Sandra lifts her head, looking at me from under heavy lids. I should let her sleep—we should both sleep. My body is exhausted, but I’m not ready to close my eyes. I don’t want this moment to be over. It feels like everything in my life has been leading me here, but my grip on it is so tenuous it might vanish if I let my attention slip for a single moment. She’s finally mine.
“Morning.” She grins then presses a kiss under my jaw.
Since we made our promises after she met my parents, we’ve spent hours talking, making love, and making even more promises. This night has been the night for us. The night we’ll always remember as the moment that marks our official beginning.
Snuggling into the crook of my arm, Sandra studies the promise ring on her finger, running the tip of her index finger over the intricate design. “How did you know my ring size?”
“I didn’t. It just so happens your finger was a match.”
She grins and twists her body so she’s looking at me. “Like destiny.”
I trail my hand down her smooth side then it lands over her belly. “I think so. Two worlds colliding.”
She laughs then rolls onto her back, putting her hands in the air as she belts out a few lines from INXS’s Never Tear Us Apart.
Grinning, I pull her closer and clamp my mouth down on hers, kissing her because I can’t not kiss her. “I promise to always love your signing.”
Laughing, she nudges against my body with her hips. “I promise to always love your kisses.”
Reaching up, I run my fingers through her hair, lightly brushing down her back before resting my hand on her hip. “I love you, Red,” I murmur, a wave of tiredness hitting me as I pull her closer and she nuzzles against my chest.
“I love you too,” she returns, her voice so faraway that I’m not sure if I hear it out loud or if this is all some kind of dream.
My eyes fly open, a shrill ringing pulling me from my sleep. Sitting upright, it takes me a moment to realise that it’s my house phone. My house phone never rings. It’s an emergency number that only certain people have.
Worried, I pull the sheet off my body and get out of bed, picking up my boxers and pulling them on before I run out to get it.
“Hello?”
Sandra
I wake with a start, the shrill sound of an alarm or an old phone cutting into my dreams. I catch sight of Jonathan as he leaves the room and the ringing stops. Wait. He has an actual phone? I didn’t realise anyone below the age of forty had those anymore.
Dragging my deliciously tired and aching body out of bed, I pick up Jonathan’s T-shirt and drop it over my head before I follow him out.
He’s standing in the living room, looking divine in his striped blue boxers and no shirt as he bows his head, listening to his caller. His free hand reaches up and rubs the back of his neck, and there’s something about the way he holds himself that has my chest thumping. “OK,” he says. “We’ll be there as soon as possible.”
“We? What’s going on?” I ask, sensing something is wrong from the tone of his voice.
He glances over at me, his eyes set with sadness as he speaks into the handset, “She’s here right now. I’ll put her on.”
Handing me the phone, he gives me a pained look and my heart leaps up into my throat as I swallow hard and press the receiver to my ear. “Hello?”
“Why haven’t you been answering your phone?” my mother cries, her voice distressed, making my concern grow as she begins to ramble. “I’ve been trying to call you since yesterday afternoon, Sandra. I knew you were with Jonathan and I had a hell of a job finding someone who’d put me in contact with him. Where have you been? We need you here.” She’s crying and I can barely understand her.
“I’m sorry, Mum, I’m sorry. What’s going on? What’s happened?
“It’s your father, he was on the roof and he fell!”
“He…he what?”
A sob bursts out of her before she continues. “He fell, and it’s…it’s bad. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know how I’ll cope.”
“Where are you?”
“At the hospital. They’re trying to save him but—” Her words cut off in another sob and my Aunt Liz, my mother’s sister, takes the phone from her and tells me where they are.
“And Sandra, you need to hurry,” she says before she disconnects.
When I hang up, I’m in shock.
“Get dressed. I’ll drive you,” Jonathan says, and all I can do is nod and follow his direction, not even knowing what I end up wearing as I get into the car beside him. I stare ahead the whole time, a sense of dread filling me. I forgot to hire a roofer.
This is my fault.
Thirty-Three
Sandra
“Red,” Jonathan whispers in comfort, his voice strained with emotion as he reaches for me.
“Don’t,” I gasp, holding up my hands and moving out of his reach. “Just don’t.”
I turn from him and wrap my arms around my wailing mother. We got here too late. My father died of massive internal haemorrhaging while we were still driving. I missed it. I didn’t see him before it was over because I was too damn busy fucking around with Jonathan.
My stomach twists and my throat clenches as my eyes burn. My family needed me, and I was too caught up my own selfish desires to even hear my mobile phone ringing.
“No,” Mum whispers as I sit beside her, cradling her in my arms. “Not my Tony. Not him. No.”
I bow my head, resting my face beside hers as she curls her body into me, seeming so small and so fragile compared to the woman who has been my rock for my entire life.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper back. “I’m so sorry.”
She shakes her head and her body quakes and we both mourn the loss of the same man, a man we both loved for very different reasons.
I mourn for the man who taught me how to swim and who refused to let me wear makeup until I was seventeen. The man who threw me in the air and twirled me around like I was an aeroplane. The man who smiled proudly with tears in his eyes when I graduated both high school and university. The man who was the man I measured all others against. The man who loved me first. My father.
And my mother mourns for the man she shared her life with, who loved alongside her and held her when she was sad. He was the light that sparked her joy, and the strength that kept her safe. He was her world.
She cries and she cries, and it’s as if I can hear her soul tearing in two. One half, now gone along with the extinguished life of its mate. And, as I hold her, it’s as if my heart splits in two right along with her. I feel broken, completely and utterly broken. I’m too angry at my own selfishness to even allow myself to cry. I should have been here. I should have been here for her when she needed me. Now all I can do is be the strength that carries her through.
When I look up, Jonathan is leaning against the wall, his head tilted back as his eyes close. He looks as though he’s feeling this loss just as much as we are, but how could he? He never even met my father. He doesn’t understand what we’ve lost. I look at him and my heart beats a little faster, causing me to feel an anger bubble up inside me. If I wasn’t so busy with Jonathan all the time, I would have booked the bloody tiler to fix the roof. Things would be different and maybe, just maybe, none of this would have happened.
Last night, when I was in Jonathan’s arms, I knew my life would be forever changed. I just didn’t expect it to be this. It’s like one of those goddamn Nicolas Sparks movies. Just when you’re at your happiest, life steps in, and tears it all away, breaking your heart and destroying your world.
“You need to go,” I tell him, his face blurry as my eyes fill with tears. My heart aches and I desperately wish we could rewind time and go back to the day before when everything was fine, and we were all happy. But I can’t. Yesterday is gone and I need him to leave me to fix what I’ve done.
His eyes open and he frowns down at me, confusion all over his beautiful features as I see that he understa
nds what has just happened between us. He understands that I can’t look at him without feeling that horrible sickness of guilt, because I wasn’t here. I.wasn’t.here.
“No,” he whispers, shaking his head. “I want to be here. I want to be here for you.”
My Aunt Liz reaches over and takes my mother from my arms, seeing that I need a moment to talk to Jonathan alone. “Go and talk to him. We’ll be OK.” She smiles, her eyes red-rimmed and watery as I stand and walk a short way down the hall with Jonathan.
“Don’t ruin this, Red. We can get through this. Let me take care of you. We have a baby to think about. Let me help.”
“I don’t need your help. I need you to go,” I cry, struggling to meet his eyes because I know that if I do, I’ll break down. And I need to be strong here. I need to be strong for my mother.
“Don’t push me away.” He frowns and tries to take my hand, but I pull away from him. “Red. Please.”
Taking a deep, shaky breath, I force myself to meet his eyes. They’re pained and swimming with emotion, just like mine are, and my breath hitches and I choke down a sob before I gather enough strength to speak.
“I look at you right now, and all I can think is that while I was in bed with you, my father was lying here dying. My mother needed me, and I wasn’t here for them. I wasn’t here because I was too busy fucking you. Too busy being selfish and planning to leave them behind to be with you. So, just go, Jonathan. Please, don’t make this any harder than it already is. It’s done. We can’t go back to yesterday. What we had—it’s ruined.” He opens his mouth to speak and his hands move like he’s going to reach out to me but I step back. “Just go!” I yell.
Several people glance over at us, and I watch Jonathan’s face twist from my rejection. Pain pierces my chest when his jaw clenches as he nods and turns away, stalking down the hall, his emotions barely contained until he goes through the exit door and slams it with a loud bang behind him.
I jump. My tears forcing their way out and spilling down my cheeks as I stare down the hall after him, knowing that I just sent away the only man I’ve ever been in love with.
Nicholas Sparks is right. We don’t all get to live happily ever after. Sometimes, love is pain. And sometimes, love is sacrifice. We don’t always get everything we want. I did this to my parents. All I had to do was book a bloody quote.
I did this.
Thirty-Four
Jonathan
This isn’t over.
I hold it together until I get to my car then I let out a bunch of expletives while I hammer my fists against the steering wheel and dash. “Fuck!”
All I want to do is be with her, comfort her, bring her shitty coffee—anything. But the thing she wants is me gone. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
I drop my head against the back of the seat and close my eyes, taking a calming breath.
I’m devastated for her. I’m devastated for her mother. And I’m devastated for us. I just want to be in the same room as her. But she’s pushing me away.
Fuck.
She can’t mean this. She’s just reeling in her grief. She’ll spend some time with her mother, and I’ll let her know I love her and when the grief isn’t so raw, we’ll be OK again. Because we have to be. We’re having a baby together
I’ll give her some time. We’re going to be OK.
Sandra
The doctor prescribes Mum a strong sedative so she can rest, and then we take her home. She barely says a word, walking out of the hospital in a daze, her expression pale and jaded. I sit with her in the back seat of my aunt’s car and I cradle her like a child as a fresh bout of tears flows from her eyes when we pull away from the hospital.
"You want me to stay overnight?" Aunt Liz asks, handing me the package of tranquillisers from the doctor.
"No, go back to Uncle Dan and the kids. We’ll be okay for now."
"All right, sweetheart. I’ll call you in the morning to see how she is. I'm so sorry for your loss." She reaches forward and gives me a tight embrace before stepping away from the door.
"Thank you," I say, even though it doesn't really fit the situation. Then I stand at the door waving her away and telling her how much I appreciate that she was there for mum when I wasn't. I’m so riddled with guilt that my body feels like a tight ball of tension and I’m barely holding on. I want to tip my head back to the heavens and scream out, why? Why did he have to be taken from us? Why did He have to steal our happiness from us?
Closing the door, I take a moment to breathe and calm myself down. So much has happened in such a short time, and I don't feel like I’m anywhere close to coming to grips with it. Last night Jonathan and I spent the night making promises and opening our hearts to each other. I’d been so worried about him breaking my heart that I never considered I’d be the one to do it. And not only my heart, I broke Mum’s too. All because of a broken promise. I was too caught up in Jonathan to remember I promised to talk Dad out of fixing the roof. Now he’s gone and I feel so responsible.
Wrapping my arms around my middle, I let out a sob, slapping my hand against my mouth to catch the sound. Somehow, I manage to tap my tooth with the ring Jonathan gave me. A promise ring.
“Oh god.” I move my hand to my forehead, breathing through my nose to calm down. I have to give the ring back, I don’t deserve anyone’s promises anymore.
Moving away from the door, I instinctively know where my mother will be, and I find her curled up on her bed hugging my father's pillow to her chest as she moans softly. I can hear the pain in each tortured sound, it tears at my wounded heart.
Sitting beside her, I smooth out her hair with my hand as I tell her I'm sorry over and over again. I don't know what else to say. I don't want to sit here and tell her that everything will be all right like one usually does in situations like these, because it doesn't feel as though we’ll ever be okay again. Right now, we’re broken.
Slowly, her sobs quiet down, so I move away from her and head into the kitchen to get her a glass of water so she can take her pills. As she swallows them down, I hope that the rest will give her a short reprieve from the pain in her heart.
“We’ll get through this, Mum,” I murmur as I return to the space next to her on the bed, and she moves so that her head is on my lap where she continues to sob quietly. I’ve never seen her like this. She’s unable to speak and unable to be anything but the emotional shell she is right now. How will we get through this when our rock is the person we’re mourning?
Slowly, the tablets force her to sleep. When her breathing deepens and her body stills, I finally give in and let myself cry for my own loss. Not just those tears that forced themselves from my eyes before. This time I cry out my grief with huge wracking sobs that hurt my chest and produce torrents of thick, hot tears that stream down my face and drip onto my chest.
I cry.
I cry for my mother as I wonder if she’ll ever recover to be the loving and confident woman I’ve always known her as.
I cry for my father, and the life that was taken from him far too soon.
I cry for myself; I cry out of guilt; I cry out of anger; I cry out of loss, and I cry because this isn’t fair.
But most of all, I cry for our happiness—my parent’s, Jonathan’s and mine—now lost, never to be returned.
Over the next week my mother becomes almost catatonic. She's barely responsive when I speak to her and does little more than sit in her chair and stare out the window all day. She's not even interested in being distracted by the TV. Between my aunt and me, we take care of her round-the-clock, and we share in making all the necessary arrangements that one is obliged to do when a loved one passes from this world.
And just to make my life even harder, I lose the baby. It was like discovering I had my period, the last link of my connection with Jonathan, slipping away like it never really existed. I always thought a miscarriage would be more dramatic, but it was slow and secretive and now I can’t feel anything. I’m numb and I’m alone and everything that w
as good about my life is now gone. I hate everything.
I hate myself.
I hate that want to call Jonathan and I hate that I can’t stand the idea of seeing him. I hate that I need to tell him about the baby. I hate that my body failed doing the one thing it’s supposed to be biologically capable of. I hate that it feels like a dirty secret. I hate that I can’t bring myself to take this ring off my finger….
Life went from beautiful to shit in an instant , and it's horrible, and I wish to God there was something I could do to turn back time to keep all of this from happening. But there's nothing. Nothing I can do. Nothing at all.
On the day I was due to travel to the US with Jonathan, I find myself sitting in an Uber travelling back to my place to collect my car and a few personal items so I can continue living with my mother. I offered for her to move in with me, wondering if perhaps living in a house that holds constant reminders of Dad is too hard for her. But she flat-out refused. She wants to stay with the memories of her love, which really, is all we both have—memories of lost loves. We can be crazy cat ladies together. We’ll just need a cat first.
Thanking my Uber driver, I get out of the car and stand in front of my house, preparing to say goodbye to it yet again. It’s funny how quickly your direction can change. Jonathan came into my life and exploded my world. I lost my best friend, my house was destroyed, and the press started following me around. Now, almost two months later, my world has exploded again. The first explosion brought me love. The second one took it away. It’s fitting that on the day I was due to leave this house and start a new life with Jonathan is also the day I’m leaving it to start my spinster life with my mother.
Letting out a deep sigh, I head inside and pull my suitcase out of my spare room. Throwing it on my bed, I open my cupboards and grab handfuls of clothes, dumping it all inside. I don’t think I’ll be coming back here.
Star (Beautiful Book 5) Page 20
