Chapter Thirty-Five
Mia
I opened the front door and walked in.
“Axel, please,” I said, holding out my arms as Ally appeared at the entrance to the kitchen, baby in arm.
She frowned for a moment, then extended Axel to me. I swept him up and looked down at his little chubby face.
“Hi, cutie,” I said, smiling as I cradled him with one hand and teased his cheeks with the other until he giggled. “Yeah, you love Auntie Mia, don’t you? Yes, you do!”
He laughed and flailed his feet around. My heart warmed immediately. I tickled one of his feet, which produced a massive fart and laugh at the same time.
“Oh, god,” I moaned as the smell hit me, moving to a different area. “What did you feed him this morning? That is toxic.”
“Hey, you wanted him,” Ally said.
“I didn’t realize you were so eager to be rid of him,” I said, a tight laugh escaping me. “He’s a monster today, is he? Are you a monster? Are you? Little cutie. You could clear a room like that. Then who would play with your cheeks, hmm? Then who?”
Axel giggled and slapped me in the face with his hand as I got in close. I recoiled, and his other hand hit me in the nose.
“This is not going how I imagined it would when I walked in,” I observed, shaking my head to remove some hair from his reach.
“How bad is it?” Ally asked.
I looked up. “Huh?”
“You came in here, sour-faced, needing baby cuddles without even saying hi,” Ally said. “So, what happened? What did you do wrong?”
I frowned at her. “Excuse me? What did I do wrong?”
“Yeah, I know you. This is about Mr. Perfect Body, isn’t it?”
“I’m still here,” Timothy said, appearing from the bedroom. “I can hear you.”
“I bore your child. I think you’re safe, darling,” Ally teased, blowing her husband a kiss. “Besides, we both spent last night admiring our waitress's rear end, so I know you admire other women, too.”
Timothy looked at me for help.
I shrugged. “You got yourself into this mess.”
He laughed. “I suppose. But you should have seen it. Talk about high and tight!”
Ally nodded. “It really was something else. We had a fun evening.”
“I don’t need to know the other details,” I said, lifting a hand. “As long as you had fun and nobody got hurt except my psyche for imagining that.”
“I had to listen to you the other night,” Ally countered.
“Let’s please never talk of that again,” I moaned, rocking Axel gently as he grubbed at my shirt. “Please.”
“Sure. But tell me why you’re here instead of at his place, and why you’re upset, and why you’re driving a muscle car,” Ally said, pointing out the window to the driveway. “One that looks suspiciously like the one you’re trying to get your dad. Did you steal it?”
“No,” I said heavily. “He gave it to me.”
“You finished cleaning his house already? Or did he like it when you cleaned something else instead?”
I glared at her as Timothy choked on his own spit in the next room.
“He gave it to me,” I said sternly. “As a parting gift.”
“Parting gift?”
I nodded. “It’s complicated. But I had to leave. Before things got … involved.”
“They were already involved,” Ally said. “Remember? I was there.”
“Not that,” I said. “Involved.”
Ally frowned, thinking it over. Then she gasped. “You fell for him! That’s what you mean. Feelings. Real feelings?”
I nodded.
“And you screwed it up?” she yelped.
“What? No!” I said sharply enough that Axel looked at me. “Oh, it’s okay, little guy, it’s okay. There, just relax.”
I cooed at him for a few more seconds until his attention turned back to his fist, keeping him focused on that again.
“So you messed it up.”
“I did not,” I said, hauling back on my emotions to make sure I didn’t snap at my best friend. “I left. He gave me the car, saying he hoped that at least would make me happy.”
“Heavy line. Could he not make you happy, though?” she asked.
“Maybe,” I admitted. “But, Al, that’s why I had to leave, don’t you see?”
“No. No, Mia, I don’t see. At all. You liked him. He liked you. That’s how it’s supposed to go. Why on Earth did you leave that?”
“Because I’m scared, okay?” I said, my eyes welling up. I handed the baby over for a cleaning. “I’m scared.”
“You can’t go through your entire life being scared, Mia,” she said, crossing the kitchen to put Axel into his rocker. Then she came and enveloped me in a hug. “You have to let go of your fear at some point. It’s not good for you to be like this.”
“But … but what if I do let myself care,” I moaned, “and then I lose him, too?”
“Why would you lose him?”
I couldn’t tell her about Rica or the Vorgans or any of the things that threatened to kill Torrent and take him from me if I decided to stay.
“It’s ... just what if I did? There are all sorts of things that could happen.”
I saw him flying through the windshield again.
Sure, he was a dragon, but what if Rica sent the car flying off a cliff next time?
I doubted he would survive that fall without being able to slow himself.
I wasn’t going to open myself up for someone who could be dead in three days. I just couldn’t do it!
“Of course, there are things that could happen,” Ally said.
“We could fall over dead at any point, without warning. Heart attack, brain aneurysm, undetected cancer, and more. There are a million ways any of us could die at any time, dear. At some point in your life, you’re going to lose other people. ”
“Yes, but this way, I minimize that,” I whispered, knowing it sounded silly but unable to stop myself.
“You’re missing the point, though,” Ally said, forging ahead. “Do you know what it means when you miss someone as much as you miss your mom?”
“What?” I asked, dabbing at my cheeks.
“It means that you loved them and lived a life so full of that person before they passed. That hurt you experienced is born from years, decades, of experiences, shared memories, and moments with that person. It’s a sign of all the wonderful and good you shared with them.
That’s what creates that pain. Yes, you lose them, or perhaps they lose you, but think of all that love you had that comes from letting yourself care for them in the first place. That’s what’s most important.”
“But the pain,” I whispered, feeling that gnawing void once more.
“You do not realize that he’s also worried about losing you,” Ally said. “Despite that, he was willing to go ahead. To open himself up to you, yes?”
“Yes,” I said, thinking about how Tor had called me his mate, his Eternal Mate. He was willing to go the distance with me, no matter how much it might hurt to lose me. I couldn’t deny that.
“That means he cares about you a lot, Mia, dear, and that he’s willing to risk that for the opportunity to have you in the first place. He feels you’re worth that kind of pain. That having you, for no matter how short a period of time, is worth the ache that might come from losing you.”
I was flat-out crying by that point.
Because she was right. What was worse was that, on some level, I knew I felt the same way. And yet I’d still left him.
“What have I done?” I whispered.