“Will it hurt?” she asked, looking scared.
I had no idea what they were going to do to her so I couldn’t answer her. Instead the tech, a woman with short dark hair and blue eyes, gave her a reassuring smile. “Nope. It won’t hurt at all, sweetpea.” She held up what looked like a cotton swab. “I’m going to tickle your cheek with this and get all your DNA information. Over and done in the blink of an eye.”
“Dad?” Lucy held her hand out to me and I moved closer to hold onto her while the woman swabbed Lucy’s cheek then turned away.
“I know what DNA is,” Lucy told me on the ride back up to the maternity ward waiting room with Emmie. “But why did she need to have mine?”
I rubbed a hand over my head, feeling the rough stubble already growing back. “It’s hard to explain, Lu, but I’m going to try hard, okay?”
“Did I do something wrong?” she asked, looking worried as she glanced from me to Emmie and then back to me.
“No! Of course not.” I shook my head. “You’re a great kid, sweetheart. Layla and I couldn’t ask for a better daughter than you.”
“This isn’t about whether you did something bad or not, Lucy,” Emmie told her, touching her cheek gently.
“You’re my daughter, Lucy. No matter what anyone says you will always be mine… Okay?”
She nodded. “Yeah. I know that.”
“Well, the man your real mom made you with… He wants you. He wants to take you away from me and Layla. The DNA test was to see if you really are his daughter.” The elevator dinged and the doors opened but we didn’t get off.
Lucy was just staring up at me with wide dark eyes. “But… you said I was yours forever, Dad.”
“You are, Lucy. I swear it. No one is going to take you from me and Layla. I won’t let that happen. Ever. That doesn’t mean he won’t try, sweetheart.” Emmie stepped in front of the elevator doors to keep them from closing on us and I crouched down so that Lucy and I were on the same eye level. She was tall for her age, but I was still a giant compared to most people. “I love you more than anything. Understand?”
Her chin trembled and my heart cracked at the sight because there was nothing I could have done to prevent this pain from affecting her. “Yeah, Dad. I love you too.”
NICU was on the floor above the maternity ward. Only one or two people were allowed in to visit the babies at a time. I had to change into clean scrubs before they even let me into the room. Before I reached the nurses’ station I had to wash and sanitize my hands. Beside me Lana glanced around nervously. I had wanted Emmie to come with me, so that she could take in everything the nurses told me because I knew that I would probably forget everything. But a security situation had come up and she’d had to deal with it. Lana was my second choice but I was still happy to have her with me.
We followed the nurse who had come to get me earlier, passing five other incubators before we reached the two that sat right beside each other. There were little oxygen tubes in their noses and they were completely naked except for their diapers. They had a slight orange color to them and the nurse explained that they were jaundiced, which wasn’t unusual since they were premature.
“It’s okay. You can touch them, talk to them. Let them know their daddy is here.” She patted me on the shoulder. “Tomorrow, if they are doing well without the extra oxygen to help them, you can feed them.”
My hand was almost too big to fit through the hole of the incubator labeled BABY 1. I touched the leg of my son and he jerked as if I had startled him, but didn’t cry. On the other side of the incubator Lana was touching his hand. “They’re so tiny,” she murmured.
The nurse shook her head. “Actually, at thirty-one weeks’ gestation they are pretty big considering they are twins. But then you see the father and it all becomes clear. I’ve seen babies born this early with holes in their hearts and tears in their abdomens. Twins can be even trickier at this stage, but I have a good feeling that these two little rocker princes will be out of here in no time.”
Another nurse came over with a clipboard in her hands. She offered Lana and me a kind smile as she watched us stroking the babies’ arms and feet. I was too chocked up to return the smile. I was touching my children… Without Layla to experience this moment with me.
“So, do we have names for these two or are we going to stick with Thing 1 and Thing 2?” the newcomer asked.
I knew the names that Layla wanted, but wasn’t sure who was who to her. It didn’t feel right giving them those names yet. Not until Layla opened her eyes and could tell me for sure which of our sons was which… I wouldn’t think about what would happen if that didn’t happen. I couldn’t!
Chapter 13
Dallas
I was exhausted on my feet by the time I fell into bed Monday night. It felt like a month had passed since I had left Harper’s wedding the night before. Of course if Linc was home he would get all smart and tell me it was my own fault for sticking my nose in shit that it didn’t need sticking in, but what the hell.
I crawled under the covers, foregoing a shower. I had work in the morning and I would shower when I got up. No use in showering now, washing hair that was going to be a nest by morning because I didn’t have the energy to blow it dry, only to have to wash it all over again to be able to sort it out. Of course as soon as I arranged my pillows to the perfect position and closed my eyes I found that my mind wouldn’t shut the hell up.
Muttering a curse, I flipped onto my back and glared at the ceiling.
I should have just walked away as soon as Axton ran off to Gabriella Moreitti. I was used to that happening. It was the reason I had ended it with him. He had sworn they were just friends and that she meant nothing to him other than fellow rockers. Like I was going to buy that BS. He had that bitch’s name on his skin, for fuck’s sake.
I hadn’t walked away. Instead I had stuck around at the wedding. Secretly hoping that he would pick me over her and come back. Idiot. Like that would ever happen. Pathetic idiot.
Hanging around had only gotten me sucked into other dramas.
Liam was an addict. I had known it when I was dating Axton—if that was what you could even call what the two of us were doing back then. I hadn’t even been a nurse at that point but I could see the signs of drug use. The sores around his mouth that looked slightly like acne but were blisters from the meth. The erratic behavior. The mood swings. The lack of appetite and almost insatiable sex drive—something that I had only guessed at after seeing him bang not one but four girls in the same night at the same party at Axton’s New York apartment.
When Liam had started mouthing off about Gabriella—or Brie as most of OtherWorld tended to call her—and Axton fucking around again it had cut me in two. Of course I hadn’t stopped to wonder why he would care so much. That had flown right over my head as I had tried to hold myself together. No way was I going to let anyone at the reception know just how torn up I was over a guy, especially a guy I had let mess me up already in the past.
While I was inwardly dealing with my own emotions, I hadn’t seen Liam coming. He had pulled me aside and started whispering all kinds of nasty things in my ear. That was when I knew he was high as a kite. I had let him know the first time I had met him that I wouldn’t touch him even if the human race depended on it before popping him in the balls with the flat of my hand. Liam had steered clear of me any time we were in the same room after that first impression.
But instead of damaging his boys this time, I only pushed him away. I hated drug users, but I felt sorry for them too. I only knew a little of Liam’s background and none of it really explained to me why he had needed to get high. At first I had thought he was the kind of person that did it just for the hell of it. Getting high to get high because his life was so boring. But later I had realized that something horrible must have happened for him to want to constantly hide in a drug-induced fog of false emotions.
As I looked into his eyes last night, seeing past the glassy sea green eyes to the
man behind them, my heart had ached a little for him. Everyone had told me that he had tried to get help repeatedly, but he just couldn’t keep from going back to the drugs over and over again. The nurse in me wanted to help him, to get him through this sickness.
So I talked him into leaving with me. It hadn’t taken much persuading. “Wanna get out of here?” had just about been the only thing I’d had to say.
His bandmates hadn’t liked it though. Zander and Devlin had tried to stop us and Wroth had even attempted to step in and talk to me. I rolled my eyes at how he had seemed so anxious for me. “He’s dangerous like this, Dallas. Let us deal with him.”
“I’ve got this,” I had assured the big ex-marine as I had tugged Liam out the door. His car had been in the parking lot and I pulled the keys from his pants’ pocket before pushing him into the passenger side.
Sliding behind into the driver’s seat I was about to start the crazy powerful piece of machinery when he grabbed me and pulled me toward him. “Let’s start the party now, Dee.”
“Not gonna happen, buddy.” I grabbed his hair and yanked his head back, hard. “We’re playin’ this by my rules. Understand?”
“I don’t like rules. Rules suck.”
Grinning at his little boy pout I pushed away from him, easily maneuvering back into my seat. “Rebel.”
“Where are we going?” he had asked once we reached the airport.
“You’re the one who asked me to go back to New York with you, Liam,” I had reminded him, because it had been the first thing out of his mouth when he was trying to get me to have a quickie in the bathroom back at the wedding reception.
“New York sucks balls. Let’s go to Vegas. Or Miami. Or Japan.” He put his hand in his pocket, the one that hadn’t housed his keys, and stuck something in his mouth, chewing it.
“What the fuck, Liam!” I had yelled at him, pulling into an empty parking spot.
“Gotta get rid of the evidence, babe.” He swallowed then reached for the half empty bottle of water in the cup holder. “I’ll be good in a few.”
“You’re an idiot. Don’t you care that you’re wasting your life? What about Marissa? I know that you using like this is breaking her heart.” I hated the thought of him hurting his sister. Marissa was an amazing girl. Sweet, kind, and too loving by half.
“Leave my sister out of it, Dee,” he had suddenly snarled at me. “You know nothing about my sister or me so shut the fuck up.”
My eyes narrowed. “Don’t talk to me like that, Liam.”
“Then stop talking about my sister,” he had yelled, stabbing his fingers through his brown hair.
“Fine.” I didn’t speak to him again as we had moved through security. I had left my things back at Harper’s place, planning on picking everything up in the morning before my flight home. But I had my wallet so I wasn’t worried about the clothes or anything else that had been in my luggage.
Somehow Liam had gotten us on the next flight out to New York. First class, of course. We had a layover in Chicago that lasted three hours and by that time Liam was coming down off his high—mostly. He was starting to shake and he had nothing to fight his need for more of whatever the hell he had been popping tonight.
“Fuck, I hurt,” he slurred, looking green. Two minutes later he was running for the closest bathroom. I stood outside the door, ignoring the men who came and went as I listened to him throwing up for nearly twenty minutes.
When he came out, looking pale and drenched in sweat but shivering, I cleaned him up and pushed him gently but firmly into a chair near our gate. I forced him to sip some Sprite. “You need help, Liam. And not just a few weeks of it. I’m talking long term.”
He raked shaking fingers through his hair. “I know.”
“So why haven’t you done it by now?” I asked quietly.
“Because the drugs were always the easy way out. They kept the good shit good and the bad shit away.” He grimaced as he wrapped his arms around his stomach. “If someone gets sick or dies I don’t feel the pain. I don’t feel the loss.”
“Is that when you started usin’?” I murmured so that the few people sitting near us wouldn’t overhear our conversation. “When Marissa got sick and nearly died?”
Pain that had nothing to do with his withdrawals crossed his face. “It was when I moved on from the weed to the harder shit, yeah. I’d already lost everyone else that meant anything to me, Dee. Marissa was all I had left and it looked like I was going to lose her too. I couldn’t deal with it so I found a way out.”
I swallowed hard, knowing that if I lost Linc or Harper who were my life lines, I would be messed up too. Reaching out I pushed a few locks of sweat damp hair from his brow. “So… Now that she’s healthy and full of life, why don’t you stop?”
His laugh was weak, full of self-mockery. “You would think it would be that easy, huh? Well it fucking isn’t.”
“Don’t you realize that you’re going to lose everything you love if you don’t get clean once and for all, Liam? If you keep destroying yourself like this, no one is going to be around when you finally fall.”
“I’ve already lost everything.” His jaw clenched shut and he leaned his head back against the seat, glaring off into space.
“What do you mean?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking.
“I got out of rehab about eight months ago and I decided to take a chance. Tell this girl that I was really into her and all that shit… But then I started using again and she found out. I’ve lost her.”
“You couldn’t get her back if you got clean again? Proved to her that you’re for real this time?” I reached for his ice cold hand, giving him a little squeeze. “Isn’t this girl important enough to try and fight for?”
He didn’t answer. Just closed his eyes and didn’t open them again until our flight was called. The next few hours as we flew toward New York he seemed lost in thought and I didn’t want to disturb him. It was obvious he didn’t feel well. When the plane hit turbulence he threw up in the little bag that the flight attendant had given him.
When we touched down I was sure that we were going to go our own way, but he stopped me before I could step outside and hail a cab. “I want to get clean, Dallas. I want to get better.”
“Okay.” I nodded. “I can help you with that.”
I knew a really good rehab upstate. It wasn’t like the ones I was sure he was used to. Where they sat you down and cuddled you and made you talk about your feelings. There was group therapy and one-on-one time with the doctors, but the place was run like military boot camp. Liam needed some tough love, not some pansy paid to hold his hand. I made the call to the administrator as we took a cab from the airport. I had made friends with the guy’s daughter in RN school and she owed me a favor, which her daddy was going to come through on.
I stayed with Liam through most of the day. Watched as they gave him his room, told him who his sponsor was, and produced a whole new wardrobe of green fatigues and a white T-shirt for him. Liam told me that all the other times he had gone into rehab it had been someone else’s decision, which I had guessed at. An addict had to be personally ready to get better before he could actually start recovering fully. He also told me that I was the first person to stay with him on his first day.
“They usually just drop me off and head off to get back to their lives. Not even Marissa would come with me. Wroth wouldn’t allow it.” His gaze wouldn’t meet mine and my heart ached all over again for him. “Thanks for being here with me, Dee.”
I hadn’t been able to keep from hugging him, even though I wasn’t comfortable with hugs and affectionate contact. I wrapped my arms around him tight, offering him something I was convinced he had lost over the years despite his bandmates always being around. I offered him my friendship and he took it with a desperation that was heart wrenching. His arms came around me, not squeezing me as tight as I was sure he could have been able to if he weren’t so ill from the detoxing.
“I’ll be back on Sunday,
” I promised him. Sundays were family visitation days.
He nodded. “Okay… Can you tell my sister?” he had asked after a small hesitation. “Tell her I’m okay?”
“I’ll get her number from Natalie,” I had assured him, and kissed his cheek before leaving him in his room.
From there I had gone straight home, which brought me to now and the need to sleep because I had a twelve-hour shift at the hospital the next day but was unable to turn off my brain.
Damn, I needed a vacation after the weekend I had just had.
My phone made a buzzing noise and I glanced over at where I had plugged it into the charger a few minutes ago. It had died around lunch time, but I hadn’t really noticed. Other than make the call to get Liam into the rehab, I hadn’t used it at all. No one would worry about me. Linc and Natalie were still in LA until later in the week and if my mother happened to call it wasn’t likely that I would speak to her. Harper was probably in a passion-induced coma on her honeymoon right now so she wasn’t going to check up on me any time soon.
With a grunt I picked the phone up. My message box said I had twelve voice mails and the number thirty was on my text app. When I opened them and saw the first one was from Axton I hit delete on them all without even reading one. My voicemails went into the trash without bothering to listen.
I was done with Axton Cage.
Chapter 14
Drake
Why is it that when things get rough, that’s when I feel the urge to drink the most?
Honestly, I still have times when I want to reach for a bottle. Angel might be my life line, but she doesn’t completely stop the cravings. My love for her, and the knowledge of how shitty my life would be without her, was what kept me from reaching for the alcohol though.
I probably should have found a meeting close by, but I couldn’t leave Angel and Jesse or the rest of my family. They would have understood, but I wouldn’t have. My sister-in-law was lying unconscious in a hospital bed in ICU. Even though we knew the cause for her reaction to the anesthesia—an electrolyte deficiency—she was still not waking up.