63. He Chose Looking Forward
He Chose Looking Forward
Toby
The battle lines were drawn. I was armed. NoBo was dangerous.
World War Fruit raged again.
I jiggled the punnet of blueberries in my hand. “Yummy,” I cooed, smacking my lips to sell the con job. “Blueberries… Yummy. ”
Noah’s head fell back against his highchair with a wail. I grimaced. Epic fail. My gaze flicked over the banana smooshed on the floor—beloved no more—and landed on the fruit bowl. Apples. Oranges. A lumpy avocado. I’d tried all those pathetic options and gotten zero love.
Noah grunted, his chubby hands clamping on air, and he pushed himself up, trying to grab… something.
My brows knitted. The only thing left on the kitchen counter was…
Uh.
His mama’s raspberry pancakes.
Wisps of steam curled from the plate. The pancakes were fresh and toasty out of the pan, just begging for Gwen to drizzle them with syrup when she wandered downstairs for breakfast. She was running late for work after I’d taken some— ahem —liberties with her gorgeous body before she’d finally wriggled free to dash for the shower.
“This?” I asked Noah, pointing at the pancakes.
Grunting, he smacked his hands on his highchair. Yep, that was what he wanted.
“Uh…” Guilty as sin, I darted a look between the plate, the empty doorway, and the furious baby with his tear-stained cheeks. “Mama won’t mind…”
I whipped a pancake off the pile and had only torn off the first nibbly bit when Noah’s hand shot out and grabbed the rest. Laughing, I shrugged and let him happily gum on the stolen pancake as I tidied the kitchen.
Moments like these—quiet moments of nothing much in particular—made me appreciate my new job.
A month had whizzed by without any regrets.
I had set hours and late starts now, which meant I could spend more time with my family.
No management. No stress. The only thing I had to do was rock up and do a damn good job.
The free time also gave me the mental space to stay on top of the lawyers and wrap up the partnership.
Good riddance. Ian couldn’t buy me out. He was living on nothing but mob money and borrowed time.
Well, Wayne had whispered that part to Gwen one day when we’d left the police station, anyway.
Buyers had snapped up the clinic for a reasonable price, and the last shackle tying me to Ian had disappeared. We were free.
I was ready to take the next step, too. Well, more like…
leap . A big jump into an abyss that started with a d and ended with an e .
A doctorate. Me. The guy everyone had written off as too dumb to go to university was going to specialize in pediatric dentistry.
Gwen had always been my biggest cheerleader—the only person who’d ever believed in me—and damn, the way she’d smiled when I’d held out my acceptance letter.
That smile was the stuff dreams were made of.
Life is good.
I grinned as I grabbed the breakfast dishes from the sink and started loading the dishwasher.
When I launched a fresh attempt to maneuver the skillet into the bottom rack, the TV caught my eye.
I’d barely paid attention to the morning show droning in the background, but the flash of red and blue lights distracted me. I flicked another glance at the news.
“Christ,” I muttered, glancing at the caption running along the bottom of the screen. “Something big is going down in Mosm—” My hand froze. The skillet fell with a clatter into the dishwasher. After swallowing the rock lodged in my throat, I blinked, then forced myself to read the caption properly.
Man dead in Mosman after suspected criminal underworld slaying.
I sucked in a deep breath. Nah, can’t be , I thought, shaking my head. I’m being paranoid. But when I glanced back at the TV, I knew I wasn’t overthinking.
The news footage zoomed past the police cars to the building swarming with officers.
My heart stopped. I’d pulled up outside those apartments a hundred times before.
The news crew zoomed closer. Men wearing blue coveralls and gloves were busy collecting—I gulped— evidence on the third-story balcony.
I’d sat on that outdoor lounge and shared a beer with Ian a hundred times.
A reporter stood in front of the chaos, a microphone gripped in her hand. I scrambled across the kitchen, grabbed the remote, and jabbed the volume button a few times.
“Police are now investigating,” the reporter was saying, “but a spokesperson has confirmed the man’s death.
Police have so far refused to corroborate the account of residents of what happened in the early hours of this morning, but it is believed the death is tied to underworld figure Marcello Morelli… ”
I didn’t hear any more. My brain had turned to fuzz, my ears stuffed with cotton wool.
Ian, you stupid damn fool.
I bent over. Shivering, a rush of nausea raced through my blood, and the test pancake sloshed around in my stomach.
“Tobes?”
A hand rubbed my back, and a kiss landed on my cheek. A long pause followed.
“Tobes, are you…okay…?”
“I—I d-don’t know.”
That was honest. Life was full of coincidences, but it wasn’t high on the probability scale that another person living in that building had mob connections, was it? My chest heaved under the strain of all the feelings being shoved into me. I was like an overstuffed teddy bear ripping at the seams.
“Gwen, I—”
Unable to choke out another word, I glanced up to see her eyes skimming the television.
Her eyebrows pinched together. “Is that—?” Her lips clamped shut. What did Liam call her— clever Gwen? She was. She’d already slotted the puzzle pieces together. Her arms flew around me, and she squeezed me so tight against her I couldn’t breathe. It was perfect.
“We’re going to get through this,” Gwen whispered. “Just like every other curveball the universe has thrown at us, you hear me? We’re going to be okay.”
I pressed my face into her neck, my tears leaving a wet splotch on her crispy white blouse. “Ye–yeah.” I pulled back, scrubbed my face, and forced down a deep breath. “Yeah.”
“Da?” A tiny voice said.
I peered over Gwen’s shoulder. Big eyes blinked up at me from the highchair. A chubby fist stuck out with a mangled bit of pancake squashed in it. Taking another swipe over my eyes, I bent forward and pretended to gobble up the soggy bit of pancake. Noah’s belly laugh filled the room.
Gwen was right.
We were going to be okay.
A couple of hours later, calls and messages were blowing up my phone.
One call was from the police. Ian was gone. The man I’d grown up with had just— poof —disappeared off the face of the earth . The investigation was in the early days, but the police officer explained that his death was a homicide. I dropped my phone, and Gwen took over from there.
Had I caused this? Had me wishing, even for a second, that Ian was dead, somehow tricked the universe into taking action?
I spent the next twenty minutes on the bathroom floor, heaving my guts up.
The only other call I answered was from Zach.
“Yeah, everything’s cool,” I lied.
Zach didn’t buy my crap for a second. He offered the usual help and condolences, but after he hung up, he sent in the big guns. John Rawles landed on my doorstep less than an hour later.
“Uh, I thought it might be time to look at those hedges of yours.” John rubbed the back of his neck, and his eyes didn’t quite meet mine. He was lying through his teeth. He was checking up on me, and I didn’t mind a damn bit.
John lumbered after me through the house, waving to the group of women buzzing in the kitchen but not stopping to say hello before following me through the back door.
We exchanged small talk about the yard. Even the high praise of him complimenting my lawn couldn’t wrestle much of a smile out of me. I was barely holding myself together.
Correction .
I wasn’t holding myself together at all. I crumpled in the corner of my backyard, and John sank to his haunches beside me.
His hand landed on my shaking shoulder. “You’re going to be alright, mate.”
“I just—if I’d done more to—to—help Ian, he’d still be here. I could’ve given him the money. I would’ve if it meant he hadn’t…” I gulped. “It’s not worth it.” That squeezy feeling tightened around my chest again. I dropped my head down to my knees. “None of this is worth it.”
“Mate, there’s nothing you could’ve done to help him. Your brother chose his path in this world—”
“My father chose this stupid fucking path! He started all of this! If he’d told my mother to fuck right off and made Ian part of our family, none of this would’ve happened!”
John didn’t react to the anger spewing out in my words. He hummed a soft sort of sound and sat on the grass beside me. The sway of trees and the rustle of leaves skipping across the lawn filled the silence until he spoke again.
“I lost my brother when I wasn’t much older than you,” he said.
My head shot up off my knees. “Y–you did?”
He dipped his chin. “Not quite the same, but not so different. He’d been lost on the drink for a while.
Maree and I—bloody hell—we fought all the time about how much time I wasted trying to help him…
all the money I was giving him…until…” His sigh was long.
“He lashed out at Maree one day when Zach was only little. I didn’t think twice about throwing my brother out of my house, but it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
I couldn’t fix him, and his addiction wasn’t worth tearing down my marriage any more than I already had.
Cutting contact was the right thing to do. ”
John sat quiet for a minute. When I glanced over, he plucked at some grass.
I could tell from the slump of his shoulders and the heavy crease between his brows that the loss wasn’t something that had ever completely left him.
Was that my future? Nothing but days filled with regret?
I could list a thousand regrets right now.