9. Anna
9
ANNA
“ S orry.” I scoot my stool back from the counter, knocking it over in my haste to escape Jax and Mark, and the embarrassment of breaking down in front of them, which only makes things worse. “I’m sorry.”
I’m at the peak of a complete and total ugly cry. I’m flushed and no doubt blotchy. I can almost feel the splotches spreading across my skin like a rash. Wrapping my arms around my ribcage, I try to hold back the sobs racking my body, but another manages to break free. My breathing is ragged, and my eyes burn from the tears currently in free fall over my bottom lashes. I squeeze my eyes shut in the hopes of stopping them, but the dam is broken.
Just like my heart.
Getting to know Mark and Jax, and listening to them laugh, poke, and prod each other with childhood stories was wonderful. It felt like I’d known them all my life. Like I’d been there beside them through the thick and thin of it. But when the conversation turned to Penny’s cancer, how hard it was to watch her suffer, and how they stayed by her side and took care of her until the end, all I could think about was my mom.
And how I’m failing her.
She must be worried sick. Worried sick? She is already sick. She’s dying, and I’m here doing what? Pretending to be kidnapped while I hide out from Patrick, shirking my responsibility to my family? Pretending to go on dates with two amazing, albeit misguided, men who took care of their foster mom, held her hand while she took her last breath, while I’m letting my mom die without her only child by her side? After all the sacrifices she’s made, the dreams she gave up so that I could chase after my own?
God, I fucking hate myself right now.
But I’m not the only guilty party for my mother’s emotional pain and suffering in this house tonight. I may have been a willing accomplice, but Jax and Mark are the reason I’m not holding my mother’s hand right now.
“Hey, Anna. Hey. It’s okay. You’re okay.” Jax is approaching me, hands raised, palms out like I’m a wounded animal. There’s a wariness in his expression and his voice that wasn’t audible in any of the stories about Penny he shared over dinner. “Everything is going to be okay.”
“Stop,” I scream at him through broken sobs when he reaches out for me. “Don’t touch me.”
More sobs and whimpering noises. I hate how pathetic and weak I sound. I wish I was stronger. I need to be stronger than this. For her.
“Take me back.”
“What? Take you back?” Jax and Mark’s questions hit me at the same time. They sound as shocked as I feel hearing the words come out of my mouth, but I mean them.
“I’m going to marry Patrick. Take me back.” My entire body is shaking, but I ball my hands into fists at my side and use the pain of my nails digging into my palms to force my eyes open and meet their shell-shocked gaze. I poured every ounce of conviction into those words, but I know if I can’t look them in the eyes when I say it, they won’t believe me. “If you don’t take me back now, I’ll just go on my own. You were going to let me go anyway, right? That was the plan? To set me up with a new life? Well, this is the life I’m choosing. I’m marrying him. I’m marrying Patrick and there isn’t anything you can do to stop it.”
“The fuck you are marrying him,” Mark shouts.
“The fuck we can’t do anything about it.” Jax’s voice ratchets up another decibel. “We already did something about it. That whole speak now, or forever hold your peace part? We spoke the fuck up, Anna, and what did your savior Patrick-fucking-Calhoun do to stop us? Nothing. Oh, wait. He did do something. Used you as a human shield. Real prince fucking charming, that fiancé of yours. You’re not going back, and you sure as fuck aren’t saying I do. Not to him. Not fucking ever, Anna.”
“I don’t need your blessing, Jax. I’m going home with or without your help. You can’t watch me twenty-four hours a day.”
“You said you wanted a family someday. Do you want Patrick to be the father of those kids? He won’t love them any more than he loves you—which is not at all. You’ll all be his property. Then he’ll mold them so they end up just like him. Cruel, ruthless, and heartless.” Mark’s words are like a sucker punch to the solar plexus.
My stomach churns, threatening to upend its contents at the mere thought of having children with Patrick. Something I know he’ll want, despite not loving me. Mark is right about that. I have no illusions about my fiancé’s feelings for me. I’m nothing more than a prize-winning broodmare in his eyes. No, when I marry Patrick, there will be no children. I’ll take precautions to make sure that never happens. When he doesn’t get what he wants from me, he’ll find someone else and, if I’m lucky, he’ll want a divorce. No bastard children for Patrick Calhoun. He’ll have to take one of his girlfriends on the side as his wife. Or he could kill me.
I can’t cause him any trouble if I’m dead, right?
That should give me pause and it would, if not for my mother. Saving her is my priority. Patrick has the ways and means to make that happen.
“Anna, please,” Jax pleads. “Even without this thing between the three of us, and don’t you dare deny we have something because I know you feel it too. There’s no way Mark and I would let you marry Patrick. He’ll hurt you, and I’m not talking about your feelings, Anna. He’ll break you. That’s what men like him do.”
“I know what kind of man I’m marrying.” Obstinance replaces heartbreak. My mind is made up, and I’m not about to change it. Not for them. No matter how much they want me to. No matter how much I want to.
“Stop saying you’re marrying him,” Mark says through clenched teeth. There’s a twitch in his jaw muscle.
“You don’t want me to marry him?” I ask. It’s a baited question and they’re about to take it hook, line, and sinker.
“No,” comes their unified response.
“Even if it means killing my mother?” I thought I hated myself before, but the next words out of my mouth bring me to a new low. “Like Penny?”
The recoil and disgust are instantaneous—not just from them, but from me. I feel sick. This isn’t who I am. I’m not a cruel or malicious person. God, what am I doing? I can’t believe I just said that, threw their foster mother up in their face like that. What’s wrong with me? My stomach revolts. I’m going to lose my dinner.
“Oh, god.” Another heave, and my hand is over my mouth. Abandoning our argument, I bolt for the bathroom and slam the door behind me.
Mark and Jax don’t follow me. They’re in the middle of a heated conversation. I can hear their raised voices, but it’s hard to make out the words over my retching as I heave the contents of my stomach into the toilet.
I’m still dry heaving when I hear footsteps in the hall, followed by a hard rap on the door. “Go away,” I grind out between stomach convulsions.
“Anna.” Mark’s voice rumbles through the solid wood. Three more raps on the door. “Anna, open up.”
“Leave me alone.” Another stomach cramp and more heaving.
“Baby, please.” Jax this time. The doorknob rattles. “Anna, please. If you won’t let us in there, at least come back out here and talk to us. Please.”
Why do they sound so sweet, so concerned? Why aren’t they mad? If someone used my mother to influence me, hurt me, and manipulate me, I would be pissed. Except someone already has. And it’s not the two men standing on the other side of the bathroom door. Patrick’s the one taking advantage of my mother’s condition, of my father’s failures. Of me.
And I’m going to marry him.
Mark and Jax have given up their attempt to get me to open the door. It’s quiet out in the hall. Silent. I can’t even hear them breathing anymore. My heart sinks. They’ve given up. They’re going to let me go. It’s what I want, so why does it make me feel worse? Why do I want them to keep arguing with me, fighting for me to stay? They won’t. I wouldn’t if I were in their shoes. It’s not like I’ve given them a reason to. After all, this was never supposed to be a permanent arrangement for them, and we hardly know each other. They don’t need the kind of trouble keeping me will bring, the trouble crossing Patrick Calhoun will bring.
Knowing I can’t stay in the bathroom forever and that I’ll have to face them eventually if I’m going to leave, I turn on the faucet and splash cold water on my face. After blotting my face with a hand towel, I notice a soft light glowing under the bathroom door.
There’s ringing.
“Hello? Anna? Is that you, sweetheart? Are you all right? Can you hear me? Say something, Anna. If you can talk, please, say something. I need to know you’re okay. Please.” My father’s voice is faint, muffled through the door, and the cell phone pressed against it, but the concern and fear in his voice are clear. Genuine.
“Dad?” I unlock the door, yank it open, drop to my knees, and snatch the cell phone from Jax’s hand. Mark and Jax share a look, something like surprise passing between them, but I don’t waste time processing it. My dad is on the phone, a connection to my mother. A strangled, half sob escapes before I can call for my father again. “Dad, are you still there?”
“Anna.” My name comes down the line with a heavy exhale. My father’s relief to hear my voice is palpable in the sigh. “You’re alive. Thank god, you’re alive. Have they hurt you? What are their demands? What do they want to bring you home? Whatever they want, whatever the ransom is, Patrick will pay it. You know he will. You’re his fiancée. He’ll pay it.”
I’m not sure who he’s trying to convince that a man like Patrick will do the right thing, me or himself. Not that I care. The only thing I care about right now is my mom.
“How’s Mom? Are you there with her at the hospital? Can I talk to her? Please, Dad, put her on the phone. Let me talk to her.” Fresh tears are streaming down my face. My father and I weren’t on the best of terms, even before he sold me off to Patrick, but I’m happy to hear his voice, for any update on my mom that he can give me.
“Anna, oh, sweetheart. Your mother, she…” His voice breaks. He’s crying. I can hear the anguish, the pain.
Oh, god. Oh no, please. No, no, no.
Coughing. Another broken sob. My father clears his throat a couple of times and tries again. “Your mother, she…”
“No, Dad. Please, don’t say it. Don’t say it.” My voice is barely a whisper. If he doesn’t say it, it isn’t real. It isn’t happening. She isn’t dead.
Jax wraps his arms around me, and I don’t fight him when he pulls me onto his lap. Mark is stroking my hair, and I’m vaguely aware the phone is on speaker, and they’re listening.
“She’s in a coma, sweetheart. The doctors aren’t sure…” He breaks off again with another choking sob. “They aren’t sure if she’ll…she’s not…they don’t think she’s going to?—”
Coma? There’s still time to save her.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.” The doctors are wrong. They have to be. “Tell Mom I’ll be there soon. I’m on my way. I heard somewhere that people in comas can hear you talking to them. Talk to her, Dad. Tell her I’m coming.”
He’s quiet for a moment, doesn’t ask how I plan on escaping my kidnappers, how I’ll get from wherever they’re keeping me to the hospital. He doesn’t say anything. There’s only the sound of his soft sobs coming through the phone until he manages to pull himself together enough to whisper goodbye. “Okay, sweetheart. I’ll tell her.”
The phone slips from my hand, hitting the hardwood floor with a thunk. “Take me home.”
My tone brooks no argument. There won’t be one. I’m leaving and there’s not a goddamn thing they can do to stop me.