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The house is filled when we get back and starts to clear out once everyone sees Izzy. Hugs are given, good-byes are said, even by Tyler, who realizes he has to find his place in our new life and staying in this house is not where he’s meant to be. He leaves with a promise of seeing Izzy during the week.
As I tuck my kids in bed, I look around at the house. My parents’ house. The place I grew up and where my children will now grow up. I moved in here, hoping to give my children familiarity and hope. Hope for a good life, a positive future, and all the love that comes with living with family. I always kept the idea of moving out on my own in the back of my mind, but the truth is, I like it here. This is the house that raised me. It’s where my best and some of my worst memories are. With every creak of my bed or echo of the wooden stairs, I hear the sounds of my childhood and the whispers of my future. It’s where my mother’s past is held and my father’s next days are spent. It’s where the new me was found, and I’m forever comforted with knowing this is home.
I walk downstairs to see Dad and Anna having a cup of tea. At my entrance, Anna starts to get up, but I motion for her to sit.
“Stay awhile,” I tell her.
Even Dad seems taken aback by my action.
Grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge, I head to the foyer. “Don’t stay up too late, you crazy kids.”
With a kiss to the sky and a prayer to my mother, I head up and feel … okay … about our new, growing family. I’ve been trying to keep it closed for so long, and I kept hurting everyone around me, even myself. While I want to fix this final piece of my life, I’m worried I’ve ruined it for good.
Tyler has Maisie, Dad has Anna, Tara is still looking, and Jillian is refusing the notion.
Love … it’s complicated.
Sometimes, we find it when we least expect it. Oftentimes, we go searching, and it’s the luck of the draw on if it works out. I’ve been in love twice in my life. Once to a boy when I didn’t even know what love was. Another to a man whose love is so real I’m petrified.
There’s no secret formula. Even I know you can’t count the success of a relationship based on the positive outcomes. Shit happens. Fights are had. People make mistakes. It’s how we choose to forgive, learn, and move on that has the relationship growing.
William Bronson is a good man. Too good for me in many ways. I know he didn’t set out to fall in love with me. That just happened. I just wish I knew if I was woman enough to let my insecurities go in order to love again.
twenty-nine
WILLIAM
LIFE OR DEATH.
It’s a term you hear often when you’re a man of the law.
A woman is trapped beneath a car after an accident.
A man has his expensive watch stolen while out to dinner on Main Street.
Both are life-or-death situations, according to the calls that come in.
What serves as one person’s trauma is another man’s cakewalk. You don’t know what constitutes such an event until you’re in one.
Being shot in the chest isn’t painful. I felt my flesh absorb the shock waves of the bullet piercing my skin, and there was this intense vibration at the entry point. You ignore it because there’s a rush of adrenaline coursing through your veins, and you hardly feel a thing. That’s how I was able to rush the attacker and wrestle the gun from him. I’ll never forget the look on his face—absolute shock that he’d pulled the trigger, mixed with horror that I was charging at him. I grabbed the gun and shot him center mass.
I remember one of the hostages in the store, a man who had been clutching on to his wife when the burglary was happening. He was standing by the register, still holding his wife. As soon as I hit the floor, he grabbed the gun from my hand, and he held me. Lying on the floor, in the arms of a stranger, with a hole in my chest, waiting for the ambulance to arrive, every fear and emotion crept in as I struggled to breathe, not knowing whether I was going to live or die. That part … it can fuck with you if you let it.
Death never scared me until I saw the blood on his hand. My own blood was pouring from my body. Heaven and hell became real. In seconds, I was looking forward to it and fearing it.
Will it hurt?
Where will I go?
Dear God, please don’t let me never see my mother again.
Every life choice was questioned.
If I had more time, would I do this?
Why did I waste so much time on that?
And for fuck’s sake, why is my last breath going to be in this goddamn dirty convenience store?
