Annabelle
Phoenix dropped me off at my house just before dark. I should have invited him in, but I needed some time alone. I think he did, too. He kissed me on the cheek and asked if he could come over in the morning. I said that would be fine and after a quick hug, he left.
It was odd for me to be home alone on a Saturday night. I was usually at the clubhouse or at one of Nathan’s matches. As much as I didn’t want to, I needed to use the time alone to process everything Phoenix had shared with me.
Grabbing a bottle of wine, I opened it and headed straight to my bathroom. A nice hot bath and a bottle of wine were the comforts I rarely had time for but desperately needed. I sank into the sudsy water, laid my head back, and closed my eyes.
So many emotions were coursing through me, but two were the most prominent. Guilt and shame. How could I have been pregnant with two babies and not known? How could I have looked at my own child every day for years and not recognized her? How could I have looked at Coal several times a week and not recognized him? How could I have taken Nathan away and left the two of them there under Octavius’s rule?
They probably hated me. Who could blame them? I hated my parents and they had done far less to me than I did to my own children. What could I even say to them? “I’m sorry, your mother is the stupidest woman alive. I brought you into this world, but I’m such an idiot I couldn’t even recognize my own children.” I deserved for them to hate me.
And Nathan. What was I going to do about Nathan? He had a right to know about his siblings and they had a right to know about him, but that meant telling him things I had kept hidden from him all these years. When he found out what I had done, he would hate me, too. I was going to lose everyone and it was no one’s fault but my own.
I had no choice but to face the music. I would tell Nathan the truth about our past. I would go to Croftridge and see my children and own up to the mistakes I made. Then, I would leave. They would all be better off without me.
With my decision made, I finished off the bottle of wine and climbed out of the tub. I didn’t bother with my usual bedtime routine, didn’t even run a comb through my hair. I slipped on a t-shirt and a pair of yoga pants. Then, I crawled into bed and cried myself to sleep.
When Phoenix arrived the next morning, I had already been awake for several hours. He followed me into the kitchen and took a seat at the table. “Nathan is still sleeping. I haven’t figured out how to go about telling him about Ember and Coal, not to mention everything else I’ve kept from him. I would appreciate it if we could hold off on discussing anything of that nature until after he is gone for the rest of the day.”
“That’s not a problem, Annabelle,” he replied.
“On that note, can you call me Taylor in front of him, at least for now?” I asked. If Nathan heard Phoenix calling me Annabelle, it would raise questions I was not ready to answer.
Phoenix’s lips pressed into a hard line. “I’ll try.”
We made small talk for the next hour. Surprisingly, it wasn’t uncomfortable at all. It felt like old times, when we were teenagers. There had always been a natural ease between me and Phoenix and I was relieved to know it was still there.
I was in the middle of telling Phoenix about my job at the tattoo shop when Nathan walked into the kitchen. “Morning, sweetheart,” I said. I gestured across the table. “You remember Phoenix?”
Nathan nodded. “Yes. Good morning, sir.” He redirected his attention to me. “I have to meet the team at the gym to go over some things before we start training tomorrow.” He lowered his voice, “Are you okay with him being here?”
I placed my hand on my son’s arm. “I’m fine, honey. No need for you to worry.”
He leaned down to give me a hug and a kiss. “I should be home around 8pm. I love you.”
“I love you, too.” He gave Phoenix a stern look before he turned and walked out the front door.
“He sure is protective of you,” Phoenix said with a smile.
“Yeah, he is. It was just the two of us for a long time. He didn’t realize it when he was younger, but when he got older, it was obvious to him that I was being protected from something by the Knights. He never said anything about it, he just started mimicking their behavior,” I explained.
“He seems like a good kid.”
I smiled. “Thank you. He really is. I’m so proud of him, landing that MMA contract. He’s worked hard for it. Wave and some of his members helped him with his training when he first started.”
“Will he stay here while he’s training?” Phoenix asked.
“Yes, he will be here most of the time. He has to go to L.A. for a six-week training camp that starts tomorrow. Then, he will be home until the scheduled fights start. The team travels as a unit, so even if he isn’t slated to fight, he still has to be there.”
“Would you be willing to come to Croftridge while he is away training?” he asked.
His question caught me off guard. “When?”
“I have to head back home soon. You can come with me if you want,” he said.
He was asking me to ride across the country on the back of his bike. Just the two of us. I had fantasized about the two of us taking off on his bike countless times over the last 20 years. Even last week I would have given my right kidney for that fantasy to become a reality, but things had changed, drastically. I wouldn’t be riding off into the sunset with Phoenix. I would be riding to a life I left behind, to children I left behind.
“I would have to talk to my boss. I don’t know that I can take that much time off work with such short notice. When are you planning on leaving?”
“That depends. If you’ll go with me, I would like to leave tomorrow. If not, I’ll probably head out Tuesday. I gotta tell you, Annabelle, I damn sure don’t want to leave you here. I want you with me, where you were always meant to be.”
Before my brain realized what I was saying, the words were out of my mouth, “Let me talk to Wave about work. I’ll be right back.”
I excused myself from the table and went into my bedroom to make the call. I didn’t want to go to Croftridge as much as I did want to go. I hurriedly dialed Wave. “Half pint! What’s up?”
“Hey, Wave. Um, I need to talk to you about work,” I said.
“All right. What is it?”
“Would it be possible for me to take some time off?”
“How much time and when?” he asked.
“That’s the thing...I don’t know how much time, but it would start tomorrow.” I braced myself for his reaction.
He cleared his throat. “What’s going on, Taylor? Is everything okay?”
“Yes and no. I’m fine, but after talking with Phoenix, I need to go back to Croftridge. I’m going to have to go back there one way or another, but he’s leaving tomorrow and offered me a ride. It’s not a big deal. I can always fly out there later on,” I rambled.
“Half pint, do you want to go with him?”
“I think I do,” I almost whispered.
“Listen here, you go with him and you can take as much time as you need on one condition.”
“And that is?” I asked.
“You have to check in with me every couple of days.”
I smiled. “I can do that.”
“Does Nathan know you’re going back with him?” he asked carefully.
“No, he doesn’t and I would like to keep it that way. I need to feel things out in Croftridge before I talk to Nathan.”
“All right. If you need anything, and I mean anything, you call me or Token. I don’t care if you’re here or half-way across the country, we’ll come get you.”
“Thanks, Wave. You guys are the best. Love you.”
“Love you, too, half pint. Be safe.”
I sat there for a while after the call disconnected. What had I gotten myself into? I wanted to go with Phoenix. A ride across the country with him was literally my dream come true. It was everything else that terrified me. How was I going to face the children I left behind?
The sound of my bedroom door creaking open had my head shooting up to see Phoenix filling the doorway, his hands braced on the top of the door frame. “You’ve been in here for a while. You okay?”
I cleared my throat and licked my dry lips. “Yeah. I was able to get the time off from work. I can leave with you tomorrow.”
“You don’t seem so happy about that,” he observed, taking a few steps closer.
“I’m not happy about it. I’m terrified,” I whispered as tears began to fall from my eyes.
He sat down on the bed beside me and put his arm around my shoulder. “There’s no reason to be scared. Octavius can’t hurt you or anyone else anymore.”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with him.”
“Ah, you’re worried about seeing Ember and Coal.” I nodded even though it wasn’t a question. “They are going to be ecstatic when I roll into town with you in tow. They don’t know where I went or why I left last week, but they both know that I have been looking for you. I already told you Ember was helping me try to find you. Coal would have helped, too, but he only recently found out about you and me being his biological parents. And, he’s had some other things going on that have kept him from diving into the search head first.”
“They don’t hate me?” I asked.
“Why on earth would they hate you, Annabelle?”
“Because I left them behind,” I wailed, my head falling against his chest.
He closed both arms around me and held me while I cried all over him yet again. “You didn’t leave them behind intentionally. You thought Ember was dead. She even thought you were dead. We both did until about a year ago and even then we weren’t sure if you were alive or not. As for Coal, you didn’t even know about him. I haven’t kept the truth from them, Annabelle. They know exactly what happened.”
“What kind of mother doesn’t recognize her own children? I saw Ember almost every day for years and I saw Coal several times a week?” I cried.
“Let me ask you something. When you hear about babies getting switched at birth, do you blame the mothers for not realizing the baby they took home wasn’t their biological child?”
“Of course not,” I replied indignantly.
“Ember and Coal ran into each other a few times on the farm. Do you blame them for not recognizing their own twin?”
“Again, of course not!”
“Then why are you beating yourself up for the same thing? They don’t blame you and neither do I, because none of that was your fault,” he said with so much vehemence I almost believed him. “It was a fucked up thing that happened to our family, but what’s done is done and we can’t go back and change it. Only thing we can do is move forward.”
I sat up and wiped the tears from my eyes. “You’re right. I know you’re right.” I clapped my hands together loudly and stood. “I guess I need to get myself packed and ready to go back to Croftridge.”
He saw right through my façade. He had always been able to read me better than anyone else and, apparently, that hadn’t changed. He got to his feet and kissed my forehead. “It’ll be okay, doll face, I promise.”
I hoped he was right.