“She said she started it—”
“Whose side are you on?” His head snapped back to glare at me. “Tell me you didn’t know about this?”
“Calm down. I learned about it when you did. You know I wouldn’t have kept something like that from you—”
“Then why are you so calm? You need to talk to her—”
“And say what, Declan?!” I didn’t want to fight with him. I was tired. “I can understand why you’re upset. But I can’t bring myself to care right now because she’s alive. They’re both alive. We got so lucky, Declan…when I found out…when I saw her and heard about him, I thought the world was ending. I kept thinking that we were going to have to bury them. I kept thinking she’d never wake up. And now she’s awake. And he’s awake. The only thing that has changed from last week is that they are a little broken and bruised…and they’re in love with each other.”
“They’re kids! They don’t know what love is—”
“Wow,” I said with a gasp. Maybe it was the exhaustion. Maybe it was because he didn’t realize how old and stupid he sounded right now.
“Wow, what? What!” he snapped. I was about done with his mood.
“Declan, I was two years younger than Helen when I met you!” I yelled, and he stared at me like he didn’t even realize. “I walked away from my family, my whole life, and everything I knew before you, and I hadn’t even known you a year. Why? Because I fell in love with you. If I had a father who loved me as much as you love Helen, he would have tried to stop us, too…and who knows where we would be now.”
“Here,” he whispered, but didn’t turn to face me. “We’d still be here because no one could have stopped me. I hear you. I get what you’re saying. But…I still don’t want this for her. Call me a hypocrite, but I can’t…she’s my daughter. Mine. Everyone has tried to take her away from us, to say that she is somehow less than our child…And I…We did everything to make sure no one ever questioned who her parents were. If she’s with him…”
“It means to them, she wasn’t really our daughter all along.” I understood his pain.
“They will ridicule her, mock her, and—”
“They won’t do it to her face,” I reminded him. “And if they do, just like you protected me, he’ll protect her.”
“She can protect herself,” he muttered and pouted not at all caring that he was contradicting his own point. He just didn’t want to think of Wyatt in that role.
And this was one of the many reasons I loved him so much. Sitting up, I wrapped my arm around his.
“She’ll always be our daughter,” I said, kissing his arm. “No one is ever going to be good enough. And I get you. They’re going to have their own mountains to climb, just like we did…but I’m begging you. Don’t be one of the things they have to overcome, too. All I want, all I have ever wanted was for all of you to be healthy and happy.”
Again, he leaned against me, putting his head on mine. “I’ll kick his ass when he can move his ass.”
I held on tightly, laughing, and he wrapped his arm around me. “Do you need a shot gun and a rocking chair, too?”
He snickered and then groaned. “Over three hundred million people in this country. Five million in this damn city, and they pick each other?”
“You don’t pick who you love. You just love.” That’s why love was so maddening…once you fell, there was no right or wrong. You just had to surrender to it.
“Don’t go encouraging them until…until…” Until he could accept it.
“Okay.” It was a crazy request, but what could I do? I loved him, and that’s what he needed. So, I surrendered, knowing he loved Helen, hat he’d learn to accept her choice.
WYATT
Rose?
The scent filled my nose, and when I felt the warmth I knew…
Helen.
She was next to me.
I didn’t know how many days had passed. I just knew the darkness. It was like being buried alive. Like they’d already put me in the coffin. It was dark and cold, and there was no room to move. They couldn’t hear me. But I could hear them, sobbing, praying, yelling...apologizing. I’d been to so many funerals growing up that sometimes I couldn’t help but wonder what mine would be like...I knew it would be a show. My Nana would send me out in style. I figured Ethan would give some carefully crafted speech, but still come off as if there was a stick up his ass. Dona wouldn’t say a thing….and Helen. I never thought about what her reaction would be. But it didn’t matter because I was wrong. I was wrong about everything. It wasn’t going to be some big send off. It was going to be regret.
Each time I heard them, I felt it…and heard it in their voices. Regret that we didn’t do more, that we didn’t act differently, that we never said what we were really feeling…and it hurt. The darkness didn’t bother me. The coldness didn’t bother me. They did. Their pain did, and the more they cried and begged, the more desperate I became to reach them. I thought when I heard Ethan’s cries…I’d hit rock bottom, that it couldn’t hurt any more than that, but I obviously knew nothing.
But when Helen came.
When I smelled the roses, and she screamed as if I were killing her…when I heard her begin to hyperventilate…I panicked. I couldn’t hear anything other than her struggling to breathe…
Help!
Please help!
Not me. Her. Helen! Come on,
