Chapter 41 – Grayson
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
GRAYSON
“God, I missed this,” I say into the microphone angled in front of my mouth.
“The adrenaline is like a drug.”
“Damn straight.” I look over at Devon and nod as the rotors reach speed, then I pull back the collective and the chopper lifts off the ground.
“It’s as if everyone was waiting for you to come back to have an accident or something,” he says with a laugh as he runs over the switches to check their positions.
“No shit. It’s one call after another today,” I say as the heaviness of the sleepless night is swept away by the adrenaline coursing through my veins as I clear the landing zone.
“MVC. Drunk driver in a truck head-on with a mini-van. Patient is a two-year-old female thrown from vehicle. Ambulance ETA to landing site ten minutes.”
“Christ,” I mutter.
This is what I don’t miss.
The frailty of life.
The fear that in the few extra seconds it takes me to make sure there are no power lines, make sure I can land safely, might be the difference between life and death.
“This is Mercy 445. Ten-four. Our ETA is eight minutes and counting,” I say.
God, please let the little girl hold on.
* * *
Exhaustion takes hold.
I can barely keep my eyes open as other patrons drone on around us in the Better Buzz, but I’m doing everything I can to be present for Luke.
“Did you have a lot of calls last night, Dad?” he asks as I pour creamer into my coffee and shake the exhaustion from my brain.
“A lot,” I say, realizing how hard it is to get back into the swing of things after being off for so long.
“Did you save them all?” he asks as if we hadn’t missed a step in our routine.
“Not sure yet, buddy.” I wrap an arm around his shoulders and squeeze. “Some are still getting help from doctors.” My mind pulls to the little girl who was ejected from a car seat, which had been strapped in wrong. To the faces of her parents as they stood outside the helicopter and watched their world being taken away, trusting in me to get her to General so she had a chance.
“Okay. I’ll say prayers for them tonight to help them get better.”
“I’m sure they’d appreciate that, bud.”
“Looking good, Malone,” a voice rings out across the shop, and I turn to her with a tired smile.
“Hey, Desi.” I pull my sister-in-law’s best friend, now turned family friend, in for a hug.
“Are you trying to make every woman in here salivate at your hotness? You really should ditch the flight suit before you leave work if you hope to have a chance of making it home. You’ll end up having to resuscitate all the women fainting over you.”
“Good to see you, too.” I laugh.
“Hey, Luke.” She ruffles his hair and talks with him for a moment. I look up and am startled to see Sidney on the other side of the street. I shouldn’t be. I see her in passing all the time. Usually, we just wave to each other and pretend not to be together, and yet something about seeing her now pulls at me.
“Give me a sec,” I say absently as I walk toward the window and watch.
Yep, that’s her, all right. She’s with another woman with jet-black hair that is pulled back in some kind of fancy knot. They are both dressed alike—heels, skirts, button-up blouses. They both are carrying shopping bags galore from some of the boutique shops in town.
They also both look like they don’t belong anywhere near Sunnyville. They stand out like an anomaly. Sidney, with her dirty blonde colored hair and brown eyes and legs for days, looks like the picture of California, but one where there are stars on the avenue instead of vines on the hills.
It’s a stark reminder of how different our lives are. She’s more like Claire than either of us wants to admit, and I’ll always be me. A Malone.
I’ve been coasting along with this . . . whatever this is . . . telling myself that we could make this work, that she could be content here. Seeing her like this—looking so out of her element, has the realization that I’ve been lying to myself fall like an anvil onto my chest.
The pressure from it is debilitating.
I stand squarely in the picture window of Better Buzz and just stare. Somehow, some way, she senses me. Her feet falter. Her head turns. Our eyes meet.
She smiles.
Waves.
I may be staring at her, but I don’t acknowledge her in the least. I can’t. I’ve already gotten too close, when I’ve been convincing myself that I’ve kept her at arm’s length.
So I don’t nod. I don’t smile. I don’t react at all. Instead, I turn my back and walk deeper into the coffee shop, to where Desi and Luke are laughing. To where I can bury my thoughts. To where I can get mad at myself for even thinking I could let anything more happen between us.
Over the last few weeks, I’d allowed those thoughts—those ideas, possibilities, emotions —to creep in.
Seeing her on the street was a solid one-two punch to the gut, reminding me why shit like that can’t be.
Fuck this. Fuck Sidney. Fuck her looking just like Claire with that air about her that screams money and privilege and everything that doesn’t want someone like me.
In the back of my mind, I know I’m being a dick. I know she can’t help but be herself . . . the woman who has invaded my life without warning. But the sting of my past, the feeling of déjà vu, is real and raw and tattooed in invisible ink. It’s a scar on my heart I can’t fucking get rid of.
One she doesn’t deserve to have to deal with.
One I’m hiding behind instead of facing the truth.
I’m fucking falling for her.
Desi looks up and smiles at me as I sit across from them, but her smile freezes and her eyes narrow when she looks closer.
“You okay?”
“Yep.”
I’m perfectly fucking fine.
Wait. Actually, I’m far from it.
She stares at me a bit longer, not believing me, and then saves my ass from having to pretend with Luke by turning her attention back to him.
I watch them joke, build a castle out of sugar packets, and have a staring contest. I’ve never been more grateful for her and her quirky sense of humor.
Because seeing Sidney like that—looking so much like Claire—brought me right back to that time, to the night Claire came home.
Luke was four months old—crying any time you set him down or moved the wrong way or God for-fucking-bid breathed the wrong way. She walked in the door drunk. I’ll never forget that. The look on her face. The smear of her mascara down her cheeks. The shame in her eyes.
Our fights had been more frequent. I chalked it up to having a newborn—a colicky one at that. It was why I wasn’t upset that she had gone out. She needed space, time to think and decompress.
“I have something I need to tell you.” Her words were slurred, her eyes averted.
“I don’t care that you went out. I know he gets to be overwhelming with the crying, but it’s a phase. It’s all just a phase.” I reiterated the same calming words my mom had told me when I had called her out of desperation.
“It isn’t a phase,” she said softly. “It’s a life sentence.”
“How can you say that?” I looked down at Luke, the life we’d created. He was a little bit of perfection in such a fucked-up world, and I was unable to comprehend how she couldn’t see it.
“I can’t do this, Gray. This isn’t me.”
My laugh must have sounded so ridiculous to her, but it was all I could give above Luke’s crying. “I know we’re young and don’t have much, Claire, but?—”
“That’s exactly it. We don’t have anything!” she shouted, and I paused in the bounce, bounce, shift rhythm that usually calmed Luke.
“Your parents got to you again, didn’t they?” I shake my head and try to move toward her without upsetting Luke, but she won’t look at me. “This is all we need, Claire. Us. Luke.”
“I need more than that.” Her voice was barely a whisper, but every single syllable was like a nail being driven into my heart. It was then that I knew . . . I knew they had won. I knew she had gotten drunk so she’d have the courage to tell me. I knew she was leaving.
I knew, in her mind, she’d already left.
Luke started crying again. I wanted to put him down so I could beg and plead with her, but I couldn’t do that to him. I couldn’t abandon him when I already knew one parent was going to.
“Claire-bear?—”
“Don’t.” Her hand came up as she squeezed her eyes closed for a second. “Fuck. Don’t call me that.”
“Don’t you love me? Don’t you love us?” Fear was all I could hear in my own voice. Fear rioted in my veins. “Don’t you love him ?”
“I just don’t know anymore.”
“Yes, you do!” My shout was loud enough that the windows in our tiny apartment rattled as my chest constricted. I couldn’t seem to breathe.
“I’ll have my attorney draft up something?—”
“You mean your parents’ attorney.”
“Yes.” Still no eye contact. Still absolutely zero acknowledgment of our son.
“You’ve told them to fuck off a million times. Rebelled when you dated me because I wasn’t part of your cotillion bullshit. What’s so different now? What changed?” Confusion owned every part of me.
“There’s a way to give up all my rights. It’s called voluntary relinquishment of rights.”
“You know the term?” I shout. “You’ve already done it, haven’t you?”
“I’ll sign the paperwork so you don’t ever worry about me coming back for him.” Her voice . . . God, her fucking voice was so devoid of emotion it made me want to scream and give up at the same time. The Hoskins’ brainwashing had finally worked.
“How can you do this? Look at him! Look. At. Him.” She lifted her eyes and took him in, her bottom lip quivering before she stared me dead in the eyes.
“It’s the money, isn’t it?”
“It’s a lot of things, Gray.”
“They finally threatened your trust fund?” Her lack of an answer was the only answer I needed. Fear turned to anger. Anger to rage. Rage to hysteria. “Get the fuck out! Our son— MY SON is worth more than any goddamn bank account.”
The first tear leaked over her eyelashes and slid along the mascara track that was already on her cheek. She had cried for someone else but could barely muster a fucking tear for us. She didn’t bother to brush it away. She just stared at me with regret and a sadness that to this day, I have never been able to fathom. How could money be more important than your own flesh and blood?
“One of these days, Claire, you’re going to look in the mirror and realize you’re a selfish piece of shit. You’re going to want to know my son. Don’t bother knocking on that door because I’d rather die than let you see what an incredible person he’s going to be. I’ll make damn sure of it.”
She didn’t react. Didn’t fucking care.
All I know is that when she turned her back and left without so much as a second glance at her son, I cried more than he did that night. And for more nights than I cared to remember, I fell asleep in a bed she bought, under a comforter she selected, beside a son who had eyes shaped just like hers.
When I look away from where I’d zoned out staring at my coffee, Desi is making faces and Luke is falling backward giggling like a loon, clutching his sides and gasping for breath. I know we’re better off without Claire’s selfishness. I know she would not have stayed trapped in this life of runny noses and little league games. She wouldn’t have given up a single piece of herself to make someone better. I know I would be worrying every single day that she was going to give in to the temptation of her parents and their house high up on the hill above the vineyards.
I know we’re better off for it, but fuck if it still doesn’t sting.
Fuck you, Claire.
“You sure you’re okay?” Desi asks with a soft smile and a pat on my knee.
“Yeah. I’m sure. Thanks for this. With Luke. I needed a minute to figure shit out.”
“Did you get it figured out?”
“Nah. It’s a work in progress.”
“Isn’t everything?”