The Key West Anthology (48 page)

Epilogue

Kade

“I can’t believe I’m almost thirty weeks along,” Avery whispered in the darkness. My arm was wrapped around her waist as my hand lay stretched out over her rounded stomach. I could feel the movement of our daughter against my palm. I couldn’t wait to hold her in my arms.

“She’ll be here before we know it,” I whispered against her neck.

Avery wiggled her butt against me, and I groaned. Her giggle let me know she knew exactly what she was doing.

“Then we better take advantage of our time alone, don’t you think?” she cooed.

I lowered my hand slowly, and she parted her legs just enough to allow me better access. I slid my fingers between her legs and found she was wet and ready. A small gasp fell from her lips when I slipped a finger inside her.

“I think that’s a great idea,” I said as I trailed my tongue along her neck. She arched her ass back against my growing erection, taking the last bit of control I had.

The moment she reached around behind her and took my hardness in her hand, I was lost. “Open your legs, baby,” I instructed as I placed my hand over hers and stroked gently.

She parted her legs and let her hand slip away from my cock. Tipping my hips at just the right angle, I guided myself toward her wetness. She arched her back when I slid inside her.

“Mm,” she moaned softly, pushing her hips backward. Our bodies began to move as if we’d been sharing moments like this our entire lives.

Avery was made for me. I believed that now. She was my angel in the darkness. The sweet to my salty.

“I love you, pretty girl,” I whispered against her ear as I slowly pulled back, only to slowly enter her again. Her breath came out in small pants as she moaned softly. “Thank you for not giving up, for waiting for me to find my way.”

“You were worth the wait,” she whimpered as I thrust my hips forward. “Oh my God, Kade.”

Before I could respond, she tightened around me, and the sensation threw me into overdrive. I began rotating my hips, racing for my own release. “Avery,” I groaned as my body began to tremble and my legs tensed with the extreme pleasure. My orgasm rolled through me as I buried my face against her hair.

We both lay silent, taking the time to regain our self-control. With Avery near, it was easy to lose myself. Nothing felt better than having her close. I had to fight against her stubbornness, but she finally moved in with me. We’d only been living together four weeks, but I couldn’t remember what living without her felt like. I never wanted to remember, either.

This was my life now, with Avery and our little girl. I couldn’t think of any place in the world I would rather be.

***

Avery

Getting out of bed was becoming harder each day. My basketball, or so Quinn called it, was difficult to maneuver.

I slipped out from underneath Kade’s arm as carefully as possible without waking him. My shift at the hospital started in less than an hour. I had picked up extra hours when Brad had fallen and broken his ankle, so I would be going in at five a.m. instead of seven for the rest of the week.

Kade didn’t like it, but he got over it.

As I walked into the kitchen, I smiled, remembering what Jett said Saturday night when he and Quinn stopped by.

“This place looks like a chick’s place. You still live here, Kade
?
”

Of course, all Kade did was smile brightly and wink at me. He said he loved that all my things were now filling his apartment, that it felt like a home now, when before it was just a spot to lay his head.

After I drank a glass of orange juice and ate a piece of toast, I gathered my bag and my keys. I knew this schedule couldn’t go on for long; I was already feeling the effects.

A few minutes later, I pulled up to the hospital, got out of my car, and waddled to the front door. I spent most of my time doing paperwork or anything to stay off my feet and left the bigger items to the staff that could get around better.

“Hello, Mommy, how are you feeling on this Tuesday morning?” Judy asked. I met Judy in nursing school, and when I found she too got hired on at the local hospital, I was happy to see a familiar face.

“Fat and jolly,” I said, placing my bag onto the table in the back room. “Anything exciting happen last night?”

“Well, it was pretty quiet until around an hour ago. They brought in a guy that was found outside of Mason’s Bar, beaten up pretty badly.”

“Mason’s?” I asked. “Isn’t that a rough place?”

“Yeah.” She took a big drink of the coffee she held. “They run those amateur fights, and if you ask me, they are shady.”

“Do you think the guy was a fighter?”

“He was pretty messed up—concussion and a collapsed lung. But they stabilized him, and he’s still hopped up on meds. All that’s left is contacting family. We found a phone in his pocket, but I don’t think anyone had made the calls yet.” Judy shrugged.

“No worries, I got it,” I said as I turned from the room and walked toward the nurses’ station.

“I need the phone you found on the guy that was brought in from the alley behind Mason’s,” I told Gina.

“It’s actually lying on the countertop in his room. Number 4. We didn’t want it to get misplaced, so I left it there myself.” She didn’t look up from the paperwork she was completing.

“Okay, I got it,” I said as I turned away and walked toward room 4.

I didn’t even look at the bed until I had the phone in hand. As I turned to leave, I noticed the person there, and my hand tightened around the phone. My heart hammered in my chest, and nausea ran through me.

I dialed Kade’s number and waited for him to answer.

“What the fuck, Jude? You better have a damn good reason for waking my ass up at five in the morning.”

“Kade, it’s me,” I whispered as the tears fell down my cheeks.

“Baby, why do you have Jude’s phone?” he asked.

“You need to get Jett and come to the emergency room. They brought Jude in about an hour ago,” I whispered between the soft sobs that shook me.

“Avery?” I could hear the shuffling of his movements on the other end of the line.

“Kade, just get here, please,” I said.

“We’ll be there, pretty girl.”

Once he hung up, I scrolled through the phone. The name Katelynn was listed as an emergency contact.

Taking a deep breath, I pressed her name and listened as the phone began to ring.

“Hi,” a tiny voice said from the other end. The last thing I expected was a little girl to answer the phone.

“Uh, um,” I stumbled. “I was trying to reach Katelynn.”

“That’s my mommy. She’s sleeping. Her medicine makes her super tired,” the sweet little girl said.

Her mommy? Who were Katelynn and this little girl? The idea of Jude being married or having a family made my heart ache for Callie. Why would he hide that?

“Sweetheart, I really need to talk to your mom about someone she knows. Can you wake her up for me?” I asked.

“She won’t wake up,” she replied. “Uncle Jude waits until after breakfast to get her up for her exercise.”

Uncle Jude?

“I’ll try back later, okay?” I whispered. I had no idea what else to say.

As I hung up, the door creeped open, and Jett and Kade stood in the doorway, staring at the bed before them. At a man they considered a brother.

I held up the phone when Kade’s eyes shifted to mine. “I tried calling his emergency contact.” I paused, swallowing hard. “Do you know a Katelynn?”

Jett’s gaze shifted to mine. “Shit,” he groaned.

“What?” I asked.

Neither of them answered me as they looked at one another in distress.

“What the hell is going on?” My voice rose, just enough to show I was not playing this game of secrets.

“Katelynn is his sister,” Jett explained. “She’s disabled, in a wheelchair. Jude takes care of her and her kids after her husband ran off on them. He’s all they have. His parents died years ago. Even before Katelynn’s accident. Not only is she in a wheelchair, she’s also in the advanced stage of breast cancer. Jude is truly all she and those kids have.”

“Who is going take care of them?” Kade asked, concern in his voice.

“We will,” I said. “All of us. I know he’s secretive and keeps everything about his life tucked safely away. But someone has to help them. We can’t leave them alone.”

Jett and Kade stared back at me, clearly running over the options they knew we didn’t have.

I was just about to make another argument when Jett spoke. “We need to call the girls. Katelynn is gonna need some help with Zoey and Matthew.”

Prologue

Jude

After pulling into the parking lot at Mason’s, the bar I fought at often, I grabbed my bag from the passenger seat, causing the shopping bag holding Zoey’s brand-new doll to fall to the floorboard. I had left early, after getting everyone to bed, so I’d have enough time to grab her a replacement. Matthew had ruined more than one of her dolls; that boy had a destructive side.

Zoey knew she had me wrapped around her little finger. That was obvious. All she had to do was shed a few tears and I was instantly doing whatever it took to bring back her toothless smile. That was actually how I felt about the both of them; they had shed enough tears in their short lives. I grabbed the handle on the Wal-Mart bag and replaced it on the center of the seat, smiling like a fool as I allowed myself to imagine her squeals of joy tomorrow when she opened her new doll.

But my phone ringing in the darkened car brought me back to reality and the fact that I had a fight to attend.

Pushing open the door to my old, beat-up Impala, I put on my game face. No longer could I think of dolls and my sweet five-year-old niece or how cute Matty was when he was pretending to be a superhero. It was time to become fierce and untouchable, and it was time to win.

Walking up the dark alley, I tucked my phone in my bag and pulled the strap securely over my head to place it on my shoulder. The only illumination was a distant streetlight that was swallowed up by the taller building on each side of Mason’s place.

The back door of the building looked as rundown as it always did as I approached it. When I reached out to take the handle, something hard struck me on the back of the head. I staggered to the side, then fell against the door as white flashes exploded through my head and my vision blurred. A wave of dizziness hit me. Doing my best to get my bearings, I pushed off the door and turned to face my assaulter.

Drake smirked back at me in satisfaction. I always knew the fucker played dirty, and this attack had truly confirmed it. Anger shot through me as I launched myself at him, only to take yet another hard blow to the left side of my head. The impact made me stumble again.

When I heard cocky laughter, I realized Drake wasn’t alone. There were at least three assholes with him, maybe more. Drake was a sick sonofabitch. He didn’t care about being deemed the winner of a fight, just the thrill of being in control. He fed off the weaknesses of others.

“What’s wrong, Jude? I thought you were better than this.” Drake chuckled, and the others joined him.

“Better than you,” I snarled. “Sorry piece of shit. Too bad you need an army of piss-stain fuckers to take me down.” I was bluffing a little here. I was still dizzy as hell from the blows, and the nausea was hard to fight down.

Before I could brace myself, they came at me from all directions. I tried to fight back, but they were on me too thick. The blows fell hard and fast, giving me no time to prepare for the impact or ward off the punches. All I could do was wait for the end.

The last thing I remembered was my cheek hitting the pavement hard before I took yet another kick to the head. Then everything went black.