Chasen leaned forward, dropped his head then drew his eyes up. “Declan said to stay away, and I can respect that, but...I have my own instinct and gut to worry about.”
Justice furrowed her brow.
“Instinct, we all have it. It makes us warriors. Declan blames himself for Nolan being lost because he didn’t listen to it and he blames himself for your ‘mugging’ because he ignored it again.”
Justice sighed, not finding this odd at all. It was fitting with the man she knew, and all his old soul quirks. Like needing his brother to tell him it was okay to plan a tomorrow with a girl...
“I’m worried about you. I want to rent the room out at your place for Boon, have him stay with you.”
Justice leaned back, knowing how this family worked. She wasn’t so sure he was really worried about Murdock, but she knew he was worried about her making ends meet. “I can take care of myself.”
Chasen dropped his gaze. “I know you can.” His stare lifted to meet hers. “He never would have given you a second glance if you couldn’t.”
Her hormones caused her eyes to well, or so she assumed. “You want Boon to stay, fine by me. You can work out the rent with my grandmother, I’m never there.”
Chasen went to speak, then instead offered a shallow nod just before he pushed back from his seat. He stood and tapped his fingertips on the table as he stared forward. “I know they’ve all told you what to expect, and knowing you, you’ve read about it a million times...but no one can explain it—the sacrifice. What you give up for a call you never understand and hate and love equally.”
He stifled a pained smile. “Five boys. My world. And the only one I met before they were months old was Nolan.” He dropped his head. “They let me come home when the doctors said it was done...he was going to leave.” He winced. “So small. He’d been fighting for weeks, and he was still so small.” He paused for a second. “We made it, though. He won his war before he had a chance to really live.”
“Yeah, he did,” Justice agreed.
Chasen took a few steps away and stopped when she said his name, but he didn’t turn. “If I...if in a month or so I happened to call you at some strange hour and ask you to meet at the hospital, will you?”
He still didn’t turn. She watched his shoulders tense, him nod and then walk away in that same tight military stride Declan always used.
Twenty-one
Justice never mailed the letters. They were too precious and had taken her too long to find. Instead, she sent an email to the account he should be checking. “I have Nolan’s letters...be safe, your Justice.”
She hoped it would open a dialogue and that once she heard from him she’d know how to tell him the rest.
Almost on cue, days after she had seen Chasen, Murdock started to call her. She ignored him and never went anywhere alone. He’d put her in a prison all over again, and she hated it.
Her precautions were pointless.
Murdock found her at the grocery store. He came up behind her and turned her sharply and doing so caused her stomach to brush right across him. He jarred back as if she had tased him all over again.
“Which one got you knocked up? Or do they not even keep tabs? All in the fam and such.”
She reached in her bag, a move he saw and with faster reflexes than she expected he clenched her shoulders. “I’ll be damned if you strike me again.”
“Off of me,” she said sharply. Rightful fear was edging up her spine. She had more than her to worry about right then.
“Got news for you, sweetheart, those fucking letters of yours are going to be your curse. Fix it. You tell them right now you forgot—he gave you those before he left. You tell them you’re still missing others or some shit. That’s what the text he sent you was about.”
“Fuck off,” she said, jerking back.
He leaned into her. “It was on record I was with your dad before you came home, that when you came home we hung out by ourselves and he had an accident. Everyone knows where he was before he came home. I didn’t tell them I saw Nolan because I didn’t. If they keep pressing me I’m going tell them why I didn’t see the fucker—because I wasn’t there, because some whore ass girl I wanted killed her father for no reason and I thought to help her out like some dumb, messed up, love sick kid.”
Murdock glared down at her stomach. “It would make sense for one of their heathens to be born in jail, grow up without a mother.”
She sneered. “No. You don’t get to threaten me,” she said as she tried to jerk out of his clutches but his grip was too tight.
Right then Justice heard commotion, some older man asking what was going on. Then she heard Boon, who was with her at the store and had only gone an aisle over, yell. “Hey! Hey! Fucker,” as he took Murdock’s hands off of Justice and moved him back with the brunt of his chest.
Murdock went to swing, Boon ducked and pushed him back, crashing him into a display.
The Sheriff came out of nowhere then. Apparently, Murdock was there with him. More security came and the old man and his wife defended Boon, as loudly as they could. “He stopped that fool from beating on this girl, right here in the open!”
When the store manager offered for the Sheriff or deputies to overlook at the footage to determine blame, the Sheriff quickly squashed the entire ordeal.
Justice’s hard glare had told Boon not to say a word during the whole upset. It didn’t matter that he was three times her size, she still saw him as Declan’s baby brother, the kid she tutored, and he saw her as woman that was best not to cross, especially lately.
Last week alone she’d caught him drinking juice from the carton, and Boon was sure the woman was going to gut him where he stood.
On the way home, Boon made his fury known, though, showing his ass like a true Rawlings. “That son of a bitch is asking for it. One good reason. That’s all I need.”
Justice didn’t engage, all Murdock had done was put the fear she had at seventeen front and center again. There was nothing she could do about any timeline he was worried about; the investigation was in full force again.
In the past, it was only the investigators the Rawlings had hired that suspected Nolan had returned to Bradyville late in the evening. Now there was proof, or at the very least a strong enough lead that the investigators had to take another look—basically they were going over everything Providence had pulled together, or so Dawson told Justice. For her sanity, she kept her distance from the investigation. The stress was the last thing she needed.
Justice pushed the fear back down as she came close to her home.
They had all the groceries in before Boon glanced down at her. “You all right? He didn’t like, jar it out or anything, right?”
Justice lifted one brow, finding the blush on his face amusing.
“Jar it out?”
He nodded at her belly.
“Figured that out did you?”
Boon’s blush deepen a bit more. “I’m not blind. I do live here.”
“Is it in a Rawlings’ handbook to just not talk about things that bother you? Ignore them?”
There was no hiding her belly, not anymore. She still wore big clothes around town, she told herself it was because it was comfortable, but she knew deep down she just didn’t want the news to get to Declan before she had a chance to tell him.
Today was the first time she had really crossed people that knew them both. She’d spent a lot of time in Savannah at work, or finishing up her training and schoolwork.
It wouldn’t be long now, though. That damn Sheriff or Murdock himself would make sure the whole town knew, and right then, Justice couldn’t decide how she felt about it.
She was scared, and no matter how strong she seemed...she wanted Declan. She wanted to know he was home safe, that she was going to be fine—they were. For once in her life she wanted certainty, but like always, it was nothing more than a pipe dream.
“Bother me?” Boon asked, pointing at his chest. “Ignore that,” he said wi
th a tick of his head.
“It doesn’t bother you this is my secret?”
He leaned forward. “I’m not so sure it’ll be that big of a secret soon. I heard those things cry a lot and stuff.”
She almost laughed. “Not my point.”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“I don’t know if it’s in a handbook, but it’s our way. We deal the way we can. Mind our own business and help when we can.”
A weak grin touched her lips.
“You gonna give him another chance?”
She didn’t answer, only glancing away before she spoke. “I want him to know about this from me, only me. Since you speak Rawlings, will you make sure that’s known if someone else happens to notice?”
He nodded. “Yeah, well, it’s not like he’s talking to any of us anyhow. Might kick my ass when he figures out I’m here.”
“I won’t let him,” she swore before she patted his chest and made her way back to the exams she was cramming for.
Justice was back to her waiting game, back to sleeping with her phone clutched in her hand, always making sure it was charged, and panicking just a bit when she lost service. She checked her email every five seconds and the actual mailbox more than once a day. She searched everywhere the UPS man could have left a package each day. She watched the news more than she should, and read chat boards and social media from wives and girlfriends she knew had Marines in the same unit as Declan.
She gauged very little. No news was good news in most cases but now it was coming close, now she was feeling even more scared. This was real, the fog of her anger could not hide how real it was anymore.
“We got this,” she whispered to herself as she stood before the mirror in her bathroom following her nightly routine, taking a snap shot of the belly that was all but overtaking her at that point, and writing a text across the image. She walked to her bed and talked to her little Rawlings. “Show momma how strong you are,” she said, sitting just right.
On cue, as if it were a game, she not only felt her belly move, but saw it. She played the game for a few minutes, then spoke to the camera, her video diary that helped her cope, a technique that allowed her to face the emotions, and find strength.
That night her entry was short and sweet—she wasn’t feeling awesome. She thought sleep would help but the pains in her side, the ones she was sure were from the baby stretching, kept on, and on, so much so she thought a bath would help.
It didn’t. Right as she stood, a sharp pain, sharper than the others hit her. And then her water broke right there in the tub.
At first she was in shock, then somehow she found a calm and managed to get dressed between the pains. She turned the camera on her phone on, the sound on, and had it on a lariat around her neck, so she could stop it and turn it off when she needed too, then she walked down the hall.
Bell was staying with her ‘friend’ across town, and Dawson was working third shift. Boon was her only shot at getting a ride, and she wasn’t so sure he was there. He’d been enjoying the freedom from his daddy’s house a little too much at times.
Downstairs she pounded on his door. When he didn’t come, through another pain she scrambled to find the skeleton key then unlocked the door and pushed in.
He was sound a sleep, shirtless in jeans. She shook his shoulder and he shot up, almost knocking her in the head, but right as he did another pain hit her and clenched her nails in his shoulders as she screamed and cursed. “Your brother is a dead man,” she grunted.
“Holy fuck!” he said, standing and holding her against him.
“Calm down, just drive. That’s all I need you to do.”
Boon cussed, in a panic as he took the bag from her shoulder, looked at her phone necklace like she was a fool, pulled his shirt on inside out then his boots.
He didn’t guide her out, he picked her up in a cradled position and walked double time out to his truck.
Justice had taken classes, a few, at school and did her best to breathe, but in all honesty right then all she wanted to do was claw out Declan Rawlings’ eyes and was thinking he was safer in whatever war zone he was in than at her side.
In the middle of the pains, she’d texted both Bell and Dawson, and just before she reached the hospital, she texted Chasen. Months before she decided it was the right thing to do, for him to be close when his first grandchild was born. It was something he’d missed with all his sons, but right then the reason she was calling him was so he could calm Boon down because the boy was freaking out enough to make you think it was his baby on the way.
The whole way there he kept his hand on her stomach as if he were trying to tell the baby to stay put.
Justice walked in the ER at 2:45 a.m. at 5:55 a.m., Declan James Nolan Rawlings cried out for the first time.
Justice’s panting cries were right alongside his. Bell and Dawson were with her. Dawson recorded what she could, took all the precious pictures of the weight, the first skin to skin, and Bell held Justice, wiped her brow, and told her how strong she was.
It was all a haze to Justice. She didn’t remember the pain the second she felt her son against her, and when she looked down at him and saw his thick dark hair, his father’s eyes, she gasped a smile. “We’re going make it, kid. You and me. One way or another...” she thought, knowing out of all the life changing moments she’d lived through, the hells she had walked through—this was the only one that mattered.
This was a promise, a symbol. It was life.
“How many are here?” she asked Bell.
“Chasen and Boon,” she said with a weak smile.
Justice was surprised, but then again she wasn’t. Those men were too loyal. She asked for them not to say a word, and they wouldn’t.
Justice nodded and Bell went to get them.
Her stare flicked to Dawson.
“I got it all, girl, swear,” Dawson said.
Justice breathed a smile as she looked down at her son.
She didn’t mean to get upset when she saw Chasen hold him, at how he marveled at how small his grandson was.
“I couldn’t decide. Not alone. So I’m giving all the names to him,” she said. “But I’m calling him Nolan.”
Chasen’s eyes welled then. “He’d like that.”
She didn’t know which he Chasen meant, and didn’t ask.
Late in the next day she called Missy, told her what she already knew, and asked her to come by. Over the next few days she saw all of Declan’s immediate family, and felt the pain they all had, but she also felt the hope. The loss of Nolan, one son, had ripped their family apart. They wanted to believe the birth of a son could help mend the broken road.
Once home, Justice had all the help she could want from Dawson and Bell, even Boon changed a diaper or two. Her watch on the mail, the clutched phone, the message boards, it was an obsession.
A month later, it was her devastation. Declan was home, and had been for a few days—almost a week— but no one, not even Providence had heard from him.
“What do I do?” she asked Dawson right as they ended their kick boxing match because Justice’s anger had turned to tears and Dawson was calling her out on it. Shaking her head saying it was too soon for Justice to be working out as fiercely as she had been—not when the issue was on the inside, not the outside.
“Fucking send him a text and say, Hey. I’m sure you’ve moved on, but if you ever come back through town say hi to your son?” Justice asked, ripping the gloves she had on off. “I can’t do this shit!” Her hands rushed through her sweaty locks as she turned away. “One second I feel guilty, and the next validated.” She glared over her shoulder. “I’m here doing this. What the fuck is he doing and with who?”
“It’s only been a few days,” Dawson said quietly, understanding the fear but doubting it all the same. Providence told her more than once, Declan was devastatingly faithful, even if only to a memory. He was never wrong about his friends.
Justice was so unne
rved because she knew Declan’s pattern and this was it—silence before he erupted in her life, which was why she was looking up her drive every five minutes with both dread and longing coiling like snakes in her gut.
In the haze of the dawn, through her fury, she did see the outline of a truck coming her way, and thought to panic until she saw it was Providence.
He stopped right by Justice, sorrow in his eyes, enough to make her want to crumble. Instead, she jutted her chin up and braced herself.
“Can you come with me,” he asked her, flicking his gaze to the yard then the house, hoping Bell was there, that she could watch little Nolan.
Justice let a trembling breath out, then nodded stiffly. She turned and rushed inside. Little Nolan was asleep, she’d just put him down before she and Dawson went through their work out.
She woke her grandmother and told her she was leaving and rushed out a list of care instructions as she pulled on her hoodie over her tank and yoga pants.
This was the first time she’d left Nolan and it was killing her. She had no idea where Providence was taking her, but she did know if Declan was at the other end of that road, it would be best for Nolan’s first impression of his parents not to be one of them screaming at each other. It didn’t matter he was only five weeks old and would never remember it—she would, Declan would.
When she came back outside and saw Dawson in the backseat of the truck, her furious grief-stricken stare caused the knots in Justice’s stomach to twist even more. Dawson had silently taken all of this harder than anyone gave her credit for, and for Justice to see the death of hope in her eyes...it said something.
Providence didn’t say a word as he pulled out of her drive then down an old country road. Miles down the road he stopped alongside flashing lights that were glowing in the dawning fog.
He put the truck in park then dipped his head before he slanted it to the side. A million dark and twisted scenarios were rushing through Justice’s mind, and they did not sit well with the empty feeling she felt.