Love Don't Live Here Anymore (The Love Collection Book 3) (4 page)

Summer got out of bed and walked into the bathroom. After brushing her teeth and washing her face, she put on her workout clothes. As if getting that piece of mail wasn’t reality enough, she was finding it hard to believe that AJ may have a child. Summer wondered if AJ knew of the child. He admired kids so much that she found it strange that he’d never stressed her about having his baby. Despite the fact that she had been honest with him about not wanting children, she still expected him to convince her otherwise. She saw the way his eyes used to twinkle at the sight of their friends’ sons, Sebastian and KJ and how overly excited he’d seemed when every woman in their circle announced their pregnancies. She knew AJ better than any of them, and behind that twinkle was a twinge of envy. AJ wanted a child. That’s why Summer had decided to stop taking her birth control. She’d taken her last pill the night before they’d left Texas and she hadn’t planned on refilling the prescription. If it had been in the plan for them to conceive, then so be it. She was no longer willing to block a true blessing.

The thought of AJ having a child in this world whom he would never meet, hold, or raise pained her.
Kids deserve nothing but the best
, she thought.

In the midst of thinking about the fatherless child, she thought about her encounter with Braxdon the day before. He had showed up at Emory to get his sutures removed and requested to see Summer. She’d met him downstairs near the pavilion and pillars to not only hear him out, but make a suggestion.

“What can I do you for, Mr. Jones?”

“For starters, I wanted to thank you for looking out with that shot. I know ol’ girl didn’t mean anything by not telling me, but it meant a lot that you did. Thank you. I mean that. I wanna repay you,” he’d said.

“Braxdon, that is very nice of you; however, the one thing you can do to show your gratitude is obtain health insurance. Do you have children?”

“Yeah, two.”

“What good are you if you don’t have the means to seek proper hospital treatment in cases that warrant it? Would you allow your kids to go without health coverage?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why not do the same for yourself? If you’re as good of a parent as you appear to be, then you would get health insurance for yourself so you can be here for your children. Get annual checkups and go see your doctor when things don’t seem right. There are signs. There’s always signs. Pay close attention. If you listen closely, it will speak to you. In some way, shape, or form, your body will talk to you,” Summer had said, becoming overwhelmed with emotion. She was having a moment and only wished that AJ had gone to the doctor at the first sign that his body was changing.

Braxdon had stared into her eyes and she stared back. They were both quiet for a long moment.

“I’mma look into it. That’s my word. I’m not gonna hold you up. Just wanted to say thanks again.” He’d leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. “Take care, Miss Lady.” He’d said, and then he walked off.

Summer laced up her sneakers and headed out the door to go for a walk, but she detoured from her usual route. Bypassing the park’s jogging area, she cut through a path that lead to a rather large housing development. She had noticed it several times before and always promised to check it out. The cleanliness and privacy of the intimate green space situated between each house quickly became an object of her desire. One house in particular caught her attention. It had a stone and vinyl siding combination, with a five-foot fountain on the neatly manicured front lawn. Matching stone was used to create a pathway from the sidewalk to the front door.

Sensing that someone was coming up on her left side, she stepped further to the right to let them pass. The jogger must have recognized her because he looked back twice and then turned around, jogging backwards.

“Summer?”

Summer removed her ear buds, not because she’d heard him but because she’d seen his reaction. “Vincent?”

He stopped jogging and walked closer to her. “Yeah. What’s going on?”

“Nothing much. I normally jog through the park but decided to deviate today.”

“Oh okay. I live a few streets over, on Dunbar Drive.”

“Oh, do you? These homes are beautiful. Love at first sight.” The two of them shared a laugh.

“You know, you have an attractive aura about you, Summer. You exude this air of confidence, authenticity, and certainty. A woman who knows where she’s going, how to get there, and won’t sell herself short along the way.”

Had it been anyone else, Summer would have been turned off. They had only met once and already, he was reading her like a new case. “I … I don’t know what to say.” She shrugged. “Thanks.”

“No need to thank me for being honest. I felt it from our first encounter and again during our follow-up email exchanges,” he said, winking. “And here, right now, it has been confirmed. I’m a prosecutor. I call it the only way I know how: like I see it.”

Summer was in awe of his coolness. His calm, confident, and casual demeanor earned big points in her book. “Well, I guess we’ll get along fine then because truth is my second language, and I am extremely fluent in it,” she replied.

Vincent abandoned the jog and opted to power walk with Summer instead.

~~~

Summer walked into work feeling renewed. Her walk and talk with Vincent was just what the doctor ordered. Choosing to walk through the emergency room department instead of her usual entrance, she stopped to grab a bagel from the coffee shop and spotted a young girl sitting alone in the waiting room. “Hello, are you being helped?” Summer asked the girl.

The girl didn’t respond or even look her way. Summer kept going and stood in line to make her purchase. During the wait, something kept telling her to go back and check on the girl. It was a tugging feeling, a force pulling her in the girl’s direction. Summer cashed out and walked back to the waiting area. “Excuse me. Are you okay?” she asked the young girl.

The girl still didn’t make eye contact with Summer, but when she lifted her head, tears were in her eyes. Summer didn’t question her any further. Instead, she sat next to the girl and empathized with her pain. “You know, I cry almost every night. Many people don’t know about my pain, but I do. And when I hurt, I cry. I have a sister I talk to, but she lives in another state. Do you have someone you talk to?”

Although the girl didn’t verbally answer, she did shake her head.

“My name is Summer. What’s yours?” 

“Ginger,” she finally replied after a long pause.

“What brings you to Emory? Are you waiting for someone?”

Ginger didn’t answer right away. She released her arms from around her bent legs and sat up straight. “Have you ever been violated?” she asked Summer.

Unsure of how to respond to her question, Summer sat quietly.

“I’m not talking about someone breaking into your home, stealing from you, or anything like that. I mean a total violation of your very existence,” Ginger stated.

Summer felt a knot in her stomach and a lump formed in throat. Ginger was telling her something deep, and she wasn’t sure of how to respond. By that time, people were starting to file into the waiting room.

“Ginger, I can sit here and make assumptions about what you’re talking about, but if you want to come with me to my office, I’m willing to listen,” Summer offered.

Ginger took Summer up on her offer and followed her to the elevator and then into her office. Summer offered her a chair and closed the door.

It didn’t take Ginger long to let Summer know that in a strange kind of way, she’d saved her life. Ginger was on the brink of committing suicide and decided that she would do it at the hospital. She told Summer that her uncle had molested her from the age of six to ten, until he went to prison for armed robbery. At age ten, her older brother started raping her, and the last time was last night.

Summer couldn’t believe what she was being told. “Did you tell someone this was going on?”

“Who could I tell? My uncle took over and raised me and my brother after my mom abandoned us. I was five when she left and my brother was ten.”

“How old are you now?”

“I’ll be sixteen tomorrow.”

This meant that her brother was twenty-one, old enough to know better. Summer wanted to hunt his trifling ass down and kill him with her bare hands.

Ginger went on to tell her that she had a rope and pills in her bag. She’d sat in the emergency room, contemplating which way to end her life. She was living in a dark place. Her mother had left her. Her father was absent. Her uncle had molested her and her only brother was straight up violating her.

Summer asked Ginger what she wanted to do because suicide was no longer an option. “Even though you weren’t given the best life, you still have life. You’re here for a reason, Ginger, and there is no doubt in my mind that you have a brighter future ahead.”

After some convincing, Ginger gave Summer permission to notify the proper people. Summer sat with her until one of the social workers came to take Ginger with her. Summer gave Ginger her business card with her personal cell number on it and told her to call if she needed anything. Ginger promised to keep in touch. When she left, Summer lowered her head and said a prayer for the lost young girl and tried hard to focus on work.

Later that evening, the emotional heaviness of Ginger’s situation left Summer with a need to talk to her sister. Autumn had called her earlier, but Summer had been too busy to talk and let the call go to voicemail. Now that she was home and relaxed, she had to call her sister back.

“Hey, Aut.”

“Hi, Summer. What’s up?”

“Oh my, I’ve had the roughest day. Two gunshot victims, a guy with a piece of metal stuck in his skull, and I met a sixteen-year-old girl who is being raped by her older brother.”

Summer heard Autumn gasp and gave her a minute to soak everything in. While she waited for her sister to compose her nerves, she poured herself a large glass of wine. This was the third time this week she’d put her Tiffany wineglasses, a wedding gift from her coworker, to good use.

“Summer, that is crazy. Is that poor girl okay? Oh yeah, and all the other patients?”

“Yeah, everyone turned out fine. I just can’t get the girl out of my head.”

“Did she tell her parents?” Autumn asked with nothing but concern.

Summer told Autumn about the family dynamics. “I guess after the uncle went to prison, the brother had one of his drug addict clients cook, clean, and ‘care’ for them until they were of age. So you know whoever that was couldn’t give two shits about what was happening to her as long as she was getting high.”

“That’s just sad. Now my heart is aching. Makes me want to go in there and wake my babies up to love on them some more.”

“Yeah, tell me about it. I hope she keeps in touch. I plan to help her any way I can,” Summer added.

There was a moment of silence on the phone. Both women were lost in their own thoughts. They hadn’t had a past of bright horizons, but they knew that during the little bit of time Ginger had been on this earth, her world was much darker than either of them ever had to bear.

So much was going on that Summer’s head was spinning. The past two weeks had completely taken her by surprise. She had agreed to things that, just weeks ago, she would have declined. Maybe God had answered her prayers and was working overtime to heal her wounded soul. Or perhaps her spirit was feeling fortified at the thought that there may be a version of AJ still left in this world. Two days ago, she had agreed to a formal date with Eugene. Braxdon had stopped by her job again and refused to leave until she accepted his offer to take her to lunch. And somehow, Vincent had tickled a part of her that had been lying dormant for months.

In less than forty-eight hours, Summer would be heading to Virginia, coming face to face with the possible mother of her deceased fiancé’s illegitimate child. It seemed like the closer the date became, the antsier she became. Reading, watching TV, listening to music, and not even her lengthy talks with her sister seemed to help ease her mind. She needed a distraction and thought about who she could call to help take her mind off the issue at hand. Eugene crossed her mind, but she knew that he would take her initiative as an invitation for more and she wasn’t even in that mode.

She went to her purse and retrieved the card Vincent had given her when they’d first met. She liked that he didn’t even ask for her contact information in return. She contemplated calling him but thought that would be too awkward. She had no idea what she would say. Summer admired how keen he seemed to be. When Autumn called her while they were having dinner that night, he must have noticed her Blackberry. Even with iPhones and Androids, she remained true to her Blackberry. On the back of his business card, he had handwritten his Blackberry Messenger pin number. The gesture made her smile. Calling him seemed too personal and emailing was too formal. She settled on reaching out to him via BBM.

Summer: Hey you! It’s Summer.

Vincent: What a pleasant surprise. I thought you may have thrown my contact info away.

Summer: Now why would I do that? Are you busy?

Vincent: If I was, I wouldn’t have responded. But on second thought, if that was the case I would have made time for you. *BBM Smiley face*

Summer: How sweet. What you doing?

Vincent: Working … the story of my life.

Summer: Well, I guess you don’t make D.A. by being a slacker.

Vincent: Hahahaha. You’re ever so correct. What are you doing?

Summer: Not much. I was bored and nothing held my interest, so I decided to hit you up.

Vincent: I feel special. Exactly how bored are you?

Summer: *BBM Confused face*

Vincent: Oh, stop. I didn’t mean it like that. I was tired of working, myself. You want to go for ice cream?

Summer: Ice cream? Hmm … sounds yummy. Sure. Where should I meet you?

Vincent sent her the address of a local eatery that served soft serve ice cream.

~~~

“Having one of those kind of nights, huh?” Vincent asked. He waited patiently for Summer to finish the ice cream in her mouth.

“I guess you can say that. Other than my sister and his mother, I didn’t tell anyone that my deceased fiancé was summoned to court for paternity.”

The look on Vincent’s face showed just how she was feeling: shocked and concerned amongst other emotions.

“Excuse me if I’m being too forward, but how does that make you feel?”

Summer slid a spoonful of ice cream into her mouth and pondered his question for a moment. Being honest with herself, she didn’t really know how to feel. “You know, I thought about that myself and couldn’t quite come up with an answer. I mean a part of me feels jealous that AJ could have a child out here, a child that wasn’t birthed by me. It almost made me feel like this woman had something over me, like she gave him something I couldn’t or wouldn’t.” Summer told Vincent how she felt about kids and how her fiancé had never pushed her any other way. “But on the other hand, it makes me anxious inside. I feel like if this kid is his, it gives me a piece of him to hold on to and cherish. Does that sound weird?”

“Not at all. That’s how emotions are. They can be extremely contradicting and that’s okay. Our bodies are equipped to deal with such uncertainty. When’s the court date?”

“In two days. My stomach has been in knots all week.”

Vincent laid his cone on the dish and grabbed Summer’s hands. “Summer, I can only imagine the toll this must be having on you. For you to even reach out to me on a personal level lets me know a little bit more about you. I don’t know what it’s like to be in that predicament, but from the bottom of my heart, if you need me, I am here for you.”

Summer gazed into the beautiful pair of brown eyes across from her. She felt like she could see into Vincent’s soul and validate his feelings. He was being genuine and that meant the world to her. “Vincent, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that. Since I lost him, I’ve just felt so lonely and so empty inside. There are no siblings of his to spend time with, share memories with, or crack jokes. No kids to hold, love, and remember their daddy by. My sister is miles away and it’s not like I can just hop in the car and go visit her when the mood strikes me. It’s just me, and sometimes that can be more detrimental than you may think.”

Vincent lowered his head solemnly. He watched her closely and before he made an assumption, he asked, “Summer, I don’t know how to ask you this; so I’ll just ask, because if I don’t, it’ll eat at me. I don’t mean to offend you in any way, but are you suicidal?”

Summer’s heart skipped a beat. Not even her sister had picked up on her level of depression and she wondered what she had said to give Vincent such insight. She lowered her head and closed her eyes in a failed attempt to restrain her tears. When she opened them, her cheeks were covered with liquid emotions and she started to sob. “Oh Vincent, you have no idea. Never in my life have I felt so alone. For a long time, I always felt like as long as I had my sister, nothing else mattered. Now she’s married, with a family of her own, and I’ve lost him. I just … just feel like things would be better if I joined him instead of mourning him.”

Vincent took a deep breath before responding.  He briefly closed his eyes and opened them. “Summer, honey, you’re in a dark place right now, probably the darkest it will ever be. However, I need you to trust me, trust God, and believe in yourself.” He placed his forefinger and thumb upon her chin and gently raised her head. “This will get better. Just hold on.”

He got out of his seat, went to the other side of the table, and sat next to her. He held her close and tight as she wept in his arms. Having already paid for the ice cream, he got up and walked Summer out. Even though it wasn’t crowded in the place, he still wanted her to have her privacy. Once inside the car, he wrapped his right arm around her shoulders and held her right hand with his left. He gave her a moment to herself while still being the company she needed. For fifteen minutes, she sobbed. She allowed all her past and current emotions to flow from her eyes. With every heave, she felt as if she was cleansing her soul. Her spirit felt lighter and her mind clearer. She had held herself together for as long as she could. She needed to cry, needed to let it out and not be afraid to scream, blame, regret, and mourn all at the same time. When she was done, she cleaned her face and looked at Vincent. “Thank you.”

“What are you thanking me for? Everybody needs somebody,” he said.

Summer smiled. As down as she was, she took heed to what he’d said. He was right; everybody did need somebody and at that moment, Vincent was her everything when she felt she had nothing and was at a point where she was beginning to crave anything. There were so many things about him that she could verbally compliment but she just opted to caress his face. She felt it. A weird sensation. An emotion she would describe as a cross between melancholy and optimism. Out of nowhere, she felt guilty on both ends of the spectrum. In one way, her love for AJ had her thinking she was wrong for fraternizing with Vincent. But her admiration for Vincent made her feel guilty for thinking about how much she loved AJ. Summer needed to have a long talk with herself. She had to rationalize all that had taken place and come to grips with the fact that no matter how much she loved AJ, she would never be with him again. Forcing their reunion would bring about more heartache than not, so she had to be strong.

Vincent was the perfect gentleman. He followed her home and offered to stay with her as long as she needed, just so she wouldn’t have to be alone. Of course, she declined. She wasn’t ready to invite another man into a home that she and AJ had shared, no matter how brief. Summer thanked Vincent for a wonderful evening and kissed him on the cheek. He hugged her and waited until he heard her lock the doors before turning to walk away. She walked to the nearby window and watched Vincent as he climbed into his car and pulled off. She turned around with her hand over her heart and inhaled deeply.
Is this what healing feels like?
she wondered as she headed into the master suite to shower and then go to bed.