Rise (Roam Series, Book Three) (6 page)

“I want you to feel that way. That’s why I’m going,” she pulled away, sighing. “Jason and I finally feel… over… and I can’t move on with my life when you’re in it… the way you are in it.”

“I’m so sorry, Morgan. I never considered your feelings- feelings that are completely natural, and you shouldn’t be embarrassed about. I’ve been too focused on Eva.”

“West,” she tilted her head
. “We’re cool. I’ll be back. Promise.”

He looked down. “When are you leaving?”

“Tomorrow. I can’t skip out on Shorty’s birthday.”

He
stood as the doorbell rang, brushing his hands against his jeans and looking out the window. “UPS. Did you order something?”

“No,”
she watched him go to the door and accept a small package.

He carried the box to the table. “No return address. But I recognize this handwriting.” Puzzled,
he pulled at the tape, tearing the package open.

Inside
the cardboard was a jewelry box, small with grey velvet and a hinged top. She watched him open the lid, staring at the diamond engagement ring inside.

“
Roam
,” he dropped the ring and reached into the cardboard box, pulling at a folded piece of white paper.

He held his breath as his eyes touched her beautiful handwriting, evenly spaced with tall, thin letters.

My baby Eva,

I hope that you know me. In the small time that I knew you, I have loved you more than anything in all of the worlds, and I will always love you this much.

Your
father gave me this ring; please keep it, and I pray that you find the great love that I had with your daddy someday.

Be strong, my beautiful girl.

Love,

Mommy

“Oh my God,” Morgan read next to him, reaching for the box. “West, there’s another note inside.”

He reached for the second paper, and she watched his breathing accelerate as his entire body tensed.

Roam will give birth to my child in early September.

I finally found something to do with her other than kill her
...

A
nd she is so accommodating.

-T
roy

Morgan jumped backwards, flattening against the wall as West grabbed the table by the edges, hurling it over with a strangled cry. She winced as he reared his elbow back, sending his fist into the wall under the stairs.

“West,
stop
,” she reached for him, but he was already crossing the room to the back door, slamming it with a force that shook the house. She waited for Eva’s cries through the monitor, and when the house remained silent, she followed him to the backyard.

She fou
nd him standing barefooted in the snow.

“Two
fucking
years,” he growled as she got closer. “The things… I
imagined
…,” he stopped speaking, his shoulders shaking.

“Thank God she’s alive,” she whispered, the cold December air
adding to Roam’s bittersweet message. “And she is having a baby… maybe she’s okay.”

He took a step forward, out of her reach. “She must have been so terrified.
And I did
nothing
… I couldn’t save her.”

“Maybe she saved herself,” Morgan
kicked at a fallen branch. “She’s alive, and she is having his child, and she said good-bye to Eva in that letter. It sounds like she did what she had to do to survive.”

He turned in the afternoon sunlight, his eyes glassy. “I’m sorry for behaving like that, inside. I’ll clean up. You don’t have to stay.”

She walked to him, raising her eyes to his. “Hey. We’re family. I’m here for you.”

“I just want to be alone.”
His words, colder than the air, chilled her.

She shivered, glancing back at the house. “Are you going to be okay?
With Eva?”

“Of course I will,” he snapped, and then softened. “I’ll call you later.”

“Okay.”

After she pulled away, West straightened the table and hung one of Eva’s most recent paintings over the hole in the drywall. When he checked on her, she was sleeping soundly in her white, wooden toddler bed, cuddling the yellow bunny that Morgan had given her for her first birthday.

A child.
He imagined Troy’s hands, his mouth, his body on hers, and fought to control the powerless rage brewing inside once more.
I should never have left without her… I should have left Laurel there.

Whenever he thought of Laurel, guilt gnawed at his stomach. Again and again he regretted going back for her, even though he
knew
it was the right thing to do. Ultimately, he felt like he traded Laurel’s life for Roam’s, and he would never forgive himself.

Never
.

Her letter talked about the love that they had, in past tense, as though she’d already accepted that there was no way back.

She’d have turned nineteen years old in July.

“Daddy!”

He jumped to his feet, skipping stairs to get to Eva as she cried. He scooped her into his arms, whispering and comforting as she screamed.

“You’re okay, babe, just a dream,” he soothed, carrying her down the steps.

“Mommy took me,” she cried, her high-pitched voice an octave lower through her tears.

“Mommy took you?” He conversed gently, settling on the couch. “Let’s watch Pooh, okay?”

“Mommy took me to the hill… and the train.” She pronounced her r’s as w’s, something Morgan worked with her to correct, but West loved.

“The train?”

He stopped reaching for the remote, looking down at her suddenly.

The hill…

H
er broken words connected in his mind, and he gripped her tightly.

“Eva…,” he carried her to the laptop at the counter,
opening a browser window and typing quickly. “What’s this?”

He clicked on an image of the Johnstown Inclined Plane in Pennsylvania. She reached for a cookie from the
sheet on the stovetop.

“Cookie please!
”

“What is this, Eva?” He pointed to the screen again. “I’ll let you have a cookie in just a minute.”

She looked at the screen as he pointed, and he felt her hands grasp for his shirt, balling the material nervously in her little fingers. “Mommy’s train.”

He reached for a cookie, carrying her to the booster chair at the table. “Mommy’s train…,” he
repeated, already dialing his cell.

Morgan answered on the second ring.

“Hey Perry. Want me to come back?”

“Eva dreamt of the inclined plane. She called it ‘mommy’s train.’ Morgan, Eva passed through… we couldn’t without Troy, but Eva passed through on her own.”

Silence spread over the line, and he thought he’d lost her. Finally, she spoke. “It makes sense… It makes
perfect
fucking sense… how could we not have seen?”

He glanced at the clock.
4:15.
“I need to think.” Possible scenarios ran rampantly through his mind, but each one involving Eva filled him with apprehension. “Morgan, please come back. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. I’ll be right there.”

He set the phone on the counter, turning to Eva. “Did you see Mommy?”

“Mommy and D
addy,” she smiled, her mouth filled with bits of cookie.

He counted the months since they’d been back. Twenty-four months…

She’s spent almost three months in hell with Troy.

The very idea that I carried West’s child again gave me the courage that I thought that I’d never find.

Taking care of
myself became my first priority. Eating was still difficult; the nausea was slowly going away, but under the stress of Troy so near, I had little appetite. He came to me just as often, but was more careful not to hurt me, for the benefit of his child.

I read the
Biography of the Immortal King,
shocked to find that he was only twelve years old when he took to the throne. His father was killed in battle, and he had no siblings. He was seventeen when the betrothal was signed, and I married him when I was sixteen.

The prophecy was not detailed in the book, but
references to the ‘adulterous queen’ and ‘traitorous knight’ showed up around his eighteenth year. I noted there was no mention of the ‘two-faced, sneaky brother,’ and wondered if Logan’s story was clear in their history. When the world ‘shook from the core’ (I assumed this was the day the universe split) Troy was still in his eighteenth year.

Troy allowed me to solve the civil disputes even after my outburst, and I began to look forward to the court and the people who were presented to me. Troy and I were the entire judicial system, and when
he was absent, I was far more vocal with the confidence of power.

The first case presented to me was a couple with a young child, no more than eight or nine months old. The mother insisted that, though the father was paying a form of child support, he had no right to see their child. “If he
does not wish to be with me, he cannot be with my baby.”

“My queen,” the young man began humbly, bowing before me. “I pay for my child. I fathered this child. Is he not mine to
raise as well as hers?”

I curled my fingers over the elaborate arm rests of the
throne, looking between the two of them. “Do you have some kind of… divorce papers? A child support agreement?”

“Yes,” he responded. “I am to pay every month until the child is twelve years old.”

Twelve
? The woman scowled at her ex-husband, gripping the whining child to her chest. “He has been a day late three times.”

“I get my pay on the third-…,”

“Please, wait,” I stood, trying to arrange the yards of fabric at my waist with some kind of decorum. “Sir, your papers will be revised to show support until your son is eighteen.”

“Eighteen years old? That is well over the legal age-…,”

“Do not challenge the queen,” an officer of the court took a step inward from the side, his dark eyes threatening. The man clamped his mouth shut.

I nodded once at
the officer, thankful for his interruption. Clearing my throat, I held my palm up ceremoniously. “The laws for the entire kingdom will change. Eighteen. And you will work out a schedule with your ex-husband,” I turned to the woman expectantly. “At least three days a week that he may see his son. Or I will work it out for you both.”

They both bowed, ushered away by the guards. I imagined them being interviewed in the hallway like old episodes of
The People’s Court
.

Troy received my new law with passivity. “Eighteen.
Old enough to fight in my army and make a child of his own. I suppose, my queen, under the authority that I have awarded you, that is your call.”

Dumbstruck, I stared
at him, unable to believe he was allowing me to change a law that he had passed himself centuries ago. “You… will let me change this?”

He gathered stack of folders, dropping them into my arms. “You may need a secretary.”

I nearly lost the stack, just making it to the table in Troy’s office before letting the folders fall. “You don’t have computers?”

“Too much freedom,” he shook his hea
d, leaning against the immense, wooden desk. He crossed his arms over his chest, staring at me intently. “Are you enjoying your power?”

Taking a step back, I looked down at my feet.
“Thank you, my lord, for giving me some… objective.”

He curled his finger, indicating that I walk to him. I steadied my breath,
moving within his reach. His fingers coiled around my abdomen, his eyes meeting mine. “Do you truly feel that our child is… disgusting?”

Choose your words. Think. Don’t speak.

I covered his hands with mine, exhaling slowly. “You are… twice my size… and have killed me many times. When your fingers are at my neck… my lord,” I halted cautiously, searching his eyes, “I have only my words to retaliate with.”

His
pressure on my abdomen increased slightly. “Do you still think of me as a monster?”

No…
Satan himself.
“How can I? You’ve kept your promises.”

His need was evident in his
tightened words. “I have done terrible things over these centuries… acted out of hatred and revenge. I know that
you
… Roam… are not responsible for the past. I will never punish you, or take my anger out on you, in that way again.”

If he wasn’t holding me, I would have been on the floor. My mouth opened, and then closed, as I struggled to find the right words through my astonishment.
He watched me carefully, reaching into my hair to pull at the pins until the long, chestnut tresses fell over my shoulders and back in waves. I knew what he wanted, my heart sinking as I felt him lift and turn me, pushing me to lay back over his desk.