The Brightest Sunset (The Darkest Sunrise Duet Book 2)

by Aly Martinez

  “Excuse me. I stepped out of the county jail, not a day spa.”

  Still wearing a gorgeous smile, she peered up at me through her lashes. “We’re going to be okay, Porter.”

  “I know. I’m just sick of all the bullshit.”

  “We’ll video chat, okay? The minute he comes around, I’ll call you and Hannah and we’ll hang out like that for the next few days.”

  I nodded even though my heart was screaming for me to say fuck it all and head straight up to that hospital to see my son. But, if I wanted any hope of us being together again, I had to play by the rules.

  I kissed her forehead. “What’d you have to do to get Tom in on this?”

  “I batted my eyelashes and cried a little. He was no match for my guilt trip.”

  I barked a laugh. “I’m not sure if I should be proud of you or worried about our future together now.”

  She curled in close. “Worried, probably.”

  I touched my lips to the top of her head. “One of these days, our lives will become boring. We’re going to be sitting on a couch together, asking each other repeatedly, ‘What’s for dinner?’ and getting frustrated when we come up with no answers. The kids are going to be wandering around, complaining, and whining that they have nothing to do. There will be nothing on TV. No good movies out. The weather will be crappy and the four of us will be stuck in the house all damn day, fighting and bickering with each other for no other reason than it provides two minutes of excitement. And I swear to you. That will be the happiest day of my entire life. This shit, where every day is another drama, is killing me.”

  She craned her head back and dreamily stared up at me. “That sounds amazing.”

  Just then, Tanner came strolling over. “How many times am I going to have to bail you out of jail?”

  I smirked. “Now you know how I felt when we were in college.”

  “Touché,” he replied.

  Charlotte rolled her eyes and then looked up at me. “I have to get back to the hospital. I don’t want him waking up without me.”

  I groaned, my heart aching at the thought of not being there when he needed me the most. But it eased me to know that at least Charlotte would be there. “Yeah. Definitely. Get up there.”

  “I love you, Porter. Just a few more days.”

  “I love you too. Take care of my boy.”

  “Hey, buddy!” I cooed in a baby voice I knew for a fact he hated, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. I was seeing my son alive and awake for the first time since I’d dragged him out of that pond.

  I hated that it was via a damn video chat, but beggars can’t be choosers. And, right then, I was a beggar to the highest power. It had been a horrible twenty-four hours. At that time just the day before, we had been laughing and eating pasta salad. Now, my son was covered in wires and laid up in a hospital bed, waiting for a heart that may or may not come.

  “Hey, Dad,” he said weakly.

  He looked like hell—dark circles under his eyes, his face swollen and still pale. But his heart was beating, and that was all that mattered.

  “Let me see him!” Hannah yelled, climbing up onto my bed and into my lap. “Hey, Travis.”

  “Hey, Hannie,” he mumbled.

  “How ya doing?” I asked, turning the phone on the side so he could see both Hannah and me in the same frame.

  “Not good,” he groaned.

  My stomach pitched, but Charlotte immediately moved the phone to her face and corrected him.

  “He’s doing great. His BP is steady, pulse ox is coming up, and his EKG looks better than any of us had hoped. He’s still a little groggy and tired from the medication, but as soon as that wears off, he should start feeling better.”

  “Okay. Good,” I whispered when I didn’t trust my voice.

  God, this sucked. In all of the times Travis had gone to the hospital, I’d always been the one to go with him. And, now, I was stuck at home like some kind of caged animal waiting for permission to see my own damn son.

  “And, now, he’s asleep,” Charlotte drawled, flashing the camera to my son, his eyes closed and his mouth hanging open in slumber.

  I chuckled at the sight, but it did nothing to tame the anger brewing inside me.

  “Go watch your movie, baby,” I told Hannah. “I’m going to talk to Charlotte for a minute and then I’ll be out.”

  “Okay,” she chirped. “Bye, Charlotte.”

  “Goodnight, Hannah. I’ll see you soon.”

  Hannah started to climb off the bed, but then she froze and leaned back into the frame. “Travis only likes red and orange Jell-O. If he gets green, Daddy brings it home to me.”

  Charlotte laughed. “I’ll be sure to set it aside for you.”

  Hannah nodded and then wandered out of the room.

  I shoved two pillows behind me and reclined against the headboard. Once I was settled, I asked, “How are you holding up?”

  She quietly moved through the hospital room and into the bathroom, where she shut the door. “I’m okay, actually. He really is looking better, Porter.”

  “Like, good enough to maybe come home?” Even I heard the hope in my voice.

  She winced and shook her head.

  “Right. Of course,” I said, pretending like I hadn’t been stabbed in the gut.

  “He’s going to get a heart, Porter. I can feel it.”

  “I’m glad you can, because I’m not feeling anything these days but a whole lot of worry and dread,” I replied, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. But I found myself unable to get comfortable.

  “Turn off the light, Porter,” she whispered.

  I shook my head. “I can’t. I need to go feed Hannah dinner. Something with, like, an actual vegetable. Mom dropped her off earlier and I swear she had a lollipop stuck in her hair. I love my mom, but she takes the job of spoiling her grandkids seriously.”

  She stared at me blankly. “Off, Porter.”

  “It’s still daylight outside, Charlotte. I could turn all the lights in the house off and it wouldn’t never be dark enough.”

  “Okay. You want to talk in the light?”

  Suddenly, a lump of emotion lodged in my throat and I had to force the words around it. “Is this the light? Because it sure as hell doesn’t feel like it.”

  “Everything is going to be okay. He’s asleep, baby. I feel really good about his stats—as a mother and a doctor.”

  I shook my head. “See…that’s the problem. I felt really good yesterday. I was lecturing you on holding on to the happy times and not allowing the fears to consume you. And here I am, learning that it was a bunch of bullshit. Just because you don’t think about the future doesn’t mean it won’t one day become the present. I’ve known this day was coming for a long time with Travis. And I still feel like it came out of nowhere.” I turned my face away from the phone with hopes that she didn’t see me wiping my cheek on my shoulder.

  Fuck. I was supposed to be the man here. I should have been the one taking care of my family. My woman. My son. Protecting them from the harsh realities of life.

  And there I was, helpless and grounded like a fucking teenager who’d stayed out past his curfew.

  I cleared my throat, but that pain-filled lump settled right back in. “And this waiting bullshit? That’s all I’ve been doing recently. Waiting on custody hearings. Waiting on the cops to clear my name. Waiting for the judge to allow me supervised visitation. And, now, I have to wait on someone to die so my child can get a goddamn heart? I mean, what the fuck am I supposed to do with that?”

  She bit her bottom lip. “I don’t know. But I’m doing the exact same thing.”

  “Swear to God, Charlotte. Tanner and I passed a fucking fender bender on the way home and my first thought was, oh maybe someone died. Who does that?”

  “Desperate parents do that, baby. All the time. You aren’t alone in that guilt.”

  My heart thundered in my ears as I confessed, “But that’s the thing. I don’t even feel guil
ty.” I rose from the bed and began pacing, holding the phone out in front of me even though I wished I could hurl it across the room.

  “And you aren’t alone in that, either.”

  “I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

  “And you’re entitled to that. It’s been a tough two weeks for all of us. But the key words here are two weeks. A few weeks ago, I didn’t think I’d last a day in this hell. But we’ve made it through two weeks. And, now, we’re going to make it through the next two days. And then, together, with Travis and Hannah, we’re going to make it through the next however long it takes for him to get a heart. We can do this, Porter. And we will do this—because there is no other choice.”

  I stopped pacing and allowed her words to infuse me. There had been a lot of days in my life, not just over the last two weeks, when I’d thought the world was going to swallow me. After Catherine died, I hadn’t had the first clue how I’d ever move past that kind of hurt and betrayal. But I had. And, through that, I’d found Charlotte.

  The day I’d met her, I’d told myself that people entered our lives for a reason, and I was determined to figure out why she had come into mine. Logic told me it was because I’d needed her to treat my son. The more spiritual answer was that I was raising her son and the heavens saw it fit for us to figure that out. But, right then, as I stared at her on the phone, her brown eyes bright with love and her face strong and fearless, I decided that this was the reason she’d come into mine.

  Without her, I’d still be lost in the hate and pain.

  Without her, this would have been another source to feed the constant rage forever growing inside me.

  Today would have come regardless if I’d met her or not. Travis had been fated to need that heart from the get-go. But Charlotte quieted my storm. She extinguished the fire. And she soothed my demons.

  Without her, I’d be lost in darkness. Alone.

  Sinking to the bed, I closed my eyes and willed my pulse to slow.

  She stayed silent, in true Charlotte fashion, until I was ready to return to the world of rational thinking.

  “Hi,” I whispered as I lifted my lids.

  “Hi,” she whispered back.

  “You stole my line with that whole ‘no other choice’ bit,” I told her, my smile tight.

  “Then take it back,” she told me. Her gorgeous grin felt like a drowning man’s first breath of air.

  “There’s no other choice. He’s going to be okay.”

  “And…” she prompted.

  “And…” I drawled in question.

  “And we’re going to stick together before, during, and after it happens.”

  I fell back on the bed, holding her smiling face above me. “Well, that was a given. You are stuck with me for the rest of your life.”

  “Good,” she smarted. “Ian will be happy to have the company.”

  I barked a laugh. “Did I forget to mention that I swung by your place on my way home?”

  “Porter,” she warned.

  “Yeeeeaaaaah. I hate to be the one to break this to you, but there was an accident involving Ian.”

  She laughed. “Porter, I swear I will hunt you down.”

  “It seems he tripped into the shredder.”

  “You are such a liar. One, I don’t have a shredder. And two, he’s, like, six feet tall and made of cardboard. No way he’s going to fit in a shredder.”

  God, I loved this with her. Even stupid shit about her Ian Somerhalder cardboard cutout made me smile wider than I’d ever thought possible. It was fun and it was light, not at all like the suffocating shroud that cloaked us on a daily basis. But it was moments like that, when we got to be just two people in love, that gave me the strength to carry on for another day.

  “You’d be amazed how affordable an industrial shredder is on Amazon.”

  “Porter!” she scolded and then burst into quiet laughter.

  That sound alone was more than enough to get me through the next two days.

  * * *

  “Hey, baby,” I whispered before kissing Porter long and deep.

  “Mmmm,” he groaned into my mouth as his strong arms held me against his chest. “God, I missed you.”

  “It’s only been two days,” I taunted. Though, not-so-secretly considering I’d all but mounted him the moment he’d gotten out of his car; I’d missed him too.

  He set me back on my feet and then straightened his navy-blue suit coat. “Two days too long. How’s Trav this morning?”

  “He’s…” Getting worse.

  When I’d left that morning, his cardiologist wouldn’t even look me in the eye. It was literally overnight that he had gone from winning the uphill climb to crashing back down to below baseline. His decreased heart function was taking its toll on his lungs and liver to the point that I worried that, even if a heart did arrive, he wouldn’t be physically strong enough to handle the stress of the surgery. I hadn’t slept in what felt like forever because all I could do was stay awake, night after night, and watch his vitals.

  Swallowing hard, I finished on a semi-lie “He’s doing fine. Mom and Tom are with him.”

  Porter nodded, but judging by the purse of his lips, he wasn’t buying it. He could see right through me. However, he didn’t want to acknowledge the hovering reality any more than I did.

  We weren’t exactly pretending as much as faking positivity.

  “As soon as we finish here, we’ll go straight up to the hospital,” I whispered.

  He shot me a genuine smile, one of the first I’d seen from him in a while. “Yeah. I can’t wait to see him.”

  Hand in hand, we walked up the courthouse steps. Once we’d gotten through the metal detectors, we found our attorneys huddled together in quiet conversation.

  “Hey, Mark,” Porter said.

  Mark’s gaze cut to me and then dipped to Porter’s hand in mine. “So, this is the front we’re portraying?”

  Porter’s forehead crinkled. “This is the only front I have. So, yeah, this is what we’re portraying.”

  Mark stared at us for a beat longer like he had something to say that wouldn’t quite come out.

  My attorney, Victoria, moved to my side, her shoulder brushing with mine as she whispered, “You sure about this guy?”

  I hooked a finger at Porter. “Him? No. I just found him in the parking lot.”

  Her lips thinned as she cut her gaze to Mark. “Charlotte, as I told you, Brady has filed for full custody. This is not something to joke around with. After the scuffle at the hospital and Porter breaking the order of protection, being here with him is not going to help your case. And, quite honestly, if you lose custody, it’s not going to help Porter, either.”

  A hum of adrenaline started in my fingertips before clawing its way through my body. “I’m not losing custody. I have done nothing wrong. Porter has been cleared of all involvement in the kidnapping. We were dating before we knew about Travis. And we’re dating after. This should be a non-issue. And if this is an issue, I’m paying you an exorbitant amount of money to make it a non-issue.”

  Porter’s hand tensed around mine in silent agreement.

  “Relax,” she urged. “We’re on the same team.”

  “Right. So, please”—I pointedly looked to Mark and then back to Victoria—“act like it.”

  Side-glances were exchanged between the two of them, but they eventually nodded and stepped away.

  I huffed and chanced a glance up at Porter, fully expecting a scowl to be covering his handsome face.

  It wasn’t.

  A sexy-as-sin smirk pulled at his lips. “You are so getting laid tonight,” he whispered. “That whole ‘make it a non-issue’ thing was hot.”

  I rolled my eyes, but only to hide the fact that my stomach was fluttering. “It’s true though. Combined, we could probably put Travis through college for what this is costing us. And, paying this kind of money, I sure as hell don’t expect it to come with a heaping side of judgment.”

  He grinne
d again and bent low to kiss me. “I like the idea of us putting Travis through college together.”

  My whole body warmed as I stared into his blue eyes. “I like the idea of that, too.”

  “All right. Break it up, you two,” Tanner said, sidling up beside his brother.

  “Where’s Dad?” Porter asked.

  “At home, probably digging cash out of his mattress for bail money.”

  Porter’s eyebrows shot up. “For which one of us?”

  Tanner straightened his ridiculous pink-and-white-striped tie, which only he could make look masculine. “If he’s smart? Both.”

  Porter grinned. Tanner’s lips split to match.

  Tanner leaned around his brother and aimed that megawatt moneymaker on me. “I owe you big time.”

  “For what?”

  “For that.” He jutted his chin down the hall.

  I turned and found Rita clipping toward us in a fitted black dress and a red pair of stilettos.

  “Don’t even pretend that you didn’t have something to do with her showing up at my door last night,” he said.

  “Oh, I had everything to do with that, Sloth. And don’t worry. I’ll let you know when I think of some way for you to return the favor. But, in the meantime”—I lowered my voice to a whisper—“don’t show your ass in here today and make me regret it. I don’t care what Brady says. You keep your mouth shut.”

  He lifted his hand to his temple in a salute and clicked out of the corner of his mouth. “Aye aye, captain.” His gaze heated as he slid it to Rita. “Hey there, my sexy lady,” he greeted in a sultry bedroom purr that I feared could impregnate her from across the room.

  He frowned when my best friend came to me first.

  “Hey, honey. You nervous?”

  “Not really,” I answered. “I just want to get this over with so can we go back up to the hospital and be with Travis.”

  “Good. Because it’s going to be great.” She reached into her black Fendi satchel and pulled a stack of papers out. “This is everything you asked for. Including a few more that I dug up on my own.” She winked. “You got this.”