Lost Hart, page 23
He made her feel safe and beautiful. And he loved her children, and they loved him. After Ted died, she didn’t think she would ever be able to trust men again. But Chase proved to her that she could. Until he took off without a word, that is.
But they’d buried that hatchet and were moving past it.
He wasn’t like Ted. He didn’t have a second family and a second life.
He had a troubled past and secrets that bogged down his soul and tortured his dreams. But through it all, he was a good man. An honest man.
She wanted to be his soft place to land. For him to come home to her and the kids, rest his head on her chest and be vulnerable, allow her to get in and see the darker side of him. Help him find the light again and hold his hand and his heart as he fought his demons. She wanted to fight alongside him. As a good partner should.
“You two have a lot to sort out before you can start making all the big plans and ideas that are swirling around in that head of yours,” Joy said, her small smile coy and knowing.
“Get out of my head, you witch,” Stacey said with a laugh.
Joy merely chuckled, but then her expression tightened again. “He went to prison in Peru to save someone else. Someone who they all knew wouldn’t survive in prison. He was in there six months before the boys got him out.”
Stacey stayed quiet.
“I aged ten years at least during those six months. Knowing my son had been put away for a crime he didn’t commit. For a crime not even the person he was protecting committed. The conditions were terrible. He was in solitary a lot. Then there was an outbreak of the mumps, and he got it. Got an infection from it, which—” Joy wiped beneath her eyes and reached for a tissue from the side table next to her chair.
Which what?
“Which what?” Stacey gently probed.
Joy blotted at her eyes and beneath her nose. “I shouldn’t say any more. It’s really not my story to tell. I feel like I’m betraying him with this little bit that I am saying.”
“Is he sterile?” Stacey asked. She was a nurse, after all. And although the mumps were rare now, since most people got the vaccination as a child, and sometimes boosters again as adults, it was still possible. Particularly in developing countries. And although the probability of the mumps causing infertility was rare, if paired with an infection …
Joy’s lips were so tightly pinned, they were turning white.
“He’s sterile, isn’t he?”
“I’ve tried to tell him that it doesn’t make him any less of a man. That fathering children doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t be a father.” Fresh tears sprang into the woman’s blue eyes, and she dabbed at them with the tissue. “But you didn’t hear it from me.” She glanced away and shook her head. “He’s so troubled.” She blinked a few times and hiccupped. “But he’s a good man. And he deserves to be loved by a good woman. He deserves a family, and you and the kids are that. I know it. You know it. And I know he wants it. He’s just …”
“Got a lot to work through before he feels worthy of it,” Stacey finished, her heart heavy, throat thick and eyes burning.
Joy nodded. “A lot.”
The unspoken question hung in the air. Was Stacey willing to tough it out and wait for Chase to work through it all? Or had she been through enough of her own chaos that she was going to cut him loose and focus on her kids?
She’d be as dishonest as her dead husband if she said the thought hadn’t crossed her mind. Because she and the kids had been through a lot. Connor was kidnapped, for Christ’s sake. And it would be a hell of a lot easier to just walk away from Chase and let him figure himself out.
But then, she’d never had an easy life.
And she knew what it felt like for people to give up on you. And she didn’t have any issues as a child, and yet her parents had given up on her anyway. She wasn’t what they wanted, so she became just another mouth to feed.
She wouldn’t give up on Chase.
He was worth sticking around for. He was worth waiting for. Worth fighting for.
“If I’m being honest,” Joy said, pulling Stacey from her wandering thoughts, “I need you here tonight, too. I don’t like being alone when one of my boys is hurt.”
“I love your son, and I’m not going to give up on him. I’m here for you, Joy. I’m here for Chase. I’m here for the whole family.”
“Because you are family. You’re a Hart. Those kids are Harts. And whether my son figures himself out or not, we’re not letting go of you.”
Stacey smiled through the pain that squeezed her chest. Easier said than done, unfortunately. She’d love nothing more than to be a Hart, but if Chase rejected her and the kids, she didn’t think she could continue to come around. It would be too hard. Too hard on all of them.
“Whatever you need, honey, just ask. No request is too big or too small. This is a scary time for all of us.” Joy’s lips twisted, and it seemed like she was fighting a pout. Her chin wobbled again as fresh tears sprang into her eyes.
Stacey stood up from the couch and went over to Joy in the chair. She knelt in front of the woman and opened her arms. Joy didn’t resist for a moment—she was a hugger—and wrapped her arms tight around Stacey.
“I don’t care what happens between you and that buffoon son of mine, you’re my daughter,” Joy said between sobs that were so fierce for her tiny stature, they shook Stacey as well. “You’re a Hart.”
Now Stacey’s eyes were damp. She half chuckled, half sobbed as she held on tight to the woman she’d come to love like a mother over the past several months.
They sat there in the living room, wrapped up in a hug for a while, until their tears had ebbed and a sense of calm had settled over both of them. Joy was the first to break the embrace, wiping her fingers beneath her eyes and smiling brightly. “How does French toast sound for breakfast?”
Stacey used her sleeve to wipe her own eyes and grinned. “French toast sounds perfect.”
“Can I have another piece of toast?” Connor asked the following morning at the breakfast table.
“Absolutely, my hungry little man,” Joy said, stabbing a piece of French toast from the stack and lifting it over to Connor’s plate. Then she went about cutting it up into bite-size pieces.
Thea was also enjoying the French toast and had nearly finished two slices on her own. However, Diesel the shark was circling beneath her seat, so who knows how much the baby actually eaten, since she seemed to be dropping her hand over the side of her highchair and awful lot.
Although plagued with worry, Stacey slept rather well. Connor had snuggled in tight to her when she finally joined him in the bed, and Thea woke sometime around 5 a.m. claiming starvation and in desperate need of sustenance. But then she fell back asleep after only a couple of minutes of nursing, and Stacey felt threads of warm contentment worm through her as she drifted back off to sleep with both her babies in her arms.
They all slept in until nearly eight thirty, until the smell of French toast and coffee had them all rising from the bed like zombies and staggering down the hallway.
Stacey took a sip of her coffee and glanced out the window at the gloomy, rainy Tuesday morning. February was not a pretty month, even for Victoria. Though the lack of knee-high snow was a nice change of pace from Edmonton.
As happy and well-rested as Stacey felt and Joy seemed, there was still an overhanging fog of worry that seemed to have settled over the house like a thick smoke. They hadn’t heard anything from Rex, Heath or Brock since earlier last night.
And of course, that meant their imaginations were going wild.
Were they not hearing anything because there was nothing to report and Chase was healing nicely? Or were they not hearing anything because they were afraid to call and tell them Chase had taken a turn for the worse?
After the last several months of Stacey’s life, her mind immediately went to the absolute worst-case scenario. It was better to think the worst and be relieved than think the best and be brutally disappointed or heartbroken.
She glanced at Joy’s cell phone on the edge of the table. Hers was over by her purse in the living room.
“Nothing yet,” Joy said, popping a purple grape into her mouth. “And believe you me, I’ll be giving each and every one of those boys a piece of my mind for not keeping us better informed.” She shook her head. “Bunch of evasive buggers. They get that from their father, I’ll tell you that.”
And as if they knew their mother was preparing to rip them a new one, Joy’s phone lit up and Brock’s face appeared on the screen.
“About damn time,” Joy said before answering the call and putting it on speakerphone. “Not happy about being kept in the dark for this long, Brock Lionel Hart,” Joy said, planting her hands on her hips and staring at her phone like it was a video call and not just a voice call.
Brock grunted uncomfortably. “Nothing to report.”
“BS and you know it,” Joy said, her hackles up. “What’s the latest?”
“He’s stable. Doing well as can be expected. They ended up having to sedate him during the MRI because of the confined space.”
Joy’s ire disappeared and she closed her eyes, her hand covering her mouth.
“Got him on morphine for the pain now. There’s always at least one of us in the room with him,” Brock went on.
“How soon until he can be airlifted here to the hospital?” Joy asked, her blue eyes having grown watery.
“At least a week,” Brock said. “Want to make sure there’s no infection or new bleeding.”
“And what are you guys doing while you wait for him?” Joy asked. Her temper was beginning to rise again, Stacey could see it. This woman knew her sons, and even though Stacey had only known the Harts for less than a year, she knew them well enough to know that not one of the four men were capable of sitting around idly and waiting. Broken brother or not.
Brock cleared his throat. “Doesn’t matter.”
“The hell it doesn’t,” Joy said, snatching her phone off the table, turning the speaker mode off and getting up from the table. “Now you listen to me, Brock Lionel Hart, you get your brother—all of your brothers home in one piece, you hear me? You got Connor back. You rescued all the other children. Now get home.” She wandered into the kitchen, but Stacey could still hear her.
“Nana Joy mad at Uncle Brock?” Connor asked, his cheeks all puffy, making him look like a chipmunk prepping for winter.
“No, honey, she’s just making sure he takes care of Chase, that’s all.” Stacey ran her hand over the back of her son’s head.
“Leave that shit for the cops and the feds,” Joy went on. “Stop this vigilante BS and get back to your wife and children.”
Stacey could practically see the steam rising up from Joy’s ears.
“You might not listen to me, but I’ll call your wife if I have to,” Joy threatened, which made Stacey snort a laugh. Her snort instigated Connor to snort. Then Thea snorted, which only set both her and Connor off in a fit of belly giggles.
Joy growled.
Connor growled.
Thea growled.
Stacey rolled her eyes.
Eventually, Joy rejoined them at the table, her complexion flushed, eyes fierce. “That stubborn buffoon,” she muttered, stabbing another piece of French toast.
“Are they going after Creed?” Stacey asked, glancing up from her plate.
Joy was viciously cutting into her squishy toast like it was a piece of overcooked steak. “They’re looking for him, yes. Haven’t come up with anything, but they—Heath mostly—say they won’t stop looking for him until they find him.” She shoved a piece of toast into her mouth. “I just want them to come home safe and in one piece.” But then she glanced at Connor, and her anger seemed to deflate. “I also don’t want anything bad to happen to anybody else’s sweet, precious babies, so I understand why they’re not ready to quit looking. But it just makes a mother worry, you know?”
Stacey nodded.
“Bunch of stubborn buffoons if you ask me.”
“Yeah, but they’re our stubborn buffoons,” Stacey said, reaching over and grabbing Joy’s hand and giving it a gentle squeeze atop the table.
Joy’s eyes lit up. “They are, aren’t they?”
“And we love them dearly.”
Chapter 24
“Fucking watch it,” Brock barked at Heath as they all unloaded Chase and his wheelchair from the airplane after ten days spent in the Seattle hospital. Skyler and Rob were kind enough to offer them all a flight home to Victoria once the doctors cleared Chase for travel.
“His legs aren’t broken,” Heath said, after accidentally bashing Chase’s knee into the doorjamb of the airplane.
“They will be with the way you steer that fucking thing,” Brock grumbled.
Chase stood up from the wheelchair. “I can walk.” He slowly, gingerly, painfully, descended the stairs from the airplane, gripping the handrail until his knuckles ached.
He loved where he lived, but the airport was damn small. So small that there was no jet bridge from the aircraft to the gate. The plane parked on the runway, and they rolled a staircase to the door for passengers to load and unload.
He reached the tarmac and stopped. He needed to catch his breath.
Grumbles and heavy footsteps behind him had him moving out of the way.
Heath plopped the wheelchair down beside Chase. “Here you go.”
Reluctantly, Chase sat back down and allowed his younger brother to push him to the doors.
Rex and Brock were behind them with all their bags.
They went through customs and immigration, and he had to say, as much as the lack of a jet bridge was an irritation, the lack of a line at the customs and immigration desks was welcome. Score one for a tiny airport.
“You know they’re waiting for us, right?” Brock murmured, sidling up next to Chase.
That’s what he was afraid of.
He didn’t want Stacey, his mother or the children to see him looking the way he did. Like he’d just endured the beatdown of the century—which he had.
The doctors deemed him “out of the woods,” but he still had a long road of recovery ahead.
Frustration and dread coiled around his insides like a molten snake, and his heart began to beat wildly. He did not want them to see him like this.
He did not want them to see him, period.
He’d failed Connor.
He’d failed Stacey.
He’d failed them all.
He deserved every ache, pain and scar Creed inflicted on him because he’d forgotten the most important rule of battle: Watch your own six. He’d been so hell-bent on rescuing Connor, he neglected to watch his back and had nearly compromised the entire operation. Then they stupidly came back for him, risking their lives a second time.
And Creed was still at large.
Brock gently squeezed his shoulder. “You ready?”
No.
The double doors slid open, and they were greeted by giant handmade Welcome Home signs scribbled on by Connor and Zoe, as well as smiles larger than life and eyes full of tears.
Stacey had Thea in the baby carrier on her front, facing outward. The baby’s legs and arms were flailing wildly. Connor held Stacey’s hand, but when he saw Chase, his eyes lit up and he kept trying to pull from Stacey’s grasp.
She said something to him, her brows knitting together, but he simply gave her the same look of irritation back and tugged again. It took Chase’s mother taking Connor’s hand and slowly leading him toward Chase for the little boy to calm down.
“Chase!” Connor cried when he was not five feet away. “You’re back. You saved me.” Well, if that didn’t fucking gut Chase like a bayonet to the abdomen.
Connor went to lunge at Chase for a hug, his arms stretched out, but Chase’s mother pulled him back. “We can’t, honey. Chase is hurt, remember. I don’t know if he can handle a wiggle-bum like you climbing all over him.”
Connor’s pout was just another stab to the chest.
“It’s okay, little man,” Chase said, gently reaching for Connor. “Your hugs have special powers, right?”
Connor’s expression made the whole airport terminal brighter. “Yeah, they do. They fix all kinds of things. Booboos, owies, hurt feelings. My hugs are awesome.” He climbed up into Chase’s lap with the help of Chase and Joy, then he wrapped his arms around Chase’s neck and squeezed. Chase hugged him back with his one good arm, ignoring the pain in his ribs and shoulders and just letting the little boy’s superpowers heal him.
They actually kind of did. When Connor finally let go, Chase did feel better.
But it was a temporary relief because as soon as he let his gaze drift to Stacey, the ache in his chest quadrupled in size.
Connor spun around in his lap but left one arm looped around Chase’s neck. “Are your legs okay, Chase?”
He was still distracted by Stacey and the way she was watching him, but he nodded and gave Connor the attention he deserved. “Yeah, little man.” He tilted his chin toward his shoulder in a sling. “I just have a few other owies, so the doctors don’t want me to do too much, and that includes walking.”
“Owies you got saving me from the bad man and lady?”
Jesus, kid, way to rip my heart right out of my chest.
“That’s enough, honey,” Joy said, helping Connor out of Chase’s lap. She leaned toward Chase and gave him a gentle embrace, her blue eyes glassy. He could hear his mother sniffling and her body shaking as she held on to him. “Don’t you give me a scare like that ever again, Chase Marvin Hart. Or so help me God.”
He chuckled. His parents, in their brilliance, had given each one of their sons a middle name that corresponded with the musician they were listening to while the baby was conceived.
Brock was Brock Lionel, for Lionel Richie; Chase was Chase Marvin for Marvin Gaye; Rex was Rex Barry after Barry White; and poor little Heath was Heath Leppard, because his father said the sexiest song in the world was “Pour Some Sugar On Me” and when it came on, he couldn’t resist their mother.
As gross as it was to think about his parents doing anything besides holding hands, and in Chase’s mind the last time they did anything more than hold hands was when Heath was conceived, it did warm his heart to know how much his parents had loved each other. Theirs was the kind of marriage that love songs were written about.
