The Key West Anthology (49 page)

Chapter One

Callie

I stood in the doorway of the hospital room staring at Jude. His appearance made my stomach ache. The rest of our friends stood around whispering, but I couldn’t focus on their words. All I could see was him.

White bandages were wrapped tightly around his head, and the bruising that covered his face was heartbreaking. He looked so weak, and I knew if he was alert enough, being so vulnerable would only piss him off. Jude had to have control. Anyone that knew him understood that, and we’d all learned to stop questioning why he lived that way, because he never shared his reasons.

A strong arm wrapped around my shoulders and pulled me against a strong body. I turned my head and looked up to find Jett staring at me with concern. “How ya doing, Cal?”

“I’m okay,” I said as I looked back toward the hospital bed.

“Quinn and Harper are gonna head over to Jude’s place. Avery has to finish her shift here, though, so she can’t go with them,” he explained, and I closed my eyes tightly to fight off the tears as images of those sweet little kids filled my mind. Until two hours ago, I had no idea they even existed or that he had a sister who relied so heavily on him. They were all alone now. “You feel like heading over there? Or would you rather stay here?”

I was torn between my head and my heart. On the one hand, my heart needed to know he was okay. But I knew he would be angry about his current state when he woke up, and the words he’d choose might hurt me. On the other hand, I could go to his place and help take care of the people who meant the most to him.

I turned to face Jett. “I think I’ll go with the girls, but you’ll call to update me, right?” He nodded, and I forced a smile. “What about the restaurant?”

“I got it covered,” he assured me. “I already called Marco, and I’ve got a few extra girls coming in to cover for you. Don’t worry about the restaurant. Jude’s family, and if that means we have to close, we will.”

I looked past Jett’s shoulder and found Harper and Quinn standing back, waiting for me. Jett stepped to the side for me.

“He’s gonna be okay,” he said as I walked past. I paused and looked up at him as my lower lip trembled uncontrollably. “And we both know he’s gonna fight us all on this. He isn’t one to accept help without a battle. He’ll say hurtful things he doesn’t truly mean out of embarrassment and anger, but Callie, you know he cares about you, right?”

I shook my head and tried to step away only to be stopped again by Jett gripping my forearm. “There is a lot of shit going on in his life. I may know some of it, but I don’t know it all. I can guarantee you, though, that he has feelings for you. I don’t know why he fights them. I don’t understand it. But I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”

“Jett,” I whispered as I hung my head.

“It’s gonna get real hard before it gets better. Just remember that.” I knew exactly what he was saying. Jude wouldn’t take our help without resistance. To him, accepting help made him weak. And weak was something Jude would never allow himself to be.

***

The ride over to Jude’s was quiet as I stared out the side window of Quinn’s Land Rover. When we drove onto the cul de sac and pulled up in front of the building Jude lived in, I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. It was a rundown apartment complex in the less wealthy part of town. There were a total of six units, and each had their own small porch. The railings were falling off some of them, and the steps were crooked and breaking away. The building and the landscape looked like they hadn’t been maintained in years.

We got out of the car and stared ahead, and I knew we were all thinking the same things—worry about Jude and his family living here, and guilt that we hadn’t known. A sick feeling ran through my veins as I thought back to last night when I dropped close to five hundred dollars on shoes and a new matching purse. I swallowed past the lump in my throat, and my vision blurred with unshed tears.

“Callie, don’t do that to yourself.” Quinn reached out and rubbed my shoulder. “None of us knew. He hid things so well. But now he can’t hide any longer. We won’t let him.”

All I could do was nod, because the burn in my throat made words impossible right now. I followed behind Quinn and Harper, each step making it harder to hold back the tears.

We approached the apartment near the end—Jett said it was unit five—and Quinn lightly tapped on the door. It was just after eight in the morning, and the sound of laughter behind the closed door made me smile. Still, I hated the idea that we were about to bring them bad news.

The door opened, and an older woman looked back at us and smiled pleasantly. “Can I help you girls?”

“Yes, ma’am. We’re actually friends of Jude. We were looking for Katelynn,” Quinn said.

“Well, if you’re friends of Jude’s, maybe you could tell me where he is.” The older woman placed her hand on her hip as annoyance flashed across her features.

“Well, with all due respect, ma’am, the whereabouts of Jude should be told directly to his sister,” Harper chimed in, making me cringe. She had a real problem with sugarcoating anything. The woman’s eyes widened, but Harper continued before she could respond. “So if you don’t mind, we would like to speak to Katelynn. But I can assure you that Jude is not passed out on someone’s couch after a night of partying. I think we both know that if he isn’t here taking care of the three people that need him most, he has a damn good reason for it.”

I fisted my hands and prayed the woman wouldn’t slam the door in our faces or start yelling at Harper.

“Well, aren’t you a feisty one,” the older woman said with a chuckle. I let out a calming breath as I looked up and saw her humored expression. “But you are right,” she said as she stepped to the side. “Come on in, ladies.”

When we stepped inside, the sick feeling hit me all over again. The apartment was tiny, and all the medical equipment inside only made it appear smaller. The tears rolled over my cheeks then, and I found it hard to fight them. Jude always came off as this strong, confident man who overpowered a room the moment he entered it. I thought back to the times I thought he was the biggest ass I had ever met, but in reality he was a selfless man who fought daily and without complaining to provide for those he loved. I was always angry at him for thinking he was too good to date me, and now I just felt like such a bitch. None of us took the time to really see what was going on, and that made me sick to my stomach.

“Is my brother okay?” A sweet, soft whisper caught my attention.

I turned around to see Quinn approaching a frail woman in a wheelchair sitting only ten feet away, hidden in the center of all the furniture and equipment. She looked so much like Jude that it was obvious they were related. She had to be his sister.

Quinn sat down in the chair at Katelynn’s side, and she looked back at Quinn with fear in her eyes. “Please tell me he’s okay.” Her eyes filled with tears, and I had to look down, because seeing her pain was just too much.

The sounds of squeals came from the hallway as two little children ran into the room and headed in our direction. The little boy ran in first, wearing only a pair of underwear and a red cape flowing behind him. The little girl, who appeared to be around five or six, chasing after him was yelling something about her Barbie. His mischievous smile told me he had a little bit of devil in him. I fought my own impending smile as she tackled him to the floor. She straddled his tiny body, holding his arms out to his sides and glaring at him with all the diva she could muster up.

“Okay, you two,” the older woman said as she separated them. “Your mommy has some company, so let’s go back to the bedroom and handle this.”

That’s when they noticed they had an audience. The little girl stood up and straightened her dress. Placing her hands on her hips, she looked at all of us and narrowed her eyes. “He pulled off my Barbie’s head,” she said as her eyes widened with aggravation.

“And Warrior ate it,” the little boy announced with pride as he danced around waving his hands above his head. “Gobble-gobble, yum,” he said in his best imitation of a deep voice followed by a loud roar.

“Matthew.” We were all surprised by the tone in Katelynn’s voice. It was stern and laced with irritation. “Do not tell me that you flushed Zoey’s Barbie’s head down the toilet.”

Harper laughed and quickly covered her mouth to hide it, shaking her head. I flashed her a look of annoyance, which in turn only made her laugh even harder. She was hopeless. When she and Easton finally had children, I knew Easton would have to be the enforcer. I was also more than positive he would be handing out punishment to Harper just as much as he would to their children. She was such a troublemaker.

Chapter Two

Jude

I woke up to a nurse hovering over me, pressing something cold against my chest. I lifted my hand and placed it over hers, and her eyes grew wide as they lifted to meet mine.

“What am I doing here?” I said, my throat burning with dryness as I spoke. I coughed and released her hand.

“Damn, man, slow down. Take a drink already.” I looked over to my left, still coughing. Jett was looking back at me with a smirk on his face.

“Here you go,” the nurse whispered as she held out a cup with a straw.

I leaned forward and took a small drink, not wanting to accept her assistance, but I saw no other way around it. I needed to wet my throat. After I felt like I could speak again without breaking out in yet another coughing spell, I turned back to Jett.

“How the hell did I get here? I need to get home, man.” Now that my throat had stopped hurting, panic was setting in. I had no idea what time it was or how long I had been here. I just knew I had to get home and get the kids taken care of. They needed to be fed and Matt needed to be changed. Katelynn needed her therapy. There was no way they could handle things without me.

I tried to move, but pain shot through my side, and I hunched over, grabbing it. “Fuck,” I groaned.

“Hold still, jackass,” Jett said as he stood from the chair and came up to the side of the bed. “You ain’t going nowhere. You got a collapsed lung and one hell of a concussion. Not to mention a shit-ton of bruising. We got everything covered.”

I lifted the side of my gown and noticed the tube that was in my side. A sense of anger washed over me as I remembered Drake and his bitches attacking me. Then Jett’s words hit me.

“What do you mean
we
got things covered? Who they hell is
we
?”

I didn’t like the idea of anyone in my business, and I barely tolerated Jett, Kade, and Easton knowing some of the details. Katelynn and the kids were my responsibility. We didn’t need anyone else, because everyone else just fucked up our rhythm. Our sorry excuses for relatives and parents, her ex-husband—all of them were worthless. They’d rush in acting like heroes only to fucking drop us when shit got real.

“The girls are with Katelynn and the kids,” Jett said and crossed his arms over his chest, as if daring me to put up a fight. “You can be as fucking pissed as you want, man. It isn’t gonna change the fact they wanted to be there.”

I tried to maintain my control. I knew Katelynn and the kids needed someone right now. But the combination of more people knowing about our trouble and the fact I couldn’t be there for them was fucking with my head.

“I don’t need pity, Jett. Katelynn could get Mrs. Reames to help until I get out of this prison. It sure as hell ain’t your responsibility or theirs.”

“She could, yeah.” Jett nodded. “But there’s no need to pay a neighbor to babysit kids when you have friends that care about you and want to help.”

“I didn’t ask for help.” I tried not to come off as pissed, but I couldn’t help it. Letting the girls into my life outside the restaurant made me vulnerable, and I hated it.

“Yeah, I know you didn’t.” He lowered his hands and scowled right back at me. Jett was fierce when he needed to be. “And that, right there, is where you fucked up. You don’t just work for me, man. You’re like a fucking brother to me. You are to all of us. You not asking for help is something I guess I will never understand. But I can assure you now that you’ve got it. We’re there whether you want us to be or not. So let go of all this fucking fight in you and let us in. You no longer have a fucking choice.”

This was the same shit he spat at me the night the guys showed up at my place when I got a call from my neighbor. Katelynn’s ex had shown up demanding that my sister give him money, saying she owed him for all the bullshit he put up with from her. I left work without warning and drove to my place, only to find he had already left, leaving behind two crying kids and Katelynn, who had fallen out of her wheelchair trying to get him to leave and was still lying on the living room floor.

It took Jett, Kade, and even Easton to hold me back. All I wanted to do was track down that sorry piece of shit and make him pay for all the garbage he had put his family through. A worthless fuck was all he ever was.

Needless to say, trusting people and their intentions wasn’t an easy thing for me to do.

None of our remaining family stepped up to offer us any help after Katelynn’s car accident. Or even when she found out the breast cancer she’d been fighting for years had spread to her lymph nodes, lungs, and now her liver. No, they all just turned their backs on us and pretended we didn’t exist. Our problems were apparently just too much for them to deal with. So the happiness and safety of Katelynn, Zoey, and Matthew was my responsibility, and I would do whatever it took to shelter them from any further disappointment. They had already suffered enough.

“Who’s with them?” I had a feeling my hunch was right, but I had to ask anyway.

“Quinn, Harper, and Callie. They went over a little after eight this morning. Harper left your apartment after a few hours, and Quinn just got back to our place an hour ago.”

I looked up at Jett, waiting for him to continue, but he just stared back at me, apparently waiting for my response. “Callie?”

“Still there,” he said, and my stomach tightened. “She’s been there all day. She doesn’t want to leave them.”

I took a deep breath because I felt like I had an elephant sitting on my chest. Callie had a huge heart, but my family and my problems weren’t hers. “I can call Mrs. Reames. I’m sure she’ll stay with them. Then Callie can take off and get back to her own life,” I said as I looked around in search of a phone.

“You do know that she ain’t gonna leave, right?” he said. “Everyone has offered to relieve her all day, but she has no intentions of going anywhere. Avery went over with Kade after her shift. They were gonna stay and get the kids to bed, but Callie insisted she had it covered. They said she had the kids fed, bathed, and ready for bed. Apparently, they were all getting ready to sit down and watch a movie on Netflix.”

“I don’t have Netflix.”

He chuckled. “No, but Callie had Harper bring her laptop, and they hooked it up to your television.”

I sat in silence, staring ahead at a dark spot on the wall. I didn’t know what to say. Callie was too sweet to be warped by my fucked-up life. That was the biggest reason I always kept a safe distance from her. She needed a guy that could give her all of his time, and I barely had any time left in my day to breathe.

“Do me a favor,” I said without looking at him. “Get her out of there.”

“Jude—”

“You heard me. If I have to stay in this fucking hospital, then I’ll have to deal with that. But I sure as hell am not gonna sit back and let people come to my rescue because they feel sorry for me.”

“You know damn well that isn’t why she’s there.”

“No, she’s there because all this time she’s been hoping for more from me.” I was being an ass, but it was better that Jett heard my harsh words than Callie. “She thinks stepping up and offering my sister and her kids help when I can’t will get her closer to me. That shit ain’t gonna happen. Her ass needs to leave and move on.”

I ignored Jett’s irritated groans and him telling me I was a stubborn fuck. The fact was, it didn’t change shit. Callie deserved more than what I could offer her. The last thing I needed was for her to grow closer to Katelynn and the kids. That would only make it harder to get her to understand she and I would never be together.