Thick as Thieves (The Greystone Family: Stolen Hearts #3)

Chapter 37

37

Xander

I have no idea how long I lay there for. It feels like a lifetime. Kell pulls at my arms and legs, but I don’t move. I cling to the cribs as if they’re the last life raft on a sinking vessel.

Jase comes and sits with me. Kell has been carried off by Mick. I can hear him bellowing and shouting in the other room. Suddenly his face is in front of me again. He looks haggard. Lifeless.

“There’s a note, Xander.”

I lift my lifeless eyes to his dead ones. A matching pair. Black holes in our faces. A note. She’s not coming back.

“Please, Xan.”

He tugs at my arms and I allow him to pull me up. My legs buckle, and Jase grabs me to steady me.

Gabe and Levi sit in the room. They look shell-shocked. Levi comes across the room and pulls me into a hug, hanging onto me for dear life. Gabe is struggling to hang onto his emotions. He’s holding Kell like he’s made of glass. He comes to me, banding his arms around Levi and I. They can’t get any words out. But what would they say? The girls are nowhere to be seen.

Mick is holding the note, and his phone is pinging with messages. He looks down and reads them. He gasps, his face changing from concern to looking like he wants to commit a murder. But his eyes aren’t focused elsewhere. They’re focused on Kell and I. What the hell is wrong with him? He moves towards Kell to hand him the note.

“No, read it out Mick. I can’t focus,” Kells mutters.

He tows me towards the sofas, pulling me down next to him. As Mick's phone pings again, Jase stands at the side of us. Levi and Gabe sit on the kitchen stools.

“I’m not sure you want me to do that.” Mick’s voice is gruff, and his face set in grim lines as he looks up and down from the letter in his hand to his phone to Kell and I. He shakes his head as he concentrates on the words.

“We do,” I say. I know I wouldn’t be able to do it.

In a monotone voice, he reads her words. He starts with the note, then moves onto the texts. Each one slicing the strings of my heart. Setting it adrift into a wasteland. Into no man's land.

Tommy

For Kell and Xander from Evie

Tommy

How could you paternity test my boys against my wishes and then not tell me? Did you not trust me? Did everyone questioning the boy's parentage affect you so much that you thought I was lying? Maybe it’s different in your world, but in mine it’s not a normal thing to do. Especially not when love and trust are in a relationship. If you didn’t want them, you should have said. Not test them and then decide that since I was actually telling the truth you’d stay and we’d be a family. Did I have to prove myself before you’d both believe me?

Tommy

How could you? I loved you Kell, always have. I trusted you. And there have been lots of things said and done over the past eighteen months that could have crumbled that. But it didn’t.

Tommy

Xander, I have loved you since I was fourteen years old. How could you go along and stand by thinking I was lying about my sons? Why would I do that? What would any of that have gained me? I don’t want money, I don’t want a title. I just wanted love. For you both to want me, love me. The same way I wanted you, and loved you.

Tommy

Kell, I know you are terrified of having any more children, but to learn you’ve taken all the decisions away from us and had a vasectomy with no discussion is a kick in the guts. What if I wanted more children? You should have discussed it with me. I would never have put you in any situation that you didn’t want to be in. But you have shoved me into that exact place. Without a thought of anyone but yourself. Again you have not trusted me with any decisions. No TRUST is no way to build or carry on a relationship.

Kell is crumbling before my eyes. We’d blamed the girls, thinking that was the issue. But it was more fundamental. It was us. We are the masters of the downfall. We are the creators of this hell.

The paternity test.

The test we did when the boys were first born. The irony is that it’s never been opened. We have no idea what it says. It was stashed in Dad’s safe, hopefully never to be seen again. A security insurance. But it has killed her trust in us. She thinks it was due to other reasons.

I thought she didn’t trust our love. But she did. Not a mention of the lies that poured out of those women. Her love was bigger than that. Her trust deeper than any ocean. But she thinks our love for her is based on evidence of her trustworthiness. A confirmation of facts about the boys.

But it was never about that. We should have trusted her with the information. We should have discussed it in more detail. Discussed why we wanted it done. But we didn’t, and now she’s gone. And I’m not sure if we can rebuild it this time.