Forever We Fall: Broken #4 (The Broken Series) (20 page)

Derek

"Where is he?" I asked Lee the second her feet hit the bottom step of the stairs.

I'd left Kyle and Lee upstairs hours ago – brought Hope downstairs and took care of her for most of the day – to give them privacy, but I was going out of my mind with worry.

Linda was dead.

She was dead and I had no idea how she died, where she died or why. I'd known absolutely nothing until I'd heard all the banging in their bedroom this morning and had rushed up being nosey. Thank fucking god because I'd never seen Kyle so out of control in my life. Hell, I'd never seen anyone react the way he had. Watching Kyle's meltdown had been one of the most terrifying things I'd ever witnessed in my life.

"He's asleep," Lee said wearily. Walking into the kitchen, she opened the cupboard under the sink and removed a bottle of bleach. "I got him in the shower," she mumbled as she reached into another press and withdrew some cleaning rags. "He's in the spare room."

"I cleaned up the stuff in the yard," I told her gently, feeling embarrassed that I'd spent an hour of my day running around scooping up Lee's bras and panties – the shit Kyle had tossed out the window. "I put your clothes in the laundry," I added, red-faced. "There was a lot of paperwork flying around loose, so I just gathered up what I could find and bunged it in a bag in the cupboard."

"Hmm… oh, thanks, Der," she whispered as she grabbed a pair of rubber gloves.

"You going cleaning, Lee?" I shook my head in confusion. "Sweetheart, I think the house will keep until tomorrow."

"It's the blood." Sighing heavily, Lee turned around and leaned against the counter. "I need to get rid of the blood, Derek." She shuddered and rubbed her hand over her face. "Cam," she whispered and my heart sank.

"I'll clean the blood," I told her gently. "You sit down and take a breather."

Taking her arm I led her out of the kitchen and into the lounge before pressing her down on the couch. Hope was playing happily in her playpen and I turned on a cartoon for her before taking a seat in the armchair by the fire. "What happened, Lee?"

"She had cancer, Derek," Lee whispered, wiping a tear from her cheek. "Kyle told me last night. That's why he's been behaving so erratically."

Cancer?
"How did we not know this?" I demanded.

"Because she didn’t want us to know," Lee replied softly. "Kyle wasn’t even supposed to find out, but that girl Cindy told him –she's related to Linda." Shaking her head, Lee climbed to her feet and tucked her hair behind her ears. "I need to call my mother," she announced quietly.

"Why? She's got nothing to do with this." I didn’t like that woman – had a bad fucking feeling about her.

"I'm going to need her help with Hope," Lee replied. "Because I'm going to need your help with Kyle."

Wiping her face with the back of her hand, Lee glanced at the door before locking her eyes on my face. "Brace yourself, Derek," she whispered. "He's in denial and we still have a funeral and a murder trial to get him through."

****

Lee

"I can't go, Lee," Kyle whispered as he sat on the edge of the bed in our spare room, and if I wasn't kneeling in front of him I wouldn't have heard him. "I can't watch another one being lowered into the ground."

"She is not another one," I said in a firm tone as I adjusted his tie and fixed the collar of his shirt.

Linda's burial was in an hour and I had only just coaxed Kyle into his suit. "She is the woman who gave up years of her life for you, and you
are
going to go. You will go, Kyle."

"I'm sorry, Lee," he choked out. "For being the worst kind of bastard to you."

"Kyle," I sighed. "You weren't yourself. Do not judge our relationship on three weeks of heartache. I'm not."

"Lee?" Kyle said softly as he stared intently into my eyes, his blue ones full of pain.

"Yes, Kyle?"

"Please don't die." Clasping my chin, Kyle tugged my face up to his. Resting his forehead against mine, I could hear his harsh breathing, watched his chest rise rapidly, as he stroked my face with his thumb. "Please don't ever leave me on my own."

"That's never going to happen," I promised, forcing down the tsunami of emotions thrashing around inside of me. I had to be the strong one this time. Kyle needed me and I would not let him down. Cupping his face between my hands, I pressed a kiss to his lips and smiled. "If we're going out, then we go out together," I told him. "Where you go I go."

Climbing to my feet, I held my hand out for his. "Come on,
Sonic
."

****

The service was beautiful, heartfelt and sincere.

Linda's sister, Patty, paid a wonderful tribute to Linda, mentioning Kyle's name in many parts of her speech, as did Cindy, Linda's niece, but Kyle had declined to speak and to be honest, I'd been relieved. I didn’t think he was physically able to stand let alone speak – his whole body had shook violently for the duration of the service.

I was stunned by how many familiar faces I recognized in the pews considering Linda had kept her illness a secret, but Cindy had told Derek that Linda had given her permission to inform her co-workers after her passing.

Mike, David, and Anna Henderson sat at the back of the church and Marcus Whiteman and most of the staff of the hotel were scattered in the center aisle.

Kyle barely made it to the graveyard, having to stop several times to regain his balance. His hand never left mine and, with Derek on his other side, Kyle managed to stay upright and pay his final respects to the woman who, for all intents and purposes, had been his mother.

The only noise he made was when they lowered Linda's casket into the ground and that small choked off cry would stay with me until my dying day.

****

Kyle

Linda was gone.

Three weeks today and it felt as fresh as if she'd died yesterday.

Her funeral and the week that had followed were still a blur to me. I couldn’t remember anything and I was glad. I only hoped in time that I could forget the sounds I'd heard and images I'd seen that night.

There was a song on my IPod that I kept finding myself going back to. Listening to the words and relating them to Linda. It's called
If You Could See Me Now
from a band called The Script. In one part of the song it says
'I'm tryna make you proud, do everything you did, I hope you're up there with god saying that's my kid...'
I replayed the song, fucking devoured the lyrics, over and over until my ears burned and my lungs restarted, inhaling huge bursts of air.

I thought back to what Derek had said to me the day after Linda's funeral – the one thing about the whole ordeal I did remember. He'd said;
'you're lucky, Kyle. At least you had time with her before she passed away – time to say goodbye, to get closure.
'

I hadn’t been able to answer him at the time, but I thought about his words every day since… and I couldn’t disagree more. Losing Cam the way we did, so quickly, and without warning was fucking brutal, but watching someone you love rot in a goddamn hospital bed was, in my opinion, a far worse form of torture – administrated in daily doses of agony and despair until you were nearly dead from the pain.

Without Lee these past few weeks, I would have been fucked and I didn’t say that lightly. I would have lost my goddamn mind. Her presence was like a soothing balm, calming me, gluing me back together and I was finally coming to terms with the fact that the world was still spinning.

I also had a newfound respect for Derek. The months following Cam's murder, when I'd tried to help him, I hadn’t had a fucking clue of what he'd truly been going through. Jesus, I was so proud of him for pulling through, for surviving, because as heartbroken and cut up I was about Linda, I knew in my heart and soul that if it was Lee who had died then that would have been it for me.

The memories of how I'd treated Lee plagued me and I didn’t think I would ever be able to do enough to make it up to the girl who had stuck by me, and when I'd fallen into the darkness had waded in and pulled me back to her.

I'd always kept a mental list of the people who mattered in my life. Because of the way I'd grown up very few made that list, but once they did, they stayed there and I coveted that list. I fucking worshipped that list. But my list was shrinking at an alarming rate. My mother was dead. My grandfather, too. My baby died. My best friend and now Linda… Too many people I loved had died and I refused to mentally scratch another name off that list. I had enough of loss. I wasn't losing again.

I wasn't losing
her.

Every move I made, every single action I took from this day forth would be for Lee and my daughter. I guess Derek was right in what he said. He once told me that love was a crazy evil bitch – that I'd take a bullet, take the pain, tear the skin from my body and give it to her. He was right. He was so fucking right...

"Good lord, it's freezing out there today," I heard Lee say, breaking me out of my trance, and my body shivered in relief.

Twisting around on the couch, I came face to face with my own personal angel, wrapped up in a green khaki coat, wild brown curls splaying down her front, and a pair of gray eyes that could sink even the coldest of men.

"What were you doing outside?" I asked her as I took in the muddy patches on her jeans and her wind burned cheeks.

"I was just saving what's left of our forestry from your best friend," Lee puffed, walking to where I was slumped. "You know I would love to know who gave him that chainsaw," she chuckled as she lowered herself onto my lap. Wrapping her arms around me, she buried her nose in my neck and sighed. "You okay?"

"Not really," I told her honestly, pulling her closer to my body to warm her up. "But I will be."

"Where's Hope?" she asked softly.

"In the kitchen with your mom," I murmured, savoring the feel of her in my arms. "I'd guess baking a cake by the smell of it."

"You okay with her being here, Kyle?" Lifting her face from my neck, she locked her eyes on mine. "She wants to help us," she whispered with a smile. "And I kinda want to let her."

"Yeah," I sighed, pressing my forehead to hers. "I kinda want her to as well, baby."

"Mike called earlier," she told me. "He wanted to let you know that he re-opened the hotel this morning."

I stiffened and Lee cupped my cheek with her cold hand. "Relax, Kyle," she whispered. "Let someone else do the worrying for a change."

"It's hard to relax," I admitted in a gruff tone. "It's hard to
not
think."

"It will get easier to cope with," she replied. "I promise."

****

Chapter Seventeen

Kyle

The early morning watery sun was shining through the lounge window, signaling to me another day of bullshit, and all I wanted to do was go back to bed, cover my head with my pillow, and forget the whole damn world.

It had been two months since Perry Franklin went on national television, marring Lee's name, and every day that passed since that disastrous night had been hell on earth for us. Aside from the attempts of numerous reporters who'd tried to get us to talk, the stress of Camryn's murder trial was weighing heavily on all of our shoulders, Jimmy Bennett was in prison. My
father
, David, was still trying to build his little plastic bridge of bullshit, I had very nearly ruined my relationship with Lee, and Linda… Linda was gone.

Eight weeks of pure hell and now the pressure was about to go up a notch. Today was day four of Rachel's trial and first thing tomorrow morning my woman would be taking the stand.

I had already been called, so had Derek and Mike, and as much as I hated the thought of Lee taking the stand, a tiny part of me was thrumming in anticipation.

Lee's evidence was going to be the nail in Rachel's coffin. She was taking Rachel-the bitch troll-Grayson down. It was motherfucking on. Derek had been right when he'd told me Lee was going to get us some long overdue justice…

"I've been thinking, Kyle," Derek mused as he slapped a mug of coffee down on the coffee table in front of me before taking a seat beside me.

"What have you been thinking, Derek?" I asked wryly before taking a sip of my coffee.

"When all this shit with Rachel is over I think you should take Lee away for a break." Sighing deeply, Derek patted my knee. "God knows you both need a break – I'll mind the kid."

My brow rose in surprise as a jolt of excitement spread through me at the thought of getting Lee to myself for a few days. "You would do that for us?" I asked. "You wouldn't mind?"

Derek raked a hand over his–freshly shaved–head and smirked. "Well, yeah," he chuckled. "No need to look so surprised, dude. I know how to change a diaper and make a feed. I'm pretty sure I can keep her alive for a day or two." Smirking, he blew into his cup and added. "Consider it your birthday gift." I stared at him, my expression blank, and Derek sighed. "Dude, you're twenty-four today."

"I forgot," I murmured as I scratched my head in confusion.
Jesus, time was going by so fast I barely had a chance to catch my fucking breath…

"Well, mine's July twenty-fourth," Derek chuckled. "I'll mark it on the calendar."

"Happy birthday, Kyle," Lee called out as she bounced into the lounge with Hope in her arms. "Here," she mumbled as she stepped towards me and thrust an envelope into my hand. "It's not much." Her cheeks reddened. "I'll make it up to you."

"Thanks baby," I chuckled, taking the birthday card from her hand.

Hoisting Hope onto her hip, she smiled and said, "I'll make you a birthday breakfast," before rushing out of the room.

"Shit," Derek muttered, shifting around uncomfortably for a moment before pulling a stuffed animal out from under his ass. "She's gonna poison us."

"And we're gonna eat every bite," I warned him. "If it kills us we will eat whatever she puts on our plates."

"True love," Derek mused. "Eating potentially fatal meals and pretending to enjoy it." He twisted the arms of the teddy bear around in his hands, his eyes on the bear but unfocused. "What time is Tracy coming?"

I checked the time on my phone. "She should be here soon and I want you to be nice to her."

Since Linda's funeral Tracy had visited our home every day and Lee was slowly bonding with her mother. It was obvious Lee was afraid of being hurt again and Tracy was afraid of pushing too hard and breaking the fragile relationship they were attempting to build, but they were both trying and slowly forming their own little mother/daughter relationship and I, for one, was proud as hell of Lee for handling the whole ordeal with such grace.

Derek, however, was another story. He was cold to the point of being rude to the woman. Derek had a stable family life growing up, and I guessed that was the reason he was so unforgiving when it came to Tracy. He didn’t understand because he'd never walked a mile in the shoes of a stray. He couldn’t empathize because he couldn’t relate. Sighing deeply I added, "She's trying, Derek. We all make mistakes, dude. No one's perfect."

"I don't trust her, Kyle," he said simply. "She's hiding something."

"Hiding what, dude?" I asked, exasperated. We'd been having this same fucking conversation with weeks.

"I don’t know," he growled. "But something is off about her. I can feel it in my bones."

"Well, Lee likes having her around," I warned. "And Hope loves her, so don't even think about planting seeds of doubt in Lee's head."

"I have no intention of it," he retorted smoothly. "I'll figure this one out by myself."

"Whatever, dude," I muttered, bored with this stalemate of a conversation.

"Kyle?" I heard Tracy call out from the hallway, the front door slamming seconds later.

Derek glowered at me. "You're a little overly trusting with the gate code, aren't you?"

I rolled my eyes at him and was about to reply to his snippy comment when Tracy called out, "Do you happen to own a pet?"

I frowned. "No. Why?"

"There was a dog sitting on the doorstep when I got home yesterday," she replied. "And I hope you don't mind, but I've brought her with me. I was afraid she would get cold."

"Oh my god, Oh my god," I heard Lee squeal excitedly. "Look, Hope. A puppy."

Derek's eyes bulged and he leapt out of his chair. "Holy shit," he exclaimed. "He's back."

"Great," I muttered through clenched teeth as I stalked down the hallway to the kitchen, and, low and behold, there he was. The scruffy little fucker himself, with his bottom teeth jutting out, dressed in a…"Is he wearing a coat?" I shook my head and wandered into the kitchen to take a closer inspection of the dog's makeover. "You bought him a pink coat, Tracy?"

"Yes," Tracy giggled as she snuggled the dog against her chest. "She's so cute, aren’t you, Poppy?"

"What the hell is that?" Derek demanded.

Stalking over to where the girls were fretting, he took the dog out of her arms. "His name is
Kevin
, and he's a dude," he sneered. "You're gonna fuck with his head putting ribbons and bows on him…" He paused and sniffed Kevin's coat. "Did you spray him with perfume?"

"I gave her a bath," she replied hotly. I rose my brow in surprise.
Tracy had claws.
"My bath products are female orientated," she added defensively.  "And then I gave her a haircut."

"
He
is not a she," Derek argued. Twisting the dog around in his arms, he glared at Tracy. "Haven't you ever seen a pair of b…"

"Tone it down," I warned him. "My daughter's in the room."

"Can we keep him, Kyle?" Lee begged, jumping up and down in front of me like a curly-haired jack-in-the-box, looking more excited than I'd seen her in weeks. "Please?"

"No way, Lee." I shook my head. I was not having another damn dog. I knew full well that I'd be the one who would end up walking him, not to mention getting up in the middle of the night to let him out for a piss. "No goddamn way."

Lifting Hope out of her highchair, Lee stalked towards me and I backed away quickly. "No, no, no," I warned. "Don't even think about double-teaming me."

"Look into her eyes, Kyle," she pressed. "Tell your baby she can't have the puppy."

"It won't work," I groaned, covering my eyes with my hand. "Keep those eyes away from me."

"Da-da-da," Hope babbled. "Dog-y."

"Goddammit," I groaned, my heart squeezing in my chest.

"Please, Kyle?" Lee begged and I swear she had a trick for making her eyes grow as wide as saucers. "Please, I promise I'll do everything for him. You won't have to lift a finger, I swear."

"Lee, we can't keep him," I argued half-heartedly, already knowing I was screwed.

"Kyle," Lee moaned. "Please. I'll do anything."

Cooing at Kevin, who was now pottering around my goddamn kitchen like a boss, Lee sat Hope down on the floor before straightening her back. With her hands on her hips she locked eyes with me. "You're a business man," she said in a serious tone of voice. "Let's negotiate this like adults."

"I'll hear you out," I told her, trying to hold in a laugh.

"I want the dog, Kyle," Lee told me. Stepping towards me, she placed her left hand on my chest and smiled up at me. "Name your terms and conditions."

"No, Poppy," Tracy exclaimed, distracting me from my stare down with Lee. I watched in dismay as Kevin cocked his leg and started pissing on the leg of my table. "Bad girl."

"I'll get it," Lee muttered sheepishly as she bent down, scooped up the dog and rushed through the hallway. "Don't hold this against him, Kyle," Lee chuckled as she opened the front door and stepped outside.

"How badly do you want this dog, princess?" I chuckled as I followed her out on the front porch. "Enough to marry me?"

"What?" Lee's eyes widened and I made a mental note to buy Kevin a very juicy bone.

"You want the dog." Shrugging my shoulders, I tilted my head to one side and smirked at her innocent face. "I want a wife."

****