Damion Read online

  Damion

  The Son Series, Book Four

  Leanne Davis

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Epilogue

  Next in Series

  Excerpt

  Other Books by Leanne Davis

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  DAMION

  She opens the door and I want to fall into her arms. It’s so ridiculous, but I cannot deny this urge. This feeling. I have an overwhelming desire to do just that. But I’m so tired, a level of exhaustion that goes far beyond sleep and I can’t imagine ever feeling okay again, or normal. Her warm, caring smile makes me seek her embrace and I want to curl up against her. I want to shut out all the angst overpowering me. All the horrible, negative things filling my brain and heart.

  Kaeja Ingalles is—fuck—no, she was my wife’s best friend. I fail to use the right tense of words when thinking or speaking about Ireena. She died. She freaking died. A week ago. And I still can’t believe it. We got up that morning like usual. I drove over to Kaeja’s, in fact, to drop our daughter off for childcare. Kaeja works from home and makes her own hours. She offered her services three mornings a week to watch our baby, Dayshia. She was so kind to help us out. After the most ordinary drop-off to the babysitter, I simply went to work that day. I work on the docks of Vancouver, Washington where I facilitate the loading of cargo on ocean-bound ships for export. I also offload the ships to put on semi-trucks or trains for transportation throughout the country. Ireena went to her office where she works in human resource management for a large manufacturing firm.

  She collapsed in her office. Massive heart attack. She was down for a long time before someone found her and called an ambulance. Too late. All too late. They fixed her heart… but for nothing. Her brain was deprived of oxygen for too long.

  She died in less than twenty-four hours. That morning, I had a young, vibrant, healthy, beautiful wife and by the afternoon, I didn’t. I was in the hospital listening to jumbled words. Garbled, shocking words that didn’t make any sense to me. Were they asking me to kill my own wife? They claimed she was brain dead; to medical professionals, that means she’s already dead. But to the loved one? Hell, she looked so calm and peaceful when I saw her sleeping in the hospital bed. It was impossible for me to touch her warm hand and believe she was… gone! And before I had the chance to say or comprehend anything.

  Ending life support seemed to be almost a case of semantics to everyone else. It meant they were ready for the donor teams to transplant the viable organs from her body to the grateful recipients. And I was the one appointed to make the final decision.

  I haven’t slept one night or eaten a single meal since.

  One week. It’s been a whole damn week. Seven days. What have I done? What happened? I don’t know. I just don’t know. I think I must have slept at some point. I’ve eaten here and there, but not a full meal yet. I take care of our daughter, Dayshia. I can do that. I do that very well. That’s all I manage to do well.

  I just finished meeting with the pastor to make sure my wife’s service will be properly officiated. It has to be done right. My stomach fists. How could her funeral service ever be “right”? How could it ever be enough? How should I know what needs to be said about her? How could a forty-minute service give a woman’s whole life due justice? Feeling inadequate and down, I have to pick up my daughter and take her home. Feed her. Bathe her. Cuddle and put her to bed. Then I lie on the couch and stare at the TV or out the window for most of the night. I don’t sleep. I feel like some kind of vampire who is immune to basic human needs. I survive on minimum water, food and sleep. I hate the daytime. The night is better only because it’s not so bright and cheerful. I don’t know what the hell to do now.

  The only reason I keep functioning and surviving this nightmare that has no ending is Dayshia. My beautiful, now motherless, daughter.

  “Come in, Damion.” Kaeja has a soft, lilting kindness in her tone. It’s not fake or overdone, like I keep running into. My grief makes me incapable of adult conversation or thought. People exaggerate their words to me like I’ve suddenly grown stupid.

  “How is she?” I don’t do as my tired brain and body desire. I don’t fall into Kaeja or dare to hug her to me, despite the damn strong urge to do so. I want… what? Comfort. Care. How about just for things to feel normal again? What is more normal to my life than Kaeja? She has been involved with me and Ireena since the very start. That was when things were bad. She was never bad. Never did she judge me or Ireena. She was also the most calm, even-tempered woman I know. I’ve never seen her in a bad mood or even annoyed and Ireena did enough things enough times to easily cause that reaction in anyone. Kaeja was almost a saint in my experience. Even Ireena agreed with that when I commented on her friend.

  Kaeja knows the “she” I inquire about is Dayshia.

  “Asleep.” Kaeja’s gaze flicks to the left, then back to me. “She’s really okay, Damion. You’re not though. Why don’t you leave her here tonight? Take a sleeping pill? Get some rest?”

  “I don’t sleep even when I take them.” I shrug. It’s so pointless. And the thought of going home alone to what was Ireena’s and my apartment? No. No, I haven’t been back to our bed yet. I feel like burning the fucker. I feel, irrationally I know, like burning down our entire place… maybe my entire life.

  I flop down on the chair nearest me. Invited or not. I am that tired. My eyelids feel like sandpaper is lining the underside of them. I lean forward and rub my hands over my head. “How am I going to get through tomorrow? With everyone looking at me? Feeling sorry for me? I have no idea what to say or how?”

  Kaeja walks forward and kneels beside me. She sets a hand on my forearm, just below my elbow. My eyeballs dart to her hand on my sleeve. I’m sure she’s never touched me before. “You just will.” Her tone is soft but strong. Sympathetic, but steely. “You have to. For Ireena. There is no other choice. We’ll all be there for you. And I can’t imagine anyone will be judging you. This is all a shock to everyone.”

  Red-eyed, confused and dizzy, I lift my gaze to stare at her. My mind knows she looks like Kaeja, but my heart is having a tough time sorting out who is who. She feels altered to me, as does my entire life. Her raven hair is like springy corkscrews around her head. The ends are chin length and all her gorgeous hair accentuates her bright, engaging smile. She has a flat mouth with white, big teeth when she grins. Her smile reaches her brown eyes and it’s impossible not to respond by smiling back. She’s almost thirty, as I am, and how she manages to still be single has always baffled me.

  “How could she die, Kaeja? I mean… of a heart attack? Old people have heart attacks… or people with symptoms of it at least… you know? An illness or lifestyle causation. But Ireena? Just living her life killed her?” She died of some rare heart condition called SCAD or Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection. As far as I understand, it develops when a tear forms in the vessel supplying blood to the heart. The tear allows the blood to collect between the inner and outer linings of the vessel, which leads to swelling, and that obstructs the blood flow to the heart, thereby reducing the oxygen supply. This specific condition can cause heart attacks.

  In Ireena’s case, it was fatal. The very first time! There were no warning signs. No preparing for it. No way of even knowing. It just kind of happened. Most victims don’t die, and there are medications to control it; rarer still, people can have surgery to repair it. But there was no chance of that for Ireena because of where it happened, in the pr
ivacy of her closed-door office. I still obsess over that fact. Such an innocuous situation to wind up being the very thing that killed her.

  Kaeja leans back. Her butt flops onto her heels. “I can’t believe it either. I… damn, it hurts.” Her eyelids squeeze shut. Tears cling to her dark eyelashes. “It hurts so much.”

  I glance at her. She gets it. Perhaps no one else does.

  No one else really liked Ireena.

  It’s the pathetic reality of my life. And our life together. All about how I ended up with a wife and child. I knew the reality, and others’ opinions of it and us, but I chose not to care. It was everyone else’s problem so it couldn’t be mine. Not if I were true and faithful to my wife.

  Unfortunately, this meant I knew my parents were totally ambivalent towards her and confused as to how they responded to her. My dad was more neutral and my mom really tried to be. She wasn’t very convincing. My grandparents, aunt and uncle, and cousins… honestly, everyone was the same way with us. Fine. Polite. Lacking all interest in engaging us. Or more specifically, Ireena. My identical twin brother, Devon hated her and me… with total justification. Most people are reasonably shocked and disgusted at hearing how my wife and I started our relationship.

  Kaeja was Ireena’s lifelong best friend. Perhaps her only real true one. They were polar opposites. My family likes Kaeja. Everyone likes her. I do too. But right now, it startles me to realize Kaeja’s the only other person who is actually grieving over the loss of Ireena because she was Ireena, not just because a young woman died at such an early age.

  I set my hand over hers. Her gaze shifts to mine, her eyes widening as much as mine. We don’t touch. In the past, we’ve never so much as stood very close to each other. It was one of those unspoken taboos. She was my wife’s friend and my interactions with her were limited because of that. Suddenly, the simple gesture of my hand touching hers feels strange. It seems heavy for a moment… like it’s a thing. We’ve never had moments that felt like it was a thing.

  I clear my throat, my hand simply remaining on hers. No rubbing or clinging with our fingertips. “I think you and I are the only ones who will miss her. Who will grieve for her. We are the only ones who loved her.”

  Kaeja drops her head and a small noise, like a half snort/half laugh escapes her mouth. She shakes her head, biting her lip. “I think people outside of your family liked her, Damion.”

  I sigh. “It just seems like their opinions permeated all corners of our life.”

  “Not entirely their fault,” she adds with a gentle nudge of her hand on my arm.

  I shake my head and rub my sore eyes. “I know. I just wish… I wish all this didn’t have to happen. I wish it all started better. Maybe… fuck…” I lean back, dislodging her touch. “Maybe we deserved it, huh? Punishment for all the damage Ireena and I did. For the shitheads we were and still are.”

  “You’re not. You didn’t deserve her death and she didn’t deserve to die. There was no retribution or ‘karma’ at work here. Don’t you dare even imply that, Damion Willapana. Yeah, she cheated on her boyfriend. God didn’t punish her for that. Strike her dead? For what? Being a slut? Come on, you of all people aren’t supposed to think like that.”

  “I meant both of us. What we did to Devon…”

  “Yeah. You did.” She shrugs. “It still doesn’t have anything to do with this. Get me?”

  I nod. Her words vibrate through my tired heart and brain and echo to my soul. She’s right. I know, when calm and feeling normal, that this isn’t some cosmic punishment. But I’m sleep-deprived. Depressed. Sad. Grieving. I can’t think straight and it occurs to me maybe this is divine retribution for what I did to my brother. The life Ireena and I tried to make together started out in sin and a betrayal so awful most people would never expect to be forgiven for it. I stole my identical twin brother’s girlfriend, had sex with her on one drunken night and she got pregnant from it. So, there we were, intimate once and suddenly having a baby. We discreetly went to the courthouse and got married, and that was that.

  “I think I’m losing my mind. It’s just hard and then… my family cares so much about me. About her death. They’re being great. But…”

  “Yeah, there’s a… a coldness, a bit of separation because it’s Ireena. I know.”

  “She never managed to win them over.”

  “Ireena was Ireena. You couldn’t sugarcoat her. She didn’t know how to placate people when she offended their feelings. It’s something I loved, but was puzzled about with her. Depending on the situation. You know that though.”

  I stare at her. She’s not touching me but kneeling close, and her face is level with mine. “I still expect you might be the only one actually grieving over her. You know? All that was good and… if we had more time, maybe people could have seen the positive aspects of her.”

  “People? Meaning… your family? I think Devon already saw the good in her since he dated her for years.” She shakes her head, biting her lip. “Damn… I’m sorry, that was cold. But…”

  I stare at her and watch her eyebrows lower as her gaze wavers. I smile in response. I deserve the dig… and compared to the holes in my gut, my heart, and my head, it feels good to freaking shake my head and smile at her gaffe. “But true.”

  She sighs. “Devon’s on your side now. I think you should take strength from that. You can ruminate all you want over the should-haves or shouldn’t-haves. The what happened and whys. None of it changes the facts. The reality. The today. Ireena died. She’s gone. You have a daughter to raise and that’s your reality. All the shit that happened? It matters in context, but it didn’t cause anything and it won’t answer any of your questions… like why this happened. It was so random. A terrible tragedy that I too, can’t wrap my head around. But it isn’t a punishment. Not for her or for you. So just throw that shit out and concentrate on everything else you’re required to feel. Not the stuff that doesn’t matter. Ignore that.”

  I could crawl into her lap and sleep for a century. Her words are so commanding, confident and certain. All the things that I lack. Doubt and regret are eating my gut slowly and I don’t know how to feel. Kaeja seems to know what to do and she simply cuts through all the confusion and guilt I suffer from to find a concrete conclusion. She reassures me I’m not a monster and I’m allowed to simply be sad. I am too tired to even answer, nod or glance her way. But I do. I nod. “Thank you.”

  “Did you really think that? That you or she deserved this?”

  “Kind of.” I don’t want to voice it. “I did. Yes. I have lived with unrelenting guilt for years. And I’ve never fully made my peace with what I did or how Ireena and I ended up together.”

  Her eyes are heavy with sadness and sympathy as she shakes her head. “And I’ll never be at peace with how it ended.”

  “I can’t get my head around it still. There was so much drama and hurt when we got together and then one day it just ends? That’s it? What’s the point? How can things end so abruptly like that?”

  “I get all the doubts. I can’t answer for her life as a whole. But I can tell you in your case, the point of it all is Dayshia. However she came to be, she was supposed to be here. So you have that to cling to. You have her to raise right, even if you might think being with Ireena wasn’t right. I’m here to tell you that with Dayshia, everything is okay.”

  “That’s all that keeps me moving.”

  She falls silent. As do I. We just sit there. The heavy burden of my grief seems to envelop me and pulls on my eyelids. I lean back, flop my head on the chair and just sit there, letting myself be. I don’t speak. I don’t move. I float outside my body.

  I jerk upright. Crap! What? Where am I? What’s going on? I’m lying down? I flip upright and find a blanket bunched around my waist. I’m in a room, it’s dark and I must have been asleep. I blink the crusty residue in my eyes. They are dry and painful still. But I slept. How did I get on this couch? Kaeja’s couch? I must still be at her place. Then I hear sounds and the ha
ll light flicks on. Kaeja, in cotton pajamas and a robe, walks in. Blinking, confused and unsure, I ask in a gravelly voice, “What time is it?”

  “Two. Forget about leaving. It’s too late. Just go back to sleep.”

  “How did I get to the couch?”

  Her lips twitch. “Well, I didn’t carry you. You walked. But you were so out of it, it seemed like you were on drugs. You can’t drive until you get some rest. I mean it. So come, take my bed and get some freaking sleep.”

  “Your bed?”

  “I’ll sleep on the couch.” She rolls her eyes and walks over to me, putting her hand out, palm up, like one might do to assist their sleepy child. I scowl at her, but the fog in my head makes me think I am watching this from some other place. I clumsily put my hand in hers and she pulls me up. She turns, loosely holding my fingers and I stumble after her. I feel drunk and shaky. But damn, no, I can’t drive. I’m beyond punch-drunk.

  “Dayshia?”

  “Still asleep, Damion. It’s the middle of the night. Remember something, while you feel changed and broken, your routine and life having been blown to pieces, she’s too young to understand any of it. We’ve kept her pretty stable and she’s getting used to things. I think that’s the key to keeping her spirits up. She’s fine. She went to bed like normal and now she needs for you to get some damn sleep before you keel over. Or do something stupid because you’re not taking care of yourself.”

  Her words enter my mind but my exhaustion clings like spongy wax between my ears and brain. Nothing works. I think Kaeja’s right. I’m too tired to go home, and too tired to sleep. But I must have finally slept. Here at her place. Three hours were the most I’ve slept in… fuck! When did Ireena die? Seven days ago? Seven days? Could have been seven weeks or seven months… hell, it could have been seven years.