Chapter 5 #3
I also hated them a little.
Not a lot.
Just enough.
The villa felt different that night. Less like protective custody pretending to be paradise and more like a home someone had filled on purpose.
There were candles lit on the patio. Flowers on the tables.
Music playing low from hidden speakers. Someone had hung more ridiculous birthday decorations near the pool, and one silver balloon kept bobbing sideways in the breeze like it had gotten drunk before the rest of us.
We ate dinner outside under strings of lights.
Fish tacos. Rice. Grilled vegetables. Lime on everything. Amber made me wear the paper crown again until Edge threatened to throw it into the pool and Regan threatened to throw him in after it.
Tarak smoked a cigar he had not yet lit, rolling it between his fingers like he was waiting for the proper dramatic moment.
Edge watched me too much.
Not in a bad way.
In a father way.
Like he was still memorizing the fact that I was sitting there, alive, eighteen, sunburned on my nose, eating birthday cake with a plastic fork because Amber insisted cake tasted better that way.
At first, everyone was loud.
Then slowly, the night softened.
Dinner plates disappeared. The staff moved like shadows.
Amber curled into one of the lounge chairs with her feet tucked under her.
Regan poured herself a glass of something pale and cold.
Edge leaned back, one arm stretched along the chair beside him, his face unreadable in the low light. Tarak’s cigar remained unlit.
The quiet made me nervous.
Quiet usually meant someone was about to say something that mattered.
I was right.
Tarak stood first.
My stomach dipped.
He didn’t make a speech. Tarak didn’t seem like the speech type. He crossed the patio and stopped in front of me, then pulled a small box from his pocket.
It was expertly wrapped.
Dark blue paper. Silver ribbon. Perfect corners.
The kind of wrapping that made me suspect Regan had helped or Tarak had hidden a shocking secret talent from the world.
“Open it,” he said.
I looked from the box to his face. “Right now?”
“No, next winter.”
Amber snorted.
I took the box carefully.
It felt heavier than it looked.
My fingers shook as I slid the ribbon free and peeled back the paper, trying not to tear it because something about the way he watched me made the whole thing feel sacred. Beneath the paper was a small velvet jewelry box.
My throat tightened before I even opened it.
“Tarak,” I whispered.
“Open it,” he repeated, quieter this time.
So I did.
Inside were diamond studs.
Real ones.
Not huge in a flashy way. Not the kind of earrings that screamed for attention. They were simple. Beautiful. Clear stones set in white gold, catching the patio lights with a sharp little fire that made my breath catch.
I stared at them.
“They were hers,” Tarak said.
The words moved through me slowly.
“Mandy’s?”
He nodded once.
“Not like this. The ring I gave your mother had diamonds in it. After she died…” His jaw flexed. “I had the stones made into earrings for you. Figured one day you might want something of hers that wasn’t a story told by people who didn’t know how to tell it kindly.”
I couldn’t breathe right.
The diamonds blurred.
“Thank you, Uncle.”
I had never called him that before.
“You’re welcome, niece.”
His voice was rougher now.
“She had a lot of people loving her badly,” he said. “I was one of them.”
No one moved.
Even the ocean seemed quieter beyond the terrace.
Tarak cleared his throat, like emotion offended him and he intended to wrestle it back into submission. “Anyway. I want you to have them.”
I touched the edge of the box.
“They’re beautiful.”
“They’re yours.”
That was what got me.
Not they were hers.
They’re yours.
My eyes burned, but I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek because I was not going to cry again. I had cried enough in this lifetime to fill the pool.
Regan came up behind me and gently took the box from my hands. “Let me.”
I turned slightly, and she slipped the earrings into my ears one at a time. Her fingers were careful, warm against my skin. When she finished, Amber made a small sound like she was about to cry.
“Oh, Destiny,” she whispered. “They’re perfect.”
I lifted my hands to my ears.
The diamonds were tiny and cool beneath my fingertips.
A part of Mandy.
A part of Tarak.
A part of a story that had been ugly and beautiful and impossible all at once.
Before I could figure out what to say, Edge stood.
He had a box too.
His was not as expertly wrapped. The paper was slightly uneven, the ribbon tied with the kind of aggressive focus that suggested he had refused help and regretted it halfway through.
Regan looked at the wrapping and pressed her lips together.
Edge pointed at her. “Don’t.”
“I said nothing.”
“You thought something.”
“I think many things.”
He ignored her and handed me the box.
His fingers brushed mine.
For a second, neither of us let go.
Then he did.
“Open it,” he said, voice low.
I stared at the box in my lap.
Something inside me already knew.
Maybe because of his face. Maybe because of Tarak’s gift. Maybe because birthdays, real birthdays, were apparently ambushes disguised as love.
I opened it slowly.
Inside was a ring.
Silver, old, and beautiful.
Turquoise sat in the center, blue-green and full of tiny dark veins like desert rivers seen from the sky. The band was worn smooth in places, not damaged, just loved. Touched. Lived with. The kind of ring that had known someone’s hand for years.
I looked up at Edge.
“It was your mother’s favorite,” he said.
My mouth trembled.
“We held on to these things for you,” he continued. “Tarak and me. Didn’t always know what to do with them. Didn’t always know if we had the right. But they were hers, and that means they were always supposed to be yours.”
I swallowed hard.
Edge’s voice roughened.
“Don’t be ashamed to wear them. You hear me?”
I nodded, but that wasn’t good enough for him.
“Say it.”
“I hear you.”
“They mean something,” he said. “Not all bad. Not all pain. A part of her will always be with you, but that doesn’t mean it owns you. You get to decide what it means now.”
That was when the tears came.
I tried to stop them. I really did. I blinked fast and looked down and pressed my lips together until they hurt, but it didn’t matter. They slipped over anyway, hot and silent.
Regan touched my shoulder.
Tarak looked away like the ocean needed guarding.
Amber openly cried and did not even pretend otherwise.
Edge crouched in front of me.
That almost ruined me more than the ring.
A man like Edge did not crouch often. He didn’t lower himself unless he was checking a tire, cleaning blood off a boot, or making sure someone understood a threat from eye level.
But now he crouched in front of me on my eighteenth birthday and took the turquoise ring from the box.
He held it out on his palm.
He did not put it on me.
He let me choose.
So I took it.
My hand shook as I slid it onto my right hand. It fit almost perfectly. A tiny bit loose, but not enough to fall. The turquoise caught the candlelight, glowing soft and strange against my skin.
Then I touched the diamond studs in my ears.
Something shifted.
Not fixed.
Not healed.
Shifted.
I was wearing pieces of my mother that no one had spray-painted. Pieces no one had twisted into a weapon. Pieces chosen for me by men who had loved her, failed her, hated her, missed her, and somehow still loved me enough to give me what was left.
For the first time all day, eighteen felt real.
Not like a legal line.
Not like an escape hatch.
Like weight.
Like inheritance.
Like I had stepped into a room inside myself I hadn’t known was waiting.
“I feel…” I started.
Everyone watched me.
I laughed once through my tears because I didn’t have better words. “I feel like an adult.”
Edge’s mouth softened.
“Good,” he said. “But don’t get carried away. You’re still my kid.”
That made Amber laugh and cry harder.
Regan handed me a tissue, then another, then finally the whole little packet because apparently my face had surrendered completely.
After that, the night got easier.
Maybe because we had survived the hard part.
Maybe because everyone silently agreed not to make me feel too much at once.
We moved inside and watched movies in the massive living room, all of us sprawled across couches and chairs like a strange, sunburned family of criminals and almost-criminals pretending to be normal.
Amber picked the first movie and chose something with singing, which made Tarak threaten to leave twice and then watch the entire thing with terrifying focus.
Edge ate cake straight off a napkin and pretended he wasn’t enjoying it.
Regan curled beside me, her feet tucked under her, and kept touching my hair like she needed to reassure herself I was there.
I kept touching my earrings.
Then my ring.
Then my earrings again.
And every once in a while, my eyes drifted toward the terrace doors.
No Dylan.
No Nate.
I told myself it was fine.
It was fine.
It was my birthday, and I had my father here. I had Tarak. Regan. Amber. I had diamonds from one love story and turquoise from another. I had a belly full of cake and salt still in my hair.
It was enough.
It was more than enough.
So why did the empty place where Dylan should have been feel so loud?
Later, the men decided they needed a fire on the beach.
“Because apparently the ocean wasn’t enough nature for one day,” Regan muttered.
Edge and Tarak carried cigars outside like they were preparing for a religious ceremony.
Amber followed with a blanket, a glass of wine, and the confidence of someone who planned to supervise rather than help.
Regan rolled her eyes and went with them, claiming she was only there to prevent the men from turning a beach fire into an international incident.
I stayed behind for a while.