Dylan's Redemption (19 page)

The more times she said that last part, the angrier he got. Hope was his, he had no doubt.

“Wait, you knew the baby died. Did Jessie call and tell you?”

“No. I checked with the hospital on her condition. I got a nurse to tell me about the baby.”

“How did you find her? How did you know she went into labor?” Greg asked.

“I hired a private investigator to find her. He paid a man at the construction company to tell him when Jessie went into labor. If there was a chance the baby was yours, I wanted to know how she was doing.”

“If there was a chance, you wanted to know? Did you ever plan to tell me?”

“It doesn’t matter now. I didn’t want to hurt you when nothing could be done.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Dylan gasped. “Does it look like it doesn’t matter to me?” He yelled at his own mother, but for the life of him she didn’t look like the woman who raised him and cared for him all these years. Where was the mother that loved him?

“I expected your surprise when I adopted Will, but when I told you, there was something about the way you looked at me that I didn’t quite understand. Now, it makes sense. The story so closely relates to the situation with Jessie and me. Doesn’t it?”

He turned to Greg, desperate to have someone understand. “You see, I adopted Will in Georgia. I worked for the Atlanta Police Department. On one of my shifts, I found a teenage girl hiding behind some Dumpsters in an alley. She’d been mugged. Eighteen, more than eight months pregnant, she didn’t have anything. She hid the pregnancy at home for as long as she could and ran away to have the baby. Her boyfriend didn’t want to keep the baby. The girl wanted to give it up for adoption. She just wanted to go home and go to college in the fall like she planned and give the baby a chance to have a real family and a good life.

“I could have taken her to a shelter, or sent her back to her family, but she called to something inside of me. I had sworn to protect people like her.”

“Because you thought Jessie was murdered,” Greg guessed.

“Yes. I took her home and fed her. Her due date only weeks away, I told her I’d help her make the final decisions and get her back to her family. She lived with me until she delivered the baby. Then, she asked me to keep him. She said it was fate I’d found her and helped her. I took one look at that little man and knew he was mine. That girl loved him enough to give him a good life, but she wasn’t ready to be a mother to him.”

He studied the little boy at his feet, light brown hair, puppy-dog brown eyes when he wanted something, and a smile that melted his heart. He was perfect.

“Long story short, her parents arrived, agreed I could adopt the baby. A lawyer and a judge later, Will was mine.”

“I chose you Daddy,” Will said from the floor where he sat tearing the magazine pages and wadding them into balls, tossing them at Dylan and making explosion noises.

“That’s right, little man. You chose me.”

Greg rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. “That’s amazing. Jessie will be surprised when you tell her,” Greg said.

“What do I tell her? That I adopted a perfect stranger’s baby, but I couldn’t be there when she gave birth to my daughter.”

“That’s your anger talking. You didn’t know. If you got her messages, you’d have been there.” Greg made a point of staring down his mother as she stood by the doorway wringing her hands.

“Jessie thinks I’ll be mad at her. Why would I be mad at her? She’ll never forgive me for what happened. She’ll never believe I love her,” Dylan said, dropping his head and frowning miserably.

“She blames herself for Hope’s death. She had a difficult delivery. She thinks that if she’d done something different, pushed harder, faster, or taken better care of herself before the baby came that it wouldn’t have happened. It wasn’t her fault. The baby got sick. That’s all. Nothing she did or didn’t do would have changed it.”

“No, but it could have been better, if I’d been there to share her pain. If we’d shared our daughter and her death. I could have helped Jessie through her grief.”

“Help her heal from this accident,” Greg suggested. “Tell her you know about Hope and take it from there.”

Greg tried to give Dylan something to look forward to. Something that would make everything a little more bearable, and Dylan grabbed on to it. “She has pictures.”

Dylan looked up with interest. “Of Hope. She has pictures of Hope.”

“Yes, Dylan. We took a lot of pictures at the hospital.”

Greg squeezed his shoulder and Dylan sat, absorbing everything they’d told him. He leaned over his knees with his hands on his forehead and wept. It was just too much.

He didn’t hear his mother sneak away or Brian and Marilee come in so that Greg and John could visit Jessie. He didn’t realize Marilee bought Will a snack at the vending machine and sat with him in her lap while he ate. He sat with his head in his hands, silent tears falling, consumed by guilt and sadness for the woman he loved and the baby they’d lost.

He wondered if he’d lost Jessie.

He vowed he wouldn’t let that happen. They’d lost enough. He wouldn’t allow them to lose each other too. Now, all he had to do, convince Jessie he loved her. He always loved her.

Chapter Twenty

D
YLAN SENT A
very sleepy Will home with his nanny, Lorena. He needed to stay with Jessie. Dylan hated to be separated from Will. He wanted the boy close, so he could hold and love him and not feel so desolate at losing his daughter. The ache in his heart turned to a chasm of emptiness that threatened to swallow him whole.

He spent the night with Jessie in her room. Before they left, Greg and John gave him a bear hug and assured him they’d be back today with clothes for Jessie. The fact they knew where she lived and could get into her house irritated Dylan, but he had to face reality. They took care of Jessie. He hadn’t been there for her, thanks to his own mother.

He was grateful to them for staying with her, helping her get through the desperate months she didn’t want to live, and making sure she wasn’t alone. They’d become the family she’d always deserved.

The nurses came and went through the night. They arrived often, checking her blood pressure, monitors, and changing out her IV bag. Jessie didn’t stir at all.

They adjusted her position throughout the night, propping pillows behind her back and hips to keep her lying on the side that hadn’t been ravaged by the slide across the road.

He caught on to the nurse’s routine, and when it came time to move her, he helped the nurses in any small way. It gave him a sense of satisfaction to help Jessie and an excuse to touch and comfort her. He held her hand while she slept and stroked her face. He talked to her, knowing she couldn’t answer him, but he hoped she heard him and took the opportunity to say all the things he’d wanted to say to her over the years. He poured his heart out about Hope and what happened, afraid she wouldn’t give him the chance to say his piece when she woke up.

Sometime in the early morning, the nurse informed him they were cutting back on the sedative. They’d continue to taper it off over the next several hours and see if she woke up around mid-afternoon. The hours without sleep, the stress and worry over Jessie’s condition, and grieving his lost daughter and a life with Jessie he wished for every second, he drifted off at dawn, shutting off his overtaxed brain.

Nearly noon, Greg walked in to check on Jessie, how she’d done last night, and check on Dylan too. He liked the guy. He’d gotten a bum rap over the years.

How could any mother be so cruel?

Jessie lay in bed, her back to the door, propped up on pillows. Dylan slept, sitting in the chair next to her, his head resting on the bed, one arm wrapped over Jessie’s calves and Jessie’s hand in his.

Greg hated to wake Dylan, but he needed to know how Jessie did last night and what the doctors and nurses had in store for her today.

“Dylan. Dylan. Wake up.” Dylan came awake with a start.

Greg gave him a pat on the shoulder to get his attention. “How is she?”

Dylan rubbed his hands over his face and scratched at his rough jaw. He stared at Jessie, his eyes red rimmed and bloodshot. Greg could almost hear him begging Jessie to wake up. The plea in his eyes disappeared when he turned and focused on Greg.

“She hasn’t come around yet. The nurses kept her sedated all night. They tapered off early this morning. She should wake up soon. If she can’t deal with the pain in her head, they’ll knock her back out.”

Greg stared at the bandages on Jessie’s head and shoulder, imagining the ones wrapped around her sheet-covered leg. The hospital gown covered a lot.

Dylan caught him. “I hate thinking about what she looks like under that gown.”

“You were the first to get to her after the accident.”

“Yes. The blood. The damage to her beautiful skin.” Dylan’s hands shook when he scrubbed them over his eyes, trying to wipe away the gruesome images.

“She’s tough. I’ll bet she opens her eyes and demands to go home,” Greg said to try to reassure him.

“At this point, I don’t care if she wakes up just to yell at me. I need her to be okay.” Dylan leaned over the bed and kissed her cheek.

“Where’s your little guy? Do you have a girlfriend or someone to take care of him?”

“Subtle.” Dylan half grinned.

Greg pulled the other chair up to the bed beside him. “Can’t blame me, can you? I’ve been looking after her for a long time. Don’t expect me to stop now.”

“Fair enough. No girlfriend. Lorena, Will’s nanny, takes care of him at the house after preschool and when I work. I’ve dated over the years, but no one special since Jessie. Every other woman never measured up to her. I could never feel for anyone else what I feel for her. I was a stupid asshole for ever leaving her.”

“You were eighteen, and she only fifteen. It’s not like you could run off, get married, and live happily-ever-after. She knew that.”

“I would have found a way to make that happen for her and the baby.”

“Not so easy to do when you were in the army. What made you join up?”

“When I took Jessie to the prom, I planned to tell her that night. She would have understood. My parents wanted me to go to college and turn into my father’s clone. He works for a large corporation and spends all his time in an office making deals. I didn’t want that kind of life. I joined the army because I needed to get out of my house and do some growing up on my own. I never expected to lose my head and my heart that night over Jessie. Blame it on the dress or the stars. Maybe it was just seeing Jessie happy and carefree that night. I got caught up in the moment, and I didn’t want to ruin it by telling her I was leaving. The next day, I was so far gone in love with her I couldn’t bring myself to tell her. If I talked to her, or I saw her, I wouldn’t be able to leave her, and I had to leave.

“It all seems so stupid now. None of that matters. When she needed me, I wasn’t there.”

“She still needs you. She loves you, though I’m not sure if she loves the boy from her past or the man you are now. You both need time to reconcile the past, everything your mother did to both of you, Hope, and find out who you are now. You want her back, right?”

“You don’t beat around the bush, do you?”

“No point. She deserves better than she’s gotten out of life. At one time, you were the only one who treated her with kindness. You loved her that night and she’s held on to that all this time. If you can’t or won’t give that to her now, walk away before things get even more complicated and messy. She’s had enough heartache and pain. She deserves to be happy.”

“I intend to love this woman for the rest of my life. She can try to push me away like she’s been doing, but sooner or later, I’ll wear her down, and she’ll realize I’m not going anywhere.”

Chapter Twenty-One

“J
ESS
. W
AKE UP,
baby.” Dylan stood over her waiting for any sign she heard him. He needed her to wake up and look at him. He needed her to be okay.

Greg met him at Jessie’s hospital room for lunch together for the last three days. He’d only gone home for a few hours each evening to have dinner with his son and put him to bed. He felt guilty twice over, for leaving Jessie for those few hours and being away from his son.

The doctor told them due to the concussion, she’d wake up when she was ready. The MRI scan showed the brain injury healing well. Every hour Jessie didn’t wake up made Dylan worry that much more. They’d expected her to wake up days ago, but she went through groggy spells, never truly waking up, and slept for hours on end.

Greg stood from his seat and went to the other side of the bed. They watched and waited as she slowly started coming around over the better part of an hour. She’d moved and twitched. This was the first sign she might actually hear them talking to her. Once, she’d murmured something incoherently. Dylan hoped this time she’d wake up for real. The doctor said to give her time. He didn’t want to give her another minute. He wanted to see her open her eyes, say something, anything, move so he knew she’d be okay.

Jessie heard voices over the throbbing pulse in her brain. She tried to lift her hand to her eyes to press them back into her skull. Someone held her hand down, and the pain, shooting through her arm and shoulder when she tried to move, made her moan. In her mind, she screamed.

“Jess? Honey, are you awake?” a voice crooned.

Honey
? Funny, it sounded like Dylan. That couldn’t be right. Maybe he changed his mind and came to see the baby.

Jessie’s head pounded fiercely, making her think it might split clear open. She had a fleeting thought she must have gotten really drunk, and she’d have to kick her own ass. She wished she could remember what happened, but her mind was a blank screen, images flickering on and off like someone playing with a light switch.

“J.T. Come back to us. Wake up,” Greg coaxed in a soft voice, his fingers rubbing her arm.

Greg’s here. His voice came through the fog. It must be time to see Hope. Jessie wanted to see her baby. Hope needed her.

She tried to open her eyes, but the light and the pounding in her head hurt too much. Someone held her hand. Greg. She didn’t know why her head hurt so much. Something she should know nagged at the edge of her mind and tried to crowd in. She kept holding it back because somehow she knew if she let it in, it would crush her.