Acceptance (Club X Book 5) (13 page)

Tears welled in my eyes at the memory of that night. So sullen and dark, still he saved me from yet another mistake I’d made in my life. He took me to that shabby apartment of his, and there in those rooms that reminded me of a cell the first time I saw them, he wrapped his arms around me and protected me from the world.

I’d been in love with him since that very night. He was everything to me. My husband. The father of my children. The man I adored more than even mere words could express.

We’d been through hell and back since that night, and through it all, I believed no matter what the rest of the world saw in this man, they were wrong. He wasn’t cold or cruel or even angry. He should have been after all he’d had to endure growing up, but he wasn’t. Beneath that gruff exterior beat the heart of a man who could love harder and more intensely than anyone I’d ever met.

And now that heart had been invaded by a bullet over some stupid fool’s mistakes.

Anger bubbled up inside me. I hated Sebastian for Kane getting hurt. I didn’t know if it was right, but it didn’t matter as I sat there watching a respirator move my husband’s chest up and down.

I couldn’t focus on that now, though. I needed to stay positive for him, so I kissed his rough knuckles and forced away my feelings about his brother in favor of remembering the times Kane and I had shared.

“Do you remember that night when Annalea was three when we all drove up to that place in Georgia because you couldn’t believe I’d never had real Georgia peaches? You made Annalea promise not to tell me where we were going. We piled into the Mustang, and I thought we were going to the beach since you’d mentioned it earlier that day. Annalea giggled practically the whole way there as I kept asking where we were going and you kept telling me to trust you. I swear, I thought she was going to explode by the time we reached the farm.”

I looked up at his face and saw his dark eyelashes still resting on his cheeks. His stony expression hadn’t changed, but I had to continue. I couldn’t let him think he was alone there in that cold hospital room.

“Those were the best peaches I’ve ever had in my life. But what was even better was the smile on your face as you watched me eat my first one. The juices rolled down my chin onto my shirt, and I tried to mop it all up with a napkin, and there you were smiling at me as I made a mess of myself on my first real Georgia peach. Do you remember that, Kane? I’ll never forget how happy my eating that peach made you.”

I wanted to see that smile again. I wanted to see those beautiful blue eyes of his light up when he looked at me. I wanted to hear him tell me how much he loved me as he held me in his arms.

As the sadness began to overwhelm me, I let myself cry as I sat there holding his hand and wishing for him to come back to me. “You have to get through this, Kane. We have so much to look forward to. Our whole lives are in front of us, baby. I can’t do this without you. Who’s going to intimidate Annalea’s boyfriends when she starts dating? Who’s going to teach Liam how to play football and baseball or whatever sport he wants to play when he gets older?”

My tears dropped onto his forearm as I thought about all the important times he’d miss if he left us now. It wasn’t just that I needed him for our kids, though. I needed him for me. From that moment he held me in his arms as we lay on the floor of his apartment, I knew I didn’t want to be without him ever again. We’d spent months apart when I was pregnant with Annalea, but since then, he’d been by my side protecting me and loving me as the most important part of my life.

I didn’t know what I’d do if I lost that.

“Kane, I need you to know I can’t imagine life without you. Life without that crooked smile you give me when you’re not really listening to what I’m saying but don’t want me to know. I know, but I like that smile anyway. Or life without hearing you say my name when you crawl into bed at night. That deep way you say it like it’s the one word you’ve been waiting all day to speak and then pull me close to be next to you as we sleep. Please don’t make me live without those things. Please don’t make me live without you. Don’t leave me, Kane.”

I should have been used to him silently listening to me as I spoke. I’d always been the talker in the relationship. Kane was more interested in showing how he felt instead of telling anyone. At that moment, I would have given anything for him to say just one simple word.

Closing my eyes, I let my mind wander back to all those days and nights that made up our life. Unlike in books and movies, the time two people spend together isn’t all fireworks and incredible moments. Most of our time together consisted of the regular events of life—the comings and goings that happened every workday, the rote answers we gave to the same old questions to let each other know that amidst the commonplace events of our lives we loved one another.

The small smile he put on when he wanted to show me he was listening to whatever I was saying but really wanted to close his eyes and fall asleep with me in his arms.

My way of gently stroking the top of his hand when he was angry about something that told him I knew his rage wasn’t directed at me but at the rest of the world.

How when work at the restaurant got to be too much he’d come home to me to rest his head on my shoulder as we lay in bed and listen to my stories of how Annalea and Liam did something so incredibly cute that day.

We had changed from the people we were when we first met all those years ago at Club X, and to some we surely would be seen as boring, but it was those small gestures from both of us that made our life together so dear to me.

As I thought about everything we shared, my favorite memory of our time together surfaced in my mind. When I became pregnant with Liam, Kane had promised that pregnancy would be different than my first. I knew he felt guilty about the time apart with Annalea, but he didn’t have to be.

I understood the demons he fought every day then. I knew them well and hated them, but I didn’t blame him.

So every day he made sure I knew how happy he was that I was carrying his child again. I’d never felt so loved in my life.

And when the day came for Liam to finally arrive, it was Kane who was by my side when that precious soul made his entrance into the world. Exhausted but happy, I watched as he took our son into his arms and his eyes filled with tears as he first looked at him.

“You have a son, Mr. Jackson. Meet your little boy,” the nurse said as she handed him to his father.

Never one for saying much, he simply stared at the tiny human in his hold and smiled. Curious to know what he thought, I asked, “Does he look like me or you?”

Kane tilted Liam toward me and beamed his happiness. With his dark hair and blue eyes, he looked just like his father. “I think this one got my genes,” he joked.

“We never decided on a boy’s name,” I said as he came around the bed to show me my son. “What are we going to call him?”

He didn’t take his eyes off him but shook his head. “I have no idea. All I know is he’s beautiful, Abbi.”

I looked at the incredible human being we’d made from love and leaned my cheek against Kane’s arm. “Liam. Liam Alexander Jackson.”

“Liam, this is your mom. She’s the person who showed me I deserved love and all the great things that come with it. She’s one of a kind and you’re lucky to have her as your mother. Never forget that.”

I looked up at Kane and smiled as he handed the baby to me. “I love you. You know that?”

He leaned over and kissed me softly on the lips and then kissed Liam on the forehead. “I do, and I love you, angel.”

“I hope he grows up to be just like his father,” I said as I looked down at our son.

“And I hope he has a lot of his mother in him.”

I lifted my head to look up at Kane now as he lay in that hospital bed and saw that man who saved me when I desperately needed it. He was scarred and broken still from all those years growing up, but the parts of him I loved the most came from the pain he’d suffered. It had made him someone whose love was gentle and steadfast, exactly the kind of love he’d never felt when he was a child.

If only I could save him now, but as usual, he was the one who had to be strong. I prayed to God he could be.

Cassian

T
he drive home from the
hospital flew by in a blur as I went back and forth between hoping Kane would be okay and hating this new brother of mine for wreaking havoc on my family. Fucking kid! I knew nothing good would come from searching out another of my father’s bastards.

By the time I reached the condo, my stomach had twisted itself into knots over this whole damn thing. I needed to calm down or Olivia and the baby would be the ones who paid for that asshole kid’s mistake. I was too emotional, but I couldn’t help it.

Kane was more than just my brother. He was one of the few people in the world I truly cared about.

Olivia sat waiting for me, and as soon as I got through the door, I saw the look of concern in her eyes. “How is he, Cash? I tried calling Stefan and your mother when you didn’t answer your phone, but all I got were their voicemails.”

I poured myself a stiff drink and downed it quickly before pouring another glass of scotch. “Sorry. I turned it onto silent at the hospital and must have forgotten to change it back when I left.”

She walked up to me and wrapped her arms around me in an embrace I needed so badly. “Oh, honey. He’s going to be okay. I just know it. Kane’s got everything in the world to live for. He’ll pull through.”

Hanging my head, I let it drop onto her shoulder as I silently prayed she was right. “He made it through surgery, but now we’ll have to see how he does in the next few days. The bullet hit his heart, so the doctor’s concerned that there might be irreparable damage.”

I heard her gasp at the news. Pulling me to her, she said quietly, “I’m so sorry, honey.”

I didn’t want to hear anyone’s apologies. I wanted my brother to be okay. I wanted him to be out of that hospital bed and back at the restaurant with me like he should have been that day. And I was fucking pissed he couldn’t do any of that and might never be able to again.

Backing away from her, I shook my head. “This should have never happened. If only he hadn’t gone searching for that goddamned brother of ours. I knew it was a fucking mistake.”

“It was important to Kane that he got to know him, Cash. You weren’t going to change his mind from that. You know him.”

Suddenly, I couldn’t stop my anger from exploding out of me. I didn’t want to hear any more talk about how much Kane wanted to find out about Sebastian. I should have done more to stop him.

“Don’t use the past tense, Olivia! He’s not dead!”

My words echoed off the walls of the condo, surprising her. Hurt by my outburst, she frowned and said, “I didn’t mean to act like there was no hope, Cash. I’m sorry.”

Christ, I was lashing out at the one person who loved me no matter what. She began to cry, so I took her in my arms and let her sob against me like I should. I was her husband. It was my duty to be there for her when everything in the world seemed to be going wrong.

“I’m sorry, Olivia. I didn’t mean to yell like that. You didn’t do anything wrong, baby.”

“I’m afraid too, Cash,” she said through her tears. “I love your brothers like they’re my own. My heart is broken over this.”

I cradled her face, pressing my forehead to hers. “I know, and I shouldn’t have snapped like that. I’m just so angry about this whole Sebastian thing.”

Olivia looked into my eyes in that way that never failed to calm me. “He’s going to be okay.”

Taking a deep breath, I let it out, wishing it would take all my fears with it. But that didn’t happen. “What if Kane can’t pull through? He’s come so far from where he was when our father forced us to work together. For him to lose everything over this…”

My emotions began to spin out of control. They swung from anger to sadness and then out of the blue I began to laugh, as if anything about this whole thing was funny at all.

The look on Olivia’s face showed how horrified she was by my behavior. “What are you laughing about?”

“My father. Wherever he is, he’s just where he’s always been when trouble happens. Nowhere to be found. He fathers all of us without a thought, and then he goes and dies. On top of that, then we get to find out that he wants to be our father from the afterlife and make the three of us work together. Pure Cassian March bullshit.”

“Cash, are you okay?” Olivia asked as I downed the rest of my second scotch.

I had just gotten started.

“Stefan and I could barely stand each other when he died, and he thought throwing another person into the mix was a good idea. I remember the first time I saw Kane. It was like his face screamed, ‘I’m a March.’ But he wasn’t. He looked like my father, just like I did, but I was a March. He was the child my father had from cheating on my mother.”

I stopped as my mind whirled with memories of how many times I heard my mother cry herself to sleep waiting for my father to return at night, knowing he was out with some woman. And then to add to the indignity, he couldn’t even be bothered to make sure he didn’t father any more fucking kids.

“And I didn’t even have it the worst. Stefan had spent his life trying to make my father happy, to make him see that he had another son other than me. He never did. And then in death, he made sure Stefan understood how much he didn’t fucking care by giving Kane part of his money. I’ve never told Stefan this, Olivia, but I understood why he was so angry for so long. Part of it was my fault, but then Kane came along and it was like having two versions of our father forever lording over him. No wonder he hated the two of us all those years.”

Gently stroking my arm, Olivia quietly said, “You’re upset. I know. It’s going to be okay.”

I shook my head. “No, but we’ve never been okay. Thanks to my father, we’ve always been fucked up. Cash, the perfect son because he didn’t dare be anything else. Stefan, the perpetual lost boy because his father never gave a damn about him. And Kane, the child he didn’t even bother to own up to until it was too late.”