Decline (Declan Reede: The Untold Story #1) (21 page)

“Did you hear Alyssa got herself knocked up after you left?”

I set my jaw and tried to warn him silently that he did not want to continue on that path. Not if he wanted to keep his fucking face intact. He was not big and muscled like Josh or Flynn. He was exactly the right size for me to pummel into fucking shit. And if he said one more fucking word about Alyssa . . .

“Yeah, I mean after you left, I kinda thought she was fair game and asked her out.”

I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose with one hand. The other was clenching in and out of a fist under the table. The force I exerted on my knuckles echoed up my arm into the strained muscles around my ribs.

“She always refused and I realised why pretty quickly when she started getting fat.”

My hand was no longer pinching the bridge of my nose. At his words, both my hands were under the table clenched into tight fists and my whole body coiled as I tried to stop myself from leaping across the table at him.

“And when it was obvious she was pregnant, I stopped chasing her and went for Darcy. No one wants sloppy seconds after all.”

Blake started to laugh at his own joke but his face fell as I tipped the table between us over with a primal cry on my lips. His drink and the rest of the contents went flying and seconds later, the sound of smashing glass echoed around us. Without stopping, or slowing at all, I launched myself at his throat with one hand. The other rounded quickly and connected with his cheek. He backed away almost as fast as I pushed forward, but after a handful of steps found himself trapped between me and the wall.

“If I
ever
hear about you saying one more thing against Alyssa, I will fucking hunt you down and gut you.” I shoved him against the wall before pinning him in place with the hand around his neck. “And if I were you, I’d stop my wife from going to masked balls. You never know who might
bang
into her.” I made sure my voice was dripping with innuendo. With one final shove, I pushed away from him and left the pub. The kitchen staff could keep my fucking sandwich.

I hadn’t heard Blake following me until he grabbed my shoulder when I was near my car. He pulled me around roughly and opened his mouth to speak. The anger that was simmering in me burned into a raging fire with his touch and the memory of his words. I turned and swung at him, knocking him to the ground. Then I fell over him, pinning him beneath me and pouring my anger at the world and at myself into him. My fists rained down on him over and over, pounding into him again and again, even as he lay on the ground trying to shield himself with his arms. I kept going until three guys came out of the pub and forcibly pulled me off of him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: CASTOR AND POLLUX

IT WAS ONLY when I climbed into the car that sense flooded back into me. My whole body shook with tremors of rage and regret, each new spasm like twisting a knife in my already aching side. My knuckles were bloodied and sore. The cut on my arm felt like I’d been torn open all over again.

I welcomed it all.

The physical pain gave me an outlet to focus on so that I didn’t have to feel the emotional scars as deeply.

Glancing down at my bloodied hands, I didn’t know how much of the blood was mine and how much was Blake’s. My knuckles had burst from connecting with the concrete during my frenzy, so it must have been at least a little of each. After a handful of breaths, the anger leached out of me, leaving me unfeeling and emotionless again. With shaking fingers, I started the car and drove from the car park before the police arrived—if they’d been called. For the second time that night, I drove without thinking and with no set destination in mind.

When I stopped the car, I was at my mother’s house. I blinked, trying to remember how I got there but I drew a blank. There was no way I could leave again though, not until I’d had a chance to stop and process.

Leaving the car parked at a skewed angle to the kerb, half on Mum’s front lawn, I stumbled to her front door. My brain refused to process anything; my body was numb. The only thing I could feel was the painful throb of my heart. That was obviously enough to compel me to return to a place of familiarity. I hadn’t seen my mum face to face in almost eleven months, not since the previous Christmas, when we’d met for coffee while I was in Brisbane. Of course I’d stayed in a hotel then, not wanting to return to Browns Plains. At the time, I hadn’t wanted to risk seeing Alyssa.

How could I have been so stupid
?

I banged on the door with my open palm because my knuckles were too badly scraped to use. I didn’t know what the time was and I only hoped it wasn’t too late. The door pulled open to reveal my mother’s shocked face. She was still dressed in her normal clothes so I couldn’t have been disturbing her too much.

“Declan?” She looked out into the darkness at me.

Even though I towered over her, I’d never felt more like a little boy in all my adult life. I’d never before wanted so badly to be pulled into an embrace and reassured that everything would be all right, even though I knew it wouldn’t be.
Couldn’t
be. I just wanted to feel like maybe, just maybe, I could find a way past the pain. I wanted to hear from someone on my side that maybe Alyssa would talk to me soon and we could at least try to be friends again. With those thoughts in my head, I collapsed into my mother’s arms, rested my head on her shoulder and began to sob again.

She held me like she used to when I was a child, gently brushing her fingers through my hair. She didn’t ask what was wrong—no doubt she suspected the reason. She just stood there and comforted me until I felt able to move. When I could, I headed for the living room but stopped dead at what I saw there.

Alyssa was curled on my mother’s armchair. A coffee mug sat abandoned beside her on the small side table. She looked like a deer in headlights, a gasp frozen on her lips.

At the sight of the shocked expression, I remembered what Flynn had said. She was afraid of me.

I didn’t want her to feel that.

After taking two steps to cover the distance between us, I fell to my knees at her feet. I ducked my head and pressed my fists into my eyes. Gut-wrenching dry sobs tore from my chest and I couldn’t get the breath to say what I wanted—
needed
—to say. I could feel the blood from my fists ooze from between my fingers and rub into my eyes, but I didn’t care. Couldn’t care. After a moment, the blood mixed with the moisture in my eyes and dripped down my face in small tear-like drops.

In a gentle gesture of comfort, fingertips brushed hesitantly through my hair. Even though I couldn’t look to confirm my suspicious, I realised they were Alyssa’s by the sensation of rightness that raced down my spine. One of my hands was gently coaxed away from my face. Cool, wet material ran over the knuckles and wrapped softly between my fingers. I kept my eyes pressed tightly together, not wanting to break the spell of the touch—
her
touch.

If I opened my eyes, she would see how broken I was. The one who’d been too scared of her hold to pick up the damn phone, leaving her alone in her time of need. Before I understood what she was doing, she’d wrapped dry material around my knuckles. I relished the contact and didn’t do or say anything that might risk her stopping.

She let go of my hand, and I let it fall to my side. With a gentle touch, she coaxed my other hand toward her and repeated the process. Once she’d finished wrapping it too, her hands gingerly touched my face, just on the either side of my jaw. When she used her hold to tilt my head from side to side, I followed her desire without words or resistance. The wet rag ran over my eyes and down my cheeks, washing away the blood and the salt tracks that remained on my face.

She ran a finger along my arm, just to the side of the covering over the cut my arm. Taking obvious being care not to hurt me, she pulled the dressing off, checked over the wound, and then re-covered it with something new.

Throughout the whole thing, we were both silent. I couldn’t find the words I needed, because I was too concerned they’d only drive her away. That
I
would.

Slowly, I opened my eyes, and fresh tears sprang up from God knows where when I met the honey-gold depths of her gaze. There seemed to be a knowledge buried within them, an instinct to care and protect. In that moment, I wanted to be cared for. I wanted to be protected. I was selfish enough to take everything she offered me. I leaned over her lap, clutching her hips between my hands and pressing my face against her thighs as I sobbed. Her hand traced small circles on my back.

“I’m sorry you had to find out like this, Declan,” she whispered to me. “You don’t know how many times I tried to tell you when we were on the plane and in London. It’s just . . . it’s not very easy to talk about. Especially not to you.”

I shook my head. I wanted to tell her that I was the one who should have been apologising. I was the one who hadn’t returned her calls. I was the one who’d thrown her out on the streets rather than listen to her story. All of it was my fault. I couldn’t get anything out other than, “I’m sorry,” so I whispered that into her lap again and again. The soft denim of her jeans brushed my cheek as I clutched her hips to keep myself grounded.

Eventually, I found other words.

I whispered them in the same hushed tones as my apologies. “What happened?”

“Do you know the story of Castor and Pollux?” she asked in response.

The names were from the tombstone, but I didn’t really know more than that. I shook my head.

“In Greek mythology, Castor and Pollux were the twin sons of Lēda and Zeus. In the myth, the twins shared the same mother but had different fathers, so Pollux was immortal while Castor was mortal. At one time, they were involved in a dispute with their cousins, and Castor was mortally wounded. Pollux begged Zeus to save Castor’s life. Zeus agreed, but on one condition: Pollux would have to give up half of his own immortality in order to save Castor. Pollux agreed and so they spent their days alternating between Hades and Mount Olympus. Eventually, they were cast into the heavens and form part of the Gemini constellation.”

My eyes flicked to her chest, just beneath her heart. Although she had a shirt on, I could still picture the small tattoo hidden beneath it. From her words, it was obvious that the stars were shaped into the Gemini constellation—the twins. My heart sank to the floor at the thought.

She stopped rubbing the circles on my back, presumably to wipe away her tears. Her voice was full of them. I wished I could do more, but I was struck by grief and wound so tightly under her spell that I couldn’t move an inch. I waited for her to continue. The story she’d told obviously had some greater relevance, but she needed to tell it all in her own time.

She took a deep breath and then the circles on my back started again. When she spoke again, her voice sounded far off, as if she was allowing someone else to take control of her body or reading a story from a script. “When I was a little less than eight months pregnant, Phoebe’s placenta detached from my womb. She started to suffocate and I was rushed for an emergency caesarean. They delivered both her and Emmanuel.”

I waited for the impact of her telling me he’d already passed by the time they got the babies out.

“Despite being so early, Emmanuel was a fighter. I can still see him in his humidicrib. He was so strong and so healthy despite his tiny size. Although they got to us in time to save Phoebe, not long after delivery, they found she’d had issues which had irreparably damaged her kidneys and liver. She probably would have been stillborn if I’d gone to term. As it was, she was on dialysis from the hour she was born.”

I couldn’t understand what she was saying. Emmanuel had been the healthy one?
But then why . . .

I started to sob again as my thoughts turned to him—to the son I’d never met and never could.

Alyssa’s voice continued with the same ghost-like quality as before. “Then, when they were three days old, Phoebe was getting worse. The doctors said that if she didn’t get a transplant, she would die. It’s next to impossible to get a matching donor organ for a baby though. An adult’s organs are just too big. Then Emmanuel—” She choked back a sob. “The doctor said it was SIDS—Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. They couldn’t give us a reason for it other than that. I knew though. I knew exactly what had happened. He’d given up his life to save his sister’s. He protected her and saved her, the way a big brother should.” She said it with such conviction and certainty. “The operation was so difficult they still could have lost her. It took hours and hours.” Her voice was thick with tears, and I found myself drawing less comfort from her and trying to provide it instead. “The next few days and weeks were touch and go to see if it worked. Transplants in ones so little are so rare they are practically non-existent. We were just so blessed that it did.”

I wanted to say that I was sorry again—over and over until everything was back to the way it should have been—but I didn’t want to stop her story. I needed to hear it all—even though every word was a dagger to my heart.

“I named Phoebe for the moon. I’d always thought of her that way. From the first moment I knew I was pregnant. She helped give light to the empty night my life had become without you in it. Emmanuel’s sacrifice helped me to see that sometimes there’s a plan for things and even though that plan isn’t always what you think it should be, you need to have faith, so I named him for that faith. While he was trying to comfort me in the hospital, Flynn told me about Gemini and the legend of Castor and Pollux. They just seemed like the perfect middle names after what happened.”

I pulled back into a kneeling position and was finally courageous enough to meet Alyssa’s gaze. Her eyes were brimming with tears, but surprisingly none fell. It was then that I remembered she’d been dealing with the heartache for almost three and a half years. Although it was clear she still ached and grieved, the wounds weren’t as raw for her as they were for me.

In that instant, looking deep into her eyes, I saw the depth of the heartbreak she’d endured. At my hand.

I didn’t break eye contact as I whispered. “I’m sorry.”

She broke.

Then I did.

I climbed onto the seat next to her and we both sat wrapped in each other’s arms.

Each broken in our own way.