“Okay, I’m ready. Take me to him.”
They help me off the bed and we make our way slowly up to the surgery ward. I’m acutely aware of every ache and pain running through my body but I refuse to take any of the pain meds they prescribed in case they make me sleepy.
When we make it to the waiting room, I’m stunned to find it full of people. People who two months ago knew nothing about us but who are here now regardless. People who filled my and Mason’s lonely existence with a sense of family. I slip my left hand into Noah’s as people come up and offer their support and a quick hug. I wait for them to be seated before I approach Ryan who is standing near the double doors that lead down to the operating room. I stare at him for a beat before letting go of Noah’s hand and wrapping my arms around Ryan. There is no hesitation on his part as he wraps his strong tattooed arms around me, rubbing my back soothingly with the same hands that tried to stop the blood flowing from Mason’s broken body.
“Thank you,” I whisper into his chest.
He holds me tightly for a few minutes, offering me his silent support before returning me to Noah and Eli, who lead me over to the three seats closest to the doors. I look out at the people who came to support us. Caleb stands by the window with Frankie in his arms, talking quietly to Malcolm. Jackson and Carter are on either side of Gracie, each holding her hand tightly as she looks at me with a sad smile on her face. Callum and a younger man with a black eye are not far from her, talking but they stand to help when Ryder and Kane appear, each with a tray of hot drinks for everyone. Sam is on the floor leaning against the wall talking to a handsome teenage boy who has his arms wrapped around a sleeping girl about the same age as he is.
I sit gingerly on the seat with Eli and Noah flanking me and rest my head on Noah’s shoulder, gripping one of their hands in each of mine.
“Do you think he knows how much I love him?”
Eli rubs circles on the back of my hand with the pad of his thumb, giving me something to concentrate on other than the heart-wrenching sorrow flooding my veins and threatening to drown me.
“He knows, Eden, I promise,” he whispers, his voice hoarse with emotion.
“You guys know I love you, too, right? More than anything.”
“We know, Eden. We love you too,” Noah tells me softly.
“It’s just, I’m so angry at him,” I sob, letting the words spill from my mouth as the tears drip onto his shoulder.
“It should have been me. He was always trying to keep me safe and in the end, it was his downfall. I knew it would be but I was selfish and now he is in there fighting for his life because I stayed when I should have run.” I can barely get the words out as my breath hitches painfully in my chest.
“I wish I had died in that crash, then he would be safe and sound at home in bed instead of bleeding out on a hospital floor.”
Eli turns and lifts me out of my chair and onto his lap. He tilts my head up, his green eyes glaring into mine. He grips my chin with his strong fingers so that I can’t turn away and hide my shame.
“Don’t you ever say shit like that again, do you hear me, Eden? Mason would be furious if he heard you talk like that. Whatever you’re feeling right now doesn’t change the fact that Mason saved your life today and he would do it a thousand times over. I’m willing to bet that if he had the chance to repeat the last couple of months even knowing the outcome, he wouldn’t change anything other than you getting hurt.” He slips his finger under the collar of my top and slides the St Jude medallion free. “The truth is, Eden, a life without you in it isn’t a life at all. I know what he would choose because it’s something that both Noah and I would choose too. So, don’t sit here wishing you had died because then we never would have had you in our lives at all and that’s something I refuse to accept.” He kisses me softly, his lips absorbing the saltiness of my tears as I try to make sense of his words.
The double doors open and a harried-looking doctor in blue scrubs walks out.
“Family of Mason Parker.”
I scramble to my feet almost slipping but thankfully, Eli catches me as everyone in the room stands in support.
“We are his family,” Noah tells him, making me squeeze his hand so tight my fingers start to tingle. Family. Something Mason always wanted. I can’t wait for him to wake up so I can tell him. Right after I kick his ass for playing the hero.
“I’m so sorry.” The doctor takes off his paper hat and twists it in his hands, his faced etched with fatigue. “There were some complications…”
My hearing fades out as if I suddenly find myself at the end of a really long tunnel. Everything around me becomes a blur of colour as the room spins and my legs give out on me. I hear crying and shouting but I can’t make out the words. I feel the cool tile floor beneath me, hard and unforgiving and hands all over my body but I can’t move or speak. I feel a huge weight on my chest like someone is pushing down on it with all their might, making breathing harder and harder until the best I can manage is short, ineffective gasps. As the darkness pulls me under, the only thought I can hold on to is
Where you go, I go. And then, blissfully, I feel nothing at all.
Epilogue
12 years later
The sun is warm against my skin as we climb our way to the top of the little hill to the gravestone that sits in the shade of the beautiful cherry blossoms from the tree above it. It’s peaceful here, away from the hustle and bustle of the city. I take a deep breath, breathing in the sweet cherry scented air around me and feel a sadness creep over me as I do every time I come here. I kneel down next to the gravestone and pull the dried-out roses from the vase beside it and replace them with sunflowers—something bright and cheerful as we head into the warm summer days. The guys stand quietly behind me giving us much appreciated minutes alone as they always have every time we come here.
“Today would have been your birthday. I want to say it gets easier, that each year that passes by offers me a measure of peace but, truthfully, I will never be okay without you here. For so long, I avoided coming but I was just so angry at you. You left me after promising me that you wouldn’t.” I choke out the words that taste bitter on my tongue. Even after all this time, anger laces my words.
“I’m working through it but I don’t think I will ever come to terms with the direction my life took as a result of you leaving me the way you did.”
A large body sits next to me, wrapping his comforting arms around my shoulders and holding me tightly as I struggle to compose myself. I take a deep breath and look up into the beautiful blue eyes of the man I nearly lost and offer him a wobbly smile. I rest my head on his shoulder and face the marble stone in front of me, engraved with my mother’s name Theresa and the dates she was born and died. The original headstone said wife and mother but both of those titles were a lie. The man she married was no husband and she stopped being a mother the day she saved herself at the expense of her little girl. See, here is the thing I struggle with most, my mother left me to fight for myself but this miracle of a man beside me willingly put himself in danger to protect me and almost died in the process. But then, if there is one thing I know about Mason Parker, it’s that he is no quitter.
The hours that followed Mason’s battle to live are still a blur. An acute panic attack followed by a knock to the head when I hit the floor and passed out meant he actually woke up before I did.
All I remember was thinking that I must have made it to heaven. It took a frantic Eli and a heartbroken Noah to convince me I was still alive but better than that, Mason was too. Speaking of the devil, I smile when I feel Noah’s hard body behind mine as he sits down and situates himself so I have one of his legs on either side of me. Eli sits down on my other side and hands out the cupcakes we brought to mark this day.
“Thank you, Eli.”
He kisses me softly on the forehead before handing the boys theirs. I turn back to the gravestone and sigh, disappointed with myself for not being able to forgive her just yet but I
know what it takes to be a real mother and she wasn’t one. She abandoned me when I needed her most, offering me up as a chew toy to the very monster she so desperately wanted to escape.
“How you doing, sweetheart?” Noah whispers into my ear from behind me.
“I’m okay. I still have a lot to work through, but I’m getting there.”
“You are allowed to be angry, pretty girl,” Mason says, lacing his fingers with mine.
“I know. I want to be able to forgive her but I’m just not there yet.”
“And that’s fine too, Eden. She was never really a mother to you to begin with. You were just a little girl when you yourself became a mom and your first instinct when that little boy took his first breath was to protect him even though it broke your heart in the process. You are the most selfless, loving mother I know but not everyone is that kind of mom, Eden.” Eli tells me, his voice firm.
“But I’m not really his mother. June is his mother and she is amazing. She is exactly the kind of parent I would have chosen for myself when I was a little girl.”
“He has that because of you, sweetheart. He had a safe place to lay his head and a mom and dad that doted on him because of the actions of a scared but heroic little girl.” Noah wraps his arms around me as he speaks, lending me his support.
“Forgiving her, pretty girl, is not about your mother but about you. It’s time for you to let her go and move on. Don’t let that chapter of your life define your story.”
I nod, knowing he’s right.
We eat our cupcakes in comfortable silence before standing to leave. I take one last look at the marble stone in front of me, silently saying goodbye to the woman who died long before she was ever placed in the ground, and feel a pang of sympathy. I might never understand the choices she made but my bruised heart can’t help but bleed a little for the lonely woman who couldn’t see any other way out.
“Goodbye, Mom.”
We head home, Noah driving and Mason up front with him, talking quietly about a case they’re working on. Eli links his fingers through mine and leans back against the leather seats with his eyes closed. The poor guy is exhausted. I’m glad the trial he had been working on is over.
I turn my head and watch the world speed by and think about how much our lives have changed over the last twelve years. The first few years were rough on all of us, especially during the trial that splashed our names across every newspaper in the country. Karl was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison, thankfully, finally paying for the crimes he was convinced he would walk away from. Jackie, his accomplice, was sentenced to six for her part in his fucked up plan. It transpired that she had been a plant all along, watching me and feeding my movements back to Karl for years. She had even snuck him in to watch me dance a time or two. I had almost thrown up in the courtroom when I heard that.
I pulled out of buying the theatre, my heart not being in it anymore, and pretty much withdrew from the world. We bought a house on the lake near Frankie’s place where I shut myself away and tried to deal with the crippling anxiety and depression that had taken over my life. I’m not sure I would have made it through those dark days without my guys putting me back together every time I fell apart. Eventually, with some counselling and some medication, I started to feel more human again. I was just different from the woman I was before—altered slightly, but not necessarily in a bad way. Yes, I could be a little clingy, finding it difficult to accept that something bad wasn’t going to happen to one of them every time they walked out the door, but I dealt with it and thankfully, they understood. I spent time making our house a home. I baked, much to the guys’ enjoyment, and I found that I loved gardening, which I wasn’t as good at but it still provided me with a sense of peace.
Jo, the girl I first saw at the hospital asleep on the shoulder of the boy I later found out was Jacob, became a close friend of mine. We related to each other through our unfortunate experiences and our determination to not let the darkness win. She worked her butt off to become a social worker, helping kids who often fell through the cracks and somehow managed to convince the guys and me to become emergency foster parents. At first, I was sceptical. What the hell could I offer to someone? But when we got a frantic phone call at three o'clock in the morning from an obviously upset Jo, I relented. An hour later, when an angry thirteen-year-old boy turned up on my doorstep covered in bruises, I knew I had made the right decision. We have been fostering for eight years now and it was the best thing we ever did.
The kids inspired Eli so much, he went back into family law and bought out Malcolm’s share of the law firm when Mal decided to retire a couple of years ago. Noah went to work with the guys at Dante’s in the PI department, which had expanded over the years. Eventually, Mason got in on it too, after years of working there as security.
We pull up outside the house and I have to gently nudge Eli awake.
“We’re home, handsome. How about you and I go for an afternoon nap? The twins are coming over later to bake. They have some kind of charity thing going on at school tomorrow and Frankie can’t bear the smell, so I volunteered.”
“Poor Frankie, I can’t imagine not being able to be around cupcakes,” he tells me seriously. He’s not lying either, he has a ridiculous sweet tooth.
“This pregnancy is really doing a number on her, huh?” Mason says, helping me out of the car.
“Oh, yeah. She can’t wait to get past the first trimester when, hopefully, everything will calm down.”
Frankie is currently ten weeks pregnant with baby number four. They have an eight-year-old son too, called Steven, who is the cutest thing on two legs.
“So, Eden, what do you feel like doing for the rest of the day?” Noah asks, flinging his heavy arm over my shoulder.
“Well, Eli and I are going for a nap and I have to bake some cakes with the girls later but we could go watch a movie or something, maybe grab a bite to eat?”
“Sounds good. Mase and I have the night off but we’ll be working the next two in a row. So, this nap thing. How tired are you?” Noah purrs into my ear, making me smile.
“Behave. Eli needs some rest.”
“I’m not that tired,” Eli tells me with a wink. “Mase, you coming?”
“I’m game.” Mason’s voice washes over me. Looks like my afternoon is about to become much more exciting.
We make our way inside and out of the bright sunshine, stopping when the sound of excited footsteps come barrelling towards us. Waffle, my golden Labrador, comes bouncing over to us, nearly knocking me down with her excitement.
“Hey gorgeous, did you miss me, huh?” I rub behind her ear, smiling when she wags her tail wildly.
“Head on up guys, I’ll just let Waffle out and I’ll be up in five.”
“I can do it if you want,” Eli offers but I shake my head.
“I got it.”
They head upstairs while I play hunt the tennis ball so I can throw it around the garden for Waffle when the doorbell rings.
“Oh man. Please don’t be the twins coming early,” I mutter to myself. I love those girls, but I was looking forward to a dirty afternoon.
I swing the door open and find myself faced with a tall blond man, well more boy than man really. He is handsome in an adolescent kind of way and really familiar. Where have I seen him before?
“Hi, can I help you?”
His eyes swing up to meet mine when he hears my voice and all the air rushes out of my lungs. I stand there frozen in shock as I take in his violet eyes. Eyes I see every day in the mirror. He looks at me warily, nervously opening and closing his hands at his sides.
“Do you know who I am?” he asks, his voice full and deeper than I imagined it would be and Lord knows I have imagined this scenario a thousand times.
I nod my head, still unable to find my voice as I feel tears spring to my eyes and slip down my cheeks.
“I hope it’s okay that I came. I just…” He blows out a breath, shaking his head to clear his thoughts bef
ore looking back into my eyes.
I notice that his eyes are wet now too, making me cry even harder.
“Can I just… Can I hug you?” he whispers.
I walk into his arms without a second thought and hold on to the boy I only got to hold once before he was taken away. The flood gates open, making me sob, holding on tight, desperately worried that this all might be a dream and that I’m really upstairs napping.
My brain starts to come back online again, making me realise that this is real, that my boy is really here. I pull back and reach up to cup his face with my hands.
“You’re really here. Are you okay? Is something wrong with your mom and dad? Is there something I can do?” I fire one question after another at him, not giving him a chance to answer any of them.
His vibrant eyes sparkle down at me with mirth. “I’m fine, everyone is fine.” He swallows hard, trying to form the words he wants to say. “I always knew about you.”
I nod. It was one of the stipulations of the adoption. I wanted my boy to know that I loved him and that he could come to me when things were safe, when he was ready.
“I… my mom and dad are awesome.” He looks at me in trepidation, worried, I guess, about my reaction but that’s exactly what I wanted for him. It’s what kept me going all those years ago before my men came along and showed me that merely existing wasn’t enough anymore.
I nod and smile for him to continue.
“They always tried to answer the thousands of questions I peppered them with but there are things that I wanted to know that they just can't answer for me. They offered to come with me today but I just wanted to come alone. I… I don’t want to hurt them. I’m just trying to figure out who I am.”
“You’re June and Stanley Evans’s son. You are the boy they always dreamt of having and holding and the boy they love wholeheartedly.” I rub my thumb over the apple of his cheek before letting my hands seek out both of his.
The Promise of Tomorrow: An Inheritance Novel Page 21
