Love Everlasting (Isle of Hope series Book 2) (33 page)

Shannon’s lips twitched with another smile. “Pray for them which spitefully use you and praise God in all things.”

“Yes!” Tess punched a fist to her palm. “Because—”

“It’s not God Who needs our praise,” Shannon interjected, “it’s us, since praise, prayer, and obedience unleashes the power of heaven.”

“You
were
listening!” Tess said with a wide grin.

Like the tide coming in, the saltwater dribbled down Shannon’s cheek to pool in the curve of her trembling smile. “Always,” she rasped, flinging herself into her mother’s arms until both of them could do nothing but weep. “I love you Mom.”

“I love you, too, Shan,” Tess whispered, eyes squeezed tightly against the fresh flow of tears. “
So
very much!” She settled against the headboard again and patted Shannon’s knee. “So … what are you going to do?”

Shannon’s sigh could have ruffled the curtains. “Well, first I’m going to praise God in this situation and ask Him to turn it around for my good and Sam’s. Then I’m going to pray that I can eventually forgive that sorry excuse of a boyfriend.”

“Eventually?” Tess angled a brow.

Shannon huffed out a sigh. “I will forgive him, Mom, I promise, but right now it’s just so raw, you know?”

Yes, she knew. All too well she knew.

“So I think I need some time to just pray and think about all of this, and especially get past the humiliation all over again.” She peeked up, eyes moist. “Sam made me feel so ashamed, Mom, that I don’t have the strength to even face him right now, even though he’s called and texted a dozen times since I left his house.” Her rib cage rose and fell. “And to be honest, I’m still so hurt and angry inside, I thought I’d give him a bit of the cold shoulder, just to let him stew for a while, you know?”

“Stewing’s good …” Tess volunteered.

Shannon stared out the window where the first shimmer of dawn spilled across her sill in subtle shades of pearl and pink “At least till I figure out what I really want. Sam may not want me anymore, but if he does, then I need to decide if I can marry a man who resorts to a bottle whenever he hits an emotional blip in the road.”

“You’re a wise woman, Shannon O’Bryen.”

Shannon peered up. “I have a wise mother,” she said with a misty smile.

Squeezing Shannon’s hand, Tess rose while her stomach emitted a noisy growl. “Hey—you feel like breakfast? Or do you want to sleep in?”

Shannon yawned, shimmying her toes under the covers. “I think I better get some decent sleep or forgiveness will be a lot further away,” she said with a wry smile, “but thanks, Mom, for everything.”

“You’re welcome, sweetheart, and I’ll just check on your tea. If you’re asleep when Cat brings it up, I may just drink it myself because the calming effect will do me good.
Especially
if your sister is on her way to Kroger.”

“Good plan.” Shannon’s grin was sleepy as she curled into a cozy ball. “G’night, Mom.”

“Good night, Shan, and by the way, I like your plan too.” She gave Shannon a wink at the door. “Cold shoulder … warm heart.”

Expelling a weary sigh, Tess closed the door and sagged against it with eyes closed, thinking she was way too keyed up to sleep now. “May as well have some tea too,” she muttered, startling when her eyes opened to see Ben standing at the end of the hall.

“What’s going on, Tess?” he said in a gravelly tone, his morning voice always lower than normal.

Her shock seeped out on a wavering sigh as she put a hand to her chest. “Good night, Ben, you scared me half to death!” she whispered, praying Davey didn’t wake up while she hurried down the hall.

“Why are you up?” he asked, hair tousled as much as his well-muscled T-shirt and pajama bottoms while morning bristle shadowed his face.

“Shan wasn’t feeling well, so Cat’s making her some tea.” She cupped a hand to his jaw, eyes tender as she brushed a kiss to his lips. “Today’s your day to sleep in, Ben, so go back to bed and I’ll fill you in later, okay?”

Turning, she started for the stairs when he hooked her arm, all but bouncing her back. “Aren’t you coming? It’s not even light outside yet.”

She stood on tiptoe to give him another quick kiss. “I don’t think so, babe. After talking to Shan, I’m wide awake, so I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to sleep.”

Slipping his arms around her waist, he drew her in close, nuzzling her neck before he swooped her up to carry her back into their room. With a kiss that muffled her squeal, he kicked the door closed with his foot, his groggy voice way huskier than usual. “Who said anything about sleep?”

Chapter Forty-Six

“I’m gonna kill him.”

“Probably not,” Chase said to Jack with a wry smile, finger calmly pressed to Sam’s fancy doorbell. “That’s why you asked me along, remember? To ensure restraint?”

Ignoring Chase’s remark, Jack pounded a fist on Sam’s front door. “Open up, Cunningham, you have some groveling to do—”

“Settle down, O’Bryen,” Chase said in the military monotone he’d always employed to diffuse volatile situations. “Losing your cool won’t help anything.”

“Wanna bet?” Jack delivered another bludgeoning blow, his lips clamped in a hard smile. “It’ll help me feel a whole lot better when I mess up his pretty face.” Cutting loose with a questionable hiss, Jack abandoned the front door to scrounge for the key Sam hid under one of his potted palms. “I don’t have time for this garbage,” he muttered, snatching up the key to rattle it in the lock.

“Sure you do.” Chase strolled in behind Jack after he hurled the door open, quietly shutting it again while Jack stormed through the foyer. “Friendship is always worth the time.”

Jack grunted, scouring Sam’s great room before tearing down the hall to the kitchen. “That remains to be seen. Cunningham?” His shout echoed in the hallway as he rampaged back to the foyer, threats ricocheting off the vaulted ceiling. “You’re going to pay for what you did to my sister, you blood-sucking lowlife.”

He tore toward the staircase, and Chase halted him with a firm hand and a sober look on the second step. “We both agreed we’d handle this like rational human beings, Jack, who also happen to be close friends with that blood-sucking lowlife.”

He shook Chase’s hand off. “You agreed, not me.” He started up the steps.

“
You
agreed by inviting me along, Doc,” Chase said with a firm hook of Jack’s arm, “asking me to keep you from doing something stupid, so I am.”

Jack paused on the second step, his scowl going flat. “Yeah, I know—what was I thinking?”

Chase scratched the back of his neck. “Uh, that your temper might get the best of you, maybe, with a very good friend?” His smile veered toward dry. “No matter how incredibly stupid that friend has been.”

Jack issued another grunt as he kneaded the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, well maybe his stupidity is catching because right now all I want to do is blacken his eye.”

Chase nodded. “I hear you, man, but if you do that, I’ll have to blacken yours per your request to keep you in line no matter what, which I told you I’d be happy to do.” A slow smile curled on his lips as he slapped Jack on the back on his way up the stairs. “Biblically speaking, of course, as in an eye for an eye?”

Jack winced as he followed Chase up. “That can’t be legal for a pastor,” he muttered.

“Tough love,” Chase said with a grim smile. “Better than incarceration for manslaughter, dude.”

Jack rubbed his neck. “Yeah, I guess. But you may have to remind me in a few seconds, ’cause just thinking about how Sam hurt Shan boils my blood, you know?”

“Yeah, I do,” Chase said quietly, thinking Shannon had been through enough grief in her life from what Jack had told him; she sure didn’t need more from Sam, the guy who
claimed
to love her. He tamped down his ire with a press of his jaw. “Somebody you trusted hurt somebody you love. And not just anybody, but one of the most kind-hearted, gentle, and gracious human beings alive,” he bit out, suddenly wanting to take a swing at Sam himself. He slowed as he reached the landing, expelling a slow, arduous breath while he shot Jack a tight-lipped smile. “It’s downright scary how quickly emotions can boil over, isn’t it?”

“Tell me about it.” Jack cuffed Chase’s shoulder as they strode down the hall to Sam’s bedroom. “Sam is my best friend along with you, Chase, so I gotta tell you, I’m more than a little shocked at how much I want to take a swing at the guy.”

“I’m not.” Chase stared straight ahead, anger licking at the edge of his restraint. “Shannon is one incredible woman.”

Jack paused outside Sam’s door to deliver a somber smile. “Thanks for caring about her like you do.”

Chase never blinked. “I love her, man, as a friend. But I gotta tell you, Jack, if this bozo screws it up, I promise you right now, I have plans to love her as way more.”

Jack smiled. “You’re a good friend, Chase.”

“You’re darn right I am.” His smile flat-lined. “Or I would have fought you tooth and nail on Lacey, and Sam on Shannon too.”

“I know. Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” he said, smile wry as he nodded to where Sam lay sprawled like a scarecrow corpse in the middle of his bed. “But
do
stop me from slapping Pretty Boy around if he gets on my nerves, okay?”

Jack put two palms in the air. “Hey, no promises, dude, especially since there won’t be anyone holding me back.”

Chase grinned. “Could get ugly, Doc.”

Jack flashed some teeth of his own as he strolled into Sam’s room, ripping the sheet off his friend’s back. “No worries, Rev, I have a medical degree—I can patch him up after we dress him down.” He kicked Sam’s leg none too gently. “Hey, jerk—wake up!”

Nothing.

Chase ambled over to shake Sam hard. “Sam—wake up!”

Still nothing.

“I guess our boy had a little too much to drink,” Jack said with a wicked smile. “He’s probably dry, so I’d bet he’d like some water.”

A slow grin inched across Chase’s face. “Good idea,” he said, heading for the door. “You scout out his bathroom, and I’ll scrounge in the one down the hall.” He strolled to the guest bathroom and found a tumbler that he filled to the brim with water. Striding back, he faced Jack on the other side of the bed with a crooked smile before leaning forward to sniff. “Smells like he needs a shower too.”

“That’s a given.” Jack held a similar tumbler full of water over Sam’s body. “Thought about using toilet water,” he said with a dark smile, “since Ham has an unnatural aversion to dirty water from some childhood trauma, but figured I’d show him
some
mercy.”

“Unlike he did for Shannon.” Chase doused a sudden flare of anger just like he planned to douse his good friend. Smile hard, he leaned close to Sam’s ear, which was the only part of his head visible beneath a feather pillow. “Sam,” he whispered, “would you like some water?”

The pillow rose and fell in even rhythm, and Jack exchanged a grin with Chase before both unloaded their liquid stash like flood stage at Niagara Falls.

A low moan sounded beneath the pillow as Sam shuddered, finally stirring like a man rising from the dead. A very wet and groggy man.

Pelting the pillow off, Sam flopped on his back with a strangled sound between a gargle and a groan, black stubble peppering an open jaw. His rumpled T-shirt appeared to be stained with vomit, and his usually shiny black curls looked like they’d been combed with a Weed Eater.

Chase caught a sniff of bottle breath and wrinkled his nose. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the meticulous Dr. Love quite so disheveled before. Nor smelling worse.”

“Yeah.” A gleam lit Jack’s eyes. “I say we take a picture for the bulletin board at Memorial.”

“No way, Jack,” Chase said with compassion in his tone, “not until the man’s had a real good shower first.”

A slow grin curled Jack’s lips as he bobbled the glass. “Good idea. See you in a few.”

The second round of H2O did the trick, resurrecting Dr. Love with a curse that defiled the air, along with his breath. “What the—?”  Sam opened his eyes—if slits can be considered open—and immediately sank back on the bed with a rusty groan. “Tell me I’m dreaming, please,” he said in a scratchy tone.

“Wish I could, slimeball, but the nightmare you put my sister through is real enough, Cunningham, so get up because I’m just itching to knock you back down.”

“Jack …” Chase’s warning tone did little to temper the fire in Jack’s eyes.

“No, Rev, let him,” Sam said, regret riddling his tone while he laid flat on his back. “I deserve it.”

“You’re darn right you do, Cunningham, so get up.”

Sam started to rise, and Jack took a step forward with hands knuckled tight, looking for all his prior promise of restraint as if he were ready to pop Sam the moment he stood up.

“Put the guns away, Jack,” Chase said quietly, blocking Jack’s way while Sam rolled out of bed with a groan. “We’re doing this the civilized way, remember?”

“He doesn’t deserve ‘civilized,’ Chase, not after the way he wounded my sister.”

“I don’t,” Sam said in a voice that sounded more like a croak, body swaying almost imperceptibly as he stood before them both with sorrow in red-rimmed eyes. “And I don’t deserve Shannon either,” he whispered, eyelids weighting closed as he ground the pads of his fingers to his temple. “I’m not good enough for her.”

“You got that right, Cunningham.” Jack cauterized Sam with a hard glare, his body all but twitching with the need for retaliation.

“So, do it, Jack,” Sam said quietly, his somber gaze so spidered with red it looked like a roadmap. “Bloody me, flatten me, and beat me to a pulp, because it sure can’t feel any worse than I do now.”

Chase sighed as he braced both of Jack’s shoulders. “Go make some strong coffee, will you? And I’ll be right down while Sam cleans up.”

“Ain’t enough soap in the world,” Jack hissed, scorching Sam with another look before he finally left the room.

“You should have let him deck me.” Sam’s voice was barely a whisper as he dropped to sit on the edge of the bed, shoulders slumped and head in his hands. “He needs the release … and so do I.”

“Why’d you do it, Sam?” Chase slowly lowered to sit beside him, hands loosely clasped. “Over and above the bottle of scotch, what possessed you to reopen the wounds that almost destroyed Shannon’s life?”

“How much do you know?” Sam whispered, the question hoarse with pain.

“Everything. From Shannon’s painful past, to what went on here last night, till she cried herself to sleep early this morning.”

Sam lifted his head, a sheen of moisture marring his gaze as he lagged into a lost stare. “Shannon is the world to me, Chase, everything I ever dreamed of … and everything I’ve never been. Clean. Pure. Untainted by my world, which in my mind has always been a cesspool, no matter how hard I try to dress it up. So when my buddies from college told me the truth about her …” His eyes met Chase’s. “I lost it. All I could think of was her sleeping with that slimeball professor, not giving a whit that she was destroying a marriage.”

“She didn’t know,” Chase said quietly. “Not that what she did wasn’t wrong, because it was, but Jack told me the jerk lied to her. Told her he was divorced when he wasn’t.”

Looking away, Sam slashed shaky fingers through his hair, his tone gruff. “Come on, Rev, Shannon’s one of the most brilliant women I know. She couldn’t figure out that a professor on campus is married? Even if she wasn’t smart enough to research it first, somebody had to tell her.”

“Nobody knew.”

“What?” Sam stared, brows in a bunch. “What do you mean nobody knew?”

Chase stretched out his legs. “I mean it wasn’t a professor on campus; it was a visiting speaker from Stanford, highly regarded in his field.” He slid Sam a sober look. “He met Shannon during his visit and arranged to take a six-month sabbatical at her university. To do research, Jack said, but it’s pretty clear what that research involved.”

Sam’s jaw dropped. “What a lying sack of—”

“Yeah, he was,” Chase interrupted. “It appears he proposed just to coerce Shannon into intimacies, keeping her in the dark along with his wife and children.” His gaze drifted off like Sam’s had before while a nerve twittered in his cheek. “Jack said even as a little girl, Shannon was always so innocent and vulnerable, the twin who always did what her mother asked and always gave in to her sister. While Cat climbed trees and beat up boys, Shannon was the gentle dreamer who always played dress-up as a bride, longing for a fairytale marriage and vowing to save herself for Mr. Right.” Chase’s mouth twisted. “Only Mr. Right turned out to be Mr. Dead Wrong, a creep who managed to disarm both Shannon and her faith.

“I didn’t know,” Sam whispered.

“Of course you didn’t because gossip isn’t interested in the truth.”

Sam peered up, both fatigue and regret etched in his brow. “What happened with the wife? I heard she went ballistic when she found them”—a knot ducked in Sam’s throat—“you know, together, and that she pulled a gun.”

“That much is true, causing a huge splash in the papers when the wife trashed his apartment before taking potshot at her husband and Shannon in the quadrangle.” His mouth thinned into a hard line. “Right before she drove off a bridge, further exacerbating an already volatile and high-profile drama, which fortunately the wife survived.” Chase expelled a harsh breath. “But Shannon almost didn’t. She was so traumatized she fled and totaled her car on the way home, ending up in the hospital pretty banged up.” He flexed his fingers, barely aware he’d been clenching them while his gut cramped over the awful guilt and anguish Shannon incurred. “Jack said the entire mess triggered a year-long breakdown for Shannon, robbing her of the will to live. The guilt was bad enough, but the papers raked her over the coals so much, Jack said she’d wished she had died in that crash. Apparently she dropped out of school and slept most days for a solid year, little more than a zombie the entire time.” His jaw ached from clenching his teeth. “And all because of some sleazebag player who promised to love her forever.”