His to Love (Fireside #1)(32)

Especially the parts about Tyson.

“Tyson,” she said, a little breathless, still surprised. “Wow. And you say you ran into him on the plane, right?”

“Yeah.” My fingers found their way into my hair. “Imagine the odds, huh?” I laughed but it was stilted and rough.

“Do you trust him?”

Her question made me pause. Did I?

With my body? Definitely.

With my heart? I wanted to.

But sometimes there was this distance he put between us, even just that morning. It made me question if he was holding himself back.

“As much as I possibly can,” I finally admitted, feeling that sinking weight return to the pit of my stomach.

“Be careful.”

My eyelids fluttered closed at the concern in her voice. It was full of love and kindness…but worry, too.

“I will,” I promised her.

I went on to further promise that I would call her more often, and that of course I would keep her posted on everything, especially my mother’s health.

By the time I arrived back at work and dived into a socialite’s wedding plans that Simone had dropped on my desk while I was gone, I realized that while I felt better after talking to Eleanor…I was not sure if any of my uncertainties had been alleviated, or my questions answered.

—

“How is she today?” I asked Claude as I stepped into the entryway of my parents’ home.

His soft smile tilted down at the edges. “Awake now, I believe. But…” He drifted off, looking away from me, and I fought the urge to wrap my arms around him as he fought for composure. My own emotions threatened to overwhelm me when I saw him looking so heartbroken.

“I know.” I rested my hand on his forearm and squeezed gently. “You don’t have to tell me.”

His fragile, aging hand rested on top of mine. “She’ll be filled with joy to see you, bella.”

With a quick nod, I let go of him and placed my hand on the banister, heading up the stairs. My journey was long and slower than normal, most likely because I knew the end was coming closer. After my talk with Eleanor today, my emotions were still raw. I knew I didn’t have much time with my mom. Every time I saw her, her skin was paler, her voice weaker. She slept longer due to meds the home nurse continued to pump into her at an increasing rate.

Sometime soon, my mom was going to drift off into a drug-induced sleep and never return. I blinked the tears out of my eyes at the thought and forced my way up the stairs and into her room.

Brianna, my mom’s nurse, turned her head toward me and smiled as I entered. She stood with a washcloth in her hands and placed it in a bucket of water.

“She’s cool.” She whispered, not because my mom was sleeping, but because, as I was learning, that’s just how people talked around people who were dying. “I was just washing her face with some warm water. Would you like to help?”

No. It was the last thing in the world I wanted to do.

“Sure,” I said anyway and walked to my mom’s side of the bed, slipping into the chair next to her.

“I’ll leave you alone.” Brianna gestured to the alert necklace my mom wore. With a simple push of a button, an alarm sounded on Brianna’s cellphone. “Call me if you need me.”

“Hey, sweetie.” My mom’s voice was gravelly and barely audible. I hated it. Hated that her breast cancer had metastasized to her brain where it was slowly killing her.

I leaned forward and brushed my lips against her cool cheek. She shivered and I leaned back, tucking in the blankets around her more firmly. Then I took the warm cloth out of the water, wringing the excess water out. With slow and tender movements, I gently brushed it along my mom’s forehead and over her exposed hands. They were bone thin.

“Having a good day?”

“Every day I open my eyes and see someone I love is a good day.” She struggled through the sentence, pausing to cough.

I couldn’t stop the tears from falling, tiny streams running down my cheeks.

She pressed her cool hand against my right cheek, running her thumb down and wiping away the wetness. “Don’t cry for me.”

“I need to tell you something.” My chin wobbled. She waited patiently for me to compose myself, only dropping her hand from my cheek to cover my hand on top of her blankets. “I can’t marry Malik.”

Her eyelids fluttered closed and a strangled breath left her lips. “I thought you’d say that.”

I turned my hand underneath hers so our palms touched and I could wrap my fingers around hers. “I don’t love him.”

She laughed softly. I hated the hoarseness in her throat. The end was coming. I could feel it taking her breath by breath, smile by smile. I wanted to run screaming from the room and demand justice for her.

“You are stubborn. Like Eleanor.”

She winked, teasing me. I choked out a laugh through the lump in my throat. “You raised me,” I accused.

“So I did.” She leaned forward and coughed so hard I reached for the wet rag and held it over her mouth. With one hand on her back, I tried to soothe her through the coughing fit that made her flinch in pain. When she settled again, both of us had eyes filled with more tears. She pulled me to her, her palms on my cheeks, and pressed her lips to my forehead. “I love every minute I spent raising you,” she whispered, her breathing now ragged and spent. “Don’t ever doubt that. Even when I was here, and you were away, there has never been a moment when you haven’t been on my mind.”

God. I lost the final thread of my self-control, the final barrier holding my emotions in check. Like a little girl, I scrambled from the chair I had been in and climbed into the bed next to my mom.

“Let me hold you, my darling daughter,” she whispered, her lips pressing against my forehead again. Her arms were frail and lacked the strength, but it didn’t matter. We lay like that for several minutes, our soft cries the only sound in the room, and her love the only thing I felt. “Marry a man you love, Gabriella. If that man can’t be Malik, make sure he loves you fiercely and would risk his life to keep you safe.”

I shook my head, unable to answer. Her weak grip tightened around me.

“Promise me,” she said, her voice suddenly firmer than it had been in weeks. “Promise me this so I don’t worry about you.”

“I promise.” I nodded frantically. I’d promise her anything in that moment. If she asked me to marry Malik again, I might have agreed.

This was her dying wish for me. “I promise,” I said again, over and over.

But she never responded. She had already fallen asleep, pulled down by the drugs and disease.

I stayed there forever, too afraid to move out of fear that I would lose the feel of her arms around me one last time. Because neither of us had to say it. We both knew.

This was our goodbye.





Chapter 16


I was completely emotionally drained by the time I arrived back at the hotel for one of my last nights there. I couldn’t wait to get into my apartment.

A month in a hotel was way too long.

After finally being awoken by my father, who didn’t seem to understand why my mom and I were curled around each other, I fell into another sob fest, that time on Clarissa’s shoulder.

Later, I drove away, tears drying on my cheeks, and I couldn’t force myself to return to the hotel. Instead, I parked in the parking ramp and walked along the riverfront. The spring breeze did nothing to calm my turmoil or my heated skin.

I had no idea how far I walked. How long I was gone. I only briefly remembered sending a text message to Tyson before I left my parents’ house saying, “I need you,” before I slipped my phone back into my purse and forgot all about it.

I forgot about everything as I walked, everything except the memories of a woman who had always been strong. A woman who fell into a life she knew nothing about and embraced it as if she belonged. A woman who married a difficult man who somehow softened at her smile and her touch. She might not have baked. She might not have volunteered at my elementary school like so many other people’s parents, but there had never been a day when I doubted her love for me. I desired to be as strong as her, as graceful as her, as determined to be my own person as she was.

I used to think about her when I was in Colorado, on dark quiet nights when I was alone, and wonder how in the world she was so easily able to walk away from her comfortable and enjoyable life to something that had to make her constantly feel dark and dirty. I never understood how she couldn’t see my father for who he was.

But now I realized, she saw him clearly. She did then and she did now…and what she saw in my father, was what she wanted for me. Someone who loved me regardless of our vast differences, someone who would protect me.

Someone who would die to keep me safe.

I couldn’t help but wonder, as I strolled back to the Apollonio Hotel, my energy fading with every slow step, if I had found that with Tyson.

I wondered if I had found a man who loved me as much as I loved him.

“Blue.”

His voice calling my name made my head jerk up. Tyson stood up from a bench outside the hotel. His hands hung loosely at his sides and he was dressed in a well-tailored, all-black suit and dress shirt. He could have looked just like one of my father’s business associates if any of them ever managed to look concerned or worried. The line between his brows dug deeper as he took a hesitant step toward me.