Ash had been their target, not the missionaries there to do whatever the hell they did. By then, she had made a name for herself in the correspondent world, not just with major news channels and political magazines, but also with the people she was reporting on. Her face had been everywhere for years and the militia had known exactly why she was there.
The mercenaries who were supposed to be her security had been taken out, and then she was dragged into the middle of their camp, her throat slit in front of the missionaries. Considering their job done, they had left her there to die in front of the others.
Afterward, once Ash could come home, she had quit her job and found a low-key position writing for a local magazine. These days, she reported on art exhibits or whatever else her editor needed her to do that his other journalists didn’t want to cover. I knew she got bored sometimes, but she refused to even think about going back to being a foreign correspondent.
“Dom?” Ash’s hand on my arm pulled me back from the memory of watching over her for weeks as her personal doctor until she was well enough to travel home. “What’s wrong?”
Years of being such close friends had given her the ability to read me easily. She could see beneath my bullshit, which had always driven me crazy. At the same time, it made me glad that I had someone who wouldn’t let me hide or get away with shit. In another lifetime, if I hadn’t still been holding on to the love I couldn’t seem to let go of for Triss, and if she hadn’t been head over heels for Sawyer, maybe we would have tried to be more than friends.
Maybe.
Regardless, we had never felt more than a strong affection and an overwhelming need to protect each other.
I needed to unload, to get this shit off my chest, and she was the only person I trusted to not only listen, but to tell it to me straight if I stepped out of line.
“Can we talk?”
ELEVEN
Triss
MY MOTHER SETTLED INTO THE new room at home with the help of Jane, the kind home health nurse that Amber helped me find. Jane, who was in her late thirties, was a godsend. She made Savanna comfortable, and then she settled into one of the guest rooms down the hall from her patient.
Monday passed easily enough, and it looked like my mother was going to do well as the days slipped by.
I had a new schedule, and I had to admit that I liked it. Each morning, the girls and I had breakfast with our mother in her room before I took Lily to school. Once I returned, Daisy and I would keep Savanna company until lunchtime. Usually that was when our mother got tired and took a nap for a few hours, and I would take the four-year-old out for a walk in the crisp autumn air before we would pick Lily up. Each evening, we had dinner with Savanna, and then it was bathes and bed for the girls after Savanna read to them.
That was how that entire first week went and most of the next. I didn’t hear from Dom during that time, and I tried not to be hurt by his lack of contact, or worried that he was doing something stupid where Lily was concerned. Amber and I chatted twice during the week, in which I learned that the will was going through probate seamlessly so far. Apparently, Nancy had taken her serious about the way she would distribute her share of the money and wasn’t contesting the will. The rest of my father’s money would be mine within a matter of weeks, if everything went as planned.
I was relieved that soon I wouldn’t have to worry about money for the rest of my life. At the same time, I felt as if I didn’t deserve to just have it all handed over to me. It had never been my plan to just sit back and allow my father to pay my way for my entire life. I had wanted to work for him, which was why I had picked a marketing major in college, and business management for my minor. Robert had been so proud of me when I told him what my plans were, how I had wanted him to show me everything about his business. From the time I was fourteen, I would shadow him periodically just to see how things worked.
I still wanted to do that, still wanted to earn the money I spent. I didn’t want to ambush the CEOs that my father had put in place, but I would have loved to have something to do within the company he had spent his entire life building into the successful and highly profitable corporation it was.
When I spoke to Amber, I had asked her who got the business, and I was surprised to find out that I owned fifty-one percent of the stocks. The day the will was read, we hadn’t even touched on the business aspect of it, and I was sure that hadn’t even mattered to Nancy. All she had wanted was the money.
Taking an active role with my majority share of the company was something that I would have to think about in the coming months. For now, I wanted to help nurse my mother back to good health and spend some time with the girls before I decided what I was going to do about working. I even thought about taking some online classes in both marketing and business management, but that too could wait.
Almost two weeks to the day that my mother had come home, I was thankful I had put my decision on hold where work was concerned. Savanna had become ill with pneumonia, which required her to return to the hospital. She seemed to be fading more and more before my eyes.
“Triss,” her oncologist said to me now as I stood outside her private hospital room. It had been three days since she had been admitted. Three days of her only getting sicker rather than better. Her heart grew weaker with each passing hour, her pain nearly unmanageable, even with the powerful narcotics I could now afford for her. “You’re going to have to make some tough decisions soon.”
“No,” I whispered, shaking my head in total denial as tears burned my eyes. “She has more time. I know she does. This is just a setback. It’s just a-a—”
The man took one of my hands, giving it a squeeze as his sympathetic eyes bore into mine. “It will be soon, Triss. Very, very soon. You need to prepare yourself for the end.”
I could only continue to shake my head as the tears spilled over and I tried to hold in my sobs. At least the girls weren’t there to see me fall apart. The new housekeeper adored them, and I felt confident in her enough to have her babysit them from time to time.
“She’s still got time.”
“A few more days, if she’s lucky, my dear. And that is pushing her time to the max.”
“God,” I breathed through the pain that seemed to be suffocating me.
I wasn’t ready for the end. I would never be ready. Just thinking about a day without my mother scared the hell out of me. How would I survive without the one person who had always loved me wholeheartedly? How could I make it from one day to the next without her? She was my hero, the one thing I could cling to when it felt like I was going to drown in the vast craziness of the world.
“Triss …? Triss?” The doctor’s voice seemed to suddenly be coming from far away. The world began to spin, and I swayed. I took a step back, but the world began to fall around me.
The last thing I remembered before the darkness finally swallowed me whole was a pair of strong arms wrapping around me as heat attempted to invade my cold, numb body …
I wasn’t sure how much time past, but when I opened my eyes, it was to find them trapped in a pair that were achingly familiar. Dom held me against his chest, his warmth slowly seeping into my pores as he stroked a few strands of my hair back from my face. I was lying on a bed that he was sitting on the edge of.
For a moment—just a split-second in time—everything felt right in the world. Dom was there, holding my hand, touching my face. I thought there was love shining out of his eyes, and my body began to ache with need for him. For that split-second I could pretend that my world wasn’t ending, that I wasn’t going to lose my mother, that the past didn’t exist, and he was still mine.
Then I blinked and reality crashed down on me like a ten-ton weight, and the tears filled my eyes yet again.
Dom wiped each one away with the pad of his thumb. “I overheard what Dr. Crandall was telling you,” he murmured in that deep voice that I had always loved. “I’m so sorry, baby.”
“When she dies, I’ll have no one,” I whi
spered, fighting the lump that was threatening to choke me. “The girls and I will be all alone.”
“No.” He said the word like a vow. “No, Triss. You won’t be alone. You’ll have me.”
I wanted to laugh at those words, yet the tears only fell faster. For a stolen moment in time, I had thought I had this man, that he belonged to me just as much as I belonged to him. Then I had lost him, just as I would lose my mother. Maybe not in the same way, but lost all the same.
A tap on the door had Dom turning his head to look over his shoulder. A nurse in green scrubs stuck her head around the corner. Even through my wet eyes, I could see the flirty, little smile she gave him, and her voice was husky with a plethora of lust that had me instantly rolling my eyes.
“Dr. Crandall asked me to check on you, Dr. Balor. Make sure you and Miss Prescott didn’t need anything.”
I bet. And she seemed so ready to give him everything he could possibly want.
My tears felt chilled on my skin as I sat up. Jealousy was going to eat me alive if I didn’t get out of there, and soon. I hated the idea of leaving when my mother’s time was so very short, but the girls needed me at home. She would be upset if I ignored the girls in favor of her. If nothing else, I knew I had to do what my mother would want rather than what I ached to do.
When I shifted, Dom’s eyes snapped back to me. “I think we’re good here, Mindy. Thanks.”
The pout was hard to miss on Flirty Nurse Mindy. After only a small pause where she basically eye fucked him, she sighed and shut the door.
If I rolled my eyes any harder, I was sure I was going to get them stuck in the back of my head. At least my tears had dried up.
“It’s getting late,” he said after a long pause where we just sat on the bed together, watching each other. “Have you eaten dinner yet?”
I shook my head. “I’m not hungry.” A glance at the clock on the wall told me it was indeed getting late. I groaned. “I should go. I need to say goodnight to my mother,” I muttered as I pushed myself up to my feet.
Dom was there to steady me with a comforting hand on my back when the world started to spin again. The heat of his touch burned through my clothes and scorched my skin, branding me as his. As I had always been.
“Your mother is already asleep,” he told me as I found my shoes that he must have taken off me and pulled them on. “You shouldn’t disturb her since she appears to finally be resting.”
I stopped in the process of tying my shoe. “How do you know she’s finally resting?”
He shrugged. “I’ve checked on her whenever I could over the last few days. I was concerned and wanted to see for myself how she was.”
I was sure my eyes looked like those of an owl as I gazed up at him. “How did you even know she was here?”
“I saw you leaving the first night as I was coming in. After checking with registration, I found out Savanna had been admitted.” He scratched at the day-old scruff on his chin, trying to look nonchalant. Apparently, he hadn’t changed all that much over the years, after all, since I could read him easily. He was nervous of my reaction to finding out he had been visiting my mother. At least he wasn’t trying to hide it from me.
“Oh,” I mumbled half under my breath before crossing my arms over my chest almost defensively, unsure of how I felt about it. “So, you’ve just checked up on her?”
“Actually, I’ve been visiting with her. I normally sit with her for a little while before I head out.” A grim smile lifted his lips. “She was reluctant the first night, so don’t think she just accepted me with open arms. But I can be charming when I want to be, and the next night, she even gave me a small smile.”
I couldn’t be mad at him for seeing my mother behind my back, not if he had really gotten a smile out of her. She had been so sick over the last few days that she had barely spoken, let alone smiled for me. I couldn’t even think about what they could possibly have talked about when he visited her.
Unless …
“You were talking about Lily, weren’t you?” It wasn’t so much a question as a statement, because I could see the truth in his eyes. I bit my lip to keep it from trembling and turned for the door. “I have to go.”
“Yes, we talked about Lily,” he admitted from behind me. “She told me how good of a baby Lily was. How she started walking when she was only nine months old. I got to live my daughter’s life up until now through your mother’s memories of her.”
Before I could open the door, I found myself turning back to face him. His face was tight with pain, his eyes dull with the same emotion cascading through him and into me.
“I talked to a lawyer the day after I saw you, Triss.”
“Oh, God.” I closed my eyes as I started to sway again, picturing what a circus Lily’s life was about to turn into.
Dom would try to take her from me. He would get the press and a bulldog of a lawyer, and our daughter’s life would get tossed upside down. And all while she had to mourn the loss of the woman who she had always thought was her real mother. It turned my stomach to just think about what they would do to my sweet little girl.
Strong hands grasped my waist, pulling me into his hard body. In the next heartbeat, he was clasping my chin between his thumb and forefinger, forcing my head to lift and look at him. “I’m not going to tear her world apart, Triss. I swear to you. I only spoke to a lawyer. I didn’t set anything into motion. And I won’t. You were right about it destroying Lily. I don’t want that any more than you do. I’m not that much of a selfish bastard.”
“Thank you.”
“During my visit with Savanna, she told me how she and Derrick had always talked about someday telling Lily the truth. Later, when she was old enough to understand.”
“Yes, it was something that the three of us talked about once or twice, but I didn’t agree with it one hundred percent.” I swallowed hard, then tried to clear my throat when it sounded hoarse to my ears. “I don’t want her to hate me.”
“No more than I want her to hate me,” he agreed. “But your mother knows her time is quickly running out.”
I started shaking my head in denial, even as the truth churned in my stomach and made it hard to breathe again.
The hand he still had on my waist tightened and the fingers clasping my chin refused to let me look away. “Baby, I know it hurts, but you have to be realistic.”
Those damn tears filled my eyes yet again. “I know,” I found myself whispering. “It’s just so hard, Dom.”
“I wish I could take all the pain away for you. If I could, I would.”
He stroked his thumb along my jaw, and I found myself leaning into his touch, starving for even the smallest contact. This was stupid, utter lunacy, yet his fingers felt so good on my skin. I was starved for the slightest touch from him, and even as I tried to convince myself I would have been just as desperate for it from any other person ready to give me the least little bit of compassion right then, I knew I was lying to myself.
It was because it was Dom.
While I knew that he couldn’t take my pain away, just having him hold me like this, having him touch me, was enough to keep my mind from shattering into a million pieces as I lost touch with reality. I needed this, needed him, to force me to be honest with myself.
To just hold me like he used to.
But I couldn’t. He wasn’t mine. He never had been. I needed to face the reality of what was going on around me.
My mother was going to die soon, sooner than I was ready for. Then again, I would never be ready. The girls needed me now, and afterward, they would need me even more.
I soaked up the warmth of his touch for a few more moments before forcing myself to pull away. “I need to get home.”
He dropped his hands to his sides. “I’ll walk you out. I have a few patients I need to check on before I head home myself.”
I should have turned down his offer, but it appeared I wasn’t as ready to leave him as I told myself I was. “Um, okay. Thank you.”
My coat was still in my mother’s room, so I quietly stepped into her room to grab it. As I turned to go, I couldn’t help looking back. She did appear to be sleeping peacefully for the first time since she had started feeling ill a few days before. She had gone from having an irritating cough to being unable to breathe on her own in only a few hours. If Jane hadn’t been there to help me, I didn’t know what I would have done. Now I watched as her chest lifted and rose in quick, little pants. The oxygen tubes sticking from her nose was turned up almost to max flow, yet she was still having trouble breathing.
If she stopped breathing, there was nothing the doctors or nurses could do to bring her back. Savanna had signed a DNR—do not resuscitate—meaning if something were to happen to her, the medical staff would have to let her go.
When she had first signed that damn form back in Buffalo, I hadn’t really thought much about it.
I might have told myself I understood my mother was going to die from her disease, but deep down, I knew I had been lying to myself. I had been living in some dreamland where my mother would one day make a full recovery and get to grow old and still be with me for the rest of my life.
Now, with the doctor telling me that it was only a matter of days—maybe—before she was gone, I wanted to tear the damn paper up and demand they do everything in their power to keep her alive. I knew that my mother wouldn’t want that, though, and I couldn’t be selfish. She wanted to go with dignity, not linger while attached to machines that were the only things keeping her alive, and perhaps even in pain.
Tears threatened yet again, but I fought them back and blew her a silent kiss as I left the room. Dom was waiting for me by the nurses’ station, his own coat already on. As if we did it every day, he put his hand on the small of my back and guided me into an already open and empty elevator. As we rode down to the parking garage, he kept his hand on my waist, almost as if he was reluctant to release me.