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His perplexed eyes are on mine. “What way?”
And I explain my plan. Really, it’s not easy to say at all. I end with, “I wanna tell Loren Hale after the meeting, so you don’t have to relay it to the parents.”
“Okay,” he agrees almost instantly.
Thatcher nods in approval too. It truly dawns on me that they all want me to be with Luna. They’re not trying to stop me or be a buncha hypocrites about it.
“This could work,” Akara says, “but I still need to talk to Price. I might have to work out a deal with him so he doesn’t have a heart attack and come for my firm.” This isn’t the first romantic relationship sparked within Omega. Not even the second or third.
Akara doesn’t say what the deal might entail, but a storm is looming over him. I hate knowing I summoned it there.
36
PAUL DONNELLY
Meeting is over, and I find myself on the phone with Loren. I’m in my shared bathroom, alone, and sitting on the toilet lid.
“Are you shitting?” Lo asks with bite. We’re video chatting, so he has a pristine view of the bathroom wall behind me.
“Nah, I’m relaxing. Toilet is where I do my best thinking.” My voice sounds a little tighter than usual. “Must be where you do yours.”
He’s leaning on a blue tiled wall of what resembles a bathroom. Likely the one in Lily’s hospital room. “I’m not having a come to Jesus with the toilet, Paul. That’s all you.” He flashes a half-smile, and regardless of sleeping with his daughter, I have to believe the strides I’ve made with him count for something. I’m not all the way back at the bad start with him.
I nod a couple times. “How’s Lily?”
“Better,” he says quietly, then his eyes flit around. “I only came in here because she’s sleeping. I didn’t want to wake her.” Xander’s dad looks exhausted, honestly. Dark half-moon shadows are under his amber eyes, and his face is sharper, more lethal. Like he’s had more reasons for murder and less for loving these days.
I understand the feelings.
His daggered gaze returns to me. “How are you holding up?”
It catches my breath. “Don’t you wanna know about Luna first?”
“I talked to her this morning and yesterday and the day before that. I haven’t really talked to you since I saw you here.” At the hospital.
I sense him studying my features, same way I studied him, and I end up staring at the shower stall and the purple Saturn bath rug. “I’m making strides,” I say quietly. “Most everyone is worried about you. What you’ve been going through is a lot…” I trail off. Just as I look back to my phone, he’s dropped his gaze.
We’re silent for a long beat. Minutes, maybe.
And then he says, “When I was younger, I used to wish everyone would just stop.” His reddened eyes are off to the side. “Stop goddamn worrying about me. It was…suffocating. Even the days where I wasn’t fucking up, they were a reminder that I could. That I have. Then, as I got older, I wondered what it would’ve been like to never have people looking out for me, and I know I wouldn’t be here.” He shakes his head once. “It would’ve been easier to grab a bottle. My brother went to the ends of the earth to stop me from drinking myself into oblivion. But he shouldn’t have had to do that. There are people, family, friends, who spend their lives fighting for their loved ones. Worrying about them. And I can say that sometimes their worry isn’t enough. All it does is make me want to drown it out.” He pauses, still staring off. “This disease is won and lost with me, but I can’t tell anyone not to worry, and if I do, it’s a lie—because I’m just as afraid of the moment they stop.”
Lo has never been this frank about his addiction with me. I try not to think about my own father and mother.
Partly, I wonder if Lo has already relapsed. I’m not sure if he’d even tell me if he had, and I don’t ask. Instead, I say, “I don’t know how you got through that night. With both of them in the hospital…” I remember how he’d still been holding his shit together in the visitors’ room. How he’d even stood up to comfort me.
“I kept rereading her texts,” Lo says, sniffing hard and tapping his phone.
“Lily text you something?” I ask.
“My daughter. Luna. That night, she texted…thanks for keeping Donnelly’s story from that night on Halloween safe and thanks for protecting him.” He chokes up, but it’s choking me up too. His hand is against his mouth before he reads, “I love you. To Thebula and back again.” His voice cracks, and he clears his throat to say, “We joked about tacos.” He sniffs, nodding. “That’s what kept me together all night.” He wipes the corners of his watery eyes fast. “Then I heard you slept with her and strangling you seemed more satisfying than a bottle of Macallan.”
