Oliver: Forbidden: Paranormal Romance Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  World Castle Publishing, LLC

  Pensacola, Florida

  Copyright © Kathi S. Barton 2020

  Paperback ISBN: 9781951642600

  eBook ISBN: 9781951642614

  First Edition World Castle Publishing, LLC, April 20, 2020

  http://www.worldcastlepublishing.com

  Licensing Notes

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews.

  Cover: Karen Fuller

  Editor: Maxine Bringenberg

  Chapter 1

  Breathing was like having his balls crushed in the hand of someone that had no clue what that did to a man. He was sure the pain he was in right now was much worse than that.

  Lyle had no illusions that he was anything near being a man yet. When he’d been living with his mom, he thought he was. But now that he was hanging around his Uncle Oliver, he realized that he was nothing more than the little shit that Grandpa had called him. Especially when he thought about all the really dumb things he’d done before the accident and his death experience.

  “You want something for the pain?” Shaking his head, he told Gracie what she said that he could call her, that he was doing just fine. “Sure, you are. If nothing else, Lyle, you get your stubbornness honestly. Your grandpa and your uncle are the same.”

  “Thanks.” She just grinned at him when he did the same. “I’m afraid of getting hooked on them, to be honest with you. I’ve seen what it could do to people firsthand. Only thing is they didn’t have to deal with any more pain if they didn’t get the drugs. I’ll take them when I really need them.”

  “I’m sure you have seen a lot. But the doctor told you that if you let the pain get the better of you, it’ll take more of it to bring the pain back down. Just let yourself be rested. That way, we can both benefit from it.” Lyle, so very insecure now, asked her if she was mad at him. “No. I’m just thinking about the homework you have to do for your class. You should work on it when you’re feeling better. You don’t need to do it all at one time.”

  “I know. But I have a lot of work to catch up on. I’m working at a sixth-grade level, Uncle Oliver told me. I was a freshman when I started screwing around, and Mom yanked me out of school. The more I think on that, I wonder why she did that. I wasn’t doing that bad. Not yet, anyways.” She nodded. “I hate to bring this up, Grace, but have you told him what my grandma did to you to get you to help her?”

  “I haven’t. I’m going to, but I haven’t yet. He’s going to fire me. Not that I don’t deserve it, but I like working for Oliver. Also, it’s going to hurt my family.” Lyle knew that. It was what his grandma was counting on. “I saw that you wrote out everything you’d been involved with concerning your mom and grandma. That must have been difficult for you.”

  “No. I thought it would be too, but it wasn’t. I’m coming clean like I told him I would. He’s going to make my life into something. I’m working on it with him. Uncle Oliver told me not to forget that I have to do this for me as well. But in my heart, I know that I did him way wrong. I’m ashamed of myself.” Gracie told him that she was ashamed of herself too. “You’re not going to feel any better if you don’t tell him. I know what you’re feeling. It’s like a festering sore, huh?”

  “It is.” She looked away. “I never in my life dreamed that was what she wanted the code for. I thought it was to steal something of his and then get him to pay her for it. She didn’t know then what sort of trouble she was in with the bank, but I don’t know other than that I could have saved him if I had just told him.”

  “You should do it today.” Gracie looked at him then. “You got them someplace safe now, don’t you? I mean, she can’t hurt your parents and sister anymore if she can’t find them, right? You should ask him for help after you tell him everything.”

  “Tell him what everything?” Uncle Oliver sat down and smiled at him. “I looked over your homework from yesterday before I turned it in for you. You’re doing so much better now. I didn’t even have to tell you that you spelled your name wrong again.”

  “Gracie has something to tell you. Something important.” Uncle Oliver looked at her, then back at him. “She’s going to have a stroke or something if she doesn’t tell you. But you have to promise me that you don’t go flying off the handle like I would have done a month ago. Okay? I mean, it’s really important that you hear everything. Okay?”

  “Is it that she helped my mother by telling her the code to my offices?” Gracie stood up, then sat down when Uncle Oliver told her to do it. “I’ve known since the day after I woke up in the hotel. You really didn’t think that I’d not be told who it was that allowed them entrance, did you, Grace? I’m also aware that what she did to make you do that must have hurt you badly. And for that, I’m profoundly sorry, Grace.”

  “I’m so sorry too.” He asked her if they were safe. “I’m sorry? What did you just say to me?” Uncle Oliver repeated what he’d asked her. Lyle watched the two of them like he would the ball in a tennis match. “You knew that they had my family? You knew what they did to them? Who? How did you find out?”

  “Quincey.” Lyle had met the big vampire. It scared the shit...crap out of him even just to hear his name. Looking around to see if he was lurking in corners in the hospital room with them, he tried to make himself look really small, so as not to draw any attention to himself if he was around. “He knew what they had done in the way that they’d hurt your father. Your mom, she’s getting stronger every day, correct? Quincey told me that your sister wasn’t there, or she may well have hurt her as well. But I knew. And I also knew that you’d get around to telling me. It took you long enough.”

  “There was a great deal going on.” Uncle Oliver nodded then got up to look out the window. “I’m sorry that you were hurt, Oliver. It was never in my mind that they’d try and kill you. But they’d hurt my dad badly enough that we didn’t think he was going to make it. My mother didn’t fare much better. I’ll give you my resignation as soon as—”

  “I don’t want you to quit, Grace. I know that you had no choice. I have come to see that my life is better than it was before this all came to pass. You do as well, I’m thinking.” She said that she’d been in on him nearly being murdered. “Yes, you were. And you told me you’re sorry for it. The police have no idea what happened. My mother and sister think they messed up somehow. I’d like to keep it that way. Also, I hope that if they approach you again for something like that, you’ll tell me so that I can keep you safe. Now that it’s out in the open, I’d like for you to allow me to take care that your family is as safe as mine is.”

  “I’ve moved them to my aunt’s house. They, your mother and sister, don’t know that I own it. As you said, I’d like to keep it that way. But I’ve made them safe.” Uncle Oliver pulled out his cell phone and then put it on speaker when someone answered. “What’s going on?”

  “Cam, this is Oliver. Yes, much better, thank you. I’d like you to do me a favor. With a computer. Can you see if Grace Lane owns any other property in town? Just do your thing with the computer.”

  While Lyle didn’t understand that, he watched Gracie. Her face was very pale, and when Cam came back on the line with an addr
ess, she had to put her head between her knees. Lyle hurt himself trying to help her. She was visibly upset.

  “That’s all they have to do?” Uncle Oliver told Gracie that they’d not have Cam do it, but it really was that easy. “I don’t want them hurt again. I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to them again. Please, I’ll do anything you want. Anything. Just don’t let them be hurt again.”

  “Cam, thank you so much.” He must have asked him what was going on. “I have my nephew and my good friend Grace here. Her parents were caught up in something nasty and were kidnapped by gunpoint, then beaten to shit when they didn’t think Grace was going to help. My mother did that. She even got her hands dirty in doing it. I was wondering if there was someplace they could stay and be as safe as you’ve made us here.”

  “Yes. But in order to make them as safe as I can, I’ll have to have a few things from you. Not necessarily just you, but from others.” Uncle Oliver told him that he’d give him any sort of information or money that he needed. “I don’t need the money, but I do need for you to tell me a couple of things. Do they drive? I mean, do they need to be near a grocery store?”

  Lyle watched Gracie again while Uncle Oliver answered all the questions. It had been only two weeks that he’d been awake and talking since the car accident, but Uncle Oliver had done a great deal to make sure that he could be a good man. He’d bet anything that he’d do the same for Gracie. She was a nice lady.

  A month ago, he’d been riding around with a couple of friends of his. Well, the other kids were his friends, but the driver hadn’t been. Lyle had been drunk then, as he was most of the time back before all this, and when the car started to speed up, he simply tightened the seatbelt that was around his waist and let the wind blow over his face. It was the coolest thing he’d ever done. Right up until the car began tossing him around like a ripe tomato and he felt himself lurch forward when the car suddenly stopped, like someone had put something in front of him.

  The tree had been huge and old, he’d been told. Lyle hadn’t been out there since he woke up, but he did remember being cut from the car and the pain that he was in. Uncle Oliver told him that he’d have to face his demons. He meant that once he was on the mend that he had to see what was left of the car, as well as what had happened to the other victims that had been with them. He knew enough that two of them were killed on impact. One of them, the driver, had ended up in the top of a tree so far away it was only by chance that he’d been found. That, Uncle Oliver told him, could very well have been him.

  Lyle told himself that every day when he wanted to whine about something that wasn’t going his way. He knew it would stay with him for the rest of his life, even if he didn’t have hundreds of cuts all over his body. Even being taken out of the car like he had, he knew that he’d been dead a few times. They’d had to work hard to save his life. He was going to make sure that no one was disappointed that they had.

  Then when he’d been on the operating table, his grandpa had come to see him. He’d died some years ago, and Lyle had thought for sure that he was dead as well. He was, he’d been told. He’d been told that he’d died several times that day, and he was lucky that someone had cared enough to come and tell him what a putz he’d been. Worse than that, his grandpa had told him he was a horrible, terrible person.

  Grandpa had asked him if he thought that he was worth the trouble of someone saving him. It was the first time that anyone had put it to him like that, and Lyle knew that he’d not been. But he didn’t want to die either. He told him that.

  “You remember that all the time, and you might just make it.” Lyle asked him what he had to do. “You can start by turning your life around. You can do it too. You’ve only done some petty shit that will get you into a little trouble, but you’re headed for the big times if I don’t miss my bet. Just like your momma there. Lyle, that momma and grandmammy of yours, they’re going to drag you right down with them.” He told him he could get some help with that, turning himself around with Uncle Oliver’s help.

  “Oliver is a good man, that grandson of mine. Now you? You should have been nothing more than a stain on your momma’s sheets. But you’re here now, and there is nothing we can do about that. Except to allow you to die right there on the operating table.” He didn’t want to but thought that it was no less than he deserved. “You want to make things right with yourself and live to tell about what you’ve been up to?”

  “I do. I really do. I don’t want to...I could have died, and no one would have given a rats ass about it.” Grandpa said that he wouldn’t have either had he not been killed off by Honey. “Grandma killed you? Why?”

  He knew the answer to that now. It wasn’t just that she wanted the jewelry that Grandpa had given over to Uncle Oliver, but she wanted it all. Everything that didn’t belong to her. The same way he had been, he was sorry to say. But no more.

  Lyle had a long list of things that he was going to have to do. None of it was really all that difficult. He had to go to school when he was able, and keep his grades up, which was something he’d always been able to do without much studying. And he was to own up to what kind of person he’d been and make restitution. That, he thought, was harder than anything, admitting that he’d been a part of some really terrible things while living with his mom, and sometimes living with Grandma too.

  Lyle had allowed his mom to take him out of school when he started causing some trouble. She was to blame for that. Not fully, because he knew that he could have just not done what she wanted. But after a while, he’d gotten lazy, Uncle Oliver told him. Lazy in that it was easier to be a bastard than it had been to be nice. Being nice, he was beginning to understand, was a lot more difficult than he ever thought it had been.

  With this newfound revelation, he was also beginning to respect his uncle a great deal more. He wasn’t just nice, though he was, even when it was hard to be nice to someone like he’d been to Lyle all these years. Lyle knew now that he would have just cut Uncle Oliver out of his life if he’d been in his shoes. But Uncle Oliver hadn’t ever done that. Even now, he was taking him under his wing and making sure that he had everything he needed while in the hospital. Lyle knew for a fact that his mom wouldn’t have done squat for him. Not even with him being her son would she have bothered if she could shove it off on someone else.

  The phone ringing by his bedside only meant one thing—his mother, grandmother, or both were coming to see him. When Gracie and Uncle Oliver left him there, without a single trace of them ever being there, he felt his heart break just a little. Lyle didn’t want his other relatives there with him. He wanted his uncle and Gracie. He put his homework under the table they put his meds on and closed up the computer. Putting it under his pillow, he was careful of moving too. He wasn’t going to go home with them anytime soon, but he didn’t want them to think he was healing more either.

  “There you are. Are you going to stay awake for a little while this time, dumbass? I swear to you, Lyle, I think they know when we’re coming up to see you and dope you up. Have they told you where you’re going after you leave here?” His mom sat on the side of his bed, smashing part of his leg with her hip. It pulled all the stitches in his leg like a chain saw going up and down him. Yelling for her to get off him, she smacked him on the chest. “Don’t you dare talk to me like that. What is wrong with you?”

  Before he could tell her that she was hurting him, the nurse came in. “I heard you yelling, Lyle. Is there—? Get off that bed. Are you trying to send him back to surgery? The young man has stitches all over his body, and I’m sure that you’re pulling at them.” Mom got up off the bed, and Lyle hurt. He’d been feeling better, but now he hurt. “Want something for pain, Lyle? You can have it now.”

  “Yes.” Mom told her no. She had to talk to him. “Please. She hurt me. I really hurt right now. Can you hurry?”

  The nurse glared at his mom and left to get his meds. Blood was start
ing to seep into the sheet above his leg. Even his belly, where he only had a few stitches and a huge bruise, was staining now. Lyle thought that he was going to be sick before the medication made it to him.

  “What are you doing? I told you no, Lyle. She’s not going to give it to you until I have some answers. Where are you going after this is finished? You can’t come home. I have too much shit going on as it is. Also, the bank is doing something with our money, and I have to go there and get that straightened out. They’ve seized my accounts. What did you tell them?” Lyle asked her what she meant, crying with the pain in his legs. “Well, I certainly didn’t tell them that they needed to do that. And Mom is having the same trouble.”

  He almost asked them if they’d gotten a letter about two weeks ago, but didn’t. Lyle didn’t want them to know that his uncle had been talking about it before. When the nurse came in with his much needed meds, she ignored his mom all together. He was sicker now with it, and as soon as the pain medication hit his system, he curled up in his blankets and closed his eyes.

  His mom wasn’t nice. Lyle wasn’t just figuring that out, but it was coming home to him more and more. He supposed that finally realizing how bad his mom was had something to do with actually getting to hang out with nice people. And Grandma was the worst. She’d kill an animal if she thought it would make people upset with her. Like she fed on people not liking her.

  When sleep took him under, he heard his mom yelling at him to stay awake. He decided that he no longer wanted to be with her. Lyle was going to do something, anything, to make sure he got to be with his uncle. He really did want to be a better person.

  ~*~

  Gracie saw Sunshine leave Lyle’s room. While she didn’t look happy about the turn of events, Sunshine did smile at the nurse that had left the room ahead of her. Even from where she was hiding, in an empty room they had set up for them to work from, she could hear the conversation.

  “When I tell you no, he will not have pain medication, you will not be giving it to him. Do you understand me? I’m his mother.” The nurse nodded and smiled back. “I’m glad that we have that cleared up. I will not pay for anything more for him to have, either. You have to take care of him, but he’s only to get what I approve of. If you’re going to be passing out drugs like they’re free, then you can hand them over to me, and I’ll give them to him when I see fit.”