plenty of times I felt like CJ had let me down over the years. Let the kids down even. It never really sunk in just how much my leaving had damaged him though. He went through being raped and having to deal with the aftermath and everything it cost him, and I wasn’t there to help make it better. I was part of the cost, part of his suffering instead. My heart hurt for the younger CJ. The one who wrote that letter was devastated, distraught, and from the sounds of it, barely hanging on.
Maybe he would have spiraled even if I had stayed. There was no way of knowing. It did me no good to think about it either. Everything in that letter was the past.
“He dreamed of you,” I said aloud. “You were the first thought he had when it came to raising a family. A boy. His boy. The boy who would protect his sister.” I smiled as I talked to Toby. It was something I did once in a while when I was feeling lost. “You were always a part of his plan, even when he didn’t know about you.” A feeling of warmth and love swept through me as I spoke to him, and as happened sometimes, I attributed it to Toby being there, listening to me. Maybe I was just crazy or having some kind of post-menopausal hot flashes, but I chose to believe instead. My boy heard me. He knew.
“I know it’s not right to ask anything of you, but if there’s anything you can do, I need you to help your sister again. Bring Deck home to her, and if it’s not too much in the end, make sure your father makes it back to us too. We still need him. We need both of them, especially since we can’t have you.”
Chapter 10
Two Months
Ever
One glance down at my belly as I waited to be called back to my appointment had me damn near in tears. When we had the twins, Deck never missed a single appointment with me. He was so excited about getting updates about our girls that he was usually rushing me out the door and damn near giddy with excitement. This time was different. There was no Deck and I hadn’t asked anyone else to go with me, unlike the last time when I still had more hope that he would be found before he missed more than the one appointment. Two months had gone by. This was the second one without him there with me, and holding back the tears was becoming harder and harder. Holding on to hope that we would ever recover him was just as difficult a task.
“Your blood pressure is a little higher than I’d like for it to be,” Doc Middleton mentioned as he glanced from the chart where the nurse had written that information and then back up to me. Doc was a trusted extended family member of the club considering he was Trunk’s uncle and he had also delivered most of the club’s babies. I liked him because he looked like a damn biker when not at work. His dirty blond hair hung past his shoulders normally, though he wore it pulled back in a ponytail or man bun while at work. The soulful green eyes that sat behind a pair of sturdy black-framed glasses noticed everything too. Hell, he noticed too much.
“I’m fine,” I insisted.
“Is Deck still…” Doc left his words hanging in the air as if speaking the truth out loud would make it hurt more. While he wasn’t privy to everything going on with the club, he knew enough, and I was comfortable with talking to him about it too.
“No word. None that’s real or that matters anyway,” I amended thinking back to the package that had been waiting for me on the front steps of my porch when I left for my appointment. It was probably also the reason my blood pressure was slightly elevated. I was pissed the hell off and saddened by the fact that my husband couldn’t be here with me once again because some psycho woman seemed to think she had a fucked up claim on him while he was a prisoner of The Trinity Group.
In the latest round of pictures that had shown up, the woman was lying naked next to Deck. He was also naked, though I could see bruises on his body. The words written across the image this time,