The Art of Sage (Cruz Brothers #2)

by Melanie Munton

  And here I thought that I couldn’t hate myself enough. I reached forward and squeezed his hand. “Scott…” I waited until he raised his head again. “That wasn’t your fault. Trust me. If anything, it’s mine because I never allowed you to understand any of it. I always kept walls up, even with my own husband, and I pushed you away without even realizing it. The guilt lies with me.”

  He squeezed my hand back. “I know it wasn’t meant to be for us anyway, but I’m still sorry that you couldn’t fully trust me.” I tried to interject, but he continued. “Not just as a husband who loved you, but as a friend who cared about you. I’m sorry I couldn’t be someone you could confide in. I knew you needed that in your life. And I tried, I did. But I’m just not that person.”

  No, but Mason is.

  Holy—

  “You’re right.” He looked taken aback and I shook my head, wanting to laugh. “I’m sorry. I’m just working through something in my head and I just realized that…you’re right. You weren’t that person. But I think I know who is.”

  Amusement lit in his eyes as he nodded. “Then, I hope it works out with that person. Because I wasn’t lying all those years ago. I want the best for you too, Sage.”

  I tilted my head and really examined his face. Those lines around his eyes were laugh lines. And his overall demeanor was indicative of a man whose universe was spinning in the right direction.

  “Have you found the best?” I asked.

  The smile was immediate. “Yeah, I have.”

  My expression mirrored his. “I think I have too.” I needed to fix a few things, but I had never been more sure of anything else in my life.

  “Then don’t let it go,” he said.

  Ridiculously, I felt the urge to cry well up inside me. Thankfully, Scott pulled me in for a hug before I could make a blubbering ass out of myself. It was a good hug—a hug that felt like…closure. I wasn’t sure why I’d never felt anything like that after we divorced, but there was a huge weight that lifted off me after we stepped back from each other. It finally felt like that chapter of my life could be shoved in the past forever, and I could officially move forward with the next one.

  Scott tossed me one more smile as he opened his car door. “Take care, Sage. And be happy.”

  I smiled and tipped my head at him. “You too.”

  I was watching his taillights disappear into the night when Pierce’s voice cut through the silence, scaring the hell out of me. “Well, that wasn’t as awkward as I thought it would be.”

  I whipped around, pinning him with a deadly glare. “You were listening to us?”

  The giant eavesdropper walked out from around the corner of the house, grinning like the jerk he was. “I would say, what are annoying brothers for if not to spy on their sisters, but I won’t torture you. I was just getting some tools out of the garage that I need to borrow. Don’t worry, I didn’t hear any of your conversation.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “Although, I couldn’t help but notice that a certain badass mechanic isn’t with you tonight.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “Is there a question in there?”

  He shrugged. “Just wondering if there’s a story in there.”

  “Not an interesting one.”

  “Liar.”

  Dammit, he knew me far too well. “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s still raw.”

  He sighed. “What stage are we at?”

  We had a habit of likening almost everything in life to that of the healing and maintenance process of a new tattoo. It just made sense to us.

  I thought about it. “The prick of the needle is still throbbing like a son of a bitch.”

  He hissed between his teeth and shook his head. “Alright, I’ll lay off. Let me know when you’re ready to remove the bandage and I’ll be here.” He paused for a second. And then, “Just don’t leave it on too long like you usually do, okay?”

  I scowled. “I know what I’m doing.”

  No, you don’t. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be in this position.

  “This is your brother talking, not your tattoo artist,” he said in a firm voice. “And I’m telling you, don’t wait too long to take care of whatever this is. You always do that and that’s how infections are caused.”

  “You’re ruining the analogy.”

  “No I’m not, because you know exactly what I’m saying.”

  I sighed impatiently. I’d already made my decision before he intruded on the moment. He didn’t need to go pushing me into anything. “You made your point, Pierce.”

  He studied me and then nodded. “Good.” He sounded satisfied with himself. “Now, we might want to hurry and get in there if we want any cheesecake. I saw Katie going for the whipped cream a few minutes ago.”

  I turned and sprinted for the door. “Hands off, Katie!”

  Chapter Twenty

  Mason

  Sage: Can we talk?

  I couldn’t answer her text. Going into the hospital to visit my dying father had me all sorts of messed up, and I wasn’t able to process everything that was going on with me and Sage on top of it. Instead, I put my phone on silent and stuck it in my pocket as soon as I stepped through the hospital doors.

  As I rode the elevator up to Sal’s floor, I tried to prepare myself for what was about to happen. My entire family was about to be in the same room at the same time, for the first time in almost fifteen years. Parker had gotten permission to miss a few of his games so he could fly in to be with us, though I’m not sure how much he actually wanted to be. Like Dawson and myself, I suspected he felt more obligated than anything.

  Though a part of me—a part that I refused to ever let see the light of day—was hoping to get some closure. It hadn’t happened the last time I saw Sal, but maybe knowing that it would be the last moments I’d have with the man would lay to rest all of the anger and indifference I felt toward him.

  I had a brief moment of self-doubt right before I walked into the room, but I quickly found my balls and pushed through the door to find that I was the last one there. Parker and Dawson stood huddling in the corner with hard expressions on their faces, while our mother sat stoically in a chair beside Sal’s bed. The man himself was sleeping but everyone else’s eyes darted over to me as soon as I entered the room.

  “Mason,” my mom said as she walked over to me with arms outstretched. “Thank you for coming.” Our hug was a pitiful gesture, barely an acknowledgment that we were even related.

  “Of course,” I replied. I walked over to my brothers who were casting me sympathetic looks as I slapped each of them on the back. “You guys been here long?”

  “My flight got in about an hour ago, so not long,” Parker answered.

  Dawson scrubbed a hand down his face that appeared drawn from what I could guess was exhaustion. “I went over to the house after she called me to say he wasn’t responsive. I followed the ambulance here.” He cleared his throat and shifted on his feet, looking uncomfortable. “She said she wanted to be with him in case he went before they could get him to the hospital. He’s stable now, though. Only woken up once in the past four hours and he was pretty confused. Didn’t even recognize me for a few minutes, which the doctor said was common at this stage.”

  “What’s the doctor saying?” I asked.

  “He said it could be anytime at this point,” Dawson said on a sigh. “He’s got intestinal bleeding and a lot of fluid build-up that are preventing the rest of his organs from functioning properly. The doctor is giving him a few days, no more than a week.”

  No one said anything as those words sank in. “How’s she doing?” I asked, nodding over to our mother.

  We all three looked over at her, sitting there staring at her husband, her face devoid of emotion. “Okay, I guess,” Dawson replied. “She hasn’t said a whole lot. To be honest, I’m not really sure how she’s handling it. She’s just…blank.”

  I was sure that’s how we all felt in that moment. Blank.

  “How long can you stay in t
own?” I asked Parker.

  “Bill said to take however much time I needed, but I’ll probably just stay until he goes and then fly back for the funeral.” He kept his voice low so our mother wouldn’t hear him. “If you guys are okay with making most of the arrangements without me.”

  Dawson immediately nodded in agreement, though I wasn’t as chipper with my response. I knew our older brother was only being so amenable because he was being a good son in helping our mother. But I didn’t much care if Sal was buried in no more than a wooden box in the ground.

  “Who’s watching the kids?” Parker asked Dawson.

  “One of Mickie’s nurse friends will take turns with our neighbor watching them while Mickie’s at work,” he said. “I’ll go home to help her with dinner, but I just feel like I need to be here to watch over Mom. My lieutenant was cool with me taking some personal days, and I know you have a business to run,” he said to me, “so I wanted to make sure at least I would be here.”

  “I can be here however long I need to be,” I said. “The guys can run the place without me. Hell, they usually do when I’m there, anyway.”

  Silence once again fell upon the room as the three of us took turns staring at the swollen, jaundiced man lying in the bed. He was hardly recognizable even from the last time I saw him, having lost almost all of his hair and looking twenty years older than he was. Whatever resemblance Dawson and Parker once had with him was now gone. The sounds of beeping machines and murmured voices outside the door were all that floated from ear to ear.

  Ever the one to break awkward silences, Parker let out a heavy breath. “So, this is it.”

  Dawson nodded slowly, his gaze focused on Sal. “This is it.”

  This was it.

  The only question was, how would we all feel when it finally ended?

  ##

  Two days passed with the three of us weaving in and out of the hospital room while our mother stayed by Sal’s side, only leaving to eat meals in the hospital cafeteria. I continued to be baffled by her devotion to the man. Frankly, I just couldn’t understand it, considering the way he had treated her over the past three decades. It made me question her judgment, her sense of loyalty, and sadly, her sanity.

  Sage had sent a few more texts, asking if we could talk, all of which I ignored. I just couldn’t deal with another argument with her if that’s what was in store. She thought I was back on drugs after all, and I didn’t have the mental capacity to defend my actions to her along with dealing with Sal’s impending death.

  I hadn’t forgotten about her in the least. Actually, I was missing her like crazy. It seemed like she was on my mind every second of the day. But I had an obligation to my family—regardless of how twisted our family was—and I didn’t want to subject her to my convoluted thoughts and rollercoaster emotions.

  It was best if I just stayed away from her while I dealt with this closing chapter of my life.

  Having already eaten lunch on the way to the hospital, I’d opted to stay in Sal’s room by myself while the other three ate lunch downstairs when he stirred in bed, forcing me to lift my head. Our eyes connected across the room, his squinting in concentration before relaxing with recognition.

  “Didn’t expect to still see you here,” he rasped. I had to strain my ears to hear him over the beeping of the heart monitor. “Or any of you for the matter.”

  “Well, Mom needs us,” I replied with steel in my voice.

  I didn’t know what to expect from him in his final moments. But if he thought he could erase the last thirty years with a simple “I’m sorry,” he was going to be sorely mistaken. Though I would probably die of shock if I heard those words ever leave his lips.

  He gave a barely perceptible nod and attempted to lift his hand, pointing at the tray table that was just out of his reach. “Could I have some water?” His throat worked as he swallowed and added, “Please.”

  I walked over and held the glass close enough that he could take several sips from the straw before replacing it back on the table. I was about to return to my chair in the corner, but his voice stopped me. “You could sit there,” he said, indicating my mother’s chair right next to the bed. I raised an eyebrow at him, prompting him to say, “It’s just harder for me to talk to you from across the room.”

  Unable to quash my curiosity, I slowly lowered myself into the chair. “We don’t have to talk at all. I’m just here for Mom.”

  “Well, I don’t expect you to believe anything I say. All I’m asking is for you to listen.” I sat there staring at him as he closed his eyes and began to speak. “I raised my sons the way I was raised. It was the only way I knew how to do things. Looking back on it now, I still don’t know how I should have done things differently. That probably makes me…well, I don’t know what that makes me. You fill in the blank. If I were to apologize for my actions, none of you would believe me so I won’t waste my breath trying.”

  He paused in his speech to take several deep breaths. “Then, what are you trying to say?” I asked, baffled that the man was doing something other than sneering at me.

  He kept his eyes closed as if he hadn’t heard me. “The one thing I never wanted, the one thing I was trying to prevent however questionable my methods were in doing so, was for any of you to end up like me.”

  My blood ran cold, the force of those words slamming into me with tremendous strength. “Excuse me? We’re nothing like you.”

  He opened his eyes at that, connecting them with mine. “Maybe not exactly. But all of you have traces of me in you. Parker has the baseball and short temper even though he does his best to hide it. Dawson has a different kind of anger in him that he deals with in his own ways, along with keeping all of his feelings bottled up inside him. Not to mention the whole resentment of his father thing. And you…” I stopped breathing, every fiber of my being desperate to hear his next words. “You, Mason…have the itch.”

  My stomach plummeted, a dark veil of despair falling over me. “What are you talking about?”

  He couldn’t be right. I wasn’t like him. That was all in the past.

  His chest rumbled with a short laugh. “Don’t give me that shit. You know exactly what I’m talking about. I have it too, have for most of my life. We just have different medicines, but it’s the same itch. It had ahold of you—probably still does sometimes if I had to guess. That’s how you’re like me.”

  I shook my head, refusing to believe it. “It’s still different. I got help and got clean because I didn’t want to end up like you. Because I care about the people around me and about making a good life for myself. That’s how I’ll never be like you.”

  “You think I didn’t try when I first met your mother?” he snapped. “You think I didn’t want to make her happy and build a better life than the one we had?”

  I shrugged. “I never saw evidence of that. So, what happened? How did you get to this?” I asked, waving my hand at his form.

  “It just wasn’t in the cards for me,” he said, averting his eyes. “Some men don’t have the right stuff in them to make it work and I didn’t. That’s the way of the world. By the time I figured that out, I knew it was too late for me…but not for you three. And if all I had to leave behind in this world was you boys, I wanted to make sure that there weren’t going to be three more Sal’s out there. That was my one goal in life.”

  “So, what?” I asked disbelievingly. “You thought that if you beat us and yelled enough that we would want to be the complete opposite of you? Out of spite?”

  The corner of his mouth tilted up in a smirk. “Worked didn’t it? The three of you hate me and have probably vowed over and over again that you wouldn’t repeat your father’s mistakes. Right? There’s a word for that. Irony?”

  “Fucked up is what I’d call that,” I spat, my head spinning with his confessions. “You’re right. You had no fucking clue how to be a father. Do you realize that your plan could have backfired on you? We could have been so much worse than you.”

&
nbsp; “I thought it was starting to backfire on me when you got into all the shit you did.” He adjusted his pillow, sitting up straighter to face me. “I wasn’t ignorant to your habits or the crew you were running with. Who do you think gave Dawson the idea to bring up rehab with you in the first place?”

  My breathing was shallow, my throat closing on me. “He wouldn’t listen to you. He hates you the most.”

  “Yeah, but he paid attention real quick whenever I told him how proud I was that you were the spitting image of your father.” He chuckled, shaking his head while mine was about to explode. “Even an uneducated alcoholic like me knows what reverse psychology is. Worked like a charm since I heard the next week that you were being admitted to that place.”

  What the hell was going on? My father—Salvatore Cruz—had actually been the one responsible for getting me into rehab? That couldn’t be true. I could not wrap my mind around that.

  “I said you didn’t have to believe me,” he went on. “I just wanted to know that I did one thing right with my godforsaken life. That even though I might be a complete fuck up, my sons won’t waste their lives like I did. At least then I would know that my life wasn’t a complete joke.”

  I felt sick, my mind reeling with the implication that my father, an abusive, alcoholic prick, might have actually possessed a heart somewhere inside his long-thought hollowed-out chest.

  “I don’t, uh,” I stopped, having to clear my throat and lick my lips before continuing, “I don’t know what to say to all that.”

  He grunted. “I told you that you didn’t have to say anything, just listen. And you don’t have to forgive me either. I know that’s a lot to ask, so it’s not going to be my dying wish or anything. I wouldn’t deserve it, anyway.” He adjusted his position again, looking more uncomfortable by the second. “Maybe you could just tell me a little about your life.”