23
GAbrIELLA
While Blake and Mr. Nowak spend time at Kain’s bedside, Dalton and I head down to get coffee. My hands are still trembling, something that seems to be bothering Dalton a lot. He keeps lifting my hand in his and staring at it with an intense expression.
The machine produces a foamy looking concoction that I usually wouldn’t touch, but under the circumstances, I clutch it in both hands, absorbing the warmth, grateful for a different focus. As I take a grateful sip, Dornan approaches, moving carefully, as though he doesn’t want to invade our privacy. I guess me and Dalton must look gray with the stress of seeing Kain in such a terrible state.
“How is he?” Dornan asks.
“He’s wired up to just about every machine they have,” I reply, the image of Kain pricking my eyes with tears. “He’s still unconscious, but that’s intentional. They don’t want him to get distressed. But his heart is still beating.”
“Fuck.” Dornan shoves his fingers through his hair, and then drops his arms by his sides, focusing on the floor in front of him.
“What the fuck happened out there?” Dalton asks.
Dornan shakes his head. “It was nothing…well, not nothing. He took a hit, but we’ve all taken hits like that and worse more times than any of us can count. There wasn’t anything particularly bad about it. I just don’t understand.”
Dalton closes his eyes slowly, and I rest my hand on his elbow, feeling the frustration and hopelessness as palpable as if they were my own emotions. Knowing what caused Kain’s heart to stop is something that might happen again makes it worse. “This fucking game,” Dalton growls. “If it’s not ankle or knee injuries, it’s concussion or fucking heart attacks. It’s not right.”
“All sports carry risk,” I remind him. “Hell, you’re probably a lot more likely to pick up an injury working in construction than Kain is at football.”
“Coach does everything he can to keep us safe,” Dornan says, but sounds falsely bright, like an old-fashioned commercial. When he glances over his shoulder to see who’s listening, our focus drifts, too. Behind Dalton, Elias is leaning against the wall looking grim. Other players are taking up the chairs, their legs spread out like giants at a kids’ tea party. Coach is bent over in his seat, his head in his hands.
There’s nothing he could have done differently, but that won’t make him feel any less responsible. That’s what being a good leader is about.
“You guys don’t need to hang around,” Dalton says. “I’ll call Coach if anything changes, and he’ll let you know.”
Dornan shakes his head and widens his stance, rooting himself to the floor more firmly. “We’ll be here until he wakes up.”
“That could be days,” I say.
Dornan shrugs. “We’ll take shifts.”
I touch his big arm, grateful that Kain has such good friends and relieved that he has so many people praying for his recovery.
“We should go back,” Dalton says, and Dornan nods, turning to return to the rest of the team.
As we reenter the ICU, I hear my name and turn to find my mom dashing down the hallway on heels too high to make running easy. “Oh my God. Tell me Kain’s okay.” she gasps.
“He’s okay.” On hearing the news, she pulls me into a fierce hug. “Were you watching the game? Did you see what happened?”
“I saw it,” I say. “It was awful.”
“Oh, Gabby.” She smooths my hair and pats my back, reverting to all the mom techniques she used to make me feel better in the past. Her perfume alone comforts me, and I sink against her, so grateful that she’s here to support me.
But why is she here to support me? I didn’t call her. Maybe Ellie did.
I draw back, resting my hands on her blouse-covered shoulders. “How did you find out what happened?”
“Lukas messaged me.”
“Lukas?” My eyes immediately flick to Dalton’s, finding my surprise reflected. I guess neither of us knew my mom and his dad were so close that he’d turn to her in a time of crisis.
“Okay…” I guess she notices my surprise and begins to stumble over more questions about Kain in a weirdly high-pitched voice.
“We need to go back in,” I interrupt, wondering what she’s going to do next. Will she take a seat with the team, or want to come through?
“I’ll come in and see Lukas,” she says, biting her lip the way she does when she’s nervous.
Dalton holds the door open for us, and we make our way inside the unit. As if he’s expecting our arrival, Lukas appears, and as soon as he sees my mom, he seems to sag. She immediately rushes forward, wrapping her arms around him, stroking his head like she did to me only minutes earlier. And once again, Dalton and I stare at each other in shock. The way they’re touching each other isn’t neighborly. It’s intimate. Her fingers thread through his thick black hair. His arms are wrapped so tightly around her that their bodies are pressed together from knees to cheeks.
I look down at the floor, embarrassed and confused because it looks like my mom and Mr. Nowak are lovers. Lovers who have been having a relationship and keeping it secret from their children.
“What the fuck?” Dalton whispers. “What the fuck is going on?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “But it looks like…”
Dalton puts his hand up as though the idea of what I am about to say is too much for him to comprehend.
I get it. While we’ve been skulking around living out our sexual fantasies, it looks like our parents have been doing the same thing. I want to throw up. This is so wrong on so many levels.
Lukas weeps in a way that I’ve never seen a man weep before, as though his heart is going to fall out of his mouth. “He died, Darly. He nearly died.”
Darly?
Oh god, he has a pet name for her. Dalton reaches for my hand, and we stand like lost school children, waiting for our parents to return to help us make sense of the world. I feel like the rug has been ripped out from under my feet. I feel like I’ve been committing some kind of incest with Kain, Blake, and Dalton. It’s ridiculous because of course that isn’t the case, but no one wants to be fucking the kids of someone their momma is in a relationship with.
That’s what Ellie did, isn’t it?
I’m supportive of her relationship, so why am I feeling so judgmental of my own actions? Or is it that I’m judgmental of my mom? A few weeks ago, I was worried that she was lonely and all the time she was hiding a clandestine relationship from me.
“I want to go home,” I tell Dalton. I need to get out of here before I say things that are hurtful and not thought through.
“I’ll take you.” Dalton says it without any pause, and relief washes over me. He understands. He always seems to understand me and find a way to give me what I need.
Without waiting to say goodbye, I turn and press the button to exit the unit. I don’t know how Mom realizes I’m leaving but her voice calls out my name again.
I burst through the door and power walk down the hallway. Dalton doesn’t follow immediately. Maybe he’s talking to his dad. A hand grasps my arm, and tugs me to a standstill, and I whip around to face Mom, whose face is flushed.
“Where are you going?”
“You’re fucking him?” I bark. “You’re seriously fucking Mr. Nowak?”
She blanches, her head jutting backwards as though I slapped her cheek. “I’m in a relationship with Lukas. We’ve been dating each other for two years.”
“Two years?” I screech as my brain glitches. All this time, she’s been sneaking around behind my back. All this time, while I’ve been worried that everyone will hate me for having feelings for the Nowak brothers, my mom’s been carrying on without a care for anyone else.
I can’t imagine how Travis will react. He was closer to our dad than I was. He took his death the hardest. I think that’s part of the reason why he’s been so protective of his friendships with Dalton, Blake, and Kain. He can’t face losing anyone else important to him.
“We didn’t tell you or the boys because we worried about how you’d react.”
“Yeah, well. You were right to worry.”
Mom pauses and inhales deeply. I can practically see her counting to ten in her head, trying to stay calm while I’m anything but. “Lukas is broken, Gabby. Neither of us can deal with this now while Kain is in a hospital bed.”
“You think I can deal with it now? You lied to me. You both lied to all of us.” Even as the words tumble from my lips like shards of broken glass, I know I’m a hypocrite. But I can’t seem to find the balance when this is my mom, the only person I thought I could trust.
I’ve been holding on to that belief ever since Dad’s accident. When I found out that he was a liar, I needed the surety of mom’s honesty. I still do.
My foundations are rocking, Kain is sick, and I’m haunted by the guilt that my secret could smash Travis’s foundations even more than Mom’s will. I just don’t know what to do.
And when I can’t cope with my feelings, I hide away.
I turn, desperate for a place to escape to. At that moment, Ellie and Dornan walk from the direction of the restrooms.
I leave my mom, her face drawn with emotion, and grab Dornan’s arm. “Can you take me home, please?”
They both stare at me, hearing my distress in the tightness of my voice. “Of course,” Dornan says without hesitation. “Whatever you need.”
We walk away, leaving the scattered remnants of my broken and betrayed heart trampled under my mom’s feet.