The Way Home (Lights of Peril Book 2) (25 page)

My parents have Patrick ready for me as I
arrive to pick him up. By the look on Dad’s face no one got much sleep around the house. Patrick’s sleep is a complete guessing game. He has no set sleep pattern anymore, just whenever he feels tired, he conks. His dad is the exact same, shocker there.

“Good morning, Sadey.
Bringing me a package? I’m bored and there’s nothing to do around here that Cricket and the others are doing that they shouldn’t be doing. Whatcha got for me?” God, Gunner, find a woman with all the emotional problems that equal the ones around here and I swear you’d never be bored on a Saturday morning.

“I have Patrick
. Want him?” I know he doesn’t. No way does Gunner want to take Patrick on, but I’ll be damned if he doesn’t come to my little guy and take the car seat from my arms.

Shit, another surprise
, but this one is wrapped as a beautiful gift that I’m going to accept. This way I don’t have to take a questionably moody infant to see his definitely moody father. Thank you, Gunner.

“Give me the little guy.
I got him. Go do whatever it is you and Pres. Do. Fuck…wait… never mind. Yes, definitely give me the little guy. You’ve got years to scar him with all the frolicking we hear in the halls from you and Hem. Uncle Gunner will have this little baby’s back today.”

He smiles and looks to Patrick, who is asleep
. “Don’t I, buddy? Mama is going to find daddy and you’re staying put. Uncle Gunner will show you how to load a gun.”

After I let out a small laugh at Gunner’s ridiculous baby voice
, I lift my eyebrows to him in an ornery way and make my way out of the room. Hem is probably so far into sleep, he may not even wake up for me to be able to tell him I’m ready to let the past go and that I want him home, with Patrick and I, for good.

When I make my way into Hem’s room I can see him sitting on the bed with his back to me, holding something in his hands.
He’s shirtless and his back muscles are tense. I can hardly tell if he’s awake.

I knock on the open door, “Hem, honey.”

He doesn’t move to look at me, just keeps his head down.
Making my way to him I see him holding an old and tattered piece of paper that looks familiar but I can’t place where it’s from.

I shut the door behind him and
move to sit next to him on the bed and sit as still as he is while he continues to read the paper in his hands…his shaking hands. He looks worried and sad.

Only so much silence a woman can handle before she ruins a moment and I’m about to ruin this one with my lack of patience.
“Hem, what is that?”

He stops looking at the paper and hands it over to me as he puts his elbows on his knee
s, hands to his head and looks down, waiting for me to respond to this.

I’m completely taken off guard by
what this is. The handwriting is mine and I blush a bit with what I’ve written.

I remember this note.
This was my very first love letter that my desperate teenage-self ever wrote, and it was to him. I reference the date at the top. I was that kid that everyone knew in school that dated
everything
compulsively, even noting the time of day I had written it.

God, I was
so immature, but he loved me regardless.

The letter was written in
pencil when I was just fourteen years old. This means the note is over seven years old. It looks so used and aged and it makes me question what it’s seen and been put through over these years.

I start to read the letter out loud for only
him and me to hear,
“I know the shape of your face and I like how you wrinkle your nose when I say something silly, so I try to be that way a lot. I love you more than you love music and if you would let me, I would sing to your heart.”

I stop reading
, not because I can’t continue, but because he’s astonishing me by continuing my written words, verbatim, without the letter to read from. His voice is husky and quiet. He has my letter to him memorized, word for word.

“No other person likes me as much as you do.
You’re the only friend I have that doesn’t make fun of me when I cry or because I eat my M&M’s one color at a time.”

As h
e recites the words to me, he gives my verses a deeper meaning. Being that I was this same fourteen year old girl once, I’m lost in his voice, letting him take us back to our young lives and those memories.

“I’m really sorry I embarrassed you.
I won’t bother you anymore.”

The way he says these words
lends me the notion of how many times he must have read this letter. My eyes are welling and I’m not considering wiping away these tears. Let them run down my face. I don’t care. They are tears of joy.

“I’m going to marry you one day and I’m going to love you forever
, even if you think that’s gross.”

Although these words were clearly written by an immature,
starry-eyed, little princess, the words still hold true. I can’t listen to this anymore without becoming a blubbering mess and I refuse to let this moment be taken away.

“Hem, you kept this?”
He doesn’t respond. He only stops reciting the words for a second to look at me.

“Honey, you kept
this all these years.” It’s no longer a question, but a statement.

“I will wait for you.”

The final sentence at the end of the page says that, even then, I would wait for him.

Oh my God.

I’m still holding the letter, my hands now a shaky mess. Drops of my tears have spilled onto the paper. Finally, he turns his body to me and sits up, touching my cheek with his calloused hands and gives me a smile that the fourteen year old girl inside me would have given up her designer wardrobe for.

“I read it
every day when I was gone. I thought if I could read that enough times, I wouldn’t forget your voice in my head. I didn’t know how to stop missing you after the first month, so I just accepted that it was impossible and I had this with me all the time. Sugar, you loved me like that then. You love me like this now?”

Quickly standing
, I move to him, placing myself in between his knees and hold his head in my embrace and let him talk. “I love you, baby. This limbo is killing me all over again. I love you so fuckin’ much.”

We are both lost in this happy to have each other again
, but still lost in the emotions that have left us questioning each other.

“Hem, you know I’m unsure about a lot
, but my love for you is the same.”

“I know
. You just need time. I just don’t want to waste any more of it. Sadey girl, I will tell ya, though, it doesn’t matter how much time you need or if we are never defined again. I will always love you, no matter what you choose.”

“I want to know something.”

“Know what, babe?”

“I’ve known all these years you were for me.
When did you realize you loved me how I loved you?” I’ve never even thought to question this until now. Seeing him read my letter, the letter he saved, has me questioning when it was he decided that he and I were going to be an ‘us.’

He’s twisting his wedding
band around his finger, looking down on it to avoid my stare.

“Sadey, I never really decided anything.
The feelings I have for you now are the same feelings I had for you when we were just kids, they just grew stronger over time. Eventually I saw you as a woman and not a kid, so the love came with more strength.”

“That’s not an answer.
You’re dancing around this and we both know it. Are you ashamed, is that it? I mean, are you embarrassed to tell me? I really do want to know. It matters to me. I don’t know why, but it does.”

He looks at me, turning his body
further to look directly into my eyes. “Sadey, honey, do you really need an exact moment? I woke up one morning and asked myself what my life would have been like without you in it. I remember it was the day you left for college and I knew I wouldn’t see you for a month. We were standing at my mom’s house and you were telling us all goodbye. You were getting ready to get into the car, the same car that you girls had overloaded with all your shit. You hugged me goodbye, as if I was nothing more than an afterthought. When I didn’t want to let you go, I think that’s when I knew. I was afraid to let you go. Now, more than anything, I’m afraid you’re going to let go of something that I just fuckin’ got.”

His words, they are everything I wanted to hear from him since I can remember
…so beautiful.

“You always did wear your heart on your sleeve,
Hem.”

“
For you, I did.”

He leans to me, kisses me with more love
than I think I deserve right now for being angry at him for leaving.

Unfortunately,
we are abruptly interrupted with a knock at the door. Damn, sometimes this place is like Grand Central Station. It’s Cricket and he looks confused and half pissed.

“Boss, Gunner is upset.
He says he has a package for you and that it is important enough for you and Sadey to stop your shenanigans and get your ass downstairs ASAP. He’s serious too. Cussed at me until I got off my ass and came up here to get you.”

“Fuck. Alright.”

Once Cricket closes the door, Hem and I stand close to each other. “Meant what I said. I would like to talk more about this, but damn if these clowns can’t handle a tiny baby for more than fifteen minutes at a time.”

I
smile at his frustration, nod, and follow him downstairs.

Once we hit the commons I see that
almost everyone is here. Mace, Shame, Honor, April, and Gunner look at us walking in the room and it doesn’t look good. Mace has tears in her eyes and April is staring at me like I’m about to disappear. Hem walks to Gunner and, as he does, I see Shame walk into Gunner as well and they all nod to head back into Hem’s office.

Really not good.

“Mace, what’s going on?” She better start talking. I’m not in the mood after my morning of mayhem to pull her teeth to find out. Lucky for me, though, she’s at least
trying
to clue me in.

“Come here and sit
for a few minutes, huh? I think you need to relax before I tell you exactly what’s going on.”

“No, I’m good.
Out with it. “

April jumps in with her usual bluntness to give me the bad news I had expected
, but it still takes me off guard. “Someone delivered pictures, like last time, Sadey “

“
What? Last time? Pictures of what?” I look to Mace and get nothing.

“Of you,
woman. They are pictures of you sitting on Hem’s bench at the cemetery. You are crying and someone was obviously watching you there.”

“Why though?
What would anyone care if I…”

Realization hits me
. Someone not so nice knew Hem wasn’t dead. They were watching me talking to his grave, looking at me for verification, to see if I believed my own words as I grieved.

“Sadey, you alright?”
Finally, coming out of your trance now Mace?

“No, Mace
, I’m
not
alright. This is messed up.”

I hear motion behind me and here comes a very pissed off Hem.
I haven’t seen him this upset since I used my words to hurt him on his first night back.

“No one leaves this place, you got that?
None of you women leave this place. Gunner is going to get Cherry and Ace now. ‘Til I advise otherwise, you are to stick close to avoid incident.”

Hem’s face is set
in vehement anger, but he says nothing else after those instructions.

“Hem, I want to know why.
April said someone took my picture at your grave. Who was it? I want to see the picture.”

“Not now
, Sadey.” The brush off.

“Yes, now, Hem.
This is about me. I want to see it.” The rebuttal.

“I just fuckin’ answered you and I said
not now
.”

“It wasn’t a question, Hem.”
I lean forward and rip what looks like an eight by ten black and white photo from his hand. He tries to jerk it from my hold, but I’m too quick.

I study the picture for
a few seconds and I see both Hem and Shame looking at each other with apprehension. I don’t see anything threatening about the picture, nothing at all. It’s just a picture of a lonely widow visiting her husband at his grave. The picture could have been anyone else doing the same.

In
the picture, I’m holding a Kleenex and I can see that I had been crying. I start to hand it back to Hem when I notice the writing on the back. I know, even before I look at it, that this is what has Hem so upset because he freezes in anticipation for me to look at it.

“
Bingo, daddy’s home. How’s the widow holding up now?”