved your life?”
She strokes my arched eyebrow into a more natural position. “Yeah, kinda. Not directly. And it was by no means a good idea or something I’d ever do again.”
“Good.” I close my eyes and try not to fucking purr when she rubs at the tension in my brow. “Tell me what made you stop drinking and want to live, Princess.”
“Love, I think.”
How much of that could she have found in our time apart, when her experience sounds so awful?
“Love?” I ask.
She nods. “I was on a random group-outing from rehab — something about observing more functional humans interact with each other and their environment or some shit. So there I was, sitting next to a bunch of other fuckups on the sideline of some suburban sports field, when I looked up from rock bottom and saw…” She twists her pursed lips and cocks her head, like she can’t think of the right word or something.
“Saw what?” I ask. “God? The man of your dreams?” I fail to keep the edge from my voice, and she frowns as she shakes her head.
“A kid,” she says. “Maybe fifteen? Playing lacrosse and just grinning — you know? Happy. Like, actually happy. His parents were on the other side of the field, cheering him on like crazy. Going nuts over this kid. There was no way he could ever have thought he wasn’t loved. You know?”
I nod and give her a sad smile. It would have been a strange sight for her to understand, because she never had that, but it’s the kind of family I had before we lost Candice and it all fell apart. “Yeah, I know.”
“And this kid..” Mandi continues, lost in the memory. “This crazy-good-at-sports kid? He looked kind of like you, but also a little bit like me.”
I give her a wary sideways look. “What are you saying?”
“I don’t think he was ours, but it made me think. This kid’s parents were so normal-looking and supportive. After the game, they hugged and celebrated him, and I cried. I sat in the bushes and cried, because that’s how a family should be, and I was so happy for them and so sad for myself, because I would never be that kind of mother or have a family like that. Not as I was. And I hoped that our boy, wherever he was, had something like that. And I started to wonder what he’d think of me if he ever tried to find me. I didn’t want him to see the mess I had become, Jason.” She says the last part like I should agree she’s the biggest fuckup there is.
“I didn’t want him to see me and be ashamed to share my DNA.” She firms her jaw and lifts her chin. “And I couldn’t let him find his birth-mom written up as an alcoholic suicide statistic. Genetics are damning, and that’s not a legacy I want to pass on. I needed to clean up my act. For him,” she says with the conviction of a mother putting her child first. “So I did. I decided to live.”
“And I am so fucking grateful you did.” I pull her into a tight hug that makes her squeak. “And for the record, I could never hate you. But I definitely should have chained you to my fucking side when I had the chance. It’s where you belong, and not a day has gone by without me regretting your absence. Tell me you’ll stay. Tell me you forgive me, for letting you down, like everyone else did.”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” she says, searching my face. “You still love me?”
“Never stopped,” I reply with a sigh. I sweep her dark hair behind her ears. “You left, and my heart went with you.”
She narrows her eyes. “Did you ever love anyone else?”
I shake my head. “Kind of impossible, without a heart,” I say with a smile.
She rolls her eyes, and I grip the back of her neck, to bring her lips to mine. “Couldn’t bring myself to relive that kind of agony.”
She scoffs and gives my chest a playful shove.
I grab her wrist in my free hand and pin it to her side. “Are you doubting my word?”
Mandi opens her mouth, and then closes it again.
“What? Did you fall in love with another man?” I ask, ready to murder the asshole for taking something that’s mine.
She shakes her head. “Never.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. “Only fucked them, huh?”
She shrugs. “You made sex feel like a cure-all, so I tried a few other men, but none of them had the right medicine. I mostly resorted to sex when I wanted to remember your touch. Was that the same for you, or did you fuck to forget me? Bet you’ve had more than a few women, over the years. Probably buried the memory of me under a stack of prettier girls. I imagine they were lining up for your love.”
“There are no prettier girls, I had no love for them, and there was no forgetting you, Princess. They had no love for me either. Our interactions were transactional. I haven’t been able to fuck a woman without tying her down until I’m ready to set her free. Do you know how few women will risk that kind of behavior with a man who has no interest to engage beyond small talk? Let alone try a relationship with him? I’ve preferred my own company to anyone else’s and mostly sated any appetite for sex with subs from clubs for twenty fucking years.”
“Nineteen,” she says with a small smile.
“Like that makes it any better,” I rumble. She shivers, and I lean in to kiss her neck. “You realize I’m never letting you go again, right?”
“I’d like that.” She makes a soft, pained sound when I stroke her breast. I gently explore both and find they’ve grown firm again. Full.
She squirms and pulls her blanket up a bit. “All I ever wanted was a loving family with you. And I was so close.” She sniffs quietly. “You really think we could find him and make sure he’s okay? Our boy?”
“Yes,” I murmur against her skin, as I push the blanket aside and trail the tip of my nose toward one of her nipples. “Because we’re not going to stop looking.”
I tease her with soft little licks, as I nuzzle her fullness and breathe in her scent. “You fed him? At your breast?”
Mandi nods. “Just the once.” She sounds a little breathless.
I suckle gently at her breast with no sexual intent, seeking only love and to forge a lasting bond, like our baby may have. Her breath quickens, and she tenses and relaxes her body. Does she not know how to feel about it?
I ease off and rest my hand over her heart. It’s racing. “Do you want me to stop this?” I ask, watching her closely. “It pains you to be reminded?”
Her eyes are earnest when she shakes her head, and she guides her nipple back to my lips. “I didn’t know how badly I wanted this closeness, until you gave it to me.”
I take her nipple into my mouth again and tug more firmly.
She utters a soft sigh, and then settles into her bones as the letdown hits, filling my mouth with her sweetness. I swallow the milk down and hunger for more, drinking from her with a greed that makes her squirm her bare ass on my lap.
The more I feed at her breast, the more worked up and restless she gets. I draw her nipple deep and keep hold of her flowing teat as I twist our bodies, until I’m lying on top of her. She clamps her spread knees at my sides and stamps at the couch with her feet in a futile bid for traction.
She’s rocking her juicy little cunt against my abs, painting me with her arousal, and I can smell a hint of my seed in her juices. The scent of her bred cunt only makes me want to fill her more, but she’s got to be sore.
I’m surprised she can grind without hurting herself. I haven’t been gentle with her since she returned to me. I wanted to cause her pain. Like a fucking asshole.
And get a baby growing in her, without asking — without knowing what she’d been through.
I break away, but she follows, clawing at my jeans, to get them undone. “Don’t stop,” she begs. “Please. Twenty years was too long to be without this.”
“But I’m an asshole.”
“Only if you fucking stop,” she growls, shoving her tits in my face.