Drowning to Breathe (43 page)

Get impatient and antsy and irritated.

Hell no.

Every single word was precious.

Never minded getting caught up in the whirlwind that was Kallie Marie Stone.

Well.

Almost.

Stone that is.

Papers were well under way. Ones that would legally make her my child.

Two months ago, the court had finally severed that bastard’s parental rights, finding him unfit to be a parent. As if he would have ever wanted to step up and assume that role, even if he wasn’t going to have his pretty-boy ass locked behind bars for the rest of his miserable life.

Kallie didn’t even slow down, just jumped along at my side when we all wandered inside. She grinned up at me the entire time. “And her mommy helped us make our own pizza and let us have ice cream and we stayed up almost the whole night. Marley says Tommy is her boyfriend, but Momma said I’m too little to have a boyfriend so I don’t have one. Not until I’m thirteen, right Momma?”

I slanted Shea a look that I knew came with a warning
. Over my dead body.
Hell, I probably wouldn’t even allow it then.

Shea laughed. “Don’t worry, Daddy Bear. That’s a long time away.”

“Not long enough,” I mumbled.

Shea popped up on her toes and brushed a kiss to my mouth. “Why don’t you get these two tucked in while I finish up the dishes?”

“Oh, man! Do I have to?” Kallie pouted.

Shea just shook her head. “I let you stay up an hour past your bedtime so you could be awake when your daddy got home, and you promised you’d go right to bed once you got to see him. Remember?” she drew out, the graze of her knuckles down Kallie’s cheek a gentle encouragement. “You have to get up for school in the morning.”

“I know,” Kallie conceded.

Knew I’d be getting in late, past Kallie’s bedtime, but I’d left the second I could get out of L.A., eager to get home. Desperate, really.

“Why don’t we get your baby brother into bed? Then you can read me a story. How’s that sound?” I offered.

Curls flew when Kallie nodded. “Okay, Daddy!”

Stepping forward, I dipped down and gave Shea another kiss and a quick squeeze to her hip. “Later,” I whispered.

Shea hummed.

Yeah. I’d be showing my wife just how damned much I missed her. I’d put bets down she’d be amending any assertion about me missing her
half
as much as she missed me.

We climbed the stairs. I held my son, chest to chest, my arm secure across his tiny back and head, my other hand one with Kallie’s.

At the top of the landing, my attention went right to the wall of photos I couldn’t help but study the first morning I’d woken up in Shea’s bed. The morning I’d had every intention of running.

Little did I know, I’d be running right back to Shea.

Find love and bring it here.

Those words were inscribed in black cursive letters along the top of the wall, like a vocal statement of what the stilled images hanging on the wall proclaimed.

All the original pictures were still there.

A wedding picture of Shea’s grandparents graced the center, the frame surrounded by others that showcased the people Shea adored. People who’d helped to shape her into the magnificent, caring, gentle woman she was today.

I grinned at the young picture of Charlie sitting off to the side, back when he’d barely been a man and not the scruffy old guy now slinging drinks at his bar down the street.

Of course there was the one of Shea holding Kallie as an infant in profile. Seeing that picture the first time had unleashed some kind of fear in me, a fear I was dragging all my ugly onto sacred ground.

Tainting and marring and ruining.

But Shea had turned that vision around.

Wanting more, more, more.

Filling me with good. Or maybe she’d just discovered it.

I gently bounced my son as my gaze moved to the picture of Shea’s mom still on display. Yeah, she’d been responsible for so much negative in Shea’s life. But she’d ultimately been the one who’d set it in order. The one who’d put herself on the line and accepted responsibility. The one who’d provided enough information that the judge had issued a warrant to search Martin’s house. The one who’d stood up at the sick bastard’s trial and testified.

The one now serving ten years in a women’s prison back in California.

Her testimony had helped convict Martin Jennings of drug trafficking and extortion. But that didn’t even come close to grazing the tip of the iceberg. The rest of his vile practices had been lurking just under water.

He got life for the murder of Donny Alstinger.

The part I still couldn’t stomach? What was always gonna haunt me?

They’d found evidence of plans to have Shea
extinguished
, the first time stopped by Mark’s intervention.

The second had been in the making—first getting me out of the way so he could easily access her. With Lester running for governor, they couldn’t risk the condemning evidence Shea had against them coming back to bite them.

Just the thought, the
possibility
, sent pangs of anger and fear spiraling through me.

Lester Ford was currently standing his own trial.

Added to that?

Martin Jennings’s conviction in the murder of Mark Nathanial Kennedy.

Fucking agony.

Truth was, it’d always been agony. Didn’t matter how he was stolen from the earth. He wasn’t here and somehow we had to learn to live with that reality.

Martin had thought himself untouchable. Out of reach. Above the law.

Knew in my heart it was Mark who’d finally knocked him down.

Martin being responsible for Mark’s death had compiled all that bitterness and hate. But somehow knowing Mark had stood up for Shea, that he’d dared to try and protect a girl he didn’t even know—the one who’d ended up becoming my entire life—eased something inside of me.

It filled me with a mournful gratefulness I’d honor my best friend with for all my days. Even though he’d been so damned lost, he’d always had something brilliant inside him. A light he’d never let shine. A goodness he’d never set free. A peace he’d never found.

Not until he found something good worth fighting for.

Guess he and I had a whole lot in common after all.

Even with the score of evidence that’d come down on Jennings, there hadn’t been enough of it to prosecute him for anything related to my brother.

But Austin was okay with that.

He just wanted to move on.

Grow.

Without a doubt, that’s what he was doing, the kid out there on his own figuring out who he wanted to be.

Once a month or so I’d receive a letter from him. Every time I read his pained words, they just about broke my heart in two. Yet at the same time, they somehow healed a part of it, too. So many of his internal struggles and newfound joys were scrawled across the pages as he openly bared his soul to me, exposing all his thoughts and worries and hopes.

Sometimes facing our pasts was more painful than letting old wounds lie. It was easier just to leave them buried by years of callus and scars that never quite healed. Because ripping off those scabs? It exposed what was seated deep, everything festered and compressed and ready to erupt.

But churning under that decay was a spirit poised to flourish.

Crazy that even though I hadn’t seen him since he walked out the door back in LA., hadn’t spoken to him in all that time other than through letters, I felt closer to him now than I ever had.

My eyes traveled to the newer pictures that had been added.

There was a huge canvas-style one of my family, taken on Shea’s and my
second
wedding day. It’d taken place in the old church where Shea’s grandma used to take her on Sunday mornings, in that special place where my girl had fallen in love with singing.

We were standing on the steps just outside the ornate wooden doors. I was wearing a dark suit and Kallie looked like a princess in her white, flowy dress with a ton of flowers woven in her curly hair.

And Shea…

Shea.

She was wearing a white silk strapless gown, hair twisted up on her head, pieces falling out and brushing her slender shoulders. Her belly was round with our boy and the happiness on her face was the most brilliant thing I’d ever seen.

So stunning it verged on devastating.

Didn’t matter how many times I looked at it...how many times I looked at her…the reaction was always the same.

Overpowering.

Connor fussed, and I made a shushing sound and bounced him softly. “Think we need to get your baby brother into bed. What do you think, Little Bug?”

We moved on toward his room. Kallie skipped along, glued to my side, voice a whisper. “I think we better. He’s gotta be so, so tired. Momma kept him up so long ’cause she knew you were gonna want kisses ’fore he went to sleep.”

I cast her a smile and proceeded to press a bunch of soft kisses to Connor’s face.

“Like that?”

“Yep, just like that.”

A nightlight glowed from within, the walls painted a muted blue, musical notes and lines of lullabies painted on the walls.

Fitting, yeah?

I lay my son in the center of his crib. A small cry rattled from him, and I spread his blankie over him, the one he always had to have.

He fisted the satin edges in his tiny hands and pressed it to his face, drawing his legs up around it like he was giving it a welcoming hug.

So fucking cute.

I palmed the top of his head, and he leaned into it as he looked up at me with sleepy eyes. “Goodnight, little man.”

Hand-in-hand, Kallie and I tiptoed out. The second we were out the door, I swept her up. The way she tried to hold in her squeal, this sweet, subdued laughter rolling from her, melted me a little more.

Kid always had me a puddle at her feet.

Always so thoughtful.

So good.

So much like her mom.

Still wondered every damned day how I got this lucky.

“Did you brush your teeth?” I asked.

Her eyes went wide, before she shook her head as if she’d committed some sort of horrible crime. I set her back on her feet. “Run in and get it done.”

“I’ll do it super fast.”

“Not too fast,” I warned as I paused at the bathroom doorway, arms crossed over my chest as I watched her climb up the step stool.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when she slipped.

There was a huge part of me that wanted to swoop in and make it better. Protect her from anything and anyone who could possibly harm her. Freak out and beg her to tell me she was okay.

But I didn’t. I held it in and let her deal with the short fall that clearly hadn’t injured her. Let her learn, because when she climbed up again, she did it more carefully.

Maybe that’s something I learned from my baby brother. You can’t grow wings if you’re forbidden to fly. He’d been right when he said I’d protected and protected and protected until it was suffocating. That sometimes I inhibited rather than sustained.

And God. Only thing in this world I wanted?

For my family to grow. For them to experience life in the best ways possible. With me always standing at their sides rather than in front of them.

But when they needed me? In whatever capacity? I’d be there. Whether with a watching eye or a father’s fury, I’d be there.

Kallie finished, rushed right back out and to her room, hopped into her bed.

I knelt down at her side and listened to this amazing kid sound out the words that she was just learning, the butterfly book little more than a picture book with a couple of small words for her to make out.

“The end!” she said emphatically, all kinds of proud when she close the last page.

“Whoa, you read the whole thing? When’d you get so big?”

“Daddy,” she admonished, “I’m growing and growing. You know in only four months I’m gonna be six and I’ll be in first grade and then I’ll stay at school all, all day.”

I chuckled.

My little hurricane.

I put her book aside and pulled her covers to her chin, dropped a kiss to her nose.

“Goodnight, Little Bug.”

She beamed up at me. “Goodnight, Daddy Bug.”

My heart skipped a wayward beat.

Apparently, I’d gotten a promotion.

“I’ll see you in the morning, sweetheart.”

She clutched the top of her covers, smiling up at me. “’Kay.”

Flipping off her light switch, I left her door open a crack, the way we always did, and headed straight for the stairs. Itching to get to my wife.

I hit the ground floor. At the end of the little hall, I nudged open the swinging door leading to the kitchen.

And there she was, dancing around on bare feet as she wiped down the countertop, singing just below her breath with that amazing voice.

Quietly, I slipped in, edged up behind her and wrapped her in my arms. For a flash of a second, she startled, before she relaxed into my hold.

I leaned closer, my cheek embracing hers before my mouth made a pass down the slope of her neck and back up to her ear. “How many women are in this world? And somehow…somehow I found the one that was meant for me.”

Shea might as well have purred as she leaned back, hair brushing at my chin, face upturned and capturing me in the warmth of those eyes. Words flowed with her undying, beautiful faith. “I never said I didn’t believe in soulmates. Don’t ever forget you’re mine.”

Her statement had pleasure rumbling through me like the roll of distant thunder, her body pressed closed to mine.

“Come here. I have something for you,” I whispered, brushing a piece of hair from her face.

Slowly, she turned in my hold, lips full with that adoring smile.

She yelped when I suddenly lifted her against me, laughed as I spun her around and then propped her up on the edge of the island. I was quick to wedge myself between her knees.

Right where I always wanted to be.

I gathered her left hand in mine and brushed my lips over the intricate weave of diamonds and platinum she boasted on her ring finger.

It was no replica like she’d requested the morning after our wedding.

It was the real deal.

Her grandmother’s wedding ring.