"Sit down. We need to tell you girls something."
Surprised, Savannah perched on one of the wing-back chairs as her dad reclaimed his own across from her. It was weird and pretty icky that her parents were probably about to lecture her about her sex life. She wanted to run from the room, but somehow resolved to keep her butt on the chair while her dad exchanged glances with his wife as if they weren't sure which of them should speak first.
Savannah also noticed that Rowan looked a little confused as well. And she realized that whatever her parents were about to drop on them, she was as in the dark as Savannah. "What?" she asked weakly, looking back and forth between them.
"It was never our intention," Regina began, "to not tell you girls everything about how Tommy died, it just worked out that way. He was gone, that's all that mattered. It was a brain bleed. But what the doctors told us while he was still hanging on in ICU-you weren't there, Rowan, you were inconsolable at his side while we spoke with the doctor in the hallway-was that it could have been second-impact syndrome."
"What does that mean?" Rowan asked, her breathing picking up, a high, hysterical quality entering her voice.
"It means that their scans showed he might have suffered a light concussion in the weeks leading up to the fight with Larson," Savannah's dad said. "It could have been something simple, minor, something that happened in training that he barely even noticed, or just ignored. But all it took was the right hit in the right place a few weeks later, and not even a hard hit. It's rare, they said, but it happens. He never should have been in the fight. He had a ticking time bomb in his head."
"But Mike Larson set it off!" Rowan said, shooting an accusing look at Savannah.
"It's not as black and white as that," Savannah shot back, completely forgetting her play dumb strategy. "This could have happened no matter who was in the cage with him. Aren't you listening?"
"Stop," Regina snapped, and both of them fell into a sullen silence. "It would break Tommy's heart to hear you two fighting like this, don't you know that?" Her eyes were filling with tears. "It broke us to pieces to hear it was something that could have been avoided, and we spared you from it. We all know how stubborn he was. Never in a million years did we ever think something like this would come up where you would need to know that it was just a horrible accident. Rowan?" Regina took her daughter-in-law's face between both her palms, making her look at her with streaming eyes. "It was an accident. It was a terrible, senseless, freak accident."
Savannah hadn't realized before now that she was crying as well, a little from relief, mostly from sadness at what they all had lost.
"But it wasn't his fault," Rowan was sobbing, throwing herself into Regina's arms.
"No, honey, it wasn't. It wasn't anyone's fault. It was just . . . a perfect storm of catastrophic circumstances."
"My entire life has been a perfect storm of catastrophic circumstances," Rowan said, shredding Savannah's heart further, and she couldn't take anymore. She left her seat to wrap both of the women in her arms. And they accepted her, even Rowan clutching at her fiercely. "I love you, Savvy."
"Love you too, Ro. Always, no matter what, okay? I'm so sorry."
"I'm sorry too," Rowan sniffled.
Savannah caught sight of her dad over her sister-in-law's blond head-he was staring at the wall opposite them, a hand to his mouth, no tears or any sign of emotion on his face whatsoever. Only the people who knew him best would see that he was as devastated as the rest of them.
And it was all her fault, really, that they were having to relive this again. Her fault for being interested in someone she shouldn't be. Even if, at the end of the day, Mike wasn't as responsible for Tommy's death as Rowan liked to think, he was still a trigger, wasn't he? The mere mention of him would make it all come back for them. Things would never be normal. She would have to respect that.
Or let it go.
"I don't want to hurt anyone," Savannah ventured. "That's the last thing I want. That's the last thing he wants."
Mike had been brought into the conversation already, but not really. They could still talk about him but keep him at a distance. Her voicing his thoughts, giving him life, made a stillness travel through the room. Confirming her fears. Even if Tommy had a ticking time bomb in his head, as her dad said, it didn't matter. Mike was the catalyst. He had set it off. Nothing would ever change it.
"He's a good person," she said, at once desperate and hopeless. "Please know that I wouldn't be with him if he wasn't. He wanted to contact you all from the start to let you know how sorry he was. I told him not to. Maybe I shouldn't have done that, I don't know."
"I just don't want anything to do with him, Savannah." Rowan disengaged herself from the hug, but she didn't look angry or defensive. She looked tired and lost. "You can be with him if you want. We're fine, okay? But seeing him . . . no. I can't do it."
"I have to agree," Regina said quietly. "Maybe someday, eventually, we'll feel differently."
Somehow, it hurt worse than an order or an ultimatum-something her parents were very good at. Why was that? Was it the silent disappointment on their faces alongside the grief? Had she completely and utterly let them down to the point that they couldn't be bothered to deal with her?
Was she just a kid crying for attention and not getting it? Jesus.
"Okay," she said, sounding small and more than a little lost herself. "I understand."
Chapter Eighteen
I need to see you.
The message came at eleven as Mike was trying to get to sleep, and worry gnawed into his gut. It seemed like more than desire or late-night sweet talk. Savannah had been absent all night, which wasn't normal for her, and now he sensed seriousness behind these words.
When? he replied.
Soon. Please.
Is everything okay?
She was a long time, an eternity, answering. I don't know. I miss you.
All right, enough of this. He couldn't lie here and try to decipher her words; he needed to hear her voice. She answered when he called, but for an awful moment he thought she wasn't going to. As he'd feared, her greeting was shaky, uncertain.
"Hi."
"Baby, what's the matter?"
"I talked to my parents tonight."
Worry turned into full-blown dread as Mike's heart lurched, and for just one god-awful split second, he didn't know if he could take any more. All the guilt, the shame, the pointing fingers, would it ever fucking stop? He wished, and not for the first time, that he could actually be the cold-blooded bastard everyone took him for. Then maybe he wouldn't give a shit. "What did they say?"
"That Tommy should never have been fighting. He might have had a previous concussion that contributed to his death."
Fuck. He put the phone to his chest for a second, grinding the heel of his other hand into his forehead. Hearing that should have helped, kind of, in some small way. It didn't.
When Savannah's distant voice reached him, asking if he was still there, he brought the phone back to his ear, his own words gruff and empty. "I'll be there by morning."
Jon would flip his shit and cuss him six ways to Sunday; well, maybe Mike could in some small way be that cold-blooded bastard he wanted to be, because he honestly couldn't give a fuck.
"You don't have to do that. I was thinking of this weekend or-"
"No. Give me your address. I'll get to you."
Relief in her voice, she gave it to him, along with the code to punch in the keypad at her gate and her door. The first flight probably wouldn't leave out until five in the morning, and he could be there by then if he drove. "Try to get some sleep," he told her, "and I'll be there when you wake up."
"Thank you," she said after a moment, but he wondered if at first she wanted to say something else.
The idea of what that something else might have been would keep him up for the next five hours, easy. He probably wouldn't have been able to sleep anyway knowing she was distressed.
Interstate 10 was long, dark, and lonely, though in no way deserted. He'd thrown a bag in the backseat of his truck with enough clothes for a few days, though he had no idea how long he would be gone. And then he was eating up the three hundred and fifty miles between Houston and New Orleans, with nothing to do but play music at ear-splitting levels, chug coffee, and think about her. The towns ticked by: Beaumont, Lake Charles, Lafayette. Then the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge, spanning almost twenty miles of wetlands and swamps.