Chapter 30
Anya
“Oh thank God, you’re here.”
My dad met us in the hallway just outside Isabel’s room. Violet and Willa were right behind me. I’d woken them up about an hour before visiting hours started and picked up breakfast on the way so we could be there as soon as we were allowed in. He gave us all hugs, and I did my best not to break down when he wrapped me in his strong arms because that shit could wait. Dad cupped the side of my face and smiled after I pulled away, then leaned down to whisper something in Willa’s ear that made her giggle.
“What’s wrong? I thought you said surgery went well.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “It did. They just moved her out of recovery, and she’s back in the room now. But … I’m not sure your sisters should go in there.”
“Why not?”
“Vi, can you take Willa down to the cafeteria and get her some food?”
Violet’s brow furrowed. “We just ate in the car. Can’t we go in and see Mom?”
Willa bounced on her toes. “I’m not hungry. Come on, I know she wants us in there. I’ll totally cheer her up.”
Dad opened his mouth to answer when I heard it. The whole freaking hallway heard it.
“I’m by myself,” she sang at the top of her lungs. It was off-key and loud and horrible. “I don’t know the words, but I’m all by myself.”
Our heads swiveled toward the room.
“Is that…?” I asked quietly.
“Is that Mom ?” Violet asked.
Dad grimaced. “She’s a little … high.”
We raced to the door, Willa shoving at Violet to get there first. I elbowed Violet out of the way, and the three of us carefully poked our heads around the corner.
Isabel’s leg was elevated, the bottom half wrapped up, and she held her hand up in front of her face. “Oh wow, look at my fingers. I have so many of them.”
“Whoa,” Willa breathed.
“Where’s my husband?” Isabel asked. “Did you see how sexy he is? He’s so sexy . I love him so much it’s stupid.”
Willa giggled into her hand. When I looked back at Dad, his cheeks were pink, and he couldn’t make eye contact with any of us.
The nurse checking Isabel’s vitals shook her head with a slight smile on her face. “He stepped out for a second, honey. He’ll be right back.”
“Oh good,” she said, sighing dramatically. “Make sure to look at his ass when he comes back in, it’s phenomenal .”
Violet slapped a hand over her mouth to contain her laughter.
Isabel heard the noise and looked over, a loopy smile covering her face. “My babies, oh, did all my babies come see me?”
Willa skipped into the room. “Dad said you’re high. How do you feel?”
“Awesome .”
Violet pulled her phone out and started filming. “This is excellent,” she breathed.
“Put that down,” I hissed.
“Yeah right.” She walked into the room, camera aimed at the bed. “Mom, your singing was so pretty. I think you should sing something else for me.”
Needing no further encouragement, Isabel launched into a nineties ballad, and Willa clapped along, dancing by the foot of her bed. The nurse checking her blood pressure winced when Isabel tried to hit a high note. I shook my head.
It was the world’s greatest distraction, and for the first time in a long time, I didn’t want my thoughts diverted. Something in me wanted to sink into the horribly achy part, wanted to sink into the pain of missing him. Missing both of them. I wanted to curl up in Isabel’s lap and let her stroke my hair while I told her everything.
Dad sighed, slinging his arm around me. “Have I mentioned I’m glad you’re here?”
I laughed as I rested my head on his shoulder. “Yes. I can stay as long as you need.”
“Really?”
My heart stuttered, picturing Parker’s face when I left him feeding Leo in his room. In a superhuman effort not to break down, I gave my dad a quick smile. “Really. We can talk about it later.” Isabel did her best attempt at vibrato, and we both winced. “Maybe after the excitement has died down in here.”
Once the drugs wore off and Isabel was cleared to go home, it took less than an hour to realize she was the worst patient in the entire universe. First, she hated sitting still. Second, she hated taking medicine, and third, she hated being helpless. Basically everyone in her immediate vicinity was fucked for the next few weeks while we tried to keep her from breaking every single order the doctor had given us.
“I don’t need pain meds,” she said.
“Liar.”
Isabel cut me an unamused look. “I’m fine,” she answered through gritted teeth. Then she shifted slightly on the couch, her face scrunching in visible pain.
“Uh-huh. I can see that.” I uncapped the bottle and fished out two pills. She narrowed her eyes, but didn’t argue. “You could always sing for us again. That would help you feel better.”
“If you don’t delete that video from your sister’s phone, I’m cutting you off.”
“Sure you will,” I said patiently.
“Where is everyone?” she asked.
“Willa is playing with her friend across the street. Violet is on the phone with that idiot boyfriend.” Isabel snorted. “And Dad is actually taking a nap.”
Her eyebrows rose. “How’d you manage that?”
I arranged some crackers on a plate, then grabbed an apple from the bowl of fruit on the counter. “I told him the alternative was having to watch girl movies with us.”
Spike was curled up on the couch, watching Isabel with thinly veiled annoyance that her leg was propped up on his normal spot where he got the best afternoon sun.
“Your cat is glaring at me.”
I cut up an apple and put it in a bowl, along with some slices of sharp cheddar. “Yeah, he does that.”
When I looked into the family room, she was scooting toward the edge of the cushion, trying to reach for the remote on the coffee table.
“Stop,” I yelled. “Get your ass back on the couch.”
She grumbled something under her breath.
“What was that?” I set the snack next to her and adjusted the pillows behind her back.
“I said this is bullshit.” She laid her head back on the couch and sighed. “Months. I’m going to be stuck like this for months .”
“Just think,” I told her. “You can watch all those TV shows you always talked about. Or read that book series Aunt Molly is obsessed with.”
She gave me a look. “She already ordered me the paperbacks and said I have to update her daily. How do people just sit here and do nothing? This is awful.”
I laughed, reaching over to grab the remote from the coffee table and handed it to her. “It’s been like two hours. You better get used to it.”
Isabel bit into a slice of cheese and sighed. “Do I really have to use those crutches for everything?”
“Everything. No arguing, young lady. Now take your pain pills.”
She rolled her eyes.”You’re a mean nurse. I think I like your dad better. At least I can bribe him more effectively.”
“Eww.” I picked up a pillow and swatted her with it.
Isabel laughed and grabbed it before I could get her in the face. “I didn’t mean that ,” she said.
As she scrolled through movie options, I ignored the pit in my stomach, and the ache in my heart.
What was Parker doing right now? Had Leo slept the rest of the night after I left? Training camp highlights had been on SportsCenter all day, and like an addict, I watched, because just a single glimpse of him felt like a jolt to my tired system.
It wasn’t fair. He was all glistening muscle under the sun, smiling and taking pictures with cute little fans and generally looking like the greatest thing I’d ever seen. Words crowded my throat, and even though they would hurt coming up, I wanted to talk about it.
I wanted to talk about how different this felt and how wretchedly he’d twisted me up inside.
It wasn’t really wretched, though, was it? There was a wonderful edge to the pain, something that was alive in its own right.
But Isabel was exhausted. I could see it stamped on her face. Once the pain pills kicked in, she’d be out like a light.
“This one sound good?” Isabel asked. It was a romance movie I hadn’t seen yet. Beneath it was an action movie with a million explosions and no kissing.
“What about the kidnapping one instead?”
Her eyebrows popped in surprise. “Sure.”
“Perfect.” I smiled, settling in next to her while she popped her meds.
Except the hero looked like Parker. He was tall and broad, with golden sunkissed looks and sex eyes.
Fifteen minutes in, he stripped off his shirt, and I found myself looking for the three small birds inked on his rib cage. When they weren’t there, I lost my breath for a second.
“Isabel? I have to tell you something,” I said quietly.
But when I looked over, she was sound asleep.
I dropped my head back and sighed.
“Can we make Champ’s tail a little bit fluffier?” Vida asked in a hushed voice.
Isabel was dozing on the couch again, and Vida had crept in through the front door, with junk food in hand and a hug that I desperately needed. We didn’t talk about Parker because Violet was coming in and out of the room, and while I’d stand down a speeding train for my sister, I didn’t trust her secret-keeping abilities for shit.
I tilted my iPad so Vida could watch me sketch.
“Yeah, like that.”
I tapped the stylus on the screen and adjusted the coloring until I was happy with how it looked. “What about Gumdrop’s eyes? Do we want him to look so sad in this scene?”
She made a considering noise. “Maybe save that for the next one. If Champ wasn’t such an asshole, teasing him for being slow …”
I laughed under my breath. “Not sure we should market the book that way.”
Vida set her chin in her hands and sighed. “Maybe not.” She reached forward and tugged my sketchbook in her direction, idly flipping through the pages. Her eyebrows shot up. “Whoa. What are these?”
I glanced over, face heating when I saw what she was looking at. “Oh, just … doodles.”
“Doodles, my ass,” she mused, bringing the page closer to her face. “These are amazing. I love the eagle. He’s a handsome boy.” She gave me a quick look. “And a mourning dove?” I nodded slowly. Her fingers traced the lines of the smallest one. “And what’s the little one tucked between them?”
“A sparrow,” I answered quietly. “A baby. He’d … he’d get bigger if you used them in a story.”
Her eyes fell on mine. “A misfit family of birds, huh?”
My throat was tight as I stared at the three of them. “Yeah.”
Vida’s gaze was heavy, and when her eyes glossed over, I gave her a stern look. “Don’t you dare,” I pleaded. “I can’t … not right now.”
She set down the sketchbook and gripped my hand. “I know.”
Once Isabel was in bed for the night and the kitchen cleaned up after dinner, I was too exhausted to talk to anyone about anything, and I flopped face-first onto the bed in the guest apartment above the garage, sleeping deeply until the sun came up the following morning.
After washing my face and tugging on a sweatshirt, I let myself into the house and heard the low hum of SportsCenter playing in the family room. Dad was on the couch with his coffee in hand. Based on the bags under his eyes, he didn’t sleep quite as well as I had.
Clips from the Washington Wolves training camp flashed, and we both listened quietly while they talked about roster changes. It switched to another team, and my dad glanced sideways.
“Want me to turn it off?”
“I don’t mind.”
He took a slow sip of his coffee and sighed.
“How’d Isabel sleep last night?”
“She woke up a lot. Finally caved and took more pain pills around three.”
On the screen, the team coverage changed again, and the sight of Voyagers colors made my stomach swoop. Without being asked, my dad increased the volume by two.
“The mood is fierce this morning as we near the end of Voyagers training camp,” stated a striking reporter in a white dress. “You can sense that they’re on a mission to rectify the mistakes made last year, and no one feels that pressure more than Parker Wilder.”
The camera cut to an interview, and my heart gave an uneven thump at the sight of his face.
He looked good. So good.
And he looked tired. The dark circles were back under his eyes, but I wasn’t sure many people would notice because he gave sharply focused answers with his hands on his hips during the interview. He must’ve gotten his hair cut the day after I left because it wasn’t visible underneath the Voyagers hat turned backward on his head.
“Of course there’s pressure to do better than we did last year.” He gave a rueful grin that yanked goose bumps along my arm. “We were so close, and it feels like the last five or six years, we’ve been building momentum in the postseason, but momentum doesn’t win championships, and we all want the same thing. We want to be the ones left standing at the end. Everything we’re doing, starting now, is in pursuit of that goal.”
The reporter smiled. “You sound ready. Like you know what you want and how to get it.”
There was a brief flicker in his eyes, and it wrenched my stomach in knots, because I had to wonder if anyone else would notice it. “Doing my best,” he told her. “That’s all any of us can do.”
When they returned to the studio, my dad hit the mute button on the TV and leaned back against the couch.
“Did you talk to him yesterday?” he asked, eyeing me over the rim of his coffee mug.
Slowly, I shook my head, keeping my eyes straight ahead on the screen. My thumb absently spun the gold ring on my finger. When would I have to take it off?
There was no reason for me to wear it now, and it was a heavy sort of awareness, a decision that I couldn’t bring myself to make.
Dad didn’t say anything else, and I wasn’t terribly surprised. The man had supernatural patience to wait people out, and for as much as I wanted to let my heart spill out of my mouth, I wasn’t really sure where to start.
My phone screen lit up with an email notification, and my heart thumped unevenly at the picture of Leo that I’d set as the background. It was a still from the video of Parker making him laugh. In the corner of the picture, I could see the line of Parker’s jaw and his wide smile.
My dad and I stared down at the screen until it went dark again. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he could hear the erratic beat of my pulse.
“Cute baby,” he said quietly.
“He is.”
I could feel his eyes on me. “Whose is it?”
Mine.
He felt like mine.
They both did. There was no arguing with my heart on that account, but everything else wanted me to get my shit together.
“I have a lot to tell you, Dad,” I whispered brokenly.
He was quiet for a moment. “I have nowhere else to be, gingersnap.” At my childhood nickname, my chin trembled. “Are you okay?” he asked.
Two tears slid down my cheeks, the relief of being able to talk to him so great that it felt like my chest was breaking open. “I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you tell me what happened,” he said patiently. “We’ll figure it out from there.”
So I did.
My throat was scratchy and dry by the time I finished talking, and he never interrupted once. The biggest reaction was a heavy exhale when I got to Leo’s arrival, but even then, he listened.
When we were caught up—naturally, I’d kept the story Dad-appropriate, scrubbed of any sex mentions or the insistent longing that clung to my insides—the silence in the room was weighted. Dad leaned his head back and stared up at the ceiling for a long moment.
I tried to be patient, I tried to wait him out, but the clawing urge to know what he was thinking got the better of me. It always did, didn’t it?
“Well?” I licked my lips, angling toward him on the couch. “Anything?”
His mouth hooked up in a half smile. “I should’ve known, that’s all.”
My brow pinched. “What do you mean?”
Dad sighed. “I never even got a chance to know the guy, Anya. You were married , and maybe if I hadn’t been so shocked, I might have pieced it together when you didn’t have him in the room with us when we talked.” He chose his words carefully. “If you were in love with someone, you’d want me to know him.”
With a tight throat, I managed an apologetic look. “You’re right.”
His gaze was relentlessly understanding. “Do you wish I knew him now?” he asked quietly.
It took a long second, but my chin dipped twice in a short nod.
One of my dad’s greatest gifts was his intentionality. He never rushed a decision, never jumped headlong into anything. His patience was legend in our family, and even with Willa and Violet and the craziness they brought into our day-to-day, he seemed to slow when it mattered most.
“Lies always weigh us down, gingersnap. It doesn’t matter if they’re the lies we’re only telling to ourselves or the ones we’re telling the rest of the world.”
“We weren’t really thinking about that when we woke up married,” I said wryly.
He smiled fondly. “You climbed your way up the tree before you knew if you could get down.”
“I sure as hell did.”
“The easy part is telling everyone else the truth,” he said.
For a moment, I stared at him. “I’m not sure I want to ask about the hard part.”
“You already know what it is.”
“Ugh, you’re so patient. Just … yell at me and tell me how dumb it was.”
Dad tamped down a smile. “Not gonna do that, kiddo. It won’t help anything.”
It didn’t take me long to give him the answer he wanted me to say out loud. That was one of his gifts too. “The hard part is that we have to stop lying to ourselves.”
“Got it in one,” he replied softly.
I rolled my eyes, which made him chuckle. “I feel like I’m being pretty honest with myself, though.”
His smile faded slowly. “Are you?” he asked.
It was never fun to have someone hold up a mirror at moments like this one. It was only natural that we wouldn’t see the thing we wanted. That the reflection would be distorted and warped, that the truth we couldn’t force ourselves to say out loud would somehow make it worse.
Was I being honest with myself? About everything?
In just a few short weeks, everything about my life was whisked around and poured back out, unrecognizable from what it had been as recently as a month ago. Spliced together with the good was the heartbreak. His and mine. His was bigger, harder to deal with. Laying this all at Parker’s feet—with his grief as the stage—wasn’t fair. It was about me, too.
“I thought I could fix him,” I admitted quietly. Dad sat and listened, and the build of my tears climbing up my throat was hot and thick and horrible. “I pretended it was all about Max, and why I’d stayed and how badly that rocked me, especially at the end. But it wasn’t.” No more lying to myself, not if I wanted to come out the other side of this and be able to look myself in the eye, with the reflection staring back at me clear and crisp. “Loving Parker wasn’t enough. And I thought it would be.”
“We can’t ever love someone so much that we fix their problems, kid. You’re setting yourself up for a world of hurt if you do that. It doesn’t mean we have to stop loving them or force ourselves to walk away, but you have to be honest with yourself about what’s going to come from it if you stay.”
“He doesn’t want me to stay,” I said. “He doesn’t want anyone getting dragged down in the stuff he’s still trying to fix.”
“Is that one of his lies?”
I pulled in a slow breath, meant to fortify, but when I let it out, all it seemed to do was fill the room with a sad, yearning sort of sound. “I think so.”
He tilted his chin up. “The two of you had to contend with a lot of those, it seems like. It’s hard to build a relationship that way.”
I pulled my knees up to my chest, hugging my arms around the front of my legs. “We were though,” I said quietly. “Building something, at least.”
“Sounds like you were.”
“But how are you supposed to know when someone’s lying to themselves and when it’s real? There’s no blinking sign over our head when we’re pretending. Sometimes we don’t even know it ourselves.”
He made a small noise of agreement. “That’s the trick, isn’t it? What’s your gut tell you?”
I scoffed lightly. “Not sure I can trust that right now.”
“Of course you can.”
Dad sounded so sure, so certain. Hooray for him.
Must be freaking nice.
“Now you’re pretending like you don’t know,” he said, nudging my leg with his.
I groaned, laying my head back on the couch. “It’s telling me that Parker is completely and utterly full of shit when he says he doesn’t want love, but he doesn’t know how to back out of it. He’s said it so many times that he believes it now. Just like he’s told himself that he needs to punish himself for the past, punish himself for making the wrong decisions. And that’s what he’s doing now … he’s punishing himself again.” My nose did that tingling thing again, and I tried to breathe through the hot press of tears, but it was like trying to hold back the ocean with the palm of my hand. “He’s so easy to love, Dad.”
His hand coasted along the back of my head. “So are you, kid.” When a tear fell, I swiped it away quickly. Dad cleared his throat. “If I thought it would help, I’d go talk to him myself.”
I laughed, the sound watery and full. “Yeah, I bet you would.”
“Not like that,” he said with a slight eye roll. “I understand where he’s coming from, you know? Isabel scared the shit out of me when I first met her. I lied to myself for a long time that I couldn’t let myself love her. That she was too young, that we didn’t know each other well enough, that I had to focus on you.” His hand came up, and he tweaked my chin. “You’re the one who knew right away. You knew she was the right one for our family.”
I wiped at more tears. “Well, I’m very smart.”
“You are,” Dad answered through a smile. “It’s hard to face love again when you’ve lost something big in your life. It might not have been his partner, but if Parker lost both parents, I can’t say I can hold it against him.”
“I know,” I said sadly. “That’s why he held himself back from Leo at first. But once he stepped past that fear, Dad,”—I laid a hand on my chest and shook my head—“it was amazing to watch. I admire him, and he probably wouldn’t even understand why because he’s so hard on himself.”
Dad gave me a knowing look. “Sounds like you two have that in common.”
“Maybe.”
We were quiet, and I felt so much better just saying it out loud. Releasing the weight of the lie eased the pressure on my chest. Talking about him, without any pretense behind it, was a staggering sort of relief.
“I should apologize too,” he said slowly.
“For what?”
“The stipulations of your trust,” he answered. Dad took my hand in his and squeezed. “You were so young when we set that up, and it’s the same way your grandparents set up your mother’s trust. It’s how we bought our first house. How we started our life before my fighting career took off.” He shook his head, weariness stamped over his features. “I didn’t feel like I should change it after your mom died because we’d made that decision together just after you were born. But it was short-sighted,” he admitted. “And I’m sorry.”
“Well, how were you supposed to know I’d go and do something like this?” I asked, aiming for a breezy tone, but based on the look on his face, I didn’t quite get there.
“Kid, you’ve been surprising me from the moment you arrived.” He motioned me in for a hug, and I leaned into his embrace, sighing at the feel of my dad’s arms holding me tight. “I wish I could take this away from you, but I can’t,” he said, pressing his cheek to the top of my head.
I closed my eyes for a moment before pulling back. “I still don’t know what’s going to happen next. It’s driving me crazy.”
He chuckled. “You never did very well at being patient, did you?”
“No, I guess not.”
My dad’s eyes searched my face. “This is not a surprise to me, gingersnap.”
“It’s not?”
“If I know one thing, my firstborn daughter, it’s that you were never meant for a safe, steady love.” His eyes glossed over. So did mine. “You have a wild heart, Anya, and whoever gets that heart is a lucky man.”
It was hard to speak around the lump in my throat. “Even if he doesn’t know he has it?”
“Even then.”
I closed my eyes. “You know what’s stupid? I was so excited to be there for him at his first game. He told me he’s never had a partner there for him like that, and I promised I’d be there. Even with everything we just said, I hate the idea that he won’t get that. He deserves it.”
“Who says you can’t still go?” My dad’s gaze was steady on mine when I risked a glance in his direction.
“You think I should?”
He answered carefully. “I think it’s important to keep our promises to people.”
Parker’s face flashed on the television again, the show having restarted at the top of the hour. How long would I feel a pinch in my chest at the sight of it?
“It is,” I said quietly.
Before my dad could say anything else, Willa poked her head around the corner. “You guys were talking for so long,” she moaned. “It was really boring.”
“What did we tell you about eavesdropping, Willa?” Dad asked, but he held his arm out, and she scrambled up on his lap.
“To not to,” she sighed. “But I always tell you the good stuff. Like when Violet was going to have sex with her stupid boyfriend at homecoming.”
My dad pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, that was a wise one to pass along. I promised you five bucks for that, didn’t I?”
My sister grabbed his face with both hands and smacked a kiss on the tip of his nose. “I think it’s ten now.”
“Is it?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.
She nodded. “Grandpa teached me about interest the other day.”
“Great,” Dad muttered.
“It’s important to keep our promises to people,” I told my dad gravely.
He narrowed his eyes over Willa’s head. “I’m retiring from the advice business effective immediately,” he said.
I patted his arm. “Sure you are, Dad. Sure you are.”