Dark Sexy Knight (A Modern Fairytale) (26 page)

Time went slowly without a job, without word from Colton, her thoughts and worries preying on her, even as she tried to stay positive. Bonnie’s Place became her haven, little by little, until she and Ryan got into the habit of stopping by every afternoon, after Melody got home from work, to share supper together.

The little family that Verity had seen coming into focus at the zoo, less one important member, was as intact as it could be for now, though missing Colton’s face at the table was a daily ache that wouldn’t subside.

But her time visiting Bonnie’s Place turned out to be fruitful for more than just looking after Melody. It led to a new opportunity that gave Verity even more purpose. After several weeks of daily visits, one of Mel’s CMs, Francisco, asked Verity if she had any interest in, one, enrolling Ryan in their day program, and two, working part-time at the Bonnie’s Place sundries store.

“Doesn’t pay much,” he said, standing outside complex F (Is For “Friendship”), where he caught Verity and Ryan as they were walking back to Colton’s car one evening. “But the older lady who used to work there? Simone? She fell down some stairs and broke her hip. Would be nice to have someone there who we already knew we could trust.”

“You’re offering me a job?” she asked, her mouth dropping open in surprise.

“No,” he said, grinning at her. “It’s not mine to offer. But I think you should apply.”

She did. And on the spot, the director of Bonnie’s Place told her she could have the job: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, from noon to six p.m. She accepted the position gratefully and signed up Ryan for the Bonnie’s Place day program, where he learned life and job skills and enjoyed the amenities at the recreation center five days a week. She enjoyed the part-time work, and she loved watching Ryan build a new life for himself, making friends within the nurturing gates of Bonnie’s Place.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, while her brother was at the day program, she cared for Colton’s house: gardening, of course, but also making new curtains for the kitchen and living room windows, freshening up the paint on the outside shutters, and planting climbing ivy that was already growing up and around the mailbox. It was the only way for her to show him that she loved him, and besides, she would have gone crazy if she didn’t stay busy.

But she should have known that the status quo wouldn’t last.

Almost forty days into Colton’s rehabilitation, Verity came down with a stomach bug, a wicked one that made her throw up for a few hours one Tuesday morning, then fall back into bed at the brink of exhaustion and sleep for an additional four hours before waking up and hurling again.

The funny thing was, she didn’t have a fever or the sweats, she hadn’t eaten anything funny, and even after sleeping, she still felt bone tired. Nursing a cup of tea in the kitchen, where she checked off the days of Colton’s commitment on a wall calendar, she finally put two and two together, widening her eyes with shock and awe. Leaping up from the table, she stared at the calendar, her heart beating faster and faster, her hands shaking as she turned back the page.

She and Colton had made love on the picnic table forty-two days ago . . . and she hadn’t gotten a period since. She’d been so overwhelmed and depressed and anxious to stay busy, it hadn’t occurred to her that she’d skipped a cycle, but now it did.

Racing to the bathroom, she whipped her T-shirt over her head and looked at her breasts spilling out of her simple white cotton bra.

“Oh my God,” she murmured, staring at her still-flat stomach in the mirror with wide eyes. Unprotected sex. Nausea. Exhaustion. Huge boobs. No period. It all added up to one unmistakable sum. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. I’m . . .”

Placing her hands tenderly on her belly, she looked at herself in the mirror as her eyes pooled with tears.
I’m pregnant with his baby.
She was carrying Colton’s child inside her, a child that she wanted so much and so completely, she thought she might faint from the wave of pure love that swept over her.
I’m having his baby.
Her heart raced with happiness, even as rivulets of tears rolled down her cheeks.

“I’m waiting for you,” she vowed, thinking of Colton, of her knight, her sweet place, her love. She sniffled softly as she wiped her tears away and smiled at her tummy. “And now I’m waiting for you too.”

***

For a week Colton had been trying to find the right words to tell Verity how sorry he was—that he didn’t mean what he’d said to her in the courthouse, that he loved her as much as it was possible for a man to love a woman, and that the weeks she’d lived with him were the happiest of his whole life.

When the sunshine woke him up, she was the first thing on his mind.

While he worked out at the hospital gym, he composed letters to her.

While he mopped the hallways, he arranged words of apology in his head.

When the bolt sounded on his hospital room door at night, he lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, trying desperately to figure out what to say.

And suddenly fifty days had passed and he had about twenty letters started, piled in the top drawer of his desk, unsent because none of them sounded just right. None of them expressed the profound depths of his regret and remorse. None of them did justice to her love for him and his for her. None of them felt fair if she’d already moved on and started building a new life for herself and Ryan. And none of them felt like they would make any difference anyway, because in his heart he believed she was already gone . . .

. . . that is, until day fifty-three, when he received a letter from Melody.

Written in her cheerful, childlike scrawl, it read:

Dear Colton,

Come and see me.

Let’s eat eggs at the table.

I miss you.

Ryan misses you too.

I love you.

Love,

Melody

xoxox

He blinked at the note, reading it and rereading it ten times before setting it down and rereading it ten more times. Not that it made any more sense on the twenty-first reading, but there was one line that he stared at, his heart and head warring passionately over its truth:

Ryan misses you too.

Was Mel thinking wishfully about the day at the zoo, wishing she could see Ryan again? Or had she transposed the words and actually meant “I miss Ryan too”?

Or—and this is where his heart clutched and he envisioned a hundred yellow ribbons around a fucking oak tree he didn’t even have—did Mel actually mean what she’d written? Which would mean that she was in contact with Ryan and, therefore, Verity. That would mean that not only did they not leave, they were seeing Melody regularly enough for his cousin to know that Ryan missed him.

He didn’t want to feel the sudden exhilaration that made his heart race like hell. Part of him despised the sharp, almost painful, rush of hopefulness that made his breath catch. Was there a chance she’d stayed? Was there a chance she’d not only stuck around, but still loved him enough to keep an eye on his cousin? Could there still be a place in her heart for imperfect, brutal, desperately-in-love him?

Propping up the note on the small desk in his room, he took out a fresh sheet of paper and a pencil, and with one final look of hopefulness at Melody’s improbable news, he started another letter.

Dr. Warren stood outside of Central State Hospital with Colt, waiting for the social worker who would pick him up and drive him back to Atlanta for a supervised visit with Mel before heading home. It grated on him that, after serving his sixty days “with flying colors” (according to the doc), he was required to have a watchdog while he visited his cousin. But Dr. Warren had already send a letter to Judge Stanton, advising that Colt was a fit guardian, so Colt expected for his guardianship status to be reinstated by the end of October at the latest. He hoped, anyway.

God, there was so much he hoped for.

He’d finally written and mailed his letter to Verity six days ago, after working on it for about twenty-four hours straight. He had considered sending it to her care of
The Legend of Camelot
, which had to have a forwarding address for taxes and such, but he didn’t trust Lynette to go to the trouble of sending it to her, so he sent it to his house, hoping against hope that Verity was still there. It had occurred to him that if she was there, she’d already received it. It had also occurred to him that if she was—by some miracle—still there, he could simply pick up the phone and call her. But at some point he’d decided to take his chances and just show up. He reasoned that if she wasn’t there, it didn’t matter, and if she was, he’d have a better chance convincing her to stay if she could see the regret and love in his eyes.

“Exciting to head home today?” asked Dr. Warren.

Colt shrugged. “Excited? I don’t know. Scared out of my freaking mind is more like it.”

“It’ll be good to see Melody either way, right?”

“Yeah. I’ve missed her.”

And he had.

He’d only entered the treatment because his guardianship of Melody meant so much to him. If he hadn’t care about her, he’d have just told the judge that the state could take care of her indefinitely, and he would have been on his merry way sixty days ago. But being responsible for Mel and honoring his promises to Aunt Jane, was important to him.

And frankly Dr. Warren had been partially right. Verity was the best thing that had ever happened to Colt, but his two-month stint at Central State was a not-too-far second. For the first time in his life, he lived without the incessant roil of thunder inside. Not that he was suddenly happy-go-lucky—he’d never be that—but the tight coils of anger that had kept a fire raging within him were cooler. Did he still get angry? Sure. But using his fists or being destructive wouldn’t be his go-to solution anymore. Through his therapy sessions with Dr. Warren, he’d learned to embrace other methods of solving disputes and expressing his feelings, and the SSRI kept that hard edge filed down.

“You have that appointment card? For Dr. Woodruff?”

Colt nodded. “Yep. I’ll go see her tomorrow.”

“She’s going to expect you every Friday morning at nine o’clock. Indefinitely. Colton, I can’t stress enough—”

“Doc,” said Colt, looking at the man who’d been his doctor and his friend. “I’ll be there at nine on the dot. And I’ll take my meds every day. I don’t want to go back to who I was.”

“Who you were wasn’t
so
bad,” said Dr. Warren.

“Who I
am now is better,” said Colt.

Through the main gates he saw a silver sedan approaching, and Colt turned to Dr. Warren, offering his hand. “I don’t know how to thank you enough.”

“You’re a good man, Colton Lane,” said the doc, giving him a wide smile as he shook Colt’s hand. “Keep in touch, huh? I want to hear that you figured things out with that girl and have a dozen kids together.”

“From your lips, doc . . .,” he said, his chest swelling with hope even as his mind forced him not to get too far ahead of himself.

Dr. Warren leaned into the open passenger window, handing the social worker some paperwork, then clapped Colt on the arm. “Godspeed, my friend.”

And a hundred yellow ribbons
, thought Colt, slipping into the passenger seat and waving good-bye.

***

The state had put a hold on Colton’s mail while he was undergoing treatment, but on day sixty, like clockwork, four large U.S. Postal Service bins arrived at the house, a sweaty mail carrier asking for Verity’s signature in order to leave them.

She’d been on pins and needles all morning, glad that it was a Thursday and Ryan would be at Bonnie’s Place from nine to five. If Colton demanded they vacate his house, she could pack them up quickly and take the bus to her brother without him witnessing a scene.

She was still battling some pretty awful morning sickness, but thankfully it wasn’t all-day sickness anymore. The pregnancy test she’d taken a week ago had confirmed her suspicions with a double line of pink that immediately made her wonder if she was having a girl. Reading the directions, she learned that the color of the lines didn’t predict the gender, but the image of a baby girl with Colton’s gray eyes and her light blonde hair had already developed quickly in her mind. Oh, she would love a little boy just as hard, but there was something about having a daughter whom she wanted so desperately, when she
hadn’t
been wanted, that would feel like reversing or somehow correcting her own history.

Verity hadn’t figured out how and when to tell Colton about the baby—it really depended on their reunion today. If he was hostile and unwelcoming, she would leave quietly, and who knows? Maybe she’d never tell him. She wouldn’t want her baby to ever feel like one of her parents didn’t want her.

She inhaled sharply, forcing herself to be more positive. For all she knew, he could be here any minute, and she didn’t want to fall apart with anxiety the moment he arrived. Eyeing the bins of mail by the front door, and itching for something to do—the house was as neat as a pin, and she’d mowed the lawn yesterday—she hefted the bins onto the dining room table and started sorting.

There were a few “30 Days Overdue” bills that Colton would need to sort through, a few magazines, and several envelopes with Bonnie’s Place as the return address. There was a large envelope from
The Legend of Camelot
. She knew what it held—the termination papers for Colton’s job and information about COBRA. She’d received an identical one from Lynette the day she was fired. There was tons of junk mail, a legion of catalogs, and several old newspapers, and there, on the bottom of the fourth bin, was an envelope hand-addressed to her.

She reached for it, pulling it out of the bin and staring at it for a moment in confusion—
Who knows I live here?—
before noticing that the postmark was from Milledgeville, GA. Milledgeville, where Central State Hospital was located.

“Oh my God,” she murmured, looking frantically at the postmark date, relieved to find it was six days ago and not six weeks ago. She wouldn’t have wanted for him to think she was ignoring him.

He must have sent it knowing it would reach me just before he came home
, she thought, fingering it carefully. She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, turning the envelope over and over nervously. What did it say? And why did he feel the need to write it when he’d be home so soon?

Leaving the mail neatly stacked on the dining room table, she took the letter and walked through the kitchen, down the back hallway, and into his room. She crawled onto the bed, sat up against the headboard, and pulled the covers up to her waist. There were tears in her eyes as she stared down at the letter in her hands.

This is my fate
, she thought, gulping with worry.
This letter holds my fate.

What if he’d meant his words in the courtroom? What if the letter said,
Hope you’re out of my house. If not, you better be out by the time I get home.

One hand still held the letter, but the other moved, of its own accord, to her stomach, rubbing it gently before taking a deep breath, carefully ripping open the envelope, and pulling out two lined sheets of yellow notebook paper folded into thirds.

Dear Verity,

I’ve written and rewritten this letter about a hundred times while I’ve been here, and “Dear Verity” always bothers me because if I was looking at you, I’d reach for your face and say “Hey, baby” or “Morning, sunshine,” but I doubt you’d be able to hear the words anyway because if I was holding your face in my hands, I’d be looking into your blue eyes, and the lump in my throat would be so big, I don’t know if I could get any words out. Plus, I’d be trying to figure out if there’s anything I could say or do to let you know how sorry—how awful, terrible sorry—I am for what I said to you in the courtroom before coming here. The problem is, I can’t think of any words that are good enough or strong enough to reverse the damage I did. As it is, I’m just about positive you’ll never read this.

But if I ever got a chance to look you in the eyes again, I’d tell you I was sorry for everything I said that day—for telling you to get out of my house and that I never wanted to see your face again. Yours is the
only
face I want to see for the rest of my life, baby—but I guess I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

I never told you much about my folks. But my father had a problem. I never saw him hit my mother, but he hit me often enough, kicked our dog, got into scraps with the neighbors that ended with fists. Always fists. Never talking things out or listening to reason.

By the time I was nine, I was doing the same—getting into fights at school, breaking things around the house when I got mad. My mother took me to a doctor, who told her that I had an anger disorder called IED, intermittent explosive disorder. He suggested therapy and medication, but my father beat me to a pulp and told me to shape up. I guess my mother was really worried about what would happen next because she sent me to Georgia to live with my Aunt Jane, Uncle Herman, and Mel. I never saw my folks again. As you know, they were in a car accident not long after—my daddy was driving—and they died.

Over the years, I’ve broken countless noses and jaws. Had my own broken many times as well. Always fists first, especially if someone I cared about was bothered or threatened. You saw it at the motel and again with Artie. Want to know something I learned about myself when I got here? I probably couldn’t have stopped myself even if I’d wanted to, because something inside me wasn’t built right. It’s broken, and it can only be fixed with therapy and medicine, as my mother was advised all those years ago.

That day in the courtroom, baby? I didn’t see a light at the end of the tunnel I’ve lived in for most of my life. All I saw was the possibility that I’d abandon you for good one day. I’d kill someone and be locked up for life, and my sweet sunshine would be left all alone. I couldn’t do that to you. All I was thinking that day was, Cut her loose. Let her go, you selfish bastard. No matter what, you can never be the man she deserves.

Except that now I’m in therapy, and I take the meds I need. And over the last month or so, I’ve started thinking that maybe I
can
be the man you deserve, if you have one chance left to give me. Just one. Because if you gave me that chance, baby, I promise you that’s the only one I’d ever need.

I’m looking at this sheet of paper and trying to decide if I should say everything or hold some back, just in case I get the chance to see you again. Aw, heck. What’s the point of this letter if I don’t say it all? So here’s the rest . . . I want you forever, Verity. I want you to be my wife, the mother of my kids, my partner, my best friend, the woman I make love to every night and wake up next to every morning. I want to spend lazy Sundays gardening around the house and making love on picnic tables. I want to take Mel and Ryan to the zoo and the park and Slip’N Slide day and everywhere else they want to go. I want BBQ dinners on the back patio and movies in our bed. I want your hand in mine. I want your naked body next to mine. I want your legs all tangled up in mine. I want you to
be
mine. I want it all, baby. And I promise I’d make it all happen from that one chance . . . if you were willing to give it to me.

No matter what, I hope you have a happy life, full of love, Verity Gwynn. You deserve every happiness the world can offer.

As for me, whether or not I ever see your face again in this life, I will love you until I breathe my last breath.

And then I will love you through eternity.

Colton

“Colton,” she whispered through tears. She’d cried throughout most of the letter, and she was utterly exhausted now—the way she’d feel if she finally came to the end of a daunting journey, which, in essence, she had.

He still loved her.

He still wanted a future with her—a forever with her.

Clutching the letter against her heart with one hand, she pressed the other against their baby growing inside her body and swiftly fell asleep.

***

His visit with Melody was good, and she confirmed what he’d desperately hoped for after reading her letter—that Verity and Ryan had never left Atlanta, and they’d been spending a good bit of time at Bonnie’s Place. In fact, if Mel had her details right, Ryan was in the life skills program on weekdays and Verity was working at the sundries store. After hearing that, he kissed his cousin’s cheek and apologized for cutting the visit short, promising to return soon. He bolted from her apartment, said good-bye to the social worker, called a cab, and waited impatiently outside until it pulled up. He needed to get home. He needed to see Verity, touch her, talk to her, and—oh God, please—beg for one more chance.