“Hello?”
I tap lightly on the door and I hear Lucy’s voice call out to me.
“Come on in, Aunt Violet.”
I slowly push open the door in wonder.
I know I’m not technically the baby’s aunt, and that one day when August stops being so self-involved and settles down, or when Charlie grows up and stops serial dating – I might get some nieces and nephews that are related by blood, but the little bundle that I can see wrapped up in my best friend’s arms – the sister I chose, will always be my family.
“Oh my God.” I breathe the words.
I don’t want to make even a sound and risk disrupting this moment of perfection.
Emmett is sitting on the side of the bed, right next to Lucy, and they’re the most beautiful little family I’ve ever seen.
“You’re only ten minutes too late.”
I don’t even have to look up to see who that voice belongs to. I would know it anywhere.
“It looks like you had it covered without me,” I reply softly, my eyes still solely focused on the tiny baby in my best friend’s arms.
“She’s beautiful, huh?” Lucy catches my eye. She looks exhausted, but I’ve never seen her happier or more content than she looks right now.
“She?”
“You bet.” Emmett nods. “My little princess.” It’s clear to see that this little girl already has her daddy securely wrapped around her finger.
“Her name is Harper Violet Hale,” Lucy tells me. “We named her after her godmother.” And with that statement I feel the tears start to fall.
“Did you know I was born in this hospital?”
I haven’t turned to check he’s there, but I don’t need to, I know he followed me out here.
“You were?” he replies after a moment of silence.
I’ve been here for hours, watching my best friend be a mother, and I’ve literally never seen a sight more perfect. It fills me with warmth and cuts me deep in the very same breath.
Lucy deserves every ounce of happiness that little girl will bring her, but according to fate, I won’t be afforded the same sense of joy.
I nod at him.
The silence stretches between us and I know he’s waiting for me to speak.
“You were right earlier; there is something I need to tell you,” I whisper, my voice shaky.
He moves closer to me and I take a minute to marvel at the feel of his warmth against my arm. He’s such an amazing man – the fact he just ensured that my goddaughter made it into the world safe and healthy is an absolute testament to that. Knowing how special he really is just makes me all the more afraid I might lose him.
He’s shared his most tightly kept secret with me tonight, and I owe him the same in return – it’s time he knew everything about me, the same way I know him.
It can’t have been easy for him to talk about his sister, but he did it. For me – for us.
His life reads like some type of sad story.
I might have experienced a lot, but he’s been through his own brand of heartbreak too and I think that maybe he needs me as much as I need him.
I’m scared like I’ve never been scared before. It seems to be a reoccurring theme where Rylan is concerned. Maybe this is what being in love is like. Maybe I’ll always be terrified about what will happen next.
“Tell me.”
His hand reaches for mine and I take it gladly.
We’re standing side by side, me watching Lucy, Emmett and baby Harper, and him watching me.
I don’t know where I should even begin when it comes to telling this tale, but I figure the beginning is as good of a place as any.
“They tell me I died in this hospital too.”
I hear his sharp intake of breath as the words hang in the air between us.
Rylan
“Come with me, there’s something I need to show you.”
She takes my hand and leads me towards the stairs, right up to the room where she paints.
I’m surprised by this, I wasn’t expecting to be allowed back in here again anytime soon after my last intrusion, let alone welcomed with a personal escort, but after what she told me at the hospital I should have known that all bets were off.
She pauses outside the door and looks warily back over her shoulder at me.
“It’ll be easier to explain if I show you as well as tell you.”
I nod, even though I don’t really understand where she’s going with this. It doesn’t matter, because I do know one thing – that wherever she’s going, I’m going there too.
She rests her hand on the door handle and takes a deep, steadying breath.
I can feel the fear and insecurity radiating from her, but I don’t say a word. I know she needs to work through this – whatever this is – for herself, and for us.
She eventually pushes the door open and I see why she’s shaking like a leaf.
The display she’s created is so confronting I can barely breathe.
I understand now exactly why she’s kept all this hidden. These paintings say so much without actually having to say anything at all.
I’m gasping for air as my eyes start at the beginning, tracing over one work of art before moving onto the next.
She’s so incredibly talented – the amount of emotion and passion that has gone into these is rivalled by nothing I’ve ever seen before.
“This is only a small part of my story. But it’s the part that I think you need to hear the most.”
My eyes dart around the room until I find her – standing by the very first painting in the big half circle she’s made. It’s one I’ve already seen, only a few short hours ago, but seeing it up on display makes it seem new again.
“I was twenty-one when my heart went into cardiac arrest less than a year before I had my transplant; they had to revive me twice. I was technically dead for a while there.”
I look at the painting she’s standing next to and I feel fear. Deep, irrational fear – I know I don’t need to be afraid, because she’s right here and she’s okay… she’s alive, but I can’t look away and I can’t seem to slow my heart rate.
“When I came back, I painted all of these.”
She’s never told me this part of her story and that scares me – I can’t think of a reason she would have decided to keep it a secret.
I’m instantly filled with worry that maybe everything isn’t as it seems – that perhaps there’s still something threatening her life.
I love her – I love her more than I ever thought I could love another person, and the thought of a world where she doesn’t exist just about brings me to my knees.
“Have you ever heard people say that their lives flashed before their eyes when they came close to death?” She’s talking about something so life altering, yet her voice is serene, she looks like she’s at peace.
I nod in acknowledgement – right now I can’t speak.
“I saw it, Rylan, I saw my whole life. I saw my parents, my brother and sister, Lucy… they were all there.”
She walks slowly past each painting as she speaks, and I feel like I’m right there on the verge of death with her. I feel like I’ve stepped into the so-called light and now my life is flashing before my eyes – because her life is my life now too. I’m not doing it without her.
My eyes follow her every movement, only leaving her face to look at each piece of art.
“But this was different than what they tell you in books or in the movies… I didn’t see the life I’d already lived; I saw the life I should have had – the life that was mine if I survived...”
I don’t understand what she means by that. I always assumed that before you died, if in fact your life did flash before your eyes, that you saw everything that had meant the most to you in the time you’d had.
“I guess it wasn’t my time yet.” She smiles, and I let out a breath I didn’t realise I’d been holding. “Maybe one day, when it is my time, perhaps I’ll see the past then…�
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I don’t even want to imagine the end of her life – I know it’s been a very real possibility for her over the years, but I just can’t allow my brain to go there.
“I think it was the only way to get me to come back, you know? To show me everything I should have had…”
“What did you see?” The words are out of my mouth without conscious thought, but I’m glad I said them. She’s nearing the end of the paintings now, and there’s only one left, but there’s still so much left to tell – I can sense it.
The final piece is huge – it’s covered with a sheet and I have a feeling that everything she’s been keeping from me will be revealed once she lifts it.
I can already see so much of what she was looking at in those moments, the images, colours and scenes on the canvases in front of me are expressive and gut wrenching – but they’re not why she brought me up here, I’m sure of it.
It’s the painting under the sheet that I’m really here for.
She looks at me, her eyes pleading, for what, I’m not sure…
Understanding perhaps… forgiveness?
She tugs on the sheet and it reveals the painting behind it with a whoosh.
At first I don’t understand. It’s a set of eyes, deep blue eyes, and in the reflection of those eyes are daisies – fields of them, just like I saw earlier in her other paintings.
“You want to know what I saw, Rylan?”
I’m staring at the painting and I still don’t understand what I’m looking at, but I think my brain is getting close to figuring it out.
“I saw you.”
It’s not until the word falls from her lips that I make the connection.
Those are my eyes.
My eyes are on a canvas that she painted four years ago – before I’d seen her for the first time, and I don’t know what that means.
I can’t fathom how any of this possibly makes sense.
“I saw you, Rylan… the last thing I saw was your eyes and the only thing I could hear in the darkness was your voice. You saved me.”
“Me?” I stutter the word as I take a step closer. “I didn’t know you, you didn’t know me…”
“Yet you were outside my room all those months later… I don’t know how to explain it, we’d never met… I don’t know how it’s possible…”
I tear my eyes away from the image and meet her gaze with what I’m sure is a look of utter confusion and wonder.
“But it was you, Rylan, I do know that.”
“This might sound stupid, but it feels like I’m here for you,” she whispers. “Maybe I survived because I hadn’t found you yet… ever since I woke up, it’s as though every moment has led me to this one.”
I know exactly what she means.
The past three years never felt like they were going anywhere at all, but now that I’m here with her in my arms, it does seem like a journey.
It feels like there’s a map imprinted on my heart, and every single road leads to her.
If it weren’t for my sister’s accident I never would have laid eyes on Violet. I never would have moved into Daisy’s house and got a job at the hospital she worked in. I never would have met Emmett or Lucy, and I wouldn’t have been set up on that first date with Violet.
I wouldn’t be here now.
It devastates me to think that my sister dying had set something like this in motion – that without her leaving me, I never would have found the woman I love with everything I have.
There’s a million thoughts flying through my head and I’ve got so many questions, but one thing seems to stand out among the rest.
Daisy… it was Daisy that brought us together.
I stroke Violet’s hair before placing a tender kiss to her forehead.
We’re out under the stars – in the place that’s become ours.
Bear’s here with us, and nothing has ever felt more right.
Even though I’m missing so much, I somehow feel complete.
I have everything I need right here, it’s not everything I want from my life, but I know for certain that it is all I’ll ever need.
I glance down at Violet and she’s staring up at the dark vastness with a look of total wonder on her face. They’re the very same stars we look at most nights, but each time she searches that sky it’s like she’s seeing it all for the very first time.
I’ve often found myself wondering what she sees through those eyes of hers.
She doesn’t perceive things like the rest of us do. I know she has fears and worries, I know that she has more insecurities than most, but she has a sense of peace that surrounds her… it envelops her.
She sees the good in everything and that good is reflected back to her, almost as though she’s absorbing it into her soul.
I’d give almost anything to look at the world through her eyes, even just for five minutes. I bet there’s no one on earth that sees those stars the way she does.
“Rylan?” she whispers into the cool night air.
“Yeah?”
“What do you think it means?”
She’s apprehensive about my answer. I can see her teeth worrying her bottom lip the way she always does when she’s nervous.
I’m not sure I have an answer for her. When it comes to things like fate and destiny, I’ve never been a big believer, but there’s no other way to explain this. I brought her back from the brink of death and in turn, she saved me in my darkest hour.
There’s credit due to something or someone for that, but I don’t have any idea where to begin with my thank yous.
I also don’t know how to answer the woman I love.
I turn and push up onto my elbow so I’m leaning over her. “I think it means we’re exactly where we’re meant to be.”
“You and me?” She whispers the words in a voice so uncertain it threatens to break my heart.
“You and me… Us… maybe it’s as simple as the fact that we we’re meant to put each other back together again.”
Violet
“That’s it… that’s the whole story.” My voice has wound up being so quiet I’m not sure she will have caught everything I said, but when I look up it’s obvious she understands exactly what I’ve told her.
I didn’t come over here with the intention to spill my guts to Lucy like this, but when beautiful little Harper fell asleep in my arms, the story had just flowed from me for some reason.
I’m still not entirely sure why I never told Lucy about what happened to me – and as strange as it was to have a secret from her all these years, in a way I’m glad I did.
Auggie might have known this whole time, but it was all just a dream until Rylan turned up. Now that he’s here and we’re together, it really has developed into one hell of a story.
“So I can’t take credit for you two after all?” She pouts, and I laugh.
Of course that would be her first response.
Luce is so proud of herself for setting us up; her and Emmett haven’t stopped gloating about it since we became an official couple.
I am incredibly grateful to them both, and I don’t want to burst her bubble, but I think she was just a pawn in something much bigger than any of us.
“I hate to break it to you, but I think I saw him first.”
I’m surprised she isn’t bombarding me with questions and demanding answers, but right now she seems to just be absorbing everything I’ve told her.
I can’t blame her for needing a minute to process, it’s taken me a long time to get my head around, and I’m the one who experienced it.
I wouldn’t fault Lucy if she didn’t believe me at all – it’s a pretty surreal and farfetched tale, but she always has been a bit more spiritual than me, so she’s likely to deem the whole thing as destiny.
“I think I felt it, you know? The first moment I met him, it was you that popped into my head. In my brain at least, the two of you have always been connected.”
It makes me happy that she thinks of the two of us like th
at.
I’ve thought a lot about it lately – how we’re all intertwined with one another’s stories. Lucy and I, Lucy and Emmett, Rylan and I, Emmett and Rylan, Emmett and I… all three of these people are responsible in their own way for saving my life – for keeping me alive both emotionally and physically.
I may have been dealt a really shitty health hand over the years, but I’ve been handed an absolute winning combination when it comes to company, love and relationships, and if I think about it, I’m not sure I’d trade one for the other.
I’d rather experience the struggles I have and be around these incredible people, than have a perfect bill of health with no one of any significance to share it with.
“I’m so glad you found him, Letty – even if it wasn’t because of my match making skills – you deserve to be happy.”
I’ve got goose bumps on my arms and legs still – it happens every time I think about what I saw in my vision.
“You know, I pictured him in my sleep every night for years… but I don’t have to dream anymore, Luce, I can just roll over and he’s there. It’s surreal – my whole life feels like a dream now.”
“That must be the weirdest thing.”
“I have to keep convincing myself that it is real…”
“It’s real.” She smiles sadly at me and I know it’s because she understands why I’m always waiting for it all to go wrong – that’s the way it’s been my whole life. “He’s not going anywhere, I’ve seen the way he looks at you – he might be willing to fight for you even harder than I have.”
I can’t imagine anyone other than my mum and dad fighting harder for me than Lucy has, but when I picture Rylan in my mind, I can’t help but consider that maybe he might be the strongest fighter of all.
Rylan is still out in the garage working with Emmett – he’s helping him build a set of shelves for Harper’s room and while they’re out there throwing around their testosterone and man skills, I’m getting my baby fix.
“She’s seriously so cute, how do you get anything done? I just want to stare at her all day.” I swoon.
My Heart Wants (The Heart Duet Book 2) Page 11
