Chapter Twenty

“We brought wine and Cheetos.” Willa presented her gifts, framed by the rectangle of Kayla’s front door. “Oreos, too.”

“And tissues,” Aislin added, hoisting the box with a sympathetic smile. “The kind with lotion, so your nose doesn’t get all chapped and gross.”

Kayla felt her eyes filling with tears, which was stupid. Hadn’t she cried enough the last few days?

“Come in.” She pushed the door open, pausing to hug each of her friends. “Oh, good, you brought Stevie.” Kayla stooped down to pet Willa’s blind dog as Fireball pranced over, then skidded behind her ankles in a sudden show of shyness.

“Hey there, cutie.” Willa stooped down and coaxed Fireball out, scratching slowly behind his ears. “You taking good care of your mom?”

“He sat on my lap the whole drive home.” Kayla stood up, smoothing her palms down the legs of her jeans. “I think he was confused about what was happening.”

“That makes two of us.” Willa flopped onto the couch and pulled a corkscrew out of her purse while Aislin ran to get glasses.

“Three!” Aislin called from the kitchen. “Plus Kayla, of course.”

Kayla sighed and eased herself onto the sofa beside Willa, who promptly threw an arm around her shoulders. “How are you holding up?”

She shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”

Willa studied her face, clearly not buying it. “Does the thumb still hurt?”

Kayla glanced down at it. She’d already swapped out the bulky bandage for a regular old Band-Aid, and she hardly felt the tug of the stitches. “It’s fine. I barely even notice it.”

“Good.” Willa dropped her arm. “Do you want tough love or supportive?”

“Um, tough love?” She accepted a glass of wine from Aislin, who carried her own glass to the loveseat on the other side of the coffee table.

“Thanks, Ais.” Willa picked up the glass Aislin had set in front of her as she turned back to Kayla. “Tough love. You’re sure?”

Kayla wasn’t sure about anything, especially not what happened with Tony. But she nodded anyway, swallowing back emotion. “Lay it on me.”

Willa took a sip of wine. “He’s a commitment-phobic idiot who never deserved you. You’re better off without him. Also, those punny diner shirts he wears are stupid.”

“I kinda like the shirts.” Aislin crossed her legs and swirled the wine in her glass.

Willa shrugged and gave a sheepish smile. “Me, too.” She squeezed Kayla’s hand. “He’s also not an idiot. And I’m not even sure about the ‘better off without him’ thing.”

Aislin rested her glass on her knee. “Sorry. We suck at tough love.”

“It’s okay.” Kayla sighed and sipped her own wine.

Aislin regarded her over the rim of her glass. “You do look pretty sad.”

Kayla spun the glass on her knee. A rosé from Sokol Blosser, it had notes of strawberry and pepper and peach.

And, like everything else, it reminded her of Tony. Of that night at Soliloquy sipping rosé and fending off jerks when a real, honest-to-God good man sat watching over her from the bar.

“I just don’t understand,” she said, setting her glass on the table. “One minute, I could have sworn we’re on the brink of making it work. Real commitment, a future, the whole works. The next second, he’s practically shoving me out the door.”

“Not unlike how most of his relationships have ended,” Aislin mused.

“He sounds scared,” Willa agreed. “And being scared doesn’t bring out most guys’ best sides.”

“He’s a freakin’ smokejumper,” Kayla argued. “He jumps out of airplanes into flaming forests for a living. You can’t honestly tell me he’s more afraid of a relationship.”

Willa shrugged and sipped from her glass. “For some guys, the prospect of death is a lot less scary than being emotionally hurt.”

“Or rejected,” Aislin added.

Willa nodded. “Or hurting someone they love.”

“Or having their heart broken.” Aislin plucked a Cheeto from the bag. “Or any number of things that involve more emotional pain than physical.”

They did have a point. “Emotional injuries do suck more,” Kayla acknowledged.

She stared at her wineglass, considering that. She’d held back a few personal details of what happened with Tony. The story of abuse—not just the physical stuff with Joel, but the years of verbal and psychological stuff—that wasn’t hers to share.

Still, she’d filled them in on some of it. “Did you know there was this study done looking into how childhood trauma impacts people as adults?” She glanced at Willa, hoping this wasn’t dredging up too many awful memories. God knew she’d had it rough as a kid. “It literally alters their DNA.”

“My therapist told me about that study,” Willa said. “It changes the genes at a cellular level, which means it’s something people can pass on to their own kids.”

“That’s awful.” Aislin’s expression filled with sympathy. “Says a lot about you, Willa, that you turned out so normal.”

“Ha.” Willa made a face, then turned back to Kayla. “Seriously, though—I don’t know what Tony’s dealing with—”

“And we totally respect you keeping his privacy,” Aislin put in. “Even if he broke your heart.”

Willa put a hand over Kayla’s, leaving Kayla blinking back tears. “But whatever’s going on with Tony, you can’t take it personally. You’re amazing and wonderful, and, deep down, he knows that.”

She couldn’t hold back tears any longer. One slid down her cheek, and Kayla swiped it away with her shoulder. “I feel dumb,” she said. “I broke up with him a year ago because he wasn’t ready for a relationship with a future. Why on earth would I have expected he’d be ready now?”

Willa propped her feet beside Kayla’s, nudging her with the toe of her cute ballet flat. “Because he changed. Can you imagine the Tony you knew a year ago agreeing to ask a bunch of his old girlfriends where he screwed up?”

Aislin laughed and threw her feet up on the table. “The Tony I first met would have run screaming from the idea. Whatever you did to him must have gotten through.”

Kayla shifted her feet to the side, making room for her friends. Her ankle bumped the hardback copy of Go Get It, knocking the book to the ground. Sighing, she picked it up. “It wasn’t me. It was this.”

Her friends exchanged a look.

“I don’t think so.” Willa took the book from her hands and began thumbing through it. “I mean, yeah, maybe some of the ideas resonated, but you’re the one who introduced him to it.”

Kayla glanced at the pages as Willa flipped through. There was the grease smudge from when Tony dropped half an Oreo frosting-side down on the page. And there was the chapter with the mirror affirmation, which made her flush with the memory.

“I guess I learned a few things,” she said, struggling to find the bright side. “If the point of all this was to work on myself so I’d be in a better place to find a relationship, I definitely did the work.”

Only right now, the one person she could imagine a relationship with was Tony. How messed up was that?

“We’ve got you.” Willa put her wineglass down and pulled Kayla in for a hug. “No matter what happens, we love you and support you. How’s that?”

“Perfect.” Kayla squeezed her friend, grateful for the unconditional love. “Thanks for being here.”

“No problem.” Willa drew back, and Aislin moved over to Kayla’s other side, plopping herself up against the sofa arm. Fireball growled and scooched aside.

“We love you, sweetie.” Aislin squeezed her tight. “Want to talk about it more, or are you ready for a break?”

“Break, please.” Kayla stroked her dog’s ears as he settled on her lap. “Did I tell you I’ve got almost half the photos edited?”

“No kidding?” Willa broke into a round of mock applause. “Wait, does that mean you stayed up all night?”

Kayla sighed and blew a lock of hair off her forehead. “Maybe?”

Aislin frowned, but Willa’s expression filled with sympathy. “The sleepless part of heartache is the worst.”

“It’s not so bad,” she said. “At least I’ve been productive.”

She’d had to be, to keep her mind off the fact that she hadn’t heard from Tony at all. She’d texted to let him know she made it home safely. Just one message, three words long.

I made it.

His reply?

A heart emoji.

Well, three of them, whatever the hell that meant. She’d given up trying to interpret it. If she could just keep herself busy, maybe her real heart wouldn’t hurt so much.

Her phone buzzed on the table, and Kayla felt hope surge into her throat. She glanced at the screen and cursed her own disappointment.

“It’s my mom.” Kayla disentangled herself from her friends and reached for the phone. “You guys mind if I grab this? I’ve been trying to catch her since I got home.”

“No problem.” Aislin stood up to let her out, earning another grumble from Fireball. “I’ll go put the snacks in bowls.”

“And I’ll refill the wine.” Willa stood up, too, and headed for the kitchen.

“Deal.” Kayla scooped up the phone and beelined to her office. She pulled the door halfway closed, then hit the button to answer. “Hey, Mom.”

“Are you home, sweetheart?”

“Yeah. Drove straight through. Just a little over seven hours.”

Her mother huffed. “I still can’t believe that awful boy would leave you stranded in the middle of nowhere.”

“He gave me his Jeep,” Kayla pointed out. “I was hardly stranded.”

“Still.” Her mother made another indignant sound. “Any word on how his mother is doing?”

“Not a peep.” Kayla had tried calling the hospital, eager to learn something new. But privacy laws prevented her from learning much. “I texted with one of the nurses who took care of her. Nyla couldn’t tell me much but did say she’d seen Tony.”

“And how is he?” Her mom’s frosty tone indicated she’d be happy if the answer was “unconscious.”

“Fine.” Kayla settled into her desk chair, bumping the mouse. Her screen flickered to life, revealing one of her images from the trip. Tony, silhouetted against the backdrop of the sunrise, his dark hair curling around his ears as he bent to pet Fireball.

“He’s staying with his friend, Leo,” she said. “I don’t know when he’s coming back.”

On the other end of the line, her mother sighed. “Can I give you a little advice?”

Kayla pinched the bridge of her nose. “If I say no, will it make a difference?”

“Probably not.” Her mother took a breath. “Sweetheart, you’re beautiful. And smart. And kind, and clever, and funny.”

“This isn’t sounding like advice, but I appreciate it.” The praise made her insides feel warm, but Kayla knew there was more. “Why do I sense there’s a ‘but’ coming?”

“No but,” her mother said. “I just want you to remember those things. You are a strong, independent woman who doesn’t need a man to be happy. You know that, don’t you?”

Tears pricked the backs of her eyelids, surprising her with their sudden rush. “You’re my mom. You have to say that.”

“It’s because I’m your mom that I know it,” she said. “I’ve met plenty of the men you’ve dated over the years, and some of them were nice enough boys. But none were really worthy of you.”

Kayla bit her lip. “You never met Tony.”

“I didn’t; you’re right. Why was that again?”

Because he’s broken. Because he’s scared. Because he doesn’t think he knows how to be happy.

She’d never say that out loud. Had never even realized it until last week.

“Too busy,” she told her mother, which was also sort of true.

“Well,” her mother said, clearly not buying it. “For what it’s worth, I heard the way you always lit up when you talked about him. So I know he’s something special.”

Wait. What? “I thought you just called him an awful boy?”

“We’re all awful from time to time,” she said. “Your father can be the absolute worst.”

“Then why—”

“When love is right, it’s not about being perfect,” she said. “And it’s not about needing the other person, either.”

Kayla held her breath. “Then what is it about?”

“It’s about feeling like a better version of yourself when that person is around. It’s about knowing you’re capable of making it on your own, but you’re consciously choosing to be with someone who brings out your best qualities.” She laughed and lowered her voice. “Also, it’s about great sex.”

“Mom.” Kayla blinked back tears, not wanting her mother to hear it in her voice. “I haven’t been a very good daughter.”

“What?” Her mother sounded genuinely shocked. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“I haven’t been there for you guys. Or for Kristin and Katie and—”

“Sweetheart, you live thousands of miles away,” she said. “You have a life there in Oregon.”

“But I have you in Ohio,” she said. “And I don’t come home like I should, because I hate feeling like some out-of-place spinster aunt when everyone’s happy and married and bouncing babies on their laps. I’m jealous, and I hate myself for being jealous, and there it is.” She gulped. “I’m not proud.”

“Oh, honey.” Her mother’s voice wobbled with emotion. “Is that how you’ve been feeling? What it’s like for you?”

She nodded, feeling ridiculous, since her mom couldn’t see her. “I know it’s dumb. And selfish. And—”

“Stop right there,” her mother said. “I won’t let you talk bad about my little girl.”

Kayla laughed, a choked sound clogged with unshed tears. “I’m sorry, Mommy.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” she said. “Families ebb and flow. Sometimes you’re in each other’s faces all the time, and sometimes you’re only in each other’s thoughts. But no matter where you are or how often you come home, you’re always in my heart.”

A tear slipped down Kayla’s cheek, and she dashed it away. “Thank you,” she said. “I love you so much.”

“I love you, too, baby.” Her mother paused. “Why didn’t you tell me? I would have planned girls’ nights or family things for just us girls so you wouldn’t feel left out.”

“I didn’t want to inconvenience everyone,” she said, feeling embarrassed. “I didn’t want to make things more awkward than they already were.”

“We’re family,” her mom repeated more forcefully. “Awkward comes with the territory.”

Kayla laughed and grabbed a tissue to wipe her nose. “I should get off. Willa and Aislin are here.”

“Give them a hug from me. And honey?”

“Yeah?”

“Give yourself a hug, too.”

“Thanks, Mom. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

As she hung up the phone, Kayla felt that hug from two thousand miles away.

…

Tony sat in the driver’s seat of his shitty rental car and stared at his mom’s house.

More than a decade had passed since the last time he sat here like this, but it felt like yesterday. He remembered his mom peeking through the blinds, her forehead creasing before she glanced over her shoulder. Then she shut the blinds and turned away.

He’d held his breath, waiting for her to come out. Waiting for her to join him. He imagined her running down the steps with her bag packed, ready to leave at last.

It never happened.

And he was old enough to know it wouldn’t be happening today. But that’s not what this was about.

He pushed open the car door, breathing in the scent of damp earth and pine. It had rained the night before, drenching the northern Washington landscape with much-needed moisture. It wouldn’t be long before snow started falling in the mountains, and the volume of that would determine how much time he’d spend fighting wildfire the next summer in this part of the country. It was an endless cycle, one mostly outside his control.

But this wasn’t.

He found himself on the doorstep and took a few breaths to steady himself. Then he rang the bell.

Heavy footsteps echoed on the hardwood, and Tony fought the sinking in his chest. He’d known Bud would be here. He was braced for this.

You’re a good man, Tony. Kayla’s words echoed in his ears, giving him strength. You’re kind and smart and gentle and funny and one of the most caring people I’ve ever met. That’s what I see when I look at you.

The echo of those words faded as the door flew open and Bud glared at him. “What the hell do you want?”

Tony shoved his hands in his pockets, resisting every urge that told him to punch the guy. “Nice to see you, too, Bud.” He cleared his throat. “I’m here to visit my mother.”

“She doesn’t want to s—”

“Bud?” A voice from the back of the house caught them both by surprise. “Is that Tony?”

Bud narrowed his eyes and stared at him. Then he turned to call over his shoulder. “You need your rest,” he shouted. “He can come back another time.”

“I’m here now.” Tony slipped his hands out of his pockets, braced for confrontation if it came to that. “And it sounds like my mom’s awake.”

He didn’t wait for Bud’s response. Just shoved past him, shouldering his way through the foyer and toward the hall. Behind him, Bud’s footsteps thundered.

“You’re not welcome here,” he shouted. “I’ll call the police. I’ll—”

“Go ahead.” Tony whirled to face him. He hadn’t realized it before, but he towered over Bud by a good four inches. He probably had in high school, but he’d never noticed until now. “I’m here to see my mother.” He clenched his hands at his sides, fighting to keep his voice even. Nothing good would come from losing his temper. “Call the police if you have to.”

Bud glared back, but Tony caught a flicker of fear in his eyes. “You’re not wanted here.”

“As soon as I confirm that with my mother, I’ll be on my way.” It was weird how calm his voice sounded. “This is still her house, too.”

He waited for some hot-air response. For Bud to insist he paid the mortgage, that it was his house alone.

But something he saw in Tony’s face must have registered. He took a step back, frowning. “I’m watching you,” he said. “Don’t try anything.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” How strange his own voice sounded. On the inside, Tony’s heart rattled like a rusty engine. It wasn’t fear—not exactly—but he felt like an anxious kid. Like a huge snowball of fury and rejection was barreling down the hall toward him.

Don’t show fear.

He flexed his fingers, surprised to find his hands weren’t shaking. “I’m checking on my mother now.”

He pivoted and walked down the hallway. The bedroom his mom shared with Bud was at the end, and Tony marched toward it with steps more certain than he felt.

Rounding the corner, he stumbled to a halt in the doorway. “Mom?”

She was sitting up in bed, propped between two pillows big enough to dwarf her small frame. Her face was the same hue as the stark white duvet, and her hair hung straw-like around her shoulders.

Tony surged forward, panic moving up his throat. “Holy shit, Mom. You look awful.”

“Don’t curse,” she said, holding a hand up. “And stay away. I don’t want you to get sick.”

“You heard her.” Bud’s voice boomed behind him, but Tony ignored it. “She doesn’t want you here.”

Tony whirled around, planting his feet firmly. “I’m done being polite, Bud. Get the fuck out of the room right now.”

Bud faltered, taking a step back. “You can’t talk to me like that in my own home.”

“I just did.” Tony moved around the bed, placing himself between his mom and her husband. “You said you were going to call the police. Better get on that.”

Bud glared at him, then spun around and stalked off.

Tony breathed out as he turned back to his mother. Dropping into the chair beside the bed, he caught her hand in his. “Christ, you’re burning up.”

“I’m fine, dear. I just need rest.”

“No. Uh-uh.” Tony glanced around for pill bottles. “Where’s the medication you’re supposed to be taking?”

“It’s too expensive. You wouldn’t believe how much they’re charging for a little bottle of pills.”

Tony gritted his teeth. This was bad. This was really bad.

His inner caveman shouted at him to bundle her into his arms and carry her out to the car. She couldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. The gear he carried in the field weighed more than that.

But the steely look in his mom’s eye told him it wouldn’t be so simple. He focused on that—on the pale blue color of her irises. They were the same eyes he remembered peering down over the edge of his crib.

The same eyes he’d seen filling with tears as she stared out the front window when his father left. She’d had one hand on Tony’s shoulder as she cradled Joel in her arms.

Tony blinked, struggling to keep it together. “I know you’re still in there somewhere, Mom.” He swallowed hard, conscious of Bud’s voice rumbling in the living room. Calling the police? Must be.

Tony pressed on, determined to finally get this out. “I know the mother I grew up with—the one who loved her sons unconditionally—didn’t just disappear when Dad did.”

Tears sprung up in his mother’s eye. “Tony—”

“No, Mom. I need to say this.” He took a shaky breath. “For years, I’ve thought of love as this thing that makes you lose yourself. That causes people to do dumb things and hurt people. But now I’m not sure I believe that.”

A tear slipped down his mother’s cheek as she squeezed his hand. He could feel her preparing to say everything was fine. That he was being silly.

“I still love you,” he said. “That’s the thing I’m starting to figure out. You can love people who bring out the best in you and people who bring out the worst in you. What I never figured out before is that it’s actually pretty damn easy to tell the difference.”

His brain flashed with images of Kayla. Her hair falling over her face as she read in bed. Her voice as she cooed over the dog. The sweet smell of her skin as she fell asleep in his arms.

Leo was right. There were no guarantees in relationships. Just ways to patch the roof and caulk the walls and keep the rain from coming in. His mother’s house had been leaking for years, and she’d been fighting like hell to shove buckets under the drips.

He should have brought an umbrella. Or a goddamn barrel. Or—

Tony swallowed, aware he was losing his grip on the metaphor. Also, that Bud’s voice had stopped murmuring in the other room. The police must be on their way.

He squeezed his mother’s hand. “Let me help you, Mom.”

Another tear slipped down his mother’s face, and she dashed it away with the back of her hand. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I know I’ve failed you as a mother.”

“You haven’t failed.” He said the words automatically, not fully believing them. “Even if you had, there’s still time to fix it.”

She reached for a tissue on the nightstand. “So much has happened. So much that can’t be undone.”

It was the closest she’d ever come to admitting her house of cards was close to toppling. The closest she’d come to acknowledging she might be willing to look for a way out.

He looked deep in her eyes. “There’s no such thing as too late,” he said. “And I’m not asking you to undo anything. I’m asking you to move forward in a different direction.”

Hadn’t Kayla taught him that? Or the damn book—but no, he was pretty sure Kayla deserved credit. She’d believed in him even when he didn’t believe in himself.

God, he’d been an idiot.

He ordered himself to focus, to stay here with his mother in this moment. “You’re my mom,” he said softly. “You’ll always be my mom. And I love you.”

“Oh, honey.” Tears filled her eyes, and she squeezed his hand tightly. “I love you so much.”

A coughing fit seized her, making her shoulders heave as she fought to cover her mouth with a tissue.

“Look, we can talk about this later,” he said. “Right now, we need to get you to the hospital. And before you argue, I’ve already set this up with the billing department. I’ll cover the cost, whatever it is.”

She stopped coughing and looked at him, shaking her head. “I’m scared.”

“So am I.” They weren’t talking about the same thing, but right now, he was a little boy who needed his mother. “I’m scared to death I’m going to screw things up, but you know what scares me more?”

“What?”

“Losing the people I love because I’m too afraid to step up.”

Saying those words out loud socked him right in the gut. Or maybe that was the hollowness inside him—the deep, heavy misery he’d felt from the moment Kayla walked out the door.

He took a deep breath. “Not all love feels like this. What you’ve been living with? That’s not the good kind of love.”

He’d never realized that before—how many kinds of love there were. Some kinds were toxic, and maybe that wasn’t love at all.

But what he’d felt with Kayla—so pure and good and perfect—that was the kind worth fighting for.

His mother closed her eyes and squeezed his hand. “You’re so brave.”

“I’m not.” He managed a weak smile. “I just fake it really well.”

She shook her head sadly. “No, you’re the real deal. I wish I’d learned how to do that. How to be brave before it was too late.”

“It’s not too late, Mom.” Not for her. Maybe not for him, either.

A siren sounded in the distance. He knew better than to hope Bud might have called an ambulance, so he stood and looked down at his mom. “I’m going to carry you out to my car, okay?”

His mother hesitated, then nodded. “Okay.”

As he stooped down and slid his arms under her, she wrapped her arms around his neck and held on tight. “Where’s the girl?” she murmured. “The one here with you before.”

He hadn’t realized she’d even been aware of Kayla, and his heart twisted at the mention of her. “Gone.”

His mother drew back, looking him in the eye as he carried her across the room. “I hope she’s coming back.”

Tony swallowed hard, blinking back the surge of emotion. He thought about his father, his mother, his brother, his whole fucked-up childhood. As his gaze landed on the cross-stitched wall hanging, he felt the strangest surge of nausea mixed with hope.

“She’s not coming back,” he said, turning his back on the living room, on the wall hanging, on his asshole stepfather, wherever the hell he might be. “But I’m going after her.”

…

An hour later, Tony dialed his brother’s number. It was after midnight in Australia, which he knew was a ridiculous time to call. And if Joel was out on a fire—

“Hey there.” Joel’s voice was tinged with sleep, but he sounded alert. “Everything okay?”

Tony took a seat in the same chair Kayla had warmed only days ago. “Mom’s in the hospital.”

“Shit. Is it serious?”

“Yeah.” Slowly, he filled his brother in on the events of the last few days. He told him about Leo’s call and finding their mom on the floor. He told him about her leaving the hospital and returning to Bud.

And he told him about Kayla. All of it—even the messy stuff.

“Wow, bro. I’m glad you were there.”

“Me, too.” He rested his elbows on the table. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“With Mom or with Kayla?”

“All of it.”

His brother said nothing for a long while, and Tony began to wonder if they’d been disconnected.

“Did I ever tell you about the time Marc dumped me?”

“What?” Tony frowned. “When was this?”

“A few months after we started dating. Long time ago. I was doing the same stupid shit I always did where I wouldn’t let anyone in. Didn’t want to talk about Mom or Dad or Bud or any of that because it was too damn hard.”

Tony held his breath, conscious of how familiar this sounded. “What happened?”

“He told me to go fuck myself.” Joel laughed, able to see the humor in the situation. “Told me that until I learned to open up, I was never going to have any kind of meaningful relationship.”

The familiarity hit him like a punch in the throat. “What did you do?”

“I got mad at first. I never liked talking about that shit, you know?”

“Yeah.” Tony swallowed. “I know.”

“But eventually, I figured out that if I didn’t pull my head out of my ass, I was going to lose the person who meant the most to me. So, I planned a grand gesture.”

“A what?”

“A grand gesture. Like in the movies, when the guy wins the girl back by holding a boom box over his head or beating up her bully or whatever.”

Tony thought about Kayla’s love of rom-coms. About what on earth could help him win her back. “What was your grand gesture?”

Joel laughed. “I went to therapy first. That was the big thing. And then I went to Marc’s house. I stood out on the lawn, and I sang Kris Allen’s ‘Letting You In’ at the top of my lungs until he opened the door.”

“I don’t know that song.”

“Totally cheesy, but it worked.” Joel laughed again. “We watched American Idol together that season he won, so it kinda made sense. Also, it got Marc back.”

Tony breathed in and out, weighing his options. “A grand gesture. I can do that.”

“I know you can. I have faith in you, bro.”

“Thanks. Stay safe out there, man.”

“Same to you.”

They hung up, and Tony set his phone down. The hospital was quiet, with nurses moving briskly down the hall. In his mother’s room, monitors beeped and whooshed.

Tony stood up and walked into the room. His mom was fast asleep, hair spread on the pillow. Bud hadn’t come by—not that Tony expected him to. Eventually they’d have to deal with it. His stepfather would try to get her back, and either she’d go or she wouldn’t. If history was any indication, Tony shouldn’t hold his breath hoping for miracles.

But for now, just for the moment, Tony sat down beside the bed and took his mom’s hand. She was fast asleep, knocked out good this time on pain meds.

Still, he needed to get some things off his chest. He needed…he needed…his mother.

He took a deep breath and squeezed her hand. “I know it hasn’t been easy for you, Mom. I know you kinda lost it after Dad left.”

He’d always recognized that grief. He’d felt it on a bone-deep level as a boy missing his father.

But until he’d lost Kayla, Tony hadn’t understood the gut-twisting grief of losing his other half. His better half. The person who made him want to get up every morning and keep striving to be a better person.

He breathed in and out, staring at the monitors beside his mother’s bed until his vision cleared. “I wish I could have done more,” he told her. “I wish—”

What? What did he wish?

He took a shaky breath as the words gelled in his mind. “I wish I hadn’t given up so easily. I wish I’d tried harder. I wish I’d understood that when you love a kind, generous, wonderful person, you don’t give up on them. Not ever. Not even when someone’s lost their freakin’ mind.”

His mom didn’t smile, which was okay. It was a dumb joke anyway, so probably best for her to stay unconscious. Maybe he’d work up the courage to say these things to her when she woke up. Maybe he’d find a way to make a difference this time.

So many damn maybes and not one scrap of certainty.

Well, one. He loved Kayla more than he ever thought possible. And if Joel was right—if he really hadn’t fucked this up beyond repair—he had to find a way to show her that.