Relinquishing Liberty (37 page)

I laid there motionless in the sand on my hands and knees as Liberty walked away with
him
. I knew he had to have played some part in this whole fiasco. He hated that Liberty and I were together, and he was just waiting for that one moment where I would fuck everything up so he could swoop in and steal my only reason for breathing away from me.

Mission accomplished.

I watched Maddie as she slowly pried her car door open, but I wasn’t going to let her get away so easily. She owed me some answers and one way or another, I was going to get them before she could run off spewing more lies. It might be my only chance, if there was even one left, to get Liberty back.

“Maddie! Wait!” I raced over to her driver-side door, slamming it shut and startling her in the process.

“Haven’t you done enough damage, Shayne?” She wiped away the few remaining tears that trickled down her cheeks before crossing her arms over her chest defensively.

“What the fuck was that back there?” I motioned my arm back towards my house. “Why the hell was Liberty going on about a baby?”

Her arms tightened across her chest and she turned away, refusing to make eye contact with me.

I hung my head, shaking it in disbelief. “Are you trying to tell me that I got you pregnant the
one
and
only
time we ever had sex, and you’ve been keeping it a secret this whole time?”

“Look, Shayne, you don’t understand…” Her eyes were apologetic, but sorry wasn’t going to cut it this time. Not when you drop a bomb on me like that.

“I don’t fucking understand!?” I roared. “What part of ‘I have a kid’ don’t you think I understand? I have a fucking kid that you’ve kept hidden from me for almost four years! Do you not see how fucked up that is!?” I could feel the heat creeping up my neck the angrier I got.

“No, you don’t understand…you don’t have a kid, Shayne. We don’t have a kid,” she whimpered.

“So you’re saying I didn’t get you pregnant? Well, which is it, Maddie? Pick a story and stick to it because I don’t have time for your mind games. I may have lost the one girl who truly ever had my heart, and if there is even the slightest chance that I can get her back, you better start telling me the goddamn truth.”

She leaned back against her car, and slid down to the pavement, her arms wrapping around her legs. “Yes, I did get pregnant.”

I started pacing alongside her car and threw my hands up in frustration. “Well then, I have a right to see my kid!”

“There is no kid! I took care of it!” She violently choked out.

I felt all of the blood drain from my face. “You…you took…Maddie, please tell me this is some sick joke. Please tell me you didn’t do what I think you did.”

“Well, what was I supposed to do!? I was 16, Shayne! Do you really think I could take care of a kid when I was still a kid myself? There was no way I was doing that on my own.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me? I would’ve kept the baby. That was my baby, too! You had no right to take that away from me!” I could feel the moisture begin to pool in my eyes, and it took everything in me not to break down.

“Oh sure, like I wanted a guy who is notorious for sleeping around with a different girl every night to raise a baby. I’m sure you’d be the perfect fucking role model, Shayne. There was no way in hell I would ever put a child through that, let alone my own. You have no idea how hard that decision was for me. I carried that baby inside me for two months…TWO MONTHS…before I finally decided that it was the best option for me. So don’t you dare stand there and try to make me feel guilty for making the hardest damn decision of my life because now I have to live with it every day.”

Her bottom lip trembled as she choked out the last few words. I don’t doubt that it was a difficult decision for her, but it doesn’t change the fact that it wasn’t a decision she had to make on her own. She never even took into consideration that I might have wanted to keep the baby…
my
baby.

“You stupid bitch! What about me? What about the best decision for me? I can’t believe you did this!” My throat grew tighter the more upset I became. “You didn’t even give me a chance, Maddie. I could be a father to a three-year-old right now. But you selfishly took that away from me, and I’ll never have the chance to know my first child!”

Saying those words and finally feeling their full impact was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I have never in my life felt so completely and utterly broken inside, and now the sobs were tearing through me in a violent frenzy. At that point, I didn’t care if my emotional breakdown made me any less of a man. Without Liberty, I was nothing, but to have this added on top of that, to have two precious beings stripped away from me, one I never even knew existed until today, was more than I could bear.

“I’m so sorry,” she softly whispered. I watched her climb in her car and speed off down the road, leaving a cloud of dust in her wake and another gaping hole in my heart.

I slumped down, crossing my arms over my knees and buried my face in them to muffle my cries as they continued rack through my body. God, that just made it so much worse because I could still smell her sweet scent coating my skin from this morning. As soon as it hit me, I wanted nothing more than to have her back, safe in my arms so I could tell her how much I love her and would always love her until the day I take my very last breath. That woman owned me in every way possible, and I was pretty sure the moment Liberty walked away, she took my heart right along with her…but it was always hers anyways. Always. Even before she fell into my life, it belonged to her, and now, more than ever, I knew that was true.

As I walked back into the house,
our home
, I could see little bits and pieces of her surrounding me, and it just worsened the ache that consumed my chest. It was so quiet without her here; without her laughter filling the air and her beautiful face lighting up the room. People say you never know what you have until it’s gone, and without Liberty, this wasn’t home. My home was wherever she was. We could live in a cardboard box for all I care, and as long as I was with her, I’d be home.

I stepped into the kitchen and grabbed the first bottle I could find. Johnny Walker Black…
that’ll do
. Maybe if I got shit-faced drunk it could help ease the pain and erase all of the memories I held of her here. I filled a glass with ice and topped it off with the amber liquor. I didn’t drink often, at least not to the point of getting drunk. The last time I had was the night before I met Liberty. I was having a rough night and thoughts of Wade were weighing heavily on my mind, so I went down to The Red Light District and got annihilated. The last thing I remember was Vanessa throwing herself at me, but I guess I was still sober enough to turn down her offer to suck me off in the restroom.

I downed the first drink and poured another, finishing it just as quickly. After a third full glass, the room was beginning to look hazy, so I laid back on the couch and shut my eyes, but all I saw was her. All I ever saw was
her
.

A few hours later my head was pounding, my ears were ringing and the voices I heard around me sure as hell weren’t helping.

“Do you think he’s alive?”

“I don’t know, why don’t you poke him and find out?”

I felt someone nudge me in the ribs with their shoe, and I flailed my arm over, swatting the intruder away.

“Well I guess he’s not dead, but dude, he sure smells like it.”

I finally peeled one of my eyes open to find Travis and Corey standing over me with disgusted looks on their faces.
How the hell did they even get in here?

“What the fuck are you two numbskulls doing here?” I slowly sat up and all of the blood rushed to my head, increasing the uncontrollable throbbing that made me want to stab myself. I ran my hands over my face, wiping away the drool covering my cheek.

“Well, we saw your back door was wide open, so we decided to come crash your party, but then Brett sent me a text to let us know that he and Liberty left a while ago and that she was crashing at our place.” Corey didn’t seem too keen on the idea of Liberty staying at their apartment. Neither was I.

“Man, what the hell happened here? There’s glass all over the deck, and you smell like you just bathed in a pool of Johnny.” Travis picked up the empty bottle beside the couch that was nearly full just a few hours earlier. “No wonder you smell like something just keeled over and died. This shit must be seeping out of your damn pores!”

“Yeah, well, if you just lost your only reason for living, you’d probably want to die, too. I guess I was just pre-gaming for the big finale.” God, I just wanted the room to stop spinning and the visions of Liberty to fade away.

“Shit, man, what happened?” Corey sat down beside me with his arms resting on his knees.

“Well, your roommate’s conniving bitch of a sister failed to tell me that she killed my baby four years ago.” I shut my eyes and leaned my head back. Just thinking about it had the bile burning in my throat.

“Whoa, wait…rewind. Maddie never had a baby.” Travis stated matter-of-factly.

“My point exactly.”

I opened my eyes and saw them looking at each other with puzzled expressions on their faces, but it finally hit Corey first. “Oh shit, bro. Wow. We never knew she was even pregnant.”

“Yeah, neither did I until now. I don’t think Liberty knows that, though. I’ve never seen her look so…so broken. She has to know that I would never do anything to hurt her. I would rather die than ever see that look on her face again. God, I just love her so fucking much.”

“I never pegged you for an emotional drunk, Thompson,” Travis said as he poked at the brownies’ charred remains on top of the stove.

“Shut the fuck up, Travis. I’ve just had my heart torn out of my chest. How about a little sympathy here?”

“Look, I’m sorry man. I’m not trying to rile you up more, but what the hell are you doing? Are you just gonna sit there and get tanked while another guy steps in and comforts your girl? We all know how Brett feels about Liberty. It’s not like he keeps it a secret; he never stops running his goddamn mouth about her. If you love her as much as you say you do, than you better damn well fight for her before Brett gets his hands on her.”

Now I was seeing red. The thought of Brett with his slimy hands all over her…FUCK! I had to get over there. Now. I stood up and grabbed hold of Travis’s shoulder as I tried to steady myself. Shit, I was still too hammered to drive, but there was no way I was letting that stop me from getting my woman back.

“Are either of you guys sober?”

“I am. I stopped drinking a while ago,” Corey said. Thank Christ, because I was about to start walking what usually took about a 20-minute drive.

“Well, let’s go!”

I stumbled out of the house and hopped in his car. I don’t even know if I shut the door before we left, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered unless Liberty was a part of my life, and I wasn’t going to let her slip through my fingers so easily. I had to fight for her. I had to make sure she knew the truth. That I wasn’t some selfish bastard who’d make an innocent teenage girl get rid of my unborn child…my own flesh and blood. Fresh tears stung my eyes as I watched the streetlights pass by one after the other, and I had this gut-wrenching feeling that I was slowly losing her as the minutes slipped by.

I couldn’t lose her. Not now.

I pounded on the door over and over again, until I finally heard movement on the other side steadily approaching. The door swung open, and Brett stood there in sopping wet clothes, dripping all over the hardwood floors.

“Where is she?” I all but snarled out.

“She’s fine, but I think you should leave.” He began shutting the door, but I quickly shoved my foot in-between the door and the frame.
Was this fucking douche-nozzle seriously going to shut the door in my face?

“I’m not going anywhere until I talk to her, Brett. She needs to hear me out. She needs to hear the whole truth.”

“I’m pretty sure we all heard enough today. Now I went easy on you earlier, so unless you want to add a broken foot to your growing list of injuries, I suggest you remove it. What’s it gonna be?” Brett stood there with his arms crossed over chest.
Does this guy really think he can intimidate me?
I’ve got at least three inches and 20 or 30 pounds on him. If he wants a fight, he’ll get one, but I guarantee it won’t end well for him.