Chapter 25
Paige hissed softly as she touched her lip.
In spite of her fall to the ground, that was what hurt the most. She could taste something metallic in her mouth and she did not need to be told that it was her own blood.
Things had gone very quiet around for her for just a moment.
"Oh my god, Paige – Paige, I am so sorry." that was JJ. "I didn't mean -"
"Get away from her!"
"Grandpa!" she cried as Shane stood protectively over her.
This was not going to help matters, she was sure of it. JJ was distraught and he had not meant to do this. The last thing which they needed was more anger.
Kim must have given Tate to someone else as she was suddenly by her side, stroking her hair and telling her to let her see her lip but Paige continued to try and stay focus on JJ. He had made so many mistakes. And he sure as hell was not going to forgive himself for this one in a hurry.
She was not sure if she was going to either but she knew he didn't meant to do this.
He really didn't.
Paige tried to get her grandfather's attention as Shane yelled at the young man, grabbing the top of his T shirt as he tried to get through to JJ what he had done and Jack tried to get in between them. No matter what had gone on, he was his son and he was always going to try and defend him. And when he finally got them apart, JJ turned and sprinted off down to the lake.
"I got this Jen," Jack said as he raced off after him. It was clear he was not going to let him run from his demons this time. After all, it never worked and they always caught up with you in the end.
Paige felt a tear trickle down her face. Up until then there Fourth of July had been going pretty well.
But now it felt as if it was ruined.
She looked about to see Kim worried, her grandfather red faced and furious. Hope and Aiden were looking concerned and then finally, she looked over to Steve and Kayla.
Kayla had Tate in her arms and her eyes were wide. She had not heard what had gone on but she knew the two of them well enough to know just what had gone on between father and son.
Steve had come over to try and break up the fight and was clearly aggravated by all that had gone on. She remembered the last time she had looked over to where the Johnson's had set up for the day, he and Kayla looked as if they could spend a million more days like this, but now Steve was angry and Kayla looked like a startled deer.
Paige had no doubt the two were connected.
"Do you think JJ is going to be ok?" she said tearfully as her grandmother kept an arm about her.
"My darling girl, I think that should be the least of your worries right now. Let's just see that you are going to be ok."
"It is just a bust lip. I am sure I will survive."
X x x
Joey had been playing in the water when things had begun to kick off with his family. The first thing he knew about it was when he heard raised voices.
He had been about to go up when he saw his cousin run past the lake like a bat out of hell and pretty soon he saw his Uncle Jack was running after him.
That was all it took to prompt him to go up to the camp.
When he got there he saw his Aunt Kim was taking her grandson from his mom and Shane was packing up there chairs.
As for Paige, she was nursing a bleeding lip.
"What's happened?" he asked as he asked as he approached his mom and dad.
Both of them looked shaken though his father definitely just looked more pissed.
"What is it? What's up with JJ?"
"He – he is just going through some stuff," said Steve as he kept his arms about Kayla.
"What stuff?"
Looking at Joe, he wondered if he knew the truth about his mothers and his uncles past. The one thing Steve knew was he had not told Joe and he never wanted too.
"Stuff I do not think you strictly need to know about."
"Adult stuff," scoffed Joey.
He was getting tired of hearing that.
"Yes. Adult stuff," Steve agreed as he looked as his boy. And he was still a boy yet. "You know there is going to come a time when I won't be able to protect you from stuff which I want to protect you from. But we are not there yet. So let me protect you from this."
Whether it was the way he had said it or what he had said Steve did not know. But his son looked up at him with his eyes, which were so liked his mamas, wide.
"Is it really that bad?"
Steve nodded. Every bit and worst. The day he had found out Kayla had been raped lived in his memory like a demon. He remembered the rage he had felt and the shame she had waited so long before coming to him and the sheer longing to take away every bit of pain she had ever felt.
He leaned forward and kissed his sons head.
"What went on here today was bad. And what has got to JJ is bad. But I promise you we are going to work it all out between us. But today is the Fourth of July so you should go down to the lake and play with your buddies. You have had enough to worry about lately, Joe."
Steve knew even as his son nodded that that was not going to hold him off for ever. He was, after all, a Johnson.
There was a day when he was going to come to him or maybe Kayla with questions about the past and they were going to have to look their boy in the eye and tell him the terrible truth.
But not that day.
With reluctance Joey did as his father said and set off for the lake again, for it was quite clear he was not going to get the answers which he wanted that day.
X x x
"Are we not going out today?" Elsa asked as she came into the Kiriakis living room to find Justin working with papers all around him.
Her tone was a little more clipped than it had been in previous days. The truth was she was beginning to feel more than a little bored with being written as the villain of the piece with near no back up from him.
She had come to Salem to surprise him. She had thought they might be able to pick up where they had left off and have a great time together here.
He had said he loved her, in the same conversation which he had admitted how much he loved this place. So she had got to thinking that…. that having the women he loved in the place which he loved could only be a good thing.
But apparently not.
Ever since she had got there he had been distant and he had been worried. They had gone out for some nice dinners but it was nothing like it had been in Dubai. It was as if, if there had any been any magic between the two of them they had left it there.
And now it was the a holiday. A time to blow everything else off and have a little fun. And here they were sitting about the house.
When she had been planning the day she had suggested to him they head to the lake. She had seen flyers all about the town advertising the family day that went on there and thought it would be fun to go. But he had said no. No, they were not going to go to the picnic. And so she had said they might go to another beach or out to dinner or even just for a walk.
But now the day had come and they weren't even doing that.
"I have some case notes to go over –"
"It's the July 4th, it would not kill you to pay me some attention." She said before she could keep it inside. She had not meant to let her anger out but she he held her tongue too long.
For the first time since she had come into the room, he looked up.
But he still said nothing and she felt the same ache in side of her she had felt for weeks.
She had tried and she had tried.
"You don't look at me the way you used too, but you don't even seem to care. Do you want me to go?" she asked.
"I – Elsa, listen –"
"It is a very simple question."
"I –"
That was not the response which she had been looking for.
"And you just gave me your answer," she said as she headed over to the window. "You know I turned up here as a surprise for you. I didn't not even consider the fact you did not ask me to come because deep down you never wanted me here. Stupid girl."
"Elsa, I did love you."
"'Did'? Are we in the past already. Of course, I have seen it in your eyes every day that deep down all you want to do is go rushing back to your wife but I did not think our love was past already. Tell me did you ever stop loving her?"
"No."
"And that is the one question you can answer without hesitation, without stumbling."
Justin sighed but nodded. Ever since she had come, he had been lying to himself but right then, more than ever, he had thought of Adrienne. She was all consuming, her face in her thoughts.
He knew she would have spent the day at the lake with her family. He knew she would have a huge smile on her face and be with her beloved big brothers and… And their son would have been there with his daughter. He should be there with him, with his family. He had no idea how he was going to get her back. But he would get her back.
"Adrienne and I have a long history –"
"And if you have your way then you are going to have a bright future too," she said with a mixture of defeat and disgust in her voice. "I am going to go pack."
"Where will you go?"
"Do you truly care?" she asked as she turned and left the living room.
He knew he should feel sad. And he did. But more than that, there was relief flooding through him.
X x x
JJ collapsed round the other side of the lake, tears running down his face, feeling as if he could not breathe.
It was not meant to be this way. None of it was meant to be this way.
For starters, he did not know how he was ever going to get the image of Paige's bloody nose out of his head – ever.
That was because of him. He had done that to her and it was just another way which he had hurt her.
He had cheated on her with her own mother and then – then this.
He had hoped there was going to be a way back for them but now he knew that was not going to be the case.
He had no hope left.
"JJ."
"I hit her. She is hurt and it is all my fault," he said as he put his head in his hand. He pulled it away quickly.
"You did not mean too. There was no intent there."
"It doesn't matter about what I meant to do. I was just so angry." He felt Jack sit down beside him… to his surprise, he did not shift away. "Do you know when the two of us first got together we were so happy. I was so happy. I had been a mess up to that point and when she came in to my life it was as if it was going to make sense. For the first time in a long time," JJ admitted. "I started slow with Paige. The other girls – we had moved kinda fast but I knew everything meant something to her and with her so I wanted to take it slow. And then –"
But he knew he could not confide these things in Jack. Not him. The words he had already said would have spilled out no matter who had come after him. But he couldn't say anymore to his father.
He could not tell him how scared he was that he just like him. After he had found out what his dad had done, there was a time when he did not think he was ever going to be able to allow himself to be with anyone, for fear of what he was going to do to them. It was in his very DNA to hurt them. And he would rather cut it off than do what his father did.
"I know."
"How can you possibly know?"
"I do."
And there was something in his father's tone that made him believe it.
Jack felt a sadness spread through him, the like of which he had never felt before. Because when he looked at JJ all he could see was himself as he had been when he was young. Well, not that young but…
But after Harper. Before that he had been naïve. It was only after he had lost his father that he had had to face up to so many truths and the first of those was that his father had been neither a good nor a kind man. Perhaps Jack had always known the senator was not kind to all but he thought – he had thought of Harper as some kind of all-powerful god. But he had not been that. The day that he had found out Harper was an evil man was the day he had felt everything he had ever believe in break.
So yes, he knew what it was to fear your father and to fear the part of him which was inside of you. He got that more than JJ could ever know. Because he had to live with it twice over. Once from Harper and then again from Duke.
"JJ, I hate myself every single day for what I did to your aunt."
"Poor you." His son bite back.
"No – poor you. If you think you are anything like me at all. Because you're not. Because believe it or not… your intent and your motives are what make you a better man than I could ever be."
JJ looked at his father then. He had been doing so before but he really looked in to his father's face then. He tried to find the evil he had thought resided there and couldn't.
He had imagined – so many times – when he had believed his father to be dead how this conversation would go. He had thought about how he was going to yell at him. How he was going to enjoy seeing the light fade in his father's face, how he would hurt him. He had even thought about given him a good hiding to boot.
For Kayla, that was what he had always said.
There had been one invariable in those imagery scenes though. His father's face had been full of menace.
He had been a man who had raped before and who could rape again.
But when he looked at his father in the living flesh that was not what he saw.
He saw man who was quiet and still. A man who was sorry. A man who was aging faster than maybe he should do.
And, yes, deep down he saw a man who understood.
JJ put his head in his hands. He wanted to hate him with every fibre of his being but he couldn't.
"I know it seems as if nothing could ever get better now but I swear to you it can," Jack sighed.
He did not want his son to think that this was it.
"I don't want it to get better, I want to have not hurt Paige."
"You can't go back. There aren't any take backs in this life. That is the one lesson which I have had to learn time and time again. But if you are truly sorry… there is going to be a way… for you to - to live with what you did…"
JJ looked up at him. "That sounds like something you got from mom."
"That is the wonderful thing about the Hortons… and the Johnson's and the Brady's for that matter. They somehow find a way to love the sinner even if they hate the sin."
X x x
"Well, today has a dampened on it now," said Steph as she walked up to her father.
Steve wished it was not the truth as they had all been having such a lovely day up till then but he knew it very much was the truth.
"It is a real shame, little sweetness."
Steph nodded. "Listen, do you mind if I sleep out tonight? Abby is just really upset about everything and I think Aunt Jen is going to wait here for Jack and JJ but I want to get her home. She is just – she needs to get out."
Steve nodded. He understood that and he was glad his daughter was being such a great friend to her cousin. He knew the two had had their moments, much as he and Jack had but they seemed to be close now.
"Sure, that's fine." He said as she leaned up to give him a kiss.
"See you later, papa."
Unfortunately, it did seem as if the day was drawing to a close and Steve was sorry for it. He knew he was not the only one who felt that way when he looked at Bo.
With the Donovan's departing and the others leaving too, Hope and Aiden were off which meant Ciara was going home.
"Not quite the day you had in mind, Bo?" he asked as if his best friend.
But Bo just shrugged.
"I had no expectations." It was he knew the best way to approach the day. "What do you make of Jennings?"
Steve shrugged. Forming an opinion of the man had not been high on his to do list.
"Not a lot," he knew he should not make a call based on the fact he was making life tough for Bo, but it was hard when he and Bo went back such a long time. The two of them had had a fierce bond and that meant a fierce loyalty.
They shared a look. Bo was about to continue the conversation when Kayla came up and stood between them. Steve knew that he could once more hold her, which made it impossible to resist doing so and he wrapped his arms about her and kissed her forehead.
Bo could not help but smile at the two of them.
It was like the old days.
"How's my sweetness?" he heard Steve sigh, as he pushed his lips to her forehead. As much as there was a lot wrong going on about them, what was going on between them… Bo knew them being together was right.
'Shall we go home too?' Kayla signed. No one was having a very good time day more and if they headed back then they were going to be able to check in on Adrienne.
But, of course, as soon as Steve thought of Adrienne he also thought of Jack and he wanted very much to wait and see he was ok before they left… but he had sworn long ago he would never put his brother above her.
'Yeah, let's do that baby.'
In the end, Steve and Kayla left the lake on their own. Joe had, to Steve's surprise, done as he had asked and, with the help of young Theo Carver, he was enjoying himself again. In fact the boys were having so much fun they were not ready for it to end. Thus when Abe said he was happy to take Joey for the night so they could have a sleep over, it seemed at least their Fourth of July would go on.
Which meant Steve and Kayla would be on their own. With the apartment to themselves. All night long.
X x x
Hope sighed as she put the picnic blanket back in the bag.
So much for their long day by the lake.
"I am so sorry we have to cut today short," said Hope.
For all the fact it was a coming to an end it had been nice.
"Me too," he said and she made no attempt to reply. She was glad for the quiet.
She was not particularly close to her cousin these days but it did hurt her to see him in so much pain. And young Paige…
Well, this was going to ripple. It already was rippling. Going home to a bit of peace and quiet would be nice.
"A date night," Aiden suddenly announced, speaking just a little louder than he had been before.
"What?" she asked as she spun around to face him. He put his arms around her once more, just as he had done that morning.
"I am going to take you on a nice, romantic date night," once more the last two words were emphasised as he drew her into his arms. "Tomorrow."
"That's sounds very nice," she said happily bemused as she put her head on his shoulder.
She didn't understand what all of this was about until she saw the slightly dejected figure of Bo Brady, heading back to the car, having just passed them.
X x x
Jack and JJ walked back to the lake silently but side by side.
There was still so much left unsaid between them and Jack knew they had a long road to walk but for the first time he had real hope that they might perhaps walk down it together. By the time they had returned, the clearing where they had all set up the blankets and picnics together had emptied out considerably.
Just Jen and Marcus remained. The doctor may have really been his brother's best friend but he had been a good friend to them too over the years as well. He had been the best man at their wedding.
Jack was thoroughly grateful Marcus had stayed and not left Jen on her own. Especially when he saw the look on her face.
It was only when she saw their son that he felt she could breathe again.
"Oh honey, are you ok?" she said as she cupped his face. JJ shook her off.
"It does not matter about me, is Paige ok?" he asked.
"She is going to be fine. I think she was like me, just worried about you," she said.
JJ shrugged. He did not know how he felt. He still didn't know.
"I am going to walk home."
And with that he stalked off once more. But this time he was at least going in the right direction with purpose.
Jen wished there was a point in arguing against it but she knew her boy. He had his mind set.
The one advantage of that was that she was only with Jack, Marcus having withdrawn once he saw they were ok. No doubt her husband had found the whole thing as trying as she had. More so in fact…
"What about you? Are you ok?"
Jack was no surer of how he was than his son. But he did know one thing.
"I have made a start." It was the one good thing about all of this.
Jen smiled sadly as she took his hand. For all the sorrow of them day, a start sounded good to her. In fact, it sounded very good.
X x x
Maybe it was because they had been down by the lake but Steve had not noticed how hot that day had become until the evening drew in. In the wake of the golden sun, there was simply mugginess and heat.
Thus as soon as he was out the shower, he was off to the kitchen for a nice cool bear.
He had checked on Adrienne, who seemed in pretty good spirits, before he had gone back to Kayla's so he did not have to go out again that day and he was glad of it.
He could not think of anything much better than an evening alone with his sweetness. Perhaps the two of them might even have a cuddle again. That's be nice he thought to himself.
He made his way to the living room to find Kayla there already – she had changed and showered when he had been with is sister so he was not surprised to see she had a small pair of shorts and a lacy top which she obviously wore to bed on.
Still, it did things to him which he had not been entirely prepared for.
He went over to the couch and set his bottle of beer next to the small glass of wine she was indulging in.
It was only then he realised that most likely she was that she was not even on her pain meds any more. She was healing. She was nearly healed, save for her hearing and speech. Then there were the emotional wounds. It went without saying they would take longer to heal, but they did not seem to be paining her that evening.
That was why he found her stance so peculiar. She had her back to him and her iPod in her hand, as if she was considering something. Whatever it was, it had to be for his benefit.
"Kayla?" he asked pointlessly. Still… as he came up behind her it was as if she had heard him.
She turned when she felt he was her behind her and he was quite taken aback again by just how beautifully blue her eyes really were. And then how determined the look in them was.
She hit the middle button, set the iPod on the dock and made her way back to the sofa as the song begun to play, leading him by the hand as she did so.
'You know baby, I'm so happy to be here with you tonight.'
Donna Summer's voice was making nothing easier for him considering the way that she looked right then.
His mind swam back across the years to another hot night, a glass of water full of ice cubes and a roof top.
"What do you think you are doing baby?" he murmured as she looked at him. He didn't have to sign. She was going to understand him perfectly, he knew that.
But the problem was he understood her perfectly too. And he knew he did not have what it took in him to back off from this point. He didn't know if he should or where to turn when her little hands rested on his shoulders. He remembered how it had always been like this for the two of them. Like they were two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that came together perfectly.
Then her lips where on his and he swore of their own accord his hands found her lower back.
It had been so long since they had been together, too long.
He drew back when he found himself trailing eager kisses down her neck. He hadn't anticipated this. This was not why he had moved on. But there was no use in denying it was just what he wanted.
He held back just long enough to look in to her eyes. To know this was just what she wanted too.
And when he saw that, there was no more hold back.
Their hands were in each other's hair and sliding off each other's clothes and their lips seemed to be trying to cover every inch of each other's bodies.
Steve swept down, picked Kayla up and carried her to her bedroom. He shut the door behind them, leaving Donna Summer singing to herself…
It's so easy with you… to be the woman in me.
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