Beyond Revenge (The Ransom Series) (19 page)

“How can you forgive me?” I ask out
loud.

I don’t know if I’m talking to Stella
or
the tombstone or God or no one.  I
reach out and
run my fingers over her name permanently marked on this place where
her bones rest peacefully
next to those of her mother
. 
My gaze darts to the tiny tattooed star on my extended inner forearm,
the simplest of all my tattoos but perhaps the most meaningful.  It’s my
reminder of Stella, the marking I’ve carried with me since the day she died.  I
don’t want to remember my guilt when I look at it.  I want to remember her.

My focus returns to the tombstone. 
There’s
silence around me, nothing but the wind blowing through my ears.
 
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there.  I’m sorry I let you down.  I fucked it
all up.  I’m so fucking good at ruining beautiful things.”  The words spit out
of me
in
my anger and self-hatred.  “I was ready to
give my life for you back then.  I would have done anything for you.  All I had
to do was be there on time for you
and protect you
like
I always
did
, but I failed, and I’m so sorry.”

Tears fall from my face to the cement
base of the tombstone below.  I slowly remember why I came here and the person
who suggested I do this.  I remember my love for her and the baby growing
inside her.  I remember that I’ve rebuilt my life, that I’ve started over, and
I have someone to share it with.

“I met someone.”  My voice catches in
my throat, and for a moment I can’t speak.  I can’t fathom hearing my voice
talk out loud in this graveyard again, but somehow it manages to come through. 
“Her name is Morgan.  She’s… she’s pregnant.  We’re having a baby, at least we
think it’s our baby.”

This is coming out so wrong.  All
wrong.  I need to be honest about this.  I need to face it.

“He hurt her, Stella.  You never told
me what he did to you, but I know he hurt her in so many ways.  I watched it. 
I participated in it.  I only wanted to help and protect her, and I failed at
that for months before I finally saved her from him.”  I take a deep breath.  I
feel like I’m past the worst of it.  “He’s gone now.  He’ll never hurt anyone I
love ever again.”

My tears have stopped.  I feel some of
the weight off my chest now.  I don’t like that I’m still on my knees.  I feel
weak in this position, so I push myself up to standing.  I instantly feel my
strength and confidence returning.  Life swells within me again.

I look back down at the tombston
e
.  The sting still hits me to see
their
name
s
, to know
they’re both
buried
beneath this ground, but it doesn’t cut me as deeply.

“I think I’m finally ready.  I can move
on now.”  My eyes scan the graveyard around me.  I’m alone in a sea of death,
these stone windows to the past.  “I’m going home.  It’s time for me to live.”

I turn and begin to walk away, but it
feels wrong.  I feel like I’m turning my back on Stella, that I’m leaving her
behind, but all I’m trying to do is move forward.

My body turns around but my feet don’t
stop moving me away from
the
tombstone.

“Goodbye, Stella.”  My heart bursts
within my chest, but then I am free.  “I’ll never forget.”

His Integrity

∞

He has known one
life.

One perspective.

One purpose.

He clings to it

despite the
invasion of variables,

regardless of the
turns.

Resisting the
current,

the things that
would make him happy.

Ecstatic.

Alive.

He just needs to
open his eyes and see

the good within
him.

His true self

he can be.

∞

“Will this really fit?”  I hold up the
newborn diaper I’ve just pulled from the box and inspect both sides of it,
checking to see if it’s folded over or some of the material may be missing. 
“This thing is tiny.”

Leo’s eyes go wide as he shrugs his
shoulders at me.  “Hell if I know.  You’re asking the wrong person.”

He looks completely out of place on the
other side of the floor from me digging through a basket of freshly cleaned
baby clothes.  He’s not so much folding them as separating them into piles of
onesies, rompers, and sleepers, these kinds of infant clothes that I’ve
recently learned about in which Leo still has no clue.  I can’t help laughing
at him as I put the diaper back in the box and push it to the side.

“What’s so funny?” he asks with a
yellow and white onesie in hand, the tiny piece of clothing embroidered with a
pattern of rubber ducks.

I start laughing harder, leaning behind
me on my arms and throwing my head back until my chuckles subside.  By the time
I tilt my head forward again, Leo
’s
scurr
ying
across the floor to me with a sly look in his eyes.  He grasps my
sides and positions himself kneeling over me, my bulging belly sticking out and
completely in the way between us.

“Tell me what’s so funny,” he demands
with a hint of a tease, trying to bring a serious look to his face but failing
terribly.

I kiss him softly on the nose.  “You’re
very handsome you know, and strong.”

“You’re not answering my question,”
he
scolds playfully, practically growling at me as he brings our
foreheads together.

“Let me finish.”  I pull my head back and
smile at him.  “My incredibly tough and tattooed manly man is sorting through
dainty newborn clothes.”  My eyes glance around the almost finished nursery
that
surrounds
us.  “We’ve replaced the knives and guns in our lives
with bottles and diapers.”

The teasing expression fades from Leo’s
face as he moves off me and sits down at my side, his entire body tensing.

I push myself up to a full sitting
position and rub his arm softly.  “Sorry.  What did I say?”

He shakes his head at me but doesn’t reply.

I watch Leo closely, trying to gauge
what’s going on in his head.  His mouth is contorted in a worried look.  He’s
staring at the tan rug underneath us, lost in thought.  I don’t know where this
is coming from.  He’s been a lot better lately.  He seemed to have let go of
the majority of his guilt over Stella and even over his part in everything that
happened to me.  I felt like we were finally moving on from the past to help us
embrace our future together.

It’s unlikely that I’ll reach him with
words, so instead I grasp the sides of his face.  He tries to divert his eyes
from me, but after the first couple of brief kisses I place on his skin, he
seems to lose the ability to keep his gaze away from me.  His eyes find mine,
and I kiss his temple on each side of them.  My breathing becomes steady and
even as I trail kisses down
to
his neck and bury my
face in his shoulder, trying to bring him back down to me.

After a long moment, Leo releases a
deep sigh.  His arms instantly wrap around me as if he’s just realized that I’m
this close to him.  When his fingers linger down to my huge belly, his entire
body freezes.

“You really think I can be a father to
this baby?” he whispers against me.

I pull back from our embrace and look
at him incredulously.  “What are you talking about?  You’re going to be an
amazing father.”

He shakes his head and looks away
before bringing his eyes back to mine.  “I don’t know the first thing about it. 
Look at who I’ve had for a dad since I was a kid.  Look at what I’ve become in
all these years, the life I’ve lived and all the things I’ve done.”

“We left that life behind, Leo.”

Our attention is drawn to the baby
readjusting its position within me.  Leo’s hand jumps slightly at its sudden
movement.  He tries to pull his arm away, but I collapse my hand over his,
compelling him to continue touching my belly.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” I say soothingly. 
“You’re not that person anymore.  You haven’t been since the moment I first
locked eyes with you at the prison.”

Leo remains quiet, and I let him have
his silence while I continue to hold his hand over our child.  After a few
minutes pass, I try to readjust how I’m sitting and feel something change
within me, the start of something amazing yet terrifying.  My eyes widen with
my sharp intake of breath.

Leo immediately stiffens next to me.  “What’s
wrong?”

I feel the dampness in my shorts even
before I look down to see the liquid soaking them.

The clock has started.

Leo looks down and sees it, too, and
his eyes grow just as wide as mine.  “It’s too early,” he exclaims, as if we
could possibly reverse or stop the natural processes that are occurring right
now.

A week and half before the due date
isn’t too early.  The baby has matured enough to be born safely at this point,
but I know what he’s feeling.  We’ve been preparing for this for months, but
now that the moment is finally here, all that preparation seems to go right out
the window.  “It’s fine, Leo. 
It may
be earlier than
we expected, but it’s fine.”

He grasps my face and pulls me close to
him.  “We’re not ready.  Jack’s not here until next week.  Your parents aren’t
here.”

I observe the man I love and run my
fingers gently through his hair and smile.  Internally I should be freaking out
as much as he is, but I’m not.  I’m slowly learning that this is what a mother
does: she is strong for her family.  “We have time.  They’ll get here. 
Everything will be fine.”

Leo looks down at my belly as if the
baby might pop out at any minute.  When his eyes reach my face again, he
quickly bolts into action.  It takes only a second for him to scoop me up in
his arms and stand us up.

“I can walk,” I protest with a laugh as
he moves us toward the door.

There’s a change in his eyes, a loving
determination.  There is strength and support where there had been self-doubt
and concern just a moment before.  It shows me all sides of Leo and embodies
everything I love about him.

“No walking for you.  Save your
energy,” he insists as he takes me into our bedroom and sets me down gently on
the bed.

He disappears for a moment and returns
with a cell phone and dials a number while he fetches a towel from the
bathroom.

“Jack?  Jack.  It’s time.  Her water
broke.”  Leo works a folded towel underneath me and slips my wet shorts and
underwear down my hips as he listens to Jack speak on the other end of the
line.  “Okay.  Please hurry.  See you soon.”

He quickly hangs up the phone and looks
down at me on the bed, my prominent belly sticking up from my horizontal and
half-naked body.  I can’t help laughing at the frazzled man facing fatherhood
who stands before me.

For a moment
it looks like
Leo might be upset, but then his expression softens as he tries and
fails to hold back a smile.  “Stop teasing me,” he says through his attempt to
control his own laughter.  His face is completely red as he tosses a blanket
over me.

I’m grinning so wide that my cheeks
hurt.  “Sorry, I can’t help it.”

He offers the phone to me, his
expression turning somewhat serious again.  “You want to call them?”

I nod and take the phone.  I dial Dad’s
cell phone number and take a deep breath before putting the phone to my ear.

He answers after only one ring.  “Is
everything okay?”  He sounds about as frantic as Leo was with Jack on the phone
just a minute ago.

“Everything’s fine, Dad, but it’s time,
or at least it’s starting.  My water broke.”

“Okay.  Jesus.  We’re on our way.”

“Dad,” I call out to him, but the only
response is rustling on the line.  My parents’ muffled voices fill the call,
and then I hear an excited squeal from my mom.  “Dad!”

“What?  What is it, sweetie?”

“You have time.  The baby’s not coming
right this moment.  Don’t worry.”

“Jack’s not there yet, is he?”

“No, he’s on his way, though.”  I look
to Leo questioningly.  He holds up two fingers.  “He’ll be here in two hours.”

“God, I hope that’s enough time.”

I shake my head and smile at Dad’s
concern.  Does he not remember the entire lengthy experience of my birth?  Mom
told me all about it.  She was in labor for over twenty-eight hours before I
was finally born.  Everything I’ve heard and read is that it’s usually a
painstakingly slow process for the birth of the first baby.

“I’ll be fine, Dad.  Get here when you
can.”

He takes a deep breath into the phone. 
I can already hear the jingling of keys through the line.  “We’ll be there
soon.  Hang in there.”

The call ends, and I toss the phone
down on the bed.  When my eyes find Leo’s again, he’s standing still across the
room staring at me, a warm smile on his face, his eyes bright and alive.  His
shoulders have lost some of the tension that’s been there since the moment
everything started in the nursery.  He seems relaxed and in love as he looks at
me with strange admiration.

Leo closes the distance between us, sitting
down on the bed and grabbing my hands between his.  He moves his inner wrist
next to mine, matching our symmetrical circular tattoos together so that the
missing
pieces
disappear and together the
incomplete
circles form infinity.

“I’m ready,” he says quietly but with
unwavering strength to his voice.  “I know that now.  I’m not afraid.  This is
all I’ve ever wanted in life, and I’m absolutely ready to embrace it with you.”

His words cause an instant lump to form
in my throat and a burn to prickle behind my eyes.  Leo has needed this time to
heal just as much as I have.  I think he’s finally ready to move on.

“Thank you for saving me,” I whisper.

“We saved each other,” he breathes back
before kissing me softly on the cheek.

Everything is quiet around us, and in a
shared look of understanding, I think we both realize this is the last time
we’ll have this kind of perfect silence and privacy together as a couple.  Soon
Jack and my parents will be here, and soon after that a newborn baby will be in
our arms.

I turn on my side as Leo lies down next
to me, staring at me with soft and loving eyes as he takes his time caressing
the side of my face and trailing his fingers down my chest and over my belly,
bringing his hand to rest on our child.  Feelings of relaxation and comfort
consume me, and my eyelids quickly become heavy.  The last thing I hear is Leo’s
soothing words lingering in my ears before I drift off to sleep.