“Baby,” I said gently, as I knelt in front of her. She obviously hadn’t heard me come in and I didn’t want to scare her. “Are you okay?” I’d intended to go and have a shower as soon as I got in, but she looked so lost.
She shrugged, and it was then that I noticed how tense she was. Rubbing my hands up and down her thighs, she looked straight at me and gave me the smile that I’d seen before in Jilly’s that didn’t reach her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” I knew she still had a bit further to go until she could trust me fully and, although it hurt, I understood it. At that moment, though, I needed her to trust me and to tell me what was wrong. “Please baby, tell me.”
Taking a deep breath in and letting it out in a loud sigh, she stared over my head. “My parents called.”
I knew that things were bad, really bad in fact, with her parents, but she looked more sad and confused and almost conflicted rather than the anger that I’d have expected her to be feeling.
“And?” I pressed.
“They were…” she trailed off as she searched for the word that she was looking for. “Like normal parents I guess. They said they had something to tell me and asked if I could come and visit.”
“Do you want to go?”
She sat staring at me for so long that I was about to ask her again, but she answered before I could. “I think so? I don’t know, Cole. They’ve never spoken to me like that, ever. They sounded like actual parents.”
“Did they say what they wanted?” I was obviously very protective of her, but at the same time, I knew that this hurt inside of her would eat away at her for the rest of her life if she didn’t resolve it, or at least try to.
She shook her head and tried to stand up, but I picked her up and sat down with her on my lap and just held her. The fact that she let me proved my theory. Normally Ebru was a spitfire, and if something was bugging her she didn’t want contact, she just wanted to be left to work it out alone. Obviously, I wasn’t down with this so she knew now that she wouldn’t get that with me, but the fact that she was clinging to me and rubbing her face into my chest, showed me how vulnerable she was feeling and helped me to give her the answer that she was looking for.
“Call them, baby. We’ll go this weekend.” I made sure to stress the we so that she knew I wasn’t leaving her alone on this.
“What about my shifts at the hospital?” She whispered into my chest as she tightened her arms around me.
“Call Lars. He’ll figure it all out for you.” As she went to get up, I gently pulled her face to mine and kissed her. Pulling back, I looked right into her eyes and said, “It’ll all be okay, I promise!”
All of the tension left her body as she looked back at me, and it was right then that I realized that she trusted me a shit ton more than she realized. I just needed her mind to catch up with her heart now.
Ebru
Three days later…
I was dying, I had to be. The pain that I was in couldn’t be compatible with life, I was pretty sure of it. Thankfully, I now had the next four days off to plan my funeral and to just let death take me.
I was lying on the couch with Pippa and Dash on the floor watching me, and a heat pad on my stomach to try and stop the pain. I’d taken pretty much everything that I could take. Obviously, none of it was working. The heat pad was also making me sweat, and if it wasn’t stopping it feeling like I was being gored by a bull from the inside, I would have put it down the garbage disposal purely for being an asshole.
Groaning as the bastard bovine took another stab at my womb with its horns, I curled into a ball and willed myself not to throw up all over Cole’s couch. So far, the Townsend’s had had to replace way too many as it was, I wasn’t about to add to that couch death count.
Hearing the door open and Cole and his Mom’s voices as they came in, I normally would have panicked at being caught looking like a train wreck, but right now I didn’t care.
“Holy shit, what’s wrong?” Cole shouted, making me jump and groan again.
“Let me die,” I begged.
“Mom, call 911,” he ordered as he fell to his knees in front of me. “Where are you hurt?” He tried lifting the heat pad off of me, and I caught myself before I put my hands around his neck and throttled him.
“I’m not hurt,” I said on another groan.
“Then what is it? Are you sick?” He sounded so worried that I almost smiled, but the painful death that I was going through wasn’t conducive with that.
“Um, sweetie?” Colette said in a tone that told me she just knew what was wrong. “Can you go and get some fans from upstairs? And maybe a washcloth?”
“Are you crazy? I’m not leaving her. Have you called the ambulance?” he snapped at her.
“She doesn’t need an ambulance, or a doctor,” she added before he could even suggest it. “Go and get the fan and washcloth.”
Ignoring her, he pushed my sweaty hair off my face. “Fuck me, she’s drenched. Call the damn doctor, Ma!”
Pushing him out of the way, she lifted my hair from behind me so that my neck got some cool air. “What have you taken so far, honey?”
“Motrin and Tylenol,” I answered, just as the fucking bull decided to attack me again.
Nodding her head, she looked at Cole and pointed in the direction of the stairs with a stern look on her face. “Get them, now!”
Looking like a wounded puppy, he walked slowly towards the stairs looking back a couple of times before huffing and going up them.
“Okay honey, we’ll get you sorted out. Are they normally this bad?” Colette asked as she fussed around me.
“They can be.”
“You realize he’s going to freak out when he finds out what’s wrong don’t you?” She looked warily at the stairs. All I could do was nod. “Well, you can always come and stay at ours if he gets too much.”
Cole chose that moment to stomp into the room and place the fan on the table in front of me, before plugging it in and putting it on high. The cool air was heaven!
“I’m going to go and get her some cold water and wet this cloth,” Colette stood up. Turning to Cole, she warned, “Behave yourself.”
He watched her leave with a baffled expression, but something she said must have hit a chord with him because his head snapped in my direction as his face went gray. “No! Please no,” he begged, shaking his head back and forth and holding a hand up. “You can’t!”
Rolling my eyes, I turned my face so that the fan was blowing straight onto it. I hated feeling sweaty.
“Oh God,” I heard a thud but refused to open my eyes to see what was going on. “I don’t think I can take this,” he whined.
I heard the sound of Colette’s shoes on the floor as she walked back towards us and the sigh she gave as she got close enough to see whatever the asshole was doing.
“I take it you told him,” she muttered as she wiped the cloth across my face. The sigh of relief that left me was so loud that I almost felt embarrassed.
“He figured it out,” I muttered, as I opened my eyes and looked in the direction of the big fat tit who was now rocking back and forth.
Standing up, she turned to face him and put her hands on her hips. “You listen to me Cole, women get their periods,” he went even paler and shuddered. “Grow up!”
Shooting up to his feet, he stood glaring at her. “It’s a legitimate phobia, you evil woman.” His expression was so indignant that I would have laughed if I didn’t know that I would end up getting el toro asshole stabbing me in retaliation.
Shaking her head, Colette turned back to me. “Let me see if Cole has any of the painkillers he was given when he left hospital after the explosion, and then when you’re due your next dose of medication you can take those. Look after her!” she said over her shoulder to Cole who was looking from me to the front door.
“It’s not contagious you insensitive twat!”
He went to take a step towards me
and then stopped. Thankfully Colette had been quick and walked back in rattling a pill bottle in her hand.
“I’m coming to stay with you,” I told her.
“The fuck you are,” Captain shit face spoke up.
“Cole, you can’t cope with it. She’s better off where she can get over the worse of it, okay?” Colette implored. “It’s only for a couple of days.”
“She stays here,” he pointed at the floor in emphasis. “Just, please, say it’s appendicitis or something, okay?”
Sighing, I looked back at Colette who looked like she was doing her best not to burst out laughing and then nodded. “Okay Cole, I’m dying of appendicitis.” Walking up to me, he dropped back to his knees and started to wipe my face with the washcloth that was cool again because the fan had been blowing on it. I gave him enough time to wipe me down before asking a genuine request, but one that I knew would have him freaking out. “I need you to go and get me some tampons.” He froze and stared at me in horror. “Super sized!”
I thought for a minute he was going to faint, but all he did was look at his mom and then run out of the room in the direction of the bathroom. The sounds of him throwing up hit us seconds later.
Sighing, Colette moved towards the door, “I’ll go and get them.”
I felt my hands start to shake as we pulled up in front of my parents’ house. The last time that I’d been here was to collect some of Lou’s stuff. Looking at it now, I remembered us playing in front of it and swinging on the porch swing, seeing how far we could go in it. It looked exactly the same as it had then, and I looked at the door expecting her to walk out and grin at me. God, I wanted that so badly.
It had been a silent drive from Piersville to here. Cole had seemed to know that I needed to just think and try to prepare for whatever my parents were going to tell me. When I’d told them that I was coming and that I was bringing Cole, my Dad had sounded like he was about to cry.
Turning off the engine, Cole turned to face me, leaning his arm on the wheel. “We can still turn around.”
Giving him a small smile, I went to open the door, but he stopped me with a hand on my arm. “I mean it,” he said gently. “You need to leave, you say so and it’s done, okay? I’ll leave the keys in the cup holder so the car will always be open. You say the word and come out and sit in here, and I’ll collect our shit and meet you here. Deal?”
He held his pinky out to me making me smile as I hooked my own around it and we shook them. “Pinky swear.”
Getting out of the car, Cole went to the trunk and got our bags out. When I looked back at the house, my parents were standing on the porch with my Dad’s arms around my Mom. They looked pretty much the same, but I could tell that Mom had lost weight. Taking my hand, Cole led us up to them.
I’d just stepped onto the porch when my Mom launched herself at me and held me in a hug so tight that I was struggling to breathe as she sobbed onto my shoulder. Looking at my Dad, I was shocked to see tears running down his face too. The only one who’s emotions I understood at this moment was Cole, who had taken a step back and was standing watching it all with a look of confusion on his face.
Hesitantly, I did something I’d never done before and put my arms back around her and rubbed her back trying to comfort her. She’d given me brief hugs when I was a child, but it had never been anything like this. Even when Lou died, all she’d done is rub my shoulder and put her arm around me.
She took a step back after a couple of minutes and, wiping her face, she turned to introduce herself to Cole as Dad took her place and swept me up in a bear hug. After Dad had put me back down, he also introduced himself to Cole before guiding us into the house.
I walked through the front door and the smell of the house that I remembered so well hit me all at once bringing with it a thousand memories, all of them like stabs to my heart and soul. It smelt like her, like Lou. I got halfway down the hall before I noticed that the normally blank walls now had framed photographs on them. In front me was a photo of Lou and me when we were really young, sitting on the floor hugging each other as we spoke. I remembered it even if I’d only been around four at the time. We were talking about living in a castle together and how we’d eat strawberries all day. I hadn’t ever realized that my parents had ever taken anything other than the token pictures of us.
Taking a step back, I looked around at the other photographs hanging on the walls and burst into tears. I was surrounded by photos of me and Lou taken throughout our lives, photos that hadn’t existed before now. My hero put his arms around me and held me tight while I sobbed like I hadn’t done since that day, even during the fire I hadn’t cried like this. Not once had Lou or I known that they were taking our photos, and she died not knowing that they actually saw her. I felt like someone had torn my heart out of my chest again and was stabbing it repeatedly. I wanted her back so fucking much; I needed my sister back.
Cole
I’d had to take Ebru up to her room. She had stopped crying eventually, but the whole time she’d sobbed I’d been torn between putting her back in the car and trying to comfort her parents as well, who were crying almost as hard as she was. I don’t even think she realized that they were crying with her, and I’ll admit that I was fighting the need to cry with her too. I’ve never heard anyone sob like that in my life, but as I’d looked around and seen the photos and thought back to what she’d told me about her childhood, I knew that it had come as a shock to her. She looked so like her sister it was scary, almost like looking at identical twins. You could see how close they were in the photos because they were always right next to each other, smiling at whatever it was that they’d been up to.
I’d lain beside her as she had a nap thinking about it all and how I’d feel if one of my siblings was taken away from me with no warning, or if I’d thought that my parents didn’t give a flying fuck about me. I couldn’t even begin to imagine it and I didn’t want to imagine the pain that it would cause. How she’d turned out to be the amazing person that she had I didn’t know; all I knew was that she wouldn’t ever live without knowing how loved she was, not only from me but from my family too. I’d make sure of it.
Ebru had woken up about an hour after she’d passed out and, after washing her face, we’d gone back downstairs to see her parents and were now sitting around the table. I’d tried making small talk and her Dad was joining in, but both Eb and her mom, Enya, were sitting quietly moving the food around their plates.
“Ebru,” her mom whispered, making her jump and look up from her plate, and shutting me and her Dad up. Leaning over the table, she gently and almost warily took Ebru’s hand. I could see how tense Eb was, so I reached for her knee under the table letting her know that she wasn’t alone.
“Why Mom?” Eb croaked. Her throat must have been red raw from all of the crying.
Looking over at Ebru’s Dad, Finn, she cleared her throat. “You and Louise Dharma are everything to us, Ebru Dhyana,” she began, and it took me a second to realize that Dhyana was Eb’s middle name. “We were brought up to allow the spirits of our children to grow and become whatever you both wanted them to be. You and Louey were such free spirits that gravitated around each other that we knew we needed to allow you to grow and go where the wind took you.” I was becoming completely lost with what the hell they were talking about. “When Lou was diagnosed incorrectly, we spoke to another specialist who told us he would see her in two days time to reassess her because he disagreed with the diagnosis that it was in her head. He also asked us to play it down to avoid any further stress being put on her. She died the day before her appointment.”
Enya had tears running down her face, and when I looked at Finn, he was watching her with tears in his eyes too. “When we lost her…” her Mom’s voice broke and she let out a sob. Finn got up and picked her up and sat with her in his lap and took over.
“We were lost too, we still are. We handled it badly, but we didn’t know what to do,” he swallowed au
dibly. “It’s no excuse, but we’d just lost our baby and you had lost the other part of your soul and we knew it.”
I was watching Ebru now and saw when a tear slowly fell down her cheek. She hadn’t even blinked during all of this, she was just staring at them and listening.
“We’ve tried so hard to get you back,” her Mom whispered through her sobs. “The knowledge that we lost both of our babies…”
Finn gave Enya a big squeeze and reached out to Ebru for her hand. She just sat staring at his hand for a long while before reaching out a shaky hand and taking his. I squeezed her leg tighter under the table.
“Ebby,” Finn said. “Your mother has cancer.”
I didn’t think it was possible after all of the crying now, but Ebru burst into tears again. Not knowing what else to do, I picked her up and put her on my lap, holding her as tightly as Finn was still holding Enya. The second I got her in position, I let the tears that had been building since we’d arrived run down my face as I met Finn’s eyes.
“What can we do to help you?”
The look of relief on Finn’s face made the tears run down my own even faster.
“You’re doing it already.”
Ebru
We’d stayed up until 2am discussing my mom’s cancer and treatment. She had stage two ovarian cancer and they were going to operate in nine days time and then start treatment. When I’d been growing up, they tended to go for natural remedies, but not now; the story that they’d told me about Louise and the appointment that they’d made for her had proven that.
After a night of truly shit sleep, we were sitting at the table with breakfast in front of us and some of the tension that had been suffocating us the night before had gone.
I was suffering from mild period pains now which were tolerable, but it meant that I was a picky eater and all of the pancakes that had been placed in front of me were staring at me like my worst enemy.
Until Forever (Providence Series Book 3) Page 11