“Honestly, I am more concerned about you. Don’t think that I don’t know how that mind of yours works.”
With my hand in hers, I pulled her back down so that she collapsed on top of me, her chin resting on my chest and her eyes looking up at me.
“I’m actually okay with everything, Sav. I learned a long time ago not to expect anything from anyone so I don’t. My only concern is you and Max. Please don’t worry about what Chelsea said. Everything that happened was before us. Look, I’ll be honest. I don’t exactly like the thought of what happened but it happened. He is my brother and I know he cares about you. We are a family. What happened in the past is exactly that.”
“God, I love you.”
“And I love you. However, I think we need to stop with the chitchat and either have sex or sleep because our spawn will be awake in exactly four hours and it’s my turn to get up.”
“You are such a charmer!” She giggled as her hands went down my body. Bingo!
“SO I’VE got to go to Australia for a business meeting. Some shit is going down in the Sydney office and apparently I am the only one who can fix it.” Mr. Davenport sat beside me on the bench and looked out over the ocean as we tried to regain our breathing after our now regular Saturday morning workout session. Since Max was born, this is what we did every Saturday, it was our bonding time as Sav liked to call it. “I don’t want to leave Sav and Max, but I know they are in good hands with you.”
“Are we having a moment?” I asked with a chuckle before throwing back the rest of my water.
“I think we are.” His words showed a hint of amusement. “Don’t get used to it.”
“How long will you be gone for?”
“No longer than a few weeks. It should be—”
“Would you put a damn shirt on? She’ll be up for sexual harassment and you’ll have a stalker on your hands.” Savannah’s thick Australian accent sounded behind us. Turning to face her, I saw that she stood with Max sitting on her hip. Tanzi was looking at Mr. Davenport with a devious smirk crossing her face. Tanzi winked at Mr. Davenport as they walked towards us in the shadows of trees along with boardwalk.
“Oh I already stalk him. Don’t worry about that. Simon Davenport is my number one favorite Google search.” Tanzi sat beside Mr. Davenport, who shook his head and shot a pleading look at Sav. Seriously, my sister was something else.
“Sav, I just told Tate about my trip to Australia,” he stated and Sav’s face clouded immediately. “It’s just for a few weeks. You won’t even have time to miss me.”
Savannah
THIS CAN’T be happening.
My breath hitched in the back of my quickly closing throat as my heartbeat accelerated to the point of pain, leaving me to feel like I was going to crumble any second the moment I heard the heartbreaking words. Miss Rae, there has been an accident.
This couldn’t be happening again. Was this karma coming back to fuck me over? Panic soared through my body and I was instantly thrown back to being ten years old—a ten-year-old who had no clue what a car accident could mean, a ten-year-old about to face life without parents. Now, at twenty-four, it was so much rawer, so much more real, so much more shattering. I actually understood what this could mean. I understood the ramifications of what ICU meant. I understood what critical condition meant. The scariest of all was that I understood that my life with Mr. Davenport could have already been ripped away from me and I was on the other side of the world, not able to do a damn thing about it.
“Sav, what’s wrong?” Tate’s worried voice hit me when I stepped into the living room and into his view.
I turned and stopped in my tracks. The heavy sigh escaped me as fresh tears spilled over my cheeks. Tate and Max were my life now, a life I had been fighting for years to earn, a life that finally had a sense of purpose and a future I still found hard to comprehend was mine. But even in the happiness of the future I had been handed, my heart ached for the man who had been my only family for the past thirteen years. My eyes traveled from Tate to Max, who slept peacefully propped up against Tate’s shoulder as he did most days. He was such a daddy’s boy.
“I’ve got to go to Australia. It’s Mr. Davenport.” I spoke quickly, hoping I was making sense through the choke of my tears. I knew my voice was heavy with emotion, cracking at every word I spoke, the words getting lost in the echo of sobs.
The color from Tate’s face drained as he tried to grasp the bombshell I had dropped. Tate hurried out of the living room with Max still peacefully sleeping in his arms and headed down the hall towards Max’s room. Walking towards the couch, I felt like I was floating. Like my feet were rising from the ground and I was living a dreamlike existence where none of this could possibly be real. This couldn’t be real.
My chest tightened with emotions I had spent years desperately trying to lock away. I hadn’t wanted to ever feel like I was ten years old again, but now, as I collapsed onto the couch, I felt like I was back to being the small child who had just lost her world.
The feeling of Tate’s strong arms wrapping tightly around my body brought me back to reality. Max was no longer to be seen. “I put him in his bed,” he explained, answering my unasked question. He pulled me close to the comfort his chest could provide and looked at me, the pain evident in his eyes. “Tell me what happened?” he whispered, rubbing small circles on my back. “Talk to me, Sav.”
“There has been an accident. They found his car in an embankment just outside of Sydney and he is barely alive. He isn’t breathing on his own.” A devastating sob ripped out of me and his arms tightened around me. “It’s happening all over again. I can’t go through this again. I can’t lose him.” Tears flooded my face as the ability to breathe became harder. Crawling onto Tate’s lap like a small child begging for love and comfort, I wrapped my arms tightly around his neck and dropped my face into his shoulder as tears dampened his shirt.
“Who can I call, Sav? We need to find out what’s happening.” Tate’s usually strong voice shattered. The relationship between Mr. Davenport and Tate had turned twofold. Since the birth of Max, Mr. Davenport’s acceptance of Tate had been phenomenal, and now every Sunday afternoon was known as Boys Only Sunday, a day where Mr. Davenport, Tate, Blake, Jack, and Lucas would take Max somewhere, just the boys, and I never knew where they went. He knew that Tate wasn’t going anywhere and he saw how amazing Tate was to me and Max. I think that was all he wanted for me.
Tate’s hand gently moved from around my waist and ran over my hips before slipping into the front pocket of my jeans in search of my phone. I pulled my face away from his shoulder and painfully watched as he scrolled through my last received calls and pressed the call button.
“Hi, this is Tate Connors calling on behalf of Savannah Rae. Could I please ask about the status of Simon Davenport and the condition he was brought in today? Yes, ma’am, what’s his condition? Okay, that sounds good. Is he stable?”
Time stood still as Tate spoke softly into my phone and my eyes didn’t falter from him. I desperately tried to read his face and listen to his words, but they weren’t giving me a thing.
“What’s the time frame?” His eyes finally met mine, and empty pits of blue looked at me.
Tate said goodbye to the person on the other end of the call, his gaze never leaving from mine. Leaning over towards the table in front of the couch, he placed my phone on the glass top before turning back to me and grabbing both my hands with his. The next words that were to flow out of his mouth had the potential to change the world as I knew it. I wasn’t a praying person, but right now, all I could think of was begging to the heavens above to allow me this mercy.
“He has three broken ribs, a punctured lung, and head injuries, and he is in an induced coma because of the severity of the swelling around his brain. The next forty-eight hours will be crucial. He is in ICU at St. George Hospital.”
The breath I was holding in released. Mr. Davenport was still alive—barely but still. He was here.
&
nbsp; “I need to be there, Tate. He needs me. I have to look after him. I need to be there when he wakes up,” I rambled as my body began shaking uncontrollably. My worst fear was swirling around me, taunting me into oblivion. Losing one of the three most important people in my life was the constant fear I lived with, and now, here in the comfort of my living room, in the arms of the man I loved, I was being slapped in the face by my fear.
After all the troubled times Mr. Davenport and I had trudged through, after all the messed-up and painful experiences we had been dealt with, and after finally overcoming all of the craziness and being given the most amazing happiness, I refused to even begin to comprehend the thought of losing him. I was not going to lose him while I was on the other side of the world.
“I can’t lose him, Tate. I won’t survive that.” I crumbled into his arms as terrifying sobs ripped from the depths of my chest. Tate’s arms scooped under me and carried me like a child down the hall and into our bedroom, where he laid me down so softly on our bed. The bed dipped behind me before Tate’s body spooned me in a cocoon of his warmth and splashing kisses on the skin of my exposed shoulder blade.
“We will get through this, Sav.”
As I rolled over in his arms to face him I finally looked up at him through aching eyes. He had so much unwarranted confidence in me—a confidence that I was scared of shattering. Tate hadn’t seen me when my world crashed around me when I lost my parents and then when Cory’s suicide was blamed entirely on me. He hadn’t seen the girl who hadn’t given a fuck about anyone but her own selfish needs, the girl who had gone out at night with the intent of having some random guy between her thighs, begging for those few moments when everything in the world was forgotten and she was made to feel like the most amazing thing in the world. He had never seen that Savannah. The Savannah who would rear her pitifully ugly head when the world fucked her over. The Savannah I hoped to god was so far locked away that she couldn’t and wouldn’t appear now.
Was I now strong enough to live a life without the one person who had allowed me to live all those years ago? Would I get through this if the worst happened? Yes, I was a survivor, but I wasn’t a warrior. I’d survived once, but the thought of my heart breaking again and trying to rebuild a life without my one constant was unthinkable.
“I need Max,” I whispered, desperate for the comfort of my son.
Tate untangled himself from my body and I instantly felt the loss of his contact. I watched him walk out of our bedroom and escape into the darkness of the hall. The rain was falling heavily outside and my aching eyes focused on the raindrops sliding down the glass of the window as I begged for distraction from my thoughts.
Tate walked through the door with Max tucked up in his arms, still fast asleep. I couldn’t help but smile. He was absolute perfection.
“I can’t believe he is ours.”
Tate chuckled and climbed back in bed, gently laying Max on the mattress between us. We both rolled in to face our precious boy, who was totally oblivious to the chaos around him. Tate swept a piece of the chocolate brown hair from Max’s forehead and looked at me.
“What are you going to do, Sav?” Tate asked quietly. I didn’t have any answers. My heart ripped in two at the decision before me. The thought of not going to Australia to be by Mr. Davenport’s side and staying in the US with Tate tore me apart, but then the thought of going to Australia and leaving Tate behind broke my heart. Whatever my decision, someone would be left behind and I would have to deal with the consequence.
Tate
LAX WAS craziness. Thousands of people rushed through departure, desperate to get to the gates of their awaiting flights, but I was praying to god that time stilled. I didn’t want time to pass. I didn’t want this day to arrive, and I didn’t want to be here. Today was the day that Savannah and Max were walking out of my life for god only knew how long.
The past week could only be described as living a horrendous nightmare. That phone call changed everything. I felt completely at a loss and utterly helpless when it came to Savannah, and I’d spent the past week watching as she became a shell of her former self. She’d withdrawn from everyone and everything. She had barely been functioning and had been moving through the days with a constant cloud hanging over her. Thank god for Max. Our son was the saving grace, the only one who’d had the ability to put a smile on her face, the only one who’s been able to make her face light up for a split second before her thoughts were hit in the face by reality. I was losing her with every passing day and that’s what scared me the most.
Mr. Davenport’s condition had been moved from critical, but he was still in a serious condition. Our days had been spent locked in the apartment, frequently calling Australia for updates. Sav had been desperate to go to the Australia as soon as possible, but the small problem of not having a passport for Max had come up. Who would have thought you would need a passport for a two-year-old? After finally getting an express passport the day before, we now found ourselves in the departure lounge of LAX.
How was I going to survive without seeing Max every day? I had been ready to pack up my life and follow her to Australia, but she wouldn’t have any of that. She wanted me to stay in the States because of my work. I had responsibilities, she’d said, but to me, my responsibilities were her and Max.
Sav had it in her head that she was going to fly into Sydney and go straight to the hospital and then Mr. Davenport would wake up and all would be right with the world. Then they would be back in the US within a week. I knew otherwise, but I couldn’t break her heart by telling her. Even though it killed me—the thought of being away from them and not walking on that flight with them—I couldn’t be the one to break her heart with the truth. I knew Mr. Davenport was far from recovering enough to come back to the States. He had been in critical condition but had only been moved into serious condition the day before. He had a serious head injury. People don’t just wake up from that. Sav was in constant denial of the facts, but that was her way of surviving the shock of what was happening and I had to support her. If the last thing I did was support her, then that’s what I needed to do.
The departure line filled around us as people dragged their multicolored suitcases down the maze-like lines, and the chattering was almost overwhelming. Sav pulled her phone out of her purse, checking it for the tenth time since we’d arrived. My hand grabbed hers and pulled her knuckles to my lips. Her empty eyes looked at mine and the intense green I loved was lost.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come? I can work from Australia.”
“We won’t be gone for long. We are going to arrive in Sydney and we are going to go to the hospital and he will be awake and everything will be fine.” Her smile was weak as she desperately tried to believe the words she was saying. My heart broke for her. “We will be back before you know it.”
“Okay, Sav, but make sure you come back to me. I need you. I need Max.”
“You will always have us. Please understand, Tate. I need to be there for him.”
All I could do was nod.
Tanzi, Jack, Lucas, and Ali arrived shortly after Sav and Max had been checked in and been given their boarding passes. Tanzi’s eyes found mine through the crowds of people as they rushed towards us. In silent conversation, I told her everything she needed to know. She could read me better than I could read myself. My hand didn’t let go of Sav’s as we walked towards the gate. Thankfully there was still time that I could spend with them. Jack made quiet conversation with Sav while I walked beside Lucas in silence.
“You doing okay?” he asked softly from beside me.
I turned my head towards him and nodded slowly. I couldn’t find the words to answer a question like that. There were no words.
Max finally woke in my arms, his little body moving around and taking everything in. This was his very first time being in the hustle and bustle of an airport, his first time around this many people. Panic engulfed his body and his eyes frantically darted to the safety of Tan
zi and Ali, who walked in front of us, before he settled back into my arms, still wide awake and on guard.
“Daddy, planes,” he said softly, her hand pointing to a Boeing 747 that was awaiting passengers—passengers that would include Max and Sav.
The sound of the first announcement for Flight 325 to Sydney, Australia echoed through the departure lounge and I swallowed hard as my eyes met and Sav’s. It was happening.
“Want to come and watch the planes, little guy?” Tanzi asked Max softly. Max shook his head and buried closer to my body. “Come on, Max.”
“Daddy,” Max cried and scratched at my arm, trying desperately to get a grip to hold on to as I handed him to Tanzi. It killed me.
Tanzi’s soft voice soon calmed Max down as they walked towards the window to watch the planes land and take off. Jack patted my back before walking to join them, leaving Sav and me in silence in the middle of the departure lounge.
My hands cupped Savannah’s face softly as my eyes burned into hers. With a sweep of my eyes, they traveled over every inch of her face, begging to memorize everything about her. I breathed in deeply, desperate to remember her scent. Her eyes closed briefly under my gaze and her lips parted.
“I love you, Savannah Rae. Never ever forget that.”
As she rose on her tiptoes, Sav’s lips swept across mine, kissing me ever so lightly before she crashed into my chest as my arms circled her body, pulling her close to me. Our hearts beat frantically against each other at the finality of this fucked-up situation.
“I don’t want to leave you, Tate, but I don’t know what else to do,” she choked against my shirt. She pulled her face away from my chest and looked up at me. The first tear I’d seen all day rolled over her cheek as she looked at me with pitiful eyes.
I had no idea what I could do or possibly say, so I just held her. I held her in my arms and hoped to Christ she was memorizing what this felt like because I had absolutely no clue when I would be doing it again.
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