Yours: A Forever After Novella (8 page)

CHAPTER TEN

~ Harleigh ~

“Why didn’t you tell us?” My dad asks for the hundredth time since he ended Spike’s life and my nightmare. “Your mom and I…we would have…we could have. Shit,” he hisses, running his hands through his hair.

“Dad,” I murmur, hating to see him upset like this.

My dad might be the VP of one of the largest motorcycle clubs in the country, feared and revered by men who would scare even the boogie man, but when it comes to my mom and his kids, he’s nothing more than a big teddy bear. He has a huge heart and has always protected us, so I know the fact he couldn’t save me from Spike – that he can’t fix the damage Spike caused – has to be eating away at him.

Repeating myself, I call out a little louder.

“Daddy.”

It doesn’t matter that I’m a twenty-six-year-old woman, I’m married, or that I’ve been living out of home for years, I still call him daddy when I’m vulnerable and need him to listen to me.

“Yeah, baby,” he answers sitting down beside me.

After carrying me into the bathroom and handing me a pile of clothes, Lyric told me I had five minutes to get dressed before he was coming back in. I was done in two, but I spent my remaining three minutes sitting on the closed toilet seat considering what to do next. Now that Spike and his threats aren’t an issue and I know that Lyric is safe, I need to figure out what I want to do with my life.

*****

In the beginning, it was an easy decision to make. I had to get away from Furnace, even though that meant leaving my family, friends, and Lyric behind. Sure, I had responsibilities at home, such as my job at the hardware store and school, but they paled in comparison to making sure my husband was safe.

My boss, Lance, the man who owned the hardware store was sad to see me go but told me that my job was always there waiting for me if I ever wanted to come back. I wouldn’t, but Lance didn’t need to know that.

Deciding to finish college online was a given. Since I was a junior in high school, it had always been a goal of mine to get my business degree. Whether I used it or not wasn’t what mattered, just that I did what I set out to do.

When I contacted my professors and course advisor, they weren’t happy with me changing things up seeing as I was close to graduating, but they understood when I explained that I had family issues that left me no choice but to complete my degree online or drop out altogether. It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth either.

Where implementing my move was easy, nothing about actually following through with it was. Horrible didn’t come close to describing my first few months in L.A. I barely ate, didn’t get out of bed unless it was absolutely necessary, and forgot for a brief period that showering should be a daily occurrence, not weekly. In short, I was homesick. Terribly so.

Faye let me wallow in what she thought was self-pity at the time for as long as she could stand it. The days had bled into weeks, turning into months of depression and I was only getting worse. Not seeing Lyric every day, not being able to touch him, or hear his voice as he told me he loved me was torture. He had been my everything for so long, that being without him was akin to losing a limb. But regardless of my heart begging me to go to Lyric and tell him everything, to let him take care of me, I knew I made the right choice by leaving.

Ripping open my curtains and tearing the mass of blankets I had wrapped myself in like a burrito, Faye stood at the end of my bed glaring down at me. I have to admit, the determination in her eyes that day scared me a little. Especially since Faye was usually the calmest of all of us.

“Get. Up,” Faye growled, crossing her arms over her chest.

“No,” I whined. Reaching for the covers, intending to pull them back up and over my head, I gasped when she threw half a bucket of freezing cold water on me.

“Since you’ve given up on personal hygiene, food, sunlight, so pretty much the essentials, I figured I would help you out,” she snaps, dropping the now empty bucket onto the floor.

Yeah, well, what can I say? Those things seemed irrelevant when I was slowly dying of heartbreak. I kept my mouth shut, though, knowing there was no way I could respond to Faye without telling her what was really going on with me.

Faye didn’t take my silence well, throwing up her arms in exasperation, she shouted,

“I can’t do this anymore. I can’t watch the strongest, smartest, most beautiful person I know wither away into nothing. I’m sorry you’re hurting, and I’m not even going to pretend to know how you feel, but you can’t keep doing this to yourself, Harleigh. I love you. Your mom and dad are worried about you. You won’t talk to Dexter or Skye. God, you won’t talk to anyone. And you haven’t eaten in days. Lyric calls every day, dozens of times a day, and it’s only a matter of time before he gives up and comes to check on you in person if you don’t do something to stop that from happening.”

“I know,” I whisper, feeling utterly helpless for the tenth time today.

“If you know, then do something. Start slow. Get up and shower in the morning. Come down and have breakfast with Dante and me. Start getting to know your godson. He’s five weeks old, and he doesn’t even know his favorite aunt yet. Anything, Harleigh. Please,” Faye says, her voice cracking at the end.

The small piece of my heart I hadn’t given to Lyric breaks at the sight of my best friend begging me to start living again, so I do the only thing I can; I promise to stop being such a shithead and try.

It was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done, and most days, I faked the happy smiles I gave Tripp, the laughter I inserted at the appropriate times, and the polite conversation with people when I would have preferred nothing more than to continue suffering alone. But eventually, those occasions got fewer and further between. Eventually, my smiles were real, my laughter wasn’t forced, and I began enjoying talking to people again.

For the most part, I let Faye believe it was her lecture and bucket that made the difference, and I suppose, in a way, it was. It was the wake-up call that jump started my return from the dead. There was a long way to go before I would be truly happy again, if ever, but at least I had hope that maybe one day I could be.

***** 

“I’m not coming home,” is how I choose to start the conversation with my dad I’ve dreaded having.

Surprising me, dad chuckles, saying,

“Yeah, baby, I know. Your man set down ground rules before he left. One of them was that you were staying here with him. I don’t want to get into it now, not after what went down today, but soon, me, you, and your mom are going to have to talk about you getting married without telling us, or letting your old man walk you down the aisle.”

The fact that dad’s not angry with me for keeping such a big secret from him is a huge weight off my shoulders. Don’t get me wrong, he’s not jumping for joy or doing cartwheels about it, but he also isn’t digging a hole to bury Lyric in so I’ll consider his reaction one for the win column.

“I’m sorry,” I mutter, wringing my hands together in my lap.

“About what?” Dad asks, his tone tinged with curiosity and the slightest hint of amusement. “Not telling us you’d been dating the boy who’s been attached to you at the hip since you were born or the fact the little shit convinced you to marry him without asking my permission first? Or maybe because you scared the fuck out of me when you up and left home without telling us why?”

“Can I answer, yes to all of the above?”

“Sure, baby,” Dad grins. Becoming serious, he states, “you can do whatever the fuck you want as long as you don’t ever shut me out like that again. Took ten years off my life today, Harleigh. Hearing that you’d been hurt by that motherfucker, that he was walking around breathing while my little girl was suffering broke my goddamn heart. If I had known what happened, what he did and why you thought you had to leave, I would have taken care of his ass then.”

“Please don’t,” I whisper, taking hold of his forearm. “That’s in the past, and nothing you can say now will change it. I had my reasons for not telling you, for not telling anyone, but they died with Spike.”

“Does it bother you?” At my confused expression, dad expounds, “That I killed him. In front of you no less.”

Shaking my head, I answer him honestly.

“Not even a little bit. I’m not stupid, dad. I know the majority of the MC’s dealings are legitimate these days, but they weren’t always. Neither were the things you had to do to protect your brothers, the club, and you families. It doesn’t bother me, though. I know who you are and what you stand for, dad, and I love you more because of the things you’ve had to do to make us safe, not in spite of it.”

Dad wraps his arms around me, pulling me into his massive frame. My dad’s hugs have always been like a balm to soothe my soul, and this one is no different. Tall, broad, and fit for an old guy, dad holds me tightly, telling me how much he loves me and how proud he is of me until we both hear someone clear their throat.

“Everything good here?” Lyric asks, raking his eyes over my face trying to determine if I need him to come to my rescue.

“Boy,” Dad growls. “You know better than to ask that shit. She’s safe with me, and it pisses me off that you’d think otherwise.”

Shrugging, Lyric crosses the room and has me in his arms then seated on his lap faster than dad or I can register he’d moved.

“I don’t really give a fuck if you’re pissed or not. Harleigh’s happiness and safety is all I care about. Walking in and seeing tears in her eyes, you get why I have to ask because if your wife were upset, you’d do exactly the same thing. And don’t pretend you wouldn’t,” he says, challenging dad to deny it.

He doesn’t, though. Dad gives Lyric a curt nod and settles back into the couch.

“Since my girl’s been through enough today, how about you explain the two of you getting married and hiding that shit from us?”

Pressing a soft kiss to the top of my head, Lyric doesn’t hesitate to answer him.

“I love your daughter; I always have. I knew from the second I set eyes on Harleigh that she’d be mine one day, and I didn’t see any sense in waiting to make that a reality. It was Harleigh’s decision to keep our relationship between us, and I respected that. Didn’t necessarily agree with it, seeing as I was more than happy to shout it from the rooftops that she’d agreed to marry me, but it was what Harleigh wanted. And as you know, she can be pretty convincing when she wants to be.”

At that, my dad chuckles.

“You don’t say. Welcome to my world, son. Out of the three women in my life, this one’s always been the negotiator. And when that fails, she pouts until she gets her way.”

Feigning outrage, because he’s not wrong, I gasp,

“I most certainly do not pout. I bat my eyelashes, make my lip quiver, then and you’re putty in my hands. It’s not my fault you’re soft, old man.”

“Well, there’s that too,” dad smirks. “So why the secrecy?” He asks after the humor has worn off.

“In a word; expectations. Where Harleigh and I are concerned, everyone’s had plenty of them. From the time we were kids until Harleigh left town, our families, the brothers, our friends all expected us to end up together one day. We couldn’t go out to eat together without someone asking us when we were going to stop playing around and settle down. The bitches at school were relentless; using my girl to get my number, befriending her to get closer to me. It didn’t matter how many times I made it clear I wasn’t interested, that shit didn’t stop until Harleigh graduated,” Lyric sighs.