RISE - Part Two (The RISE Series Book 2) (8 page)

Her hands leap to her face as a sob escapes her.

I feel myself tear up almost instantly even though I have no idea what treasure awaits me when I pick up the card. I rest the box in my lap as I unfold the paper and I read the four simple words written in Lilly's handwriting:

Congratulations! You're a Godmother.

I watch as the paper beings to tremble. I feel my entire body react to the words.

"You want me..." I hold up the paper towards her. "You want this."

"I want you to be Haven's Godmother." She moves quickly around my desk until her arms are wrapped around my neck. "Clive wants it too. Our little girl needs the best Godmother in the world. That's you, Tess."

"What does it mean?" I ask under my breath. "What do I do?"

She lowers herself to her knees, her hands resting over mine. "It means you'll help us take care of her. You'll love her too, like you do already and Tess, Clive and I want you to be her guardian in case something happens to us. We know you'd be a good mother to our little girl."

Her words collide in my mind with the last conversation I had with Ansel and as I reach forward to drape my arms around her neck, I sob into the air. "I would have been such a good mom. I would have been."

––––––––

"Y
ou never told me you were pregnant." Lilly's eyes drop to my flat stomach. "How pregnant were you?"

I was pregnant enough to mourn the loss of what might have been. "Just a few weeks. I was right around the two month mark when I started spotting."

She swallows hard. "It was Ansel's?"

I hate to admit that. I've mourned the loss of my baby, not Ansel's baby. He may have been the one who shared the night of muted passion with me that lead to the conception, but after that, he wanted everything to be kept secret. He was even making plans for me to move to Europe alone to have the baby when I suffered a miscarriage.

"Ansel was the dad," I say quietly. "He didn't take the news very well. He wasn't happy about it."

"I'm sorry, Tess." She leans forward to grab my hands in hers. "I can't tell you that I know what you feel because I don't."

"You know about loss," I release the breath I've been holding since I told her I lost my baby. "I've wanted to tell you so many times, Lilly, but I know you don't like talking about death. I know you lost everyone you love."

She nods silently as she studies my face.

"Your father stole your mother and siblings from you. I didn't know how to mention that I was still mourning the loss of a child that I'd just conceived. I never knew my baby. I don't know if it was a boy or a girl."

She pauses to take a deep breath as her hand moves to my chest. "You knew your baby in here, Tess. You miss your baby in your heart. No loss is worth more than another. I want to help you with this. Let me help you."

"No one but you and Ansel know." I try to calm my voice. "I never told my dad or my mom because I was so early in the pregnancy. Ansel didn't tell anyone."

"I know now." She leans forward to kiss my cheek. "We can talk about it whenever you need to."

Her words offer me a comfort I didn't know I needed this desperately and as I stare into the face of my best friend, I finally feel myself letting go of the most painful moment of my past.

***

"A
re you going to tell Landon?" Lilly straightens her skirt. "You should tell him."

"At some point I will." I reach to pull a wayward piece of lint from her blouse. "It's too early to bring up stuff like that. Ansel and I are done, that's all Landon really wants to know at this point."

Her left brow pops up. "Is he jealous of the ex-boyfriend? If he is that's a great sign."

It may be a great sign if we're in middle school but Landon is a thirty-one-year-old man. He's confident, kind and compassionate. He's also an accomplished airline pilot. I doubt that him being jealous means anything at all. "Landon isn't threatened by my past with Ansel. He knows it's over."

"He seems really together." She reaches for her purse. "He's almost as together as you are."

I laugh out loud at the notion. "You're wrong. He's almost as together as you, Lilly."

"Right," she tries to sound sarcastic but it comes across as playful. "I'm so together I put the soap for the dishwasher in the microwave instead of the cupboard. It took me three days to find it."

"You were thinking about work." I point to my laptop. "Your mind is like one of those. You have so many different compartments working at the same time. It's expected that your wires would get crossed sometimes."

"I guess so." Her shoulder half-shrugs as she points at the card she brought me that's still sitting on my desk. "We're going to have a small ceremony for Haven's christening next month. You need to come since you're her Godmother."

I glance at the card before I look at her again. "I'm so honored that you and Clive picked me. It means everything to me, Lilly."

"You are like a sister to me." Her voice wavers slightly. "I haven't had a friend like you before. You're my family, Tess."

"You're my family too," I say as I wrap my arms tightly around her. "I won't let you down, Lilly. I'll always be here for you and for Haven too."

––––––––

"I
'm going back to work tomorrow." He grazes his lush lips over my stomach. "Gabriel told me that you need to go back to L.A. in a couple of weeks. I'm going to pilot that plane."

"What you're actually trying to say Captain Beckett is that you're going to make love to me thirty thousand feet in the air."

His head falls back with a hearty laugh. "I just fucked you and you're already looking forward to the next time?"

"Are you saying I have to wait weeks for it to happen again?" I drop my hand to my wetness. "I can take of myself in the meantime."

His hair tickles the flesh of my side as he looks down. "Don't touch yourself right now. I can't take that."

It's my turn to laugh. "You can take it. You're a machine."

His eyes dart up to mine. "Only with you, Tess Marlow. With anyone else I'm one and done."

I smile even though the words slice through me. I know he's slept with others. I doubt that our number of past lovers compare. He's nine years older than I am and he's traveled the world.

"No one else matters, Tess." He inches up my body. "I didn't mean it that way."

"I know," I say quietly as I curve my body into his. "You're not sleeping with anyone else right now."

"Our intimacy is different." He sighs as he rests his lips against my forehead. "It's so intense. I want you all the time. I just want to be around you."

I sigh at the admission. It's the same for me. Even though our relationship to this point has been far from normal, I've relished each moment that we've spent together. The drama surrounding his family has only created another level of trust between us that may not have been there for months otherwise. I can tell that he's as comfortable with me as I am with him.

"I love being around you too."

"My father's lawyer wants him to do an interview." His shoulders tense as he brushes his lips against my brow. "He wants the world to know what really pushed my father to fake his death."

It's the most he's shared with me since he told me that his brother and mother went with him to see his father in prison. I've held up my promise to not share any details any his father's reappearance in his life with anyone.

I know myself and even though I've remained patient to this point, that's been wearing thin. I'm no expert on the legalities of the situation. I don't know anything about statues of limitations but I do know that Frederick is paying for his crimes in every sense of the word.

Landon's voice has no inflection of compassion anymore when he talks about his father. If Dane is anything like his brother, he has little regard for the fate of his dad either. A man who was once respected and adored by his sons now sits in a prison cell waiting for his world to implode on him.

"What happens to you, Dane and your mom if your dad talks to the press?"

He lifts my hand to his lips. "We hold our heads up high. The father I had died in the water that day."

I nod faintly. I sense that any momentary thrill he may have felt when he first saw his father was instantly replaced with the desperate sadness of knowing that the man who had raised him, and taught him to ride a bike and fish had willingly caused him immeasurable emotion pain.

"He keeps telling us that he was protecting us." He chuckles softly. "He wants the three of us to believe that he pretended to drown that day to give us a better life."

"How was he protecting you?" I feel a sense of righteousness wash over me. "You could have died, Landon. What if you had drowned when that boat capsized?"

He pulls me tighter into his arms. "I was fine. I swallowed some water but other than that, I was fine. I think he trusted in my ability to swim."

I've watched Lilly cradle Haven in her arms and I've thought endlessly about what it would have been like if I'd carried my pregnancy to term. I can't say for certain if I would have been as caring a mother as Lilly or Ivy is, but I know, without any question, that I'd never throw my child into a situation in which they had to fend for their life.

"What he did was inexcusable." He looks up at me under heavy eyelids. "I'll never forgive him for what he did to my family."

I rest my head against his. "There are things that no one can forgive. Sometimes you just have to close off your heart."

––––––––

"I
know it's over, Tess." His voice is empty and shallow. "I'm not going to bother you again."

I stare at the top of my desk as I cling tightly to my phone. "It is over, Ansel. We can never go back to what we once had."

"I still want that." I hear a shuffle carry over the phone line. "I mean, I wish you'd give me another chance but I know you're never going to."

Even though they're words that I've longed to hear, they still carry with them a sense of sadness that is palpable. I loved him for a period of time in my life when I was innocent and relationships seemed uncomplicated. I doubt that it's ever easy to let go of a first love but sometimes we have to in order to truly love with a sense of depth.

"I loved our baby too." His voice cracks briefly before he pulls in a deep breath. "I would have taken such good care of both of you."

He would have hidden the two of us away in a part of the world where his fans wouldn’t catch wind of the fact that he was a father. The first words out of his mouth when I joyfully told him I was pregnant were that it would cramp his style. He apologized profusely over and over again as I cried into his shoulder but the damage had been done. I'd never forgotten the brutal pain that came with the words and with the knowledge that his career was more important than a life with me and our child.

"Talking about what might have been isn't a good idea. We've both moved on."

"I haven't," he blurts out. "I mean I will, but I've never met another girl like you."

I could absorb those words as a compliment but there's not truth in that assumption. He means he's never met another girl who put up with his reckless need to be everyone else's hero. He wanted the world to love him and the sacrifice for that was my love.

"You're going to meet someone one day, Ansel and she'll make you forget about me."

He laughs deeply. I can picture the smile in his eyes even though I can't see it. "I doubt like hell that I'll meet anyone like that. Does he make you forget about me, Tess?"

There's no need to hide behind a lie. I don't owe Ansel anything, not even the truth but I want to give it to him because I want this to end with absolutely no regrets or wished words on my part. "It's not like that with him. Landon helps me see that every moment matters. He doesn’t make me forget you. He helps me remember that I'm important."

***

"I
'll be back on Wednesday," Landon says brusquely as he buttons up the jacket of his pilot's uniform. "I thought we could have dinner with my brother."

I tear my gaze away from his body to look up at his face. "You want me to meet Dane?"

"I want you to meet his fiancé, Bridget, too, but she has plans with some of her friends." He effortlessly ties a dark blue tie around his neck. "Dane asked me to meet him for a beer and I told him I wanted him to meet my girlfriend."

"I'm your girlfriend."

His brows pop up. "You are. I mean, we haven't established that, but it's obvious, no?"

It's been obvious to me for a long time. What we share already transcends my relationship with Ansel so it seems trivial to call Landon 'my boyfriend' but it's much better than 'my lover.'

"Do you want me to ask you to go steady, Tess?" He furrows his brow. "I'll do it for you."

"No." I pop my hand into the air to stop him. "I'm your girlfriend and you are my boyfriend."

He nods before his gaze drops to the top of the bed. "I'll text you as soon as I land in Athens."

"Is it nice there?"

"You've never been to Athens?" He arches his neck to look back to where I'm still laying beneath the covers of his bed. "I'll take you there one day."

It's a promise of a future adventure that I desperately need. I'd come to his apartment today after spending much of the afternoon with Clive. We'd gone over the fine details of the Corteck gala and even though I could tell he was impressed with my ideas, he wanted something that would set the bar high. I'd tossed out a few concepts off the top of my head and he'd stopped me mid-sentence to tell me how much he valued my work.

I had to excuse myself and take leave to go to the ladies' room. It wasn't because I felt overly emotional. I just wanted a minute to myself to bask in the glow of his adoration. He's not an easy person to please and knowing that I impressed him, recharged me.

Since things have settled into a routine with Landon and me, I've been able to more fully focus on my work. Gabriel is sending me to Los Angeles next week and Landon will be there with me. It's our first trip together and I know already it won't be our last.