38. Last Chance
38
Last Chance
WINTER
“What?” Haze’s voice echoes in my head. I only realize how tightly I’m squeezing the Polaroid when it shrinks into a crumbled ball. I can’t move a muscle, just staring at the bloody man in front of me.
“This isn’t happening.” I step backward.
This guy is not my dad.
Haze’s sister’s killer cannot be my biological father.
The man gives me a faint smile, his teeth painted with blood.
“What the hell is going on?” Haze turns to me.
“I…” No words seem appropriate for this moment.
“Did you just call him Dad?” Haze’s horrified.
I try and regain my composure.
“No.” I chase my breath. “This is a mistake. He’s… He’s not my dad.” I close my eyes while I say it. Like I’m hoping it’ll shield me from the look on Haze’s face when I tell him. “A few days ago, I… I went to see my mom. I asked her about my biological father. She gave me a picture.”
I hand him the wrinkled photograph.
Silent, he scans the picture.
One second is all it takes.
I can see it in his eyes: how fast he realizes what I’d go to the end of the earth to deny.
“But… she said his name was Mike. This doesn’t make any sense. He can’t be my dad,” I convince myself.
“She’s right,” Marcus cuts in.
Haze’s furious eyes dart back to him.
“My name isn’t Marcus. It never was.”
None of us speak, blink, move.
This is too much.
“I was nineteen when I started working for the organization. Just like your boyfriend here.” He motions to Haze with his chin. “They got my name wrong. Thought I said Marc and just assumed it was short for Marcus. I didn’t correct them, and it stuck with me.”
“No.” Haze shakes his head. “There’s no fucking way. Out of all the people in the world, you’re… Fuck .” Haze jams his fist right through the shitty hotel wall, and I yelp, eying the hollow hole he left behind. “This isn’t real. You… You can’t be her dad.” He holds his head in his hands and paces around the room obsessively as if he’s waiting for another explanation to come to him.
“I can’t believe you’re finally here. In front of me.” Marcus—shit, Mike —smiles at me, and it sends Haze over the edge.
“You’re not her fucking dad!” Haze shouts at the top of his lungs and grips Mike’s collar. He takes a powerful swing at him, near having a mental breakdown. Mike collapses onto the floor with a loud thud.
“How do you know about the organization? How do you even know we were dating? You said you didn’t know me!” I’ve never seen Haze this furious. “You’re going to explain everything. Right fucking now. Am I making myself clear?”
Mike wipes blood from his mouth and leaps off the ground with a groan of pain.
“The day you came looking for me, I knew the organization had sent you. It was the only thing that made sense. But I just figured you worked for them. Then, I found out you were Winter’s boyfriend. I didn’t know you were that little girl’s brother, I swear.”
“How?” I raise my voice. “How did you find out we were together?”
His eyes soften when he addresses me. “By watching you. My daughter. I’ve been watching you for a while now.”
What the fuck?
“Did you really think…” He looks at Haze. “That it would be that easy? You never found it weird that I just happened to be in the same city as you when you were searching for me?”
Haze’s jaw drops.
Of course.
The chances of him being this close were practically nonexistent. There’s a reason he was here this whole time. He chose to stay here. But why would he put himself in danger like that?
“Why would you watch me? You never gave a shit about me!” I snap.
“You’re wrong! So wrong.” He speaks rapidly.
“Tell that to my mom. Remember her? Lauren, the girl you abandoned when she was pregnant?” I’m getting emotional.
“Winter, you have to understand… When I got your mom pregnant, I owed the organization a lot of money. I was just a kid. A scared, broke, stupid kid. I didn’t leave your mom because I didn’t love her. I left because I did. Every minute I spent with her put her in danger. The day she told me she was pregnant… was the worst day of my entire life. That’s when I knew I had to disappear.”
“Bullshit!” I belt out. He’s just messing with my heart to save his own ass.
“It’s true!” he insists. “I just… panicked and left the country. Then I met…” His gaze drops to the rotten corpse, reminding us that there’s a dead body right fucking there. “I met Greta, and she helped me out. Said if we paid back my debt, I’d be fine. That’s why I started stealing, breaking into loaded pricks’ houses.” He glances Haze’s way, knowing damn well that, in this case, the loaded pricks were his parents. “At first, I just wanted a normal life… To go back to you and your mom.”
“Liar!” I yell.
“I promise you everything I just told you is the truth,” he says like his promises mean shit to me. Yet, his words afflict me. I can’t help seeing a sick, twisted similarity between Haze and the damaged man in front of me. Leaving the girl to protect her? Because I haven’t heard that before.
“When Greta and I moved back here for the first time in years… we opened this place. Mostly for money laundering, a bit of drug dealing on the side. I just couldn’t help myself. I had to find out what happened to your mom. I went to check up on her. Up until then, I’d always convinced myself that she’d gotten an abortion. That she couldn’t have possibly raised the baby alone. But Winter… the second I laid eyes on you, I knew you were my kid.”
I want to scream, puke, hit him, run away. I’d do anything to change the truth.
This man is my father.
This man is my fucking father.
“What the hell happened here?” I motion to Greta.
Tears of rage spill down Mike’s face. He wipes them off.
“I-I was on the move for so long after they traced me back to the motel, never staying in the same place for over a day, but I still… I still continued to watch over you. Greta warned me, she begged me to stop, but I kept coming back. I wanted to see you, even from a distance. It’s all my fault. I led them right to us.” He assesses the lifeless woman at his feet. “I lost everything, kid,” he tells Haze. “There’s nothing else you can take away from me.”
Haze is the definition of conflicted, blue eyes drifting between me and his sister’s killer repeatedly.
“There’s still something,” he says and points his weapon back at Mike.
But this time…
He cocks it.
My heart stops.
“Haze, don’t!” I scream and step right in front of Mike.
“Winter, get out of the way!” he yells, but I can see how distressed he is.
“You’re not a murderer. You don’t want to do this!’
“It doesn’t matter what I want. I have to do it.” A tear rolls down his cheek. “ For her .”
“No. You’re wrong. Don’t you see? You’re not doing this for her, Haze. You’re doing it for you. Because you’re angry. Because you’re hurt. And you have every right to be. No one should ever have to go through what you went through. But you can’t change what happened to Desiree. You’ll never be able to. The one thing you can do is send him to jail for the rest of his miserable, pathetic life.”
He doesn’t reply, but his clenched jaw, the tears streaming down his face, they tell me I’m getting through to him.
“What do you expect to happen, huh? Once you’ve shot him? Do you think it’s going to make you feel better? Bring you peace? Do you think you’ll finally be able to breathe again?” I shake my head. “You won’t. It’ll feel good for a second. Then you’ll realize what you’ve done. Killing him won’t make you happy, Haze. But you know what it will make you?”
I pause.
“A murderer.”
Color spills from his face.
“You’ll go to jail. And you’ll never have the long and happy life Desiree wanted you to have. He already took her life. I’m begging you, please… please don’t let him take yours .”
He’s shaken up by my speech, but he fights it.
“Why do you even care?” Haze clenches his jaw. “You gave up on me, remember?” Pain emanates off every word.
“I care because I love you!” I blurt.
His lips part.
He blinks at me in shock.
A long, heavy silence ensues.
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do. I love you, you idiot,” I repeat.
“Then why didn’t you show up that night?” he sounds so broken—so hurt—that it destroys me.
“I did show up!”
He frowns.
“I showed up, but you didn’t see me. I… I never got out of the cab.”
It takes a second for the information to sink in.
“It fucking killed me, you know that?” His voice cracks.
The ache in my chest spreads to my entire body.
If I’d just gotten out of that cab, we wouldn’t be here right now. He changed his ways for me. He was finally the man I wanted him to be. All he needed was for me to tell him we still stood a chance.
I sniffle. “I know, and I’m so sorry. I was just scared. So scared that if I opened up to you, you’d break my heart again, and I…” I’m full-on sobbing at this point, crying so hard it’s hard to speak. “I… I didn’t think I could survive you losing you a second time.”
His face softens, but he’s still so angry. At me, at Mike, the whole damn world. The words come out of their own will.
“Haze, I’m pregnant.”
He doesn’t react right away, completely baffled.
Like his brain is rebooting, he opens his mouth to speak, then closes it, then opens it again, all to no avail.
“What?” he whispers.
“I’m pregnant.” I cry harder.
“But… how?”
“Remember three weeks ago? At the party.”
His eyes grow in realization.
“And I have no idea what the hell I’m going to do from here, but I know one thing: I need you by my side to do it. I need you to stick with me. So, we can figure this out, okay? Together. If you pull that trigger, you won’t get to see the first steps. You won’t get to hear the first word. Or the first laugh. And for what? For him? Just look at him.” I point at Mike. Haze’s eyes follow the motion. “You’re going to throw everything away for this guy? Our future together? All of it? Please. If not for me, do it for mini Haze.” I bring a hand to my belly. “Please don’t be like your father. Be there .”
He squeezes his eyes shut, tears pouring uncontrollably down his face for the longest wait of my entire life.
Then…
He lowers the gun.
Drops it on the ground and kicks it away.
As cliché as it may sound, in that moment, it feels like the world stopped turning. Like time slowed down for us. I don’t think. I just run straight to him.
He’s chosen to have life.
He’s chosen us.
His arms curve around me, holding me so closely it’s difficult to breathe. We’re both suffocating each other, but… what’s a little asphyxia when you’ve just gotten everything you’ve ever wanted?
“We’re going to have a baby?” he says in a trembling voice. I nod, my heart swelling with joy, fear, panic, and love all at once. I’m so caught up in the moment I almost forget Mike is right there, witnessing our heartfelt reunion. It isn’t long before his voice pulls us away from each other. Haze glares at him, probably considering kicking his teeth out for interrupting. But… there’s something different about the man in front of us. He seems just as emotional as we are.
Haze’s fists contract when Mike dips his fingers into his dirty clothes’ pocket, in search for something.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Haze warns.
Mike looks at me. Then at Haze.
“The right thing,” he exhales. “For once in my goddamn life.”
In his hands is a phone.
In his eyes… regret.
Mike dials the number right in front us, and I somehow know not to stop him. I grip Haze’s bicep before he can spring into action and snap his phone in two.
The room is so quiet we can hear the first ring.
“911, what’s your emergency?” a distant voice says.
He sucks in a breath.
“My name is Michael Walker.”
And holds my stare.
“I want to confess to the murder of Desiree Adams.”
I’m not sure how long Haze and I stayed in each other’s arms after that. I’m not even sure if we spoke at all after the police took him away. All I know is we cried. And smiled. And kissed. The aftermath is a bit of a blur, although it might have something to do with the fact that I was sobbing so hard I couldn’t see.
Looking back, I do remember one sentence.
One specific, unforgettable moment.
“I love you more than anything,” Haze whispered into my neck while I bawled into his shirt.
He’d said that to me once before.
But this time was different.
Because this time…
I believed him.