“Miss Nevaeh Stevenson?” I nodded numbly as I quickly walked toward him, and he opened the back door for me. “I’ll get you to the airport, Miss Stevenson. Don’t you worry about a thing.”
Nodding mutely, I climbed into the back seat and shoved the wedding invitation into the backpack with my books. Scrubbing a hand over my damp cheeks, I texted Mom that I was on my way to the airport and I would see her as soon as I could.
Chapter 18
Braxton
As soon as the plane touched down and they let everyone disembark, I was running. It hurt like fucking hell because I didn’t have my running blade on, but I didn’t care about the physical pain.
All I could think about was that my kitten had had to make the flight to California all on her own while worrying about her dad. She must have been scared out of her mind, and I wasn’t there to hold her, to tell her it was all going to be okay. She was so upset about everything going on that she hadn’t even texted or called me.
I’d gotten out of my final earlier and turned on my phone, to find Mia had blown up my messages, telling me what was going on.
Drake Stevenson had woken up in agony and vomiting uncontrollably. Lana rushed him to the hospital, where the doctors said they needed to do the surgery immediately, not to wait for the date they had originally planned. Nevaeh’s Uncle Shane was told to go straight to the hospital so they could prep him. Thankfully, it was so early he hadn’t had breakfast or even coffee yet. Otherwise, they would have had to wait. The surgery would take anywhere from four to eight hours, depending on complications, and by the time I’d gotten Mia’s messages, both men had already been in the operating room for over an hour.
Once I knew what was going on and that Nevaeh was already on her way, nothing could have stopped me from getting to California. Luckily for me, Mia’s mom was some kind of miracle worker who predicted everything, and she already had a car service waiting for me just off campus to take me to the airport. A ticket had been sent to my phone, and I was escorted straight to my gate when I got there. I had an hour wait, but at least there were no connections for my flight, so I got there as quickly as possible with no delays.
Running out of the airport, I saw a driver holding up a sign with my name on it, and I sprinted toward him. The man had the back door of the town car already open by the time I got to him, and I jumped in, telling him to move his ass.
As I wiped sweat off my brow, I pulled out my phone and tried to call Nevaeh again. Her phone had been off earlier, so I’d left a message telling her I loved her and would be there as soon as I could.
Now, her phone rang and rang, but she didn’t answer. Figuring she was with her mom and the rest of her family and not paying attention to her phone, I sat back and closed my eyes. My leg was already throbbing, but I blocked out that pain, hoping both Drake and Shane made it through this.
Traffic was total hell, and it felt like it took hours to get to the hospital. I texted Emmie when the driver said we were only ten minutes away, and there was someone waiting for me when he pulled up at the back entrance. There had been flashing cameras and news vans in the front parking lot when the driver passed it. It was one of Seller’s men and Harris Cutter, who greeted me with a handshake when I stepped out of the car.
“How are they?” I asked as we hurried inside before any stray vulturous paps pounced on us.
“We got news when they took part of Shane’s liver that he came through it easily. He’s still in recovery right now, though, and they will only let Harper back to see him, but everything seems to be good on his end. We haven’t had any news about Drake yet, though.” He pushed the elevator button, and it opened immediately.
“And Nevaeh? How is she holding up?”
He pressed his lips together for a moment before he blew out a heavy sigh. “I’ll have to let you determine that for yourself, man. She seems…off.”
Off? I didn’t know what the fuck that meant, but I kept my mouth shut as we rode up. When the elevator opened a few moments later, there were four more of Seller’s men standing at attention. One moved forward, asking for my ID.
Knowing the drill, I produced it and got a chin lift in acknowledgment when he realized who I was. One day, I was going to be this guy’s boss, but that day wasn’t this one.
Harris led me down a short corridor to a waiting room where two more security men were standing. Inside, the room was almost full to capacity yet eerily quiet, almost as if everyone was afraid to speak.
I scanned the room until I found Nevaeh. She was sitting with all three of her sisters, her little brother sitting on her lap. The two youngest sisters each had their heads on Nevaeh’s shoulders, while Arella clutched at one of her hands. None of them were crying, although there was proof they had done plenty of that from their swollen, red eyes and tear tracks down their cheeks.
I moved toward them. As I approached, the younger four all lifted their heads, giving me grim smiles, but Nevaeh didn’t move so much as an eyelash. Her gaze was trained straight ahead, her face completely devoid of…everything. There was no emotion, no signs of life in her eyes. If she hadn’t been breathing, I would have thought she was a beautiful mannequin.
“Braxton,” Lana stopped me before I could reach my kitten, with a chilled hand to my arm.
Seeing the tears that still filled her eyes and the lack of color in her face, I hugged her.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” she whispered when I pulled back. “Something is wrong with Nevaeh. All she’s done since she got here is sit there. Like she is now. She hasn’t moved. She hasn’t spoken, not one word. I don’t know if it’s shock or what, but this isn’t good for her. I can’t get her to drink anything or to eat.”
I glanced over Lana’s head. Nevaeh’s sisters were all whispering something to her, but she didn’t seem to hear them.
“Take her for a walk. She needs to cry or scream or hit something.” Lana grimaced. “She just needs to come back to us because I can’t breathe right now, thinking I might lose her on top of everything else…”
Hearing the hitch in her voice cracked my heart open, and I gave her another hug, promising I would take care of her daughter.
Crouching down in front of the five siblings, I gave Damien a tight smile. “Hey, little dude.” I bumped fists with the eight-year-old. “Maybe you can sit on Arella’s lap for a little while so I can take your sister for a walk?”
He nodded and jumped down. The movement didn’t even budge Nevaeh. She still sat there, staring at nothing, her eyes unblinking behind her glasses. Heavenleigh and Bliss shook their heads at me.
“It’s like she’s a statue,” Bliss murmured quietly. “She’s seriously starting to freak me out.”
I took both of Nevaeh’s hands in mine. Feeling how cold her fingers were, I started rubbing them. “Hey there, Kitten.”
She jerked at my special name for her. Her head moved, and she finally blinked, focusing on her surroundings. Shifting her gaze from left to right, she took in the room and all her relatives. Then she looked down at me, and heat filled those blue-gray depths.
“No,” she bit out between clenched teeth, and my heart dropped into my stomach. “I don’t want you here.”
It was my turn to jerk, her words like a physical blow directly to my solar plexus. When she tried to pull her hands from mine, I tightened my hold. “Kitten—”
“I said no!” she screamed and jumped to her feet, forcing her hands from mine. “Get the hell out of here. I don’t want to see your lying face. Not now, not ever.”
Everyone in the room seemed to move in around us, but they didn’t intervene. I stood, trying to reach for her, but she slapped my hands away as two huge tears fell from her eyes. Seeing her tears, I felt my own eyes begin to sting. “Baby, I’m so sorry you had to fly here on your own. If I’d known what was going on, I would have been with you, I swear.”
“I’m glad you weren’t with me,” she spat, pure venom in her words. “Why would I want a cheater like yo
u anywhere near me?”
“What are you talking about?” I demanded, reaching for her again. “You’re out of it, Nev. Baby, you’re just in shock. Come here. Let me hold you.”
“Stay the hell away from me,” she raged. “Don’t touch me. Don’t even speak to me. Ever.”
She shoved me, and I was so surprised, I actually took a step back just as she moved away from me and ran toward the door. But before she could open it, a man in sweat-soaked scrubs and a surgical cap walked in. She stopped when he glanced around the room. Her eyes were huge and full of fear when she looked at him, as if she thought he was the grim reaper or something.
“Mrs. Stevenson?” the doctor called out, and Lana practically sprinted to him.
He took her hands in both of his and gave her a reassuring smile. “Everything went beautifully. I couldn’t have asked for a better surgery. He came through it with no complications. And as long as he remains stable, you can see him in about an hour.”
Everyone in the room collectively released their held breaths. I saw Nevaeh begin to sway, and I rushed toward her, my arms going around her as her eyes completely lost focus and she fell against me, unconscious. I lifted her into my arms easily.
Lana and Emmie appeared on either side of me while the doctor checked the pulse at her wrist. “She’s okay,” he said after a tense moment. “I think the relief of getting good news just messed with her blood pressure a bit.”
Even as he spoke, Nevaeh moaned in my arms. I kissed her brow, and she opened her eyes. For a fraction of a second, she frowned. “What happened?” she whispered.
“Honey, you passed out.” Lana tenderly brushed her daughter’s hair back from her face. “But we got good news. Daddy is going to be okay.”
Her face lit up, then crumpled when she looked at me. “Let go of me,” she seethed.
“Not happening,” I told her calmly.
“Wanna bet?” She lifted her head and looked for someone over my shoulder. “Luca. Lyric. Make him put me down.”
The two identical beast-like eighteen-year-olds stood without question and marched toward me. I only tightened my hold on Nevaeh. I didn’t want to fight anyone during this emotional family moment, but I would kick both their asses if they tried to take her from me.
“Whoa there, killers,” Emmie said, cutting off the twins before they could get to me. I wasn’t surprised they stopped in their tracks. I was pretty sure she could have told a charging bull to stop and it would listen to her. “Back to your seats,” she commanded. “And, Luca? Try to get Violet to drink something. She hasn’t had anything since Harper went to sit with Shane.”
He nodded as the two of them both returned to their seats. Picking up Violet’s hand, he murmured something to her, and she gave a weak nod. He passed her a bottle of water, which she put to her lips and took a small sip.
Emmie turned her focus on Nevaeh next. “Sweetheart, you have been like a zombie from the moment you got here. We all understand that, but you aren’t making any sense right now. If something is wrong, you have to tell me so I can make it all better. Okay?”
“What’s there not to make sense of?” she demanded, her beautiful face a mask of anger and hurt, making it impossible for me to draw a deep enough breath. When she hurt, I hurt. I wanted to make it all go away, but she was pissed as hell at me. “Braxton’s fiancée showed up at the house with their wedding invitation. An invitation your daughter helped him pick out.”
Ah fuck.
I didn’t know how or when she’d found out about the invitation, but I knew I needed to start explaining. If she would listen. My promise not to keep anything from her was broken, but I had to get her to hear me out.
“Kitten,” I began. “It’s not what you think. I’m not marrying her.”
She snorted and struggled in my arms, but I held on to her easily, refusing to let her go, terrified if she did get out of my arms somehow, I would never get her back into them. “Maybe you should tell that to Darcy, then.”
“He isn’t,” Emmie tried to tell her. “I’ve been helping him sort out the publicity side of everything for the past few weeks. I promise you, Nevaeh, he is not marrying Darcy Hamilton.”
The fight suddenly drained out of her, and that scared me more than when she was struggling to get away. She was giving up, blocking me out. I could practically feel the walls slamming down between us, blocking me from her and her heart. “Whatever. I don’t even care right now. I just want to be away from him.”
Chapter 19
Nevaeh
The numbness I’d felt since getting on the plane earlier was gone now. I wanted it back. All the emotions that were running riot through me were causing the mother of all headaches, and I wanted to turn them off.
I wanted to feel nothing, think nothing…be nothing.
It was too much. Daddy’s emergency surgery and finding out my boyfriend planned on marrying someone else, that he’d even picked out their damn wedding invitations, broke something in me. I lost Braxton, and then there was the very large possibility that I could lose my dad…and it hurt so damn badly that I couldn’t think. The moment Darcy handed me that wedding invitation, part of me shattered.
I blocked out everything. My senses shut off, and for a while, I couldn’t hear, see, feel, taste, or even smell anything. I was just floating somewhere in my head. It was dark there, but quiet and oddly peaceful. There was no lying, cheating boyfriend. My dad wasn’t sick or possibly dying. Nothing could touch or hurt me.
Then I heard it.
Kitten.
So tenderly spoken, with love and kindness. The complete opposite of the man he’d been hiding from me—along with his fiancée and all the other lies he’d fed me. How could I have been so wrong about him? How could I have been so stupid as to trust him?
Whatever spell I’d cast over myself broke, and it all came flooding back with a vengeance.
Feeling someone shift beside me, I slowly turned my head. It was only Arella readjusting Damien on her lap. He was eight and already getting tall, but we all babied him and he didn’t mind letting us. On the other side of Arella sat Jordan Moreitti, and I honestly didn’t know when he’d arrived. I didn’t know when anyone had shown up or if they had been there already when I’d gotten there. I didn’t remember anything after taking my seat on the plane earlier.
On my other side, sat Bliss and Heavenleigh. I was thankful they surrounded me. That meant Braxton couldn’t get close.
He hadn’t left. I could feel his eyes on me, and despite refusing to look his way, I knew exactly where he was in the room. He was sitting in a chair in a corner, Mia’s brother Jagger beside him. That was where he’d been since Aunt Emmie had told him to put me down. Something he hadn’t done right away. It took her using her fire-breather voice before he carried me to the chair I was in presently and then took his current seat on the opposite side of the room from me.
That had been over an hour ago. Mom had been escorted back to see Daddy just a few minutes before, promising us all that she would tell him we loved him. I understood why only one person was allowed back to see him for now, but I wanted to go with her. Needed to see with my own eyes that the doctor hadn’t been lying. That he was really okay. Breathing.
Someone crouched down in front of me, and it took me a moment before my eyes finally focused on Lyric. Grasping one of my chilled hands in his much bigger one, he pressed a cup of something hot into it then guided my other hand up so I was holding it with both. “It’s hot chocolate. It’s all I could find in the cafeteria that I figured you would drink. There isn’t a coffee shop in the building, and Aunt Emmie has declared martial law, so we’re kind of trapped and can’t go across the street to Starbucks.”
“Thanks,” I told him weakly and lifted the cup to my lips. It tasted slightly bitter yet overly sweet, but the heat dethawed my insides a little, making me shiver. “Why is it so sweet?”
“I added a few extra packets of sweetener,” he said sheepishly. “Figured you neede
d a sugar rush.”
“Um, yeah. Thanks.” I took another sip, grimacing at how sweet it was, then shrugged and tossed back the rest of the contents. It was hot as hell and burned my mouth, but I welcomed the pain.
Lyric’s mouth fell open when I handed him the empty cup. “Are you okay?”
“That’s debatable,” I told him honestly. “But I’ll live.”
Leaning forward, he lowered his voice. “Give me the word, and Luca and I will fuck him over, Nevi.”
Knowing he and his twin would burn the whole place down if I asked, I shook my head. “No. It’s not worth it. But thanks anyway.”
“Mia and Barrick are downstairs,” I heard Jordan saying to Arella.
Stiffening, I stood. “I need the bathroom,” I told Lyric. “Where is it?”
“I’ll show you,” he offered. He put his arm over my shoulders, guiding me out of the room and down the hall to the bathrooms.
I forced myself to take my time, needing to be away from Braxton’s pleading eyes—and yes, hiding from Mia for a little while. I couldn’t believe she would betray me like she did, yet for some reason, I didn’t doubt what Darcy said about Mia helping Braxton and Lyla pick out the wedding invitations with his mom.
I stayed in the bathroom so long, Lyric opened the door enough so he could ask if I was okay. Grimacing, I washed my hands and walked out, knowing he wouldn’t let me hide in there any longer.
But when I stepped out of the bathroom, Braxton was standing there with Lyric, Barrick and Mia right beside him.
I glared at my cousin when she started to step forward to hug me. “Don’t even talk to me, Mia. I’m not in the mood to hear your excuses.”
She gasped as if I’d hurt her, but I couldn’t have cared less. She’d broken my heart just as easily as Braxton had. I thought we were close, family. And if nothing else, I knew family was always supposed to have your back. I didn’t want to see her or even hear her voice.
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