Authors: Shiloh Walker
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Contemporary, #Contemporary Romance
No Longer Mine (2 page)
Tomorrow. She’d take tomorrow.
She had to go into town and get her prescriptions refilled and she’d promised her dad she’d come by.
With her luck, if she didn’t her nagging brother would tattle on her.
Wrinkling her nose, she pitched the juice, the science experiment and what was left of the chicken, but guilt wouldn’t let her ignore food altogether. She sliced off some cheese and grabbed one of the soft drinks. With the cheese and her Diet Coke, she leaned against the counter and grabbed the amber bottle of prescription pills.
She studied the bottle with a grim sigh and wondered, for the millionth time, how she’d found herself here.
This wasn’t the way things were supposed to turn out.
Not at all.
Opening the bottle, she muttered, “Suck it up, princess.”
9
Shiloh Walker
She tossed back one of the small yellow pills and ate the cheese, drank her soft drink. It filled the empty hole in her stomach. Plus she knew if she got a call from a certain somebody tomorrow, when she was asked a certain question, she could honestly say, “Yes, I’m eating.” Her body felt weighted down as she dragged herself upstairs. Too many nights of catnaps and the migraine from hell, and she was ready to crash. But she wanted a shower—needed it.
She stripped as she made her way into the large, dark blue shower just off her bedroom, leaving a trail of clothing behind her as she went. Shower. Then bed. Shower. Then bed.
She deliberately kept her mind blank, although she was so tired it would be a miracle if she could manage any sort of coherent thought even if she tried.
While she rinsed off though, her blissfully blank mind turned traitor. She wasn’t as tired as she thought, because the memories rose up, rushing at her like a freight train, unstoppable, unasked for.
Unwelcome.
Time wasn’t healing her wounds. Wasn’t it supposed to?
God
, she pleaded silently.
Will it ever get any easier?
The pain was just as shattering now as it had been then. It clawed at her, filling her chest, then belly with hot, lancing little darts of pain. Her throat constricted until crying was punishment, but she had no control over the tears that swam in her eyes, the sobs that filled her throat.
With the water pounding down around her, she slid down the shower wall to huddle in the corner, wrapping her arms around her shivering naked body. She thought wildly,
It has to get better. It has to.
Sometime.
“You’re almost there, sis. It’s just up there…” Rain pounding against the windows, the roof. So much rain.
“Almost there, fella.”
“Eat! Momma, eat!”
“Just a few minutes, Jas—”
The impact…the crash. Pain exploding in her head and dimly she could hear her brother swearing in the seat next to her.
Jason crying…
“Jason!”
The drop-off—have to keep away from the drop-off.
Another jolt. More pain…
The world spun around her, horrendous crashing and above it, she heard a baby’s terrified cry.
But then, even as the crashing continued, that crying…it went silent.
Forever silent.
10
No Longer Mine
“Jason…”
It was the sound of her own voice that brought her back to herself. Huddled on the floor of the shower, freezing. The water battering her body was icy and it stole the breath from her lungs. Shaking, she turned the water off and climbed out of the shower.
She didn’t want to look at the mirror, didn’t want to see her ravaged face, didn’t want to see the body she had let get too thin.
Grabbing her robe and a towel, she stumbled out of the bathroom to her bed. She rubbed her hair until it was mostly dry and then stared off into the distance.
They said time healed all wounds, but three years after she’d had her heart shredded, she was still bleeding out.
Her little boy…
Closing her eyes, she said softly, “Jason…”
She’d survived, barely, losing his dad.
It had damn near killed her, but she’d survived. Because of Jason.
Falling back on the bed, wrapped in her damp robe, she thought of his little face, those dark eyes, so like his father.
His father.
Wade Lightfoot. At one time, that man had meant the entire world to her.
He had
been
everything to her. He had meant more than her books, her writing, her dreams to leave her rather sad, miserable childhood behind her.
He had been her entire life.
And then he had gotten another woman pregnant.
She’d survived that, and she’d even managed to be happy eventually…because of Jason.
Losing that little boy, that… Well, she wasn’t technically dead. Her heart still beat. She breathed.
But she hadn’t felt truly alive for three years.
New Albany, Indiana
The hot summer sun shone brightly down on the little house. A For Sale sign was in the yard, topped by a bright red sign announcing to the world that this house was sold. Toys dotted the lawn, and a crop of wildflowers bloomed under each window. Freshly painted shutters gleamed under the noonday sun.
He’d lived in the house for a little over six years, but it hadn’t ever been the home he’d hoped it would be.
Too many ghosts.
He was finally putting those ghosts to rest.
11
Shiloh Walker
Shoving the door open with a booted foot, Wade Lightfoot walked out of the house, three boxes precariously stacked in his arms.
A gleefully laughing child darted in front of him, a yapping puppy at her heels. Wade stumbled and the box on top, one covered with dust, fell to the ground, falling open as it hit the concrete.
A familiar picture fell out—one he hadn’t seen in years. But he hadn’t ever forgotten it either.
Automatically he diverted his eyes and started to reach for it without looking, intending to pack it away with the rest of his memories. But then his hand slowed, stopped, and he turned his eyes back to the smiling faces looking up at him.
Damn, we looked so innocent…
It was Nikki and him at her senior prom. He had worn a monkey suit, had even gotten his hair cut.
Her shy grin and tousled hair at odds with the flirty black dress she had worn. He smiled, remembering how she had dieted for two months, exercising like some aerobics instructor from hell, losing twenty pounds, to fit into that dress.
He looked up to check on Abby as she shrieked. Her uncle Joe had caught her up in a bear hug.
Slowly, knowing he shouldn’t, he righted the box. Photographs, notes, souvenirs from some local amusement parks jumbled inside as he reached in and pulled out a picture at random.
Their first real date. Lori’s Christmas party.
The day he realized just how
right
it felt to be with Nikki. It was more than friendship, and that was a little scary. This girl was from the wrong side of town, but worse, she was only seventeen and had more problems than he had ever imagined anybody having.
She was three years younger than him, but in her mind she was already far older than him. She’d seen things, dealt with things, he hoped he’d never have to see.
He’d seen some ugly things in his work, but only in his work.
He was an EMT and he often saw the ugly side of life. It touched him, but it hadn’t shaped him.
It had shaped her all right. She’d lost two friends to drive-by shootings, her mother to suicide and for as long as he’d known her she’d done her damnedest to keep her younger brothers from falling into the dangerous lifestyles too often prevalent where she’d lived.
It had shaped her all right. Giving her a spine of steel and the resolve to get the hell out.
There was something else inside that box.
A book. The first one he’d seen, a year and a half after she’d run out of his life.
She’d gone and done it—exactly as she’d always said she would.
Sighing, he went to put the book back in the box and tried to tell himself to do the same with the picture, but he couldn’t. He found himself staring at it, at the younger versions of them.
At Nikki in her black dress, her eyes laughing as she stared at the camera. If he closed his eyes he could still remember the smell of her flesh, how she felt in his arms…
12
No Longer Mine
“Daddy?”
He started, looking up into dark eyes so like his own. Abby. “Yeah, darling?” he asked, amazed his voice could sound so calm after spending heaven only knew how much time lost in memories.
“I’m hungry.” She flashed him an engaging grin and held up her stuffed cocker spaniel puppy and added, “Skip’s hungry too.”
“So is Joe,” his older brother said, mounting the steps.
He nodded, ran his hand over the picture, feeling a familiar ache in his chest. He tucked the picture back inside the book then slid the book back into the box.
Out of sight, but never out of mind.
She was no longer a part of his life…no longer his.
That was that.
13
Chapter Three
Morning found Nikki at a tiny hillside cemetery, the old-fashioned kind that had a little white chapel in front of it. A white picket fence surrounded the cemetery and a tiny stream ran through it.
It was one of the loveliest sites she had ever seen. Peaceful and quiet. That was why she had chosen it.
Her entire world lay six feet below in a tiny coffin, clad in his Easter Sunday suit, his precious Mouse tucked under his arm.
JASON CHRISTIAN KLINE
BORN MAY 11, 2006 DIED SEPTEMBER 2, 2007
Beloved Son
I Am With You Always, Until the End of Time.
She closed her eyes as her mind drifted back to that time of brief consciousness in the ER when she had awakened after the accident.
“Jase…”
She didn’t know where that weak whisper had come from. Licking her lips, she tried to call out louder so he would hear her better. When he was playing it damn near took an earthquake to get his attention.
“Jason…” The second pathetic whisper was only minutely louder than the first.
She tried to open her eyes but couldn’t. Reaching up, she encountered gauze. Searching fingers roamed her face. The gauze bandages covered the top half of her head. What in the hell…
“Ms. Kline? Are you awake?”
She turned her head in the direction of the voice. “Where am I? What’s happened?”
“I’m Dr. Lawrence, Ms. Kline. You’re in Wayne County Hospital. Do you know where that is?”
“Yes. It’s in Monticello. What am I doing here, Doctor?” she asked, telling herself not to worry. Jason was fine. He had to be. She reached up to shove the bandages off her head and another voice intruded.
“You need to leave those bandages be, now,” the soft, cool female voice said. “You had some trauma to your face and we have to be careful.”
“Who are you?”
“Leanne Winslow. I’m one of your nurses. How are you feeling?”
No Longer Mine
“I hurt. Will you please tell me what happened?” she asked, reaching out, encountering a soft gentle hand. Another hand rested comfortingly on her shoulder.
Above her head she didn’t see the glances exchanged between nurse and doctor or how the doctor compressed his lips and nodded.
“Honey, you were in a car accident. Remember?” Leanne said. The bed dipped beneath added weight and the soft voice was closer.
“The storm…”
“A tornado passed through two neighboring counties. It was a pretty bad storm. You were in a car accident. You were run off the road. Remember?”
The prodding made her try to remember. The sluggish black curtain that obscured her mind wouldn’t let her think too clearly. “Not much. My son?”
The hand on hers tightened. “I am so sorry,” the nurse said, her voice sounding odd. “Ms. Kline, your son is gone.”
She heard those last words and the black curtain suddenly cleared. She remembered. Jason’s tiny little body gone cold, his eyes sightless. Pain roared up through her, biting, slashing and clawing until she wanted to scream with it.
She couldn’t though. Her throat was tight. Whimpering noises came to her from far off as she drew her knees into her chest, shrugging off restraining hands.
He couldn’t be gone. He was all she had left…
Again, darkness…
In a cool hospital room that hummed with machinery, the young woman lay on a hospital bed. She had been comatose for five days, ever since awakening in the ER to hear her son was dead.
During that time she hadn’t so much as flickered an eyelid. The doctors were unsure whether or not she would snap out of it. They had found no physical reason for the coma and were certain it had been caused by the trauma of losing her son.
They couldn’t say whether she would wake. It could happen any minute. It could happen never.
The room was dark and quiet, save for the steady beep of machinery in the corner.
Nikki gained awareness slowly. First of the sheets beneath and above her, then of the faint itchy feel of her skin. She shifted her hips and noticed another oddity, a tube strapped to her thigh. A catheter.
She swallowed, her mouth dry, her throat tight. Her nose, the area behind it felt strange. Slowly she lifted a hand and probed her nose with tentative fingers. Another tube. They had put a feeding tube down her nose, inserted through her left nostril.
15
Shiloh Walker
When her eyes opened, she squinted automatically, prepared to not be able to see clearly. Instead she saw a gauzy white light. Bandages. Her searching fingers found the end of the bandage, peeled back the tape and unwound it.
Clarity. She could see everything clearly, from the clock on the wall, to the drab painting, to the room number on her open door.
She hadn’t been able to see a damn thing more than two feet away without her glasses in years. Too many years.