The Man Who Has No Sight (Soulless Book 4) Read online

  “Baby, I’m okay.”

  “I know that. I just… You don’t deserve to be treated that way.” Her heart was on her sleeve, in her eyes, in her words. Her love for me had never been so obvious, so clear, as it was right now. Everything she did showed her devotion to me. But this moment, this fragility, showed just how pure her heart was. “I’m sorry.”

  My hands wrapped around her tiny wrists, and I placed my forehead against hers. “I know.” I kissed her forehead then pulled her soft fingertips from my cheeks. “It’s over now.” And it might be over forever.

  “What happened?”

  It took me a second to piece together words that would make sense. “Jake’s ex-wife is pregnant…so he’s moving to London to raise the kid.”

  “Whoa…”

  “And Valerie wants to move with him.”

  “What?” she asked blankly. “They hardly know each other.”

  Yeah, it didn’t make any fucking sense. “She wanted to take Derek with her—”

  “Fuck that bitch.”

  “But I told her that wasn’t possible, that she would never win that case in a million years. The conversation escalated… It was bad.”

  “So, what’s going to happen now?”

  “She still wants to move.”

  Instantly, all of her anger was gone. Instead of being relieved by the information, she was just hurt, quietly sad, somber. She stepped back slightly, her arms crossing over her chest. Instead of celebrating the exit of our tormentor, she was devastated by the impact it would have on Derek.

  It made me fall in love with her all over again. She was selfless, not thinking about herself, but the boy she’d given her heart to. “But…she wouldn’t do that, right? She wouldn’t leave Derek…”

  I shook my head slightly. “I was shocked too.”

  “I mean, he’s moving there to take care of his kid. She’s going to abandon hers so she can watch her boyfriend raise his baby?”

  The irony wasn’t lost on me either.

  “There are a million other guys in this city.”

  “She said she loves him.”

  “But more than Derek?” she asked incredulously. “I just… How? How can she do this? How can she just leave him behind like that?”

  It made me sick too. How would I explain this to Derek? How would I prevent my son from hating his mother? How would I fill the void of his mother’s abandonment? I loved him so much, not because I had to, not because I was stuck with him, but because he was my entire reason for living. But I couldn’t be two parents. I couldn’t blunt the pain of losing a parent like that, especially his mother. “I told her she needs to stay. I told her she can’t do this to him. But I don’t know if it’ll make a difference.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I told her I would never forgive her.”

  “Derek won’t either.”

  “Yeah…I know.”

  Her hands cupped her face for a moment, over her mouth, and she took a second to process everything I’d said, the sheer horror of it. Derek’s life would never be the same. “You’ve been working so hard for the three of you to get along…and then she just leaves. All for nothing.”

  When you became a parent, your life wasn’t yours anymore. It was all about the little person you made. You did everything for them, did everything to give them the best life possible. I couldn’t stand Valerie, but I was patient, hoping we could find our own way of being a family.

  Valerie never cared.

  If she did leave, I just needed to accept it, to rid myself of the guilt. Because I’d done everything I possibly could to keep the three of us together, to have a blended family based on friendship and respect.

  But instead…Derek was losing a parent.

  Cleo moved her hands to my chest. “You’re a great father, Deacon. You’ll be able to give him everything he needs. I have no doubt.” She smiled through her sadness, her fingers slowly gliding down my chest.

  “We’ll be able to give him everything he needs…”

  After dinner, I got Derek ready for bed. He brushed his teeth and changed into his pajamas. I put him in his twin-sized bed and pulled the covers up to his shoulder. I didn’t want to leave. I just wanted to sit there with him. He brought me a kind of comfort that no one else ever could, not even Cleo.

  Derek opened his eyes. “You’re sad.”

  I didn’t even bother to lie about it. I nodded.

  “Mom always makes you sad…”

  I shrugged.

  “She makes me sad too.”

  Fuck.

  “Because she makes you sad.”

  My hand went to his arm, and I gently rubbed him. “Sometimes adults…just can’t get along.”

  “There’s a kid in my class I don’t like. Mrs. Kite puts us together to work out our differences, but I just don’t like him…and he doesn’t like me.”

  “Why don’t you like him?”

  “He doesn’t pay attention in class, he kills spiders for no reason, he pulled up a girl’s shirt when the teacher was in the hallway and embarrassed her. No one likes him. But I was the one who told him to stop…so we’ve never gotten along.”

  I squeezed his arm. “It’s good that you stand up for other people, Derek. And spiders.”

  “They’re good for the environment. They kill all the bad bugs.”

  “That’s true. They do.”

  “And it was just a daddy longlegs, not even venomous.”

  “Maybe I should talk to Mrs. Kite about all this.”

  He shook his head. “No…”

  I left it alone and rubbed his back.

  “Can we go to the cabin this weekend?”

  “It’s supposed to snow.”

  “I like the snow.”

  “I’ll think about it.” I leaned down and kissed him on the forehead. “Go to sleep. I love you.”

  “Love you too, Dad.”

  I turned off the lamp and left his bedroom. Cleo was on the couch in the living room, holding a glass of wine, wearing my sweatpants and t-shirt because all her little shorts and tank tops were too revealing around Derek.

  I fell into the cushion beside her, my arm draping over her shoulders, my hand immediately moving to her thigh.

  “How is he?”

  “Tired. I bet he’s already asleep.”

  “Because he’s got so much energy throughout the day.” She sipped her wine then set it on the table beside her. She turned her body into me and cuddled into my side.

  My lips moved to her hairline, and I kissed her.

  Her arm wrapped around my waist, and she squeezed me like a teddy bear.

  “Ready to go to bed?”

  “I’m so comfortable…”

  My arms scooped under her body, and I lifted her, cradling her to my chest, finding her weight insignificant because I benched more than this every morning. I carried her to bed before I stripped off my clothes and got under the sheets.

  She ditched the bottoms but left the black shirt on, turning on her side to face me.

  I lay on my back beside her, my face angled in her direction. My hand grabbed hers and held it on my stomach, knowing both of us were too tired to make love tonight. It’d been such a terrible day that I really wasn’t in the mood anyway.

  “So…if Valerie really leaves, we’ll have to figure something out.”

  I didn’t have many options. I needed someone to be there for Derek constantly. That meant I really did need to hire someone, which was weird. Paying someone to raise my kid…that didn’t feel right.

  “She’d only pick him up from school and be with him for a few hours until you get home. It’s not as bad as you think it is.”

  “But he does his homework when he gets home. I should be there for that.”

  “If he needs help with something, he can move on to the next assignment then circle back to it when you get home.”

  “Yeah…I guess.” I still didn’t want a nanny having those moments. They should be mine. But my job wasn�
��t just a job. If I left early every day, I would miss out on a lot of progress. Derek was important, obviously, but I couldn’t completely sacrifice it either. Going to work earlier made me tired all day long, and it just wasn’t practical. My colleagues needed to be there at the same time. I really wished Cleo would do it, but it was unfair to even ask. She was right. He wasn’t her responsibility.

  “I can work it out to pick him up from school every day and deliver him to the residence. That way, he can see my face first. And then the nanny can meet me here and take over.”

  I knew she was only offering to make me happy. “I’m sure that’s unrealistic, Cleo, to reserve a spot in the middle of the day to always do that. It’s alright. A nanny makes more sense. Maybe I can go into work early two days a week so I can pick him up from school on those days.”

  “Yeah, that could work.”

  “I guess you can work on finding someone…”

  “I promise I have good people. They aren’t just random people off the street, okay?”

  I still felt like shit about it, but there really was no option. Even if Cleo were my wife, she still wouldn’t sacrifice her job to take care of Derek because her job was important to her, which I understood. But that was a reality I’d like to see, her being the one to take care of Derek until I came home…for us to be the family that Valerie and I never were. But I didn’t say that, didn’t make her feel bad about it, because it was wrong. “Alright.”

  She stared at me for a while, her hand rubbing my chest, feeling each slab of muscle on either side of my spine. “There’s something I need to tell you…”

  Her tone of voice implied disappointment, and I’d already had a shitty day. But may as well make it as shitty as possible so tomorrow could be a new beginning. “Okay.”

  “I saw my ex-husband today.” Her hand stopped moving, as if she expected a reaction.

  I never really thought about her ex-husband. Sometimes I forgot she was once married—like I was. “You ran into him someplace?”

  “No…I went to his office to see him at lunchtime.”

  Now I was really getting confused. “Why?”

  “I just… I had so much guilt I needed to get rid of.”

  “Guilt?” I asked. “You did nothing wrong.”

  “I thought that too…but then I realized I was wrong.” She dropped her gaze, her thick eyelashes hiding the color of her blue eyes. “I realized it doesn’t matter how busy I am, I always do the dishes in your sink. It doesn’t matter how tired I am, if you want to make love, I want to make love. It doesn’t matter how busy my schedule is, I’ll rework everything for you. I’ll push jobs onto Matt so I can go to the cabin with you. All I ever do is make sacrifices for you…and I never did that for him.”

  Stunned, I just listened.

  “It made me realize I never really loved him, that I never should have married him. My heart was never in that relationship. If it were, I would have tried to be a better wife, but honestly, I never really cared. With you…this is real love. This is what love is supposed to feel like. I wanted to apologize to him for wasting both of our time.”

  “I don’t think you deserve all the blame, even if that’s all true.”

  She shrugged. “He told me he was still glad it worked out the way it did, because he’s happily married with a baby on the way. He said what they have is real, and from what I said about you, what we have is real. So, he told me I shouldn’t feel bad about anything—because we both ended up exactly where we were supposed to be.”

  At first, I was a bit uncomfortable with her spending time with her ex, having lunch, but when she said all of that, that anger went away. She told him she loved me, that she loved me in a way she never loved him. They were happy for each other. “He wasn’t the right person for you…”

  She shook her head. “No, he wasn’t. And now I feel a lot better about it.”

  “Good.” I was glad the weight had been lifted off her chest. “Because you’re the right person for me, and I’m the right person for you.” Maybe all of this did happen for a reason. I was married to the wrong person, and so was she. But then we found each other…and that was it.

  She smiled. “You are.” Her hand moved to mine and held it again. “Our relationship makes so much more sense. You understand I’m dedicated to my job and are never bothered by it. But I also do everything I can to be present with you, so it’s the perfect compromise.”

  It used to unnerve me when she talked about her deep feelings for me, but now it chased away my jealousy, made me feel warm, made me feel lucky…that she loved me the way she did. If I were her ex, I would have lost her, and I already knew how shitty that felt. “I’m a lucky man.”

  She rolled her eyes slightly, playfully. “I don’t know about that…”

  “I am a lucky man, baby.”

  “I’m the one who hit the jackpot.”

  “Why?” What was so much better about me than her? Because I didn’t see it.

  “Seriously?” she asked. “Well, for one…” She pulled down the front of my boxers to reveal my dick, which was soft, but still impressive.

  I chuckled.

  “And then this.” She pressed her hand over my heart. “And this.” She rested her hand on the side of my head, indicating my brain. “You’ve literally got it all.”

  “If that’s the criteria, you’ve got it all too.” My hand grabbed her ass and squeezed. “There’s this…” I pulled her shirt up and kissed her bare tits. “This.” Then I moved to her heart, beside her left breast. “This.” I kissed her neck until I reached her hairline, pressing a kiss there. “And this.” Now I was on top of her, aroused when I hadn’t been just minutes ago, my boxers still down and my hard dick out. “Looks like we’re even.”

  She cupped my face and wrapped her legs around my waist. “We’ll never be even, Deacon. But the fact that you think so…is the reason why I love you so much.”

  Seven

  Deacon

  “You really don’t mind?” I felt bad leaving Cleo alone with Derek to go have a beer with Tucker. But I didn’t have the time I had before, when I could have my driver drop me off at any time. Derek had usually been with Valerie. But now that flexibility was a luxury, and it was possibly a permanent situation.

  She moved her palms to my chest and kissed me. “Of course not.”

  Derek was on the couch with his toys, having already said goodbye to me.

  “I’m not working, so I don’t mind at all. Derek and I will probably color.”

  I just felt bad leaving her to watch my kid while I went out. I was going to a bar, which made it worse because I’d probably get a few free drinks. I would have taken her out to dinner, just the two of us, but now with Derek, I couldn’t do that either.

  I was so happy to have Derek more, but it really did change my life completely. Even when I lived with Valerie, I had more freedom. I could work as late as I wanted without worrying if Derek had someone to watch him. If Valerie really left, I’d have to sacrifice a lot to make it work as a single father.

  But he was worth it.

  “Alright. Thank you.” I gave her another kiss before I walked out. “I’ll be home in a few hours.” I left the condo and had my driver take me to the bar. I would have just walked, but it was cold. It was December, and Christmas was just a few weeks away. I’d have to get a Christmas tree and some decorations soon to make sure Derek had a nice holiday.

  I walked into the bar and joined Tucker at a table. He was already drinking, and he’d already ordered me my favorite beer.

  “Dude, it’s been forever,” Tucker said. “You never call me.”

  “I just saw you two weeks ago.”

  “Yeah, that’s forever. So, what’s new?”

  A lot.

  “Has Valerie checked herself into a facility yet?” He drank his beer.

  She wasn’t crazy. She was just a bitch. “Things haven’t improved between us.”

  “They’ll never improve. You can’t reaso
n with someone like that.”

  For the years I’d known her, I’d never been able to reason with her. It was impossible. “Her boyfriend is moving to London, and she wants to move with him.”

  “What the fuck did you say?” He was about to take a drink of his beer when he slammed it back down again. “Oh, hell no. She better not be trying to take—”

  “I told her she couldn’t. I’ll take her to court if it comes down to it—and she’ll lose.”

  “So, then that stopped the problem?”

  “No. She still wants to go.”

  Tucker cocked his eyebrow, bewildered. “Without Derek?”

  I nodded.

  “Like…leave him with you?”

  I nodded again.

  “Abandon her son?”

  I sighed in annoyance. “Yes, Tucker. You understand the situation perfectly.”

  “I don’t like the bitch, but I’m shocked she would do that. Who does that?”

  A very selfish person.

  “So, you just tell Derek his mom took off?”

  “I haven’t figured out how I’m going to handle it yet.”

  He rubbed his jawline, taking some time to think about everything. “It’s so shitty, don’t get me wrong, but…it’s not the worst thing in the world either. Valerie is unstable, difficult, and she’s made your life a living hell since you met her. With her gone, you can finally be happy, you know?”

  I’d had to move to New York for work, and it was a happy coincidence since I’d just gotten divorced, but I’d felt guilty every single day, leaving my son behind in a different state. She could move to another country with no guilt at all? “Yes, it benefits me. I can have Derek full time, and I don’t have to deal with her bullshit anymore, unless it’s an occasional phone call. But that’s not what’s best for Derek.”

  “Not best for Derek? Dude, she’s a terrible mother.”

  I couldn’t deny it. “But it’ll damage him, knowing his mother left him.”