“Angel, of course you should go. How long has it been since you saw her?”
“Almost a month,” she admitted. I could hear the guilt in her voice, and I came to stand behind her in front of the mirror, slipping my arms around her waist as I kissed the top of her head. “She isn’t really aware of the time passing, but I still hate that I can’t be there with her every day. I call the staff to check in and get updates, but talking on the phone is confusing for her.”
I frowned in concern and confusion. I hadn’t wanted to pry for details on her mother’s health condition earlier, but it sounded very bleak. Charlotte relaxed in my arms and met my gaze in the mirror.
“Is it something you want to do alone, or would you mind me tagging along?” I asked, smiling faintly at the look of surprise on her face. “We could use the car ride to talk, and I can wait outside the room while you visit with her if you’d like time alone.”
“You realize the drive is an hour there and back? And there’s really nothing to see in Wauchula.”
“It’s no problem,” I assured her. “I’ll feel better if you don’t try to make that trip alone in your car anyway.” I expected her to be stubborn and argue the point, but she agreed with visible chagrin.
“Yeah… I know my car really isn’t really reliable enough for long trips, which is another part of the reason I don’t visit more often.”
“So, you don’t mind if I drive?”
“That would be great. If you’re sure you want to come, I mean. Don’t feel like you have to.”
“I want to.” I smiled and squeezed her a little tighter before releasing her. “Come on, then. We can grab some lunch on the way.”
Fifteen
Charlotte
A short while later, I found myself in the passenger seat of Eli’s sleek BMW with a bag of fast food in my lap and a pair of large sodas between us. We were heading east out of Tampa toward Lakeland, and traffic was surprisingly light for a Saturday.
I unwrapped his cheeseburger halfway and handed it to him, surreptitiously taking in his appearance. When he’d emerged from his bedroom in board shorts and a t-shirt, it had taken me a moment to realize it was the first time I’d seen him dressed in something other than office wear. As much as I liked Eli in his sharp suits or dress shirts and ties, he looked damn good like this too.
Now with the burger in his hand, he almost looked like a completely different person. His t-shirt was blue and bore a logo that was slightly too faded to be legible. It fit him in a way that had me thinking very unladylike thoughts, as though I weren’t still sore from this morning. Hell, I’d barely managed to resist him as we’d bathed in his monstrosity of a shower. What had gotten into me?
We spent the whole car ride talking as his GPS directed him to my hometown. It was a little strange how natural it felt. Although we were just beginning to learn about each other, it felt like we’d been doing this for years. Taking drives and sharing French fries, talking about our favorite music and what our childhoods had been like…
He told me a little about his parents, Lee and Virginia Brighton. His father had spent years in the Navy and Coast Guard, and Rowan Pierce had been Lee’s best friend for as long as Eli could remember. He described his mother as a woman with an ‘interesting personality.’ Whatever that meant. He must’ve been able to read my confusion, because he decided to elaborate.
“I guess you could say she has a special way of making people feel uncomfortable. She’s a good person at heart, and she loves her family. She generally means well, but…” He shrugged nervously. “As my sister likes to say, her delivery could use some work. Mom has improved over the past couple of years, but it took a lot to get her to even admit she needed to change.”
“What brought it about, then?”
“Kennedy decided to be a surrogate for her best friend a couple years ago. She was single at the time, didn’t have kids of her own… My mom had a hard time understanding why she would do that for anyone, much less someone who wasn’t related. That’s actually how Kennedy met Donovan. He’s her friend’s younger brother.”
“Wow. Sounds complicated.” That was probably an understatement, though it wasn’t like our situation was any simpler. Eli smiled and nodded.
“You would think. It worked out well for everyone in the end, though. Their niece turned two last month. She was born early, but you can’t tell by looking at her now. Kennedy and Donovan were in a car accident, and it sent her into early labor. My mom was pretty shaken up by the whole ordeal, especially since she’d been too mad to even talk to Kenn ever since she told us about the surrogacy. That was enough to wake her up a little. She’d been distant from me too, because she didn’t approve of the divorce, but after the accident, she reached out to both of us, trying to reconnect.”
I digested his words in silence for a moment as I nibbled on my own sandwich. His mother certainly sounded like a piece of work, and I wasn’t entirely sure I ever wanted to meet her. But I liked that he’d been willing to share the bad as well as the good when it came to his family. I couldn’t help but feel flattered by his trust. I still didn’t know where this relationship was headed or if I was being ridiculous to want to pursue it, but his openness was reassuring.
“What was your ex-wife like?” I dared to ask. Eli looked a little surprised by my question, but he didn’t clam up.
“She was okay for the most part, I guess. Our relationship was good at first, or at least I thought so. Granted, we were both focused on our own goals, but that was okay. It worked for a while, but we started having issues around our first anniversary. We were arguing all the time, especially when she thought I was spending too much time at work and not paying her enough attention.”
He paused, seeming to regret his words, and backpedaled slightly.
“I shouldn’t say it like that. She was my wife, and she deserved my attention. I hated that she felt like she wasn’t getting it, but I was more concerned with other things at the time. Rowan was still alive, but I think he knew his health was failing. He’d amped up my training quite a bit, though I didn’t realize why back then. Eventually, June started going out of her way to pick fights, and before I knew it, she was asking for a divorce.”
“You didn’t want to split up?”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t my idea, but by that point, I was just so tired of arguing all the time,” Eli shrugged. “So, I didn’t fight it. It was as quick and clean as those things can ever be, and I haven’t heard from her since. She moved to Atlanta not long after we split. I’m just glad we never had a child together. That would’ve made it so much worse.”
I had to agree with him there. As much as I loved and admired my mother, I had certainly missed having a father in my life. However, I’d had friends whose parents weren’t together but were both still around, and it had seemed like there was always some sort of drama. Being forced into a co-parenting situation tended to make people forget that they were supposed to be the adults in the equation.
“Did either of you want kids?” I asked cautiously, not quite sure what answer I was hoping for.
“She didn’t, and at the time, I was so busy with RPC that trying to add fatherhood into the mix probably wouldn’t have been a good idea. I wouldn’t have been opposed to it eventually, though, and I guess that’s pretty much how I feel now. But if it never happens, it won’t be the end of the world. What about you?”
Eli’s blue eyes were a bit more guarded, and I couldn’t help but wonder what answer he was hoping for. Was he envisioning a future for us already? Part of me thought the speed and unlikelihood of that sort of thinking was ridiculous, but on the other hand, it didn’t necessarily feel wrong. Though to some extent, we were still dancing around the proverbial elephant in the room: the fact that he was going to be my boss.
“I guess I’ve always imagined having them eventually, but it’s the farthest thing from my mind right now. My life is complicated enough as it is. I can’t imagine trying to add a child to it
any time soon.”
“Because of your mom?”
“Yes, among other things. Her name is Paula,” I added softly, gazing out the window. “I’m not sure I told you that before.”
“You didn’t. Will you tell me more about her?”
I smiled and glanced over to find him watching me with a cautious expression. As though he wasn’t sure he had a right to ask, even after he’d shared so much about his own life. He wasn’t keeping score and didn’t expect equal reciprocation, which made him different from pretty much every man I’d ever known.
“She’s been a single mom for as long as I can remember,” I began, thinking back to my earliest memories. “My dad left when I was really young, maybe two or three. I don’t remember much about him, and what I do recall… I’m not even sure if they’re real memories or things I imagined, you know?”
Eli nodded but remained silent, reaching over to take my hand in his. I smiled briefly down at our entwined fingers and was struck by how natural it felt.
“Anyway… I’ve seen some old pictures, and I know his name. But that’s about it.”
“You never tried to look him up?”
“Why would I? He left. Didn’t want to have a family anymore. He was a trucker, so he was gone a lot anyway, and one day he just decided not to come home. He left a message on our answering machine saying he wouldn’t be back. My mom cried for weeks. That much, I do remember. He made it perfectly clear that he didn’t want us, and I’m not one to impose where I’m not wanted.”
“And your mother never remarried or had other children?” he asked, his expression sympathetic.
“I don’t even remember her dating, to be honest. Not that I would’ve had a problem with it.” I sighed and returned my gaze to the passing scenery. “She had her first stroke in the fall semester of my senior year at UF. Her health really deteriorated, and she had to stop working. So, I moved back home to take care of her and help her get things set up with disability. I wouldn’t wish that process on my worst enemy,” I said, shaking my head.
“I’ve heard,” Eli nodded. “I don’t have personal experience with that, but I know it’s not as easy as a lot of people seem to think.”
“It took almost a year to get it approved, even with full support and cooperation from her specialists. And that’s faster than a lot of people get it. At that point, Mom was still pretty lucid and had about half of her mobility. Social security jerked us around about wanting her to train for more sedentary work, but she wasn’t even capable of sitting at a desk for an hour before needing to rest. No employer would be that accommodating.
“When she had her second stroke, though… That was the ballgame, so to speak. She lost pretty much all of her mobility and most of her memory and cognitive function. I’m not strong enough to lift her by myself, so I had to find a care facility for her and set her up to be my dependent. Her disability claim finally went through, so she got Medicare in addition to Medicaid.”
“And you said that still doesn’t cover everything?” I glanced at him again and was surprised to see a look of determined concentration on his face. He’d sat up a bit straighter, listening intently.
“At some places, it would cover everything. Or cover enough. I didn’t know well enough what to look for when I was finding a place for her the first time,” I admitted, still feeling guilty about it. “I chose one that would’ve been covered fully and figured once she was settled, I could go back to school and just drive down to visit on weekends or something.
“So, I got her set up there and worked on clearing out the house so I could get it on the market. Mom worked as a guidance counselor at the local high school, but it’s a small district, so we never had much. We weren’t poor by most people’s standards, but the house still had to go. Anyway, I was looking forward to re-enrollment at UF when…”
My voice failed me for a moment, and I felt an echo of the anger that had flooded me that day. Eli waited patiently and gave my hand a squeeze of encouragement. I took a deep breath and plowed on.
“I was visiting in the evening and decided to help Mom change for bed. Thought I’d give the nurses a break, you know? That’s when I saw the bruises.”
“Jesus.” His eyes were wide with alarm and disgust, and I nodded.
“At that point, she was still lucid some of the time, and she said she’d slipped somehow and bumped into something. But because of her memory issues, she didn’t recall it actually happening. An orderly had just told her that was where the bruises had come from, so she believed him.
“I know that moving a sedentary person around, even to do simple things, can leave unintentional marks. Accidents happen. But there were no accident reports in her chart, and I know what those kinds of marks look like. These were something else.”
“Did they figure out who was responsible?” Eli asked, appalled and angry.
“No. No one would fess up, and there had been about ten different people in contact with her that week. The director pretended to investigate but eventually ruled that an accident must have simply gone unreported. He didn’t want to hear that one of their patients had been abused.”
“Son of a bitch. So, what happened?”
“I got her the fuck out of there. Wauchula is a small town, and there’s only one other facility in the immediate area that was equipped to care for her. I’d ruled it out before because they didn’t accept her state healthcare, which would have meant a lot of medical bills we couldn’t afford to pay.”
“So, you moved her there anyway and then came to Tampa to find a better paying job than whatever was available in Wauchula,” Eli surmised aloud. I took a deep breath, beginning to feel lighter as the weight of my burdens eased. I’d never realized how much of a difference it made to be able to share them with someone else.
“Yes. I got rid of my car and started driving Mom’s instead, since it was paid off. The proceeds from selling the house helped cover her deductibles, but even that money went pretty quickly when she had a third stroke.”
Eli sucked in a breath and squeezed my hand tightly again.
“That one aged her more than the others. She’s not even fifty-five, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at her. Her hair turned white, she lost a lot of weight, and her lucid moments are pretty rare… She doesn’t talk much anymore either. They tell me she could live for years like this before her body finally begins to shut down, but…”
“But it’s like she’s already gone.”
“Exactly.”
I felt my eyes stinging with tears and wiped them away quickly, stifling a sob. Jesus, pull it together. Regardless of the shitfest that had become my life, I always tried not to let it get to me like this. Crying solved nothing. I could weep until I had no tears left, but I’d still be homeless, hopeless, and exhausted. Visiting my mom was always an emotional ordeal, but talking about her like this was even harder. I hadn’t shared this much with anyone in years, and it was as overwhelming as it was liberating. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel so alone.
“Sorry,” I sniffled, shaking my head at my brief show of weakness.
“Don’t be. You love your mom, and you’re allowed to feel sad about what’s happened to her. You shouldn’t keep that bottled up,” Eli murmured, his voice sincere and soothing.
“Most of the time, she doesn’t seem to recognize people. Doesn’t know who or where she is. But every now and then, I’ll see a little glimpse of something in her eyes. Just a spark... It’s like she’s in there somewhere, but she can’t find her way to the surface.”
“I can’t even imagine. I’m so sorry you’ve had to go through this, Angel. Is there any chance she could improve?”
“Slim to none. Her lucid periods might improve a little, but her doctors have warned me not to count on that,” I sighed. Eli’s frown deepened.
“Can she be moved? Somewhere closer to Tampa, so you could see her more often?”
“I’ve never asked,” I admitted with a shrug. “The
re’s probably no physical reason she couldn’t be, even if they had to transport her in an ambulance, but the cost would be ridiculous. Not to mention that anywhere decent in Tampa would be even more expensive. I’d never be able to afford it.”
“That was before you got a new job with private health coverage. I don’t know off the top of my head how much is covered when it comes to long term care facilities like that, but combined with her Medicare, it should at least be an improvement.”
“I know.” I gave him a tremulous smile and felt my previous good mood returning. “I was planning to research the health plan in more detail this morning, but… I was otherwise occupied.”
Eli grinned back and lifted my hand to his lips, kissing my knuckles softly.
“We’ll figure it out.”
“We?”
“Yes,” he nodded, glancing at me a bit nervously. “As long as that’s what you want, anyway.”
My mind was racing. What was he saying? That he wants us to be together officially? I mean, it was one thing to claim my body and talk me into staying at his place until I could afford an apartment. But when I thought of all the baggage I’d just put on display for him, I realized I’d been expecting him to pull away. To be intimidated or turned off by the chaos and instability of my life. But he seemed to be doing the opposite. I didn’t know what to make of it, so I said the first thing that came to mind.
“But how would that work? What happens on Monday? You’re going to be my boss.”
And there it was. The bush we’d been beating around since the moment I’d taken the job. Eli’s expression was serious, but he looked a bit more confident.
“I’ve been giving that some thought, and I might have a solution.”
“Okay?”
“You haven’t officially started yet. Not until Monday. We could notify HR that we have a standing relationship that began before your official hire date. RPC doesn’t have rules about intraoffice dating, but this way we won’t feel like we have to sneak around about it. We can just be open.”
Fortune's Angel (Fates Aligned Book 2) Page 11
