Irreplaceable (Underneath it All Series: Book Three) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance)

by Ava Claire

  Just in case she hadn’t made it obvious, she confirmed her disdain with a scowl. “That wasn’t a compliment, sweetheart.”

  “I’m well aware,” I fired back. Years with my mother had given me a thicker skin (and sharper tongue) than most. “And I’m not your sweetheart.”

  Anger flashed in Donna’s crystal blue eyes and before we could waste anymore of each other’s time, I added, “It’s clear you have some sort of history with my mother, but I’m not here to hash it out with you. I want to know how she is.” Anger was alive and well in me too. Anger directed at my mother, for leaving a legacy that I had to navigate my way through, whether I wanted to or not. Now, Donna Whitewater had joined the list, her hair seeming to defy gravity more and more by the minute. Any second, she’d let out a banshee screech and tear off her scrubs to reveal that she was really the Wicked Witch of Falcon.

  Most of all, I was angry at my myself. Leaving the people you loved high and dry was in my DNA, courtesy of the woman that had soured Donna’s mood. If I was smart, hearing that she was no longer in critical condition would have been enough, and I could carry on before my mother got her hooks in me. In Rose. Instead, I was channeling my grandmother, who stood by my mother through it all.

  “If your baggage is impeding you from doing your job, perhaps you can point me in the direction of a nurse who actually cares about my mother’s wellbeing.”

  That got her attention and the annoyed look on her face morphed into something almost conciliatory. “That won’t be necessary. Your mother’s room is right this way.”

  There was no apology for her rudeness or a signal that we were about to power walk to the room, so I turned back to the waiting room to look at the two people I cared about most in this world. I did the dorkiest thing I could have done and flashed them a thumbs up sign. Instead of pelting the glass with fruit, Rose made a heart with her two hands and Jackson flashed a thumbs up back at me. Tears stabbed my eyes like a thousand tiny needles, but I had no time to cry because Donna was practically a speck on the horizon.

  I flew down the hall after her, white walls, white floors and the smell of disinfectant and sickness whirling around me. I’d barely run the length of the hall but by the time I was in step with the charge nurse, I could barely catch my breath. She didn’t slow, but she found the time to cast a smirk over her shoulder. Even if she was amused at my expense, I’d take it over drawing a line in the sand. No one won if we battled it out. It didn’t change the past and only served to complicate the present.

  And while I was eager to blame my mother’s demise on someone, to have a target, the closer we got to her room, the more I felt my anger dissipating. Turning to mist as I remembered walking through the sliding doors. There’d been a family who’d lost someone huddled near the front, holding each other. And then there was those already parked in the waiting room, their faces perking hopefully when we entered, and instantly collapsing back into worry when they realized we weren’t the doctor with an update. A lot of families in this building would wait for hours, only to receive the glimmer that surgery or whatever procedure was a success, but the patient wasn’t out of the woods. Some would be faced with a reality that no longer had their loved one in it, filled with regret and all the things that were left unsaid. All the adventures and birthdays that wouldn’t be celebrated. First birthdays that wouldn’t even be reached. Lives lived but unexpectedly cut short.

  The tears that were slicing a hot trail down my cheeks were suddenly selfish and I wiped my face in between pants. My mother was hurt, but she’d be okay. There would be no grief counselor waiting for us in a sterile room, away from the public so they wouldn’t hear our wails. We’d dodged a bullet we weren’t even aware we should have been looking for. My mother, the squirrely cat with nine lives.

  “So, what happened?” I asked breathlessly. “The nurse on the phone didn’t give us too many details-”

  “I was hoping you could tell me,” Donna interrupted, pausing when we turned down yet another corridor. ‘Authorized Personnel Only’ was in big, red letters above the door and she tugged her ID card towards the reader. The doors creaked open automatically and she strode through like a woman on a mission. I noticed how the other nurses went from smiling and friendly to quiet and avoiding eye contact. I’d thought Donna’s vitriol was specific to my mother, but it was pretty clear now that her attitude didn’t discriminate.

  I tried to not marinate on the fact that my mother was in the hands of a tyrant that made everyone scatter like roaches when she entered the room. “You know way more than I do. The last time I saw my mother, she was cozying up to her slimy boyfriend.” I couldn’t bring myself to say the douchebag’s name. Not when the image of him touching Rose was burned into memory. Not when my gut was telling me that he had something to do with my mother being in the hospital.

  Donna finally slowed, but went from full throttle to a complete stop, almost forcing me to collide with her. “Does he drive an old Cadillac? Black and slightly rusted with gleaming rims?”

  “What?” I frowned. Black Cadillac, rusted exterior...that described my mother’s old car to a T, but she’d given it to the bookie to secure her debt. She barely had money for groceries, which meant that her gambling debt fell to me, or I risked some shady ass characters resorting to other means to intimidate and get their cash.

  My throat tightened. Means like, putting her in the hospital.

  Donna’s eerily blue eyes washed over my face and she crossed her arms impatiently. “What do you know?”

  I wanted to tell her everything, but I’d seen enough movies to know that they got it all wrong. In real life, the bookies weren’t buff and darkly attractive, threatening those who owed them money with bodily harm. In real life, they were normal people, drunk off the power of taking advantage of those with less than nothing and zero common sense. They didn’t bother with threats. They just showed up and asked for money and if you didn’t have it, they took collateral and used their fists or a weapon to drive home how serious paying the debt off was.

  I knew this because I’d been home sick when one of my mother’s ‘friends’ had kicked in the door. The chicken noodle soup I’d made for myself had spilled all over my lap. My mother had scurried in, snatching on her robe, her eyes rounding with horror. She’d begged him to come back to the room. That she didn’t want to talk about it in front of ‘the kid’. Not her daughter. Not her kid. The kid. The inconvenience. The unwilling audience when the man who looked just like one of the teachers from school, balding with gentle eyes, punched her in the face.

  He’d walked calmly to the back bedroom and when he returned, he was holding her flat screen TV. He loaded it in his car and disappeared again, reappearing with my mother’s jewelry box tucked under his arm. Before he left, he’d patted me on the head while I sat there, petrified and unmoving.

  He spoke to me directly. “I’ll let you keep the TV in the living room, because I’m a nice man. If I have to come back here, Colleen, you will regret it.”

  I waited for what felt like an eternity, scared to move until I heard his car leave the driveway. I even counted to a hundred five times in my head before I croaked one word: Mom.

  I couldn’t remember the last time we’d touched, but she let me clean the blood from her lips and nose. I ended up making her soup and we watched daytime television like nothing had happened.

  Donna didn’t push the envelope, her scowl returning to her lips. “Just as stubborn as your mother.” She left it at that and revved back up, striding down the corridor like some military hot shot. Her coworkers didn’t salute, but they snapped to attention nonetheless, only relaxing after we passed.

  She came to a second hard stop, but a collision was no longer a danger because I was too busy freaking out.

  What if this was my fault?

  I’d been making the payments, but the man I’d been working with made it clear that our arrangement was subject to change at a moment’s notice. What if they’d decided to take
the remainder of the balance out of my mother, plus interest?

  Donna didn’t bother with knocking, shoving her way into the room. The door thudded shut behind her. After sprinting behind the woman for God knows how long, my legs were suddenly filled with lead. There wasn’t a drop of saliva in my mouth to combat my bone dry throat, and I couldn’t handle the way my heart was being squeezed into a bloody pulp in my chest.

  I took a breath and closed my eyes. You can do this. Rose needs you. Think about Rose. Think about the man who cleared his entire schedule to be there for you guys. Now’s the time to be strong.

  I gripped the door handle and twisted. Now’s the time-

  “Mom?”

  I mouthed the word, the volume at a level only audible to animals. I had no breath. No anything.

  My mother glanced at the doorway, the eye that wasn’t swollen shut resting on me.

  My hand flew to my mouth just as the door clicked shut behind me and all the air, everything, left the room. Her face was covered in bruises, a rainbow of colors that started at her temple, rippled over her eyes, spilled onto her cheeks, and raced past her chin to her neck. A halo of tender, red and purple contusions wrapped around her neck like some twisted jewelry. My mother attempted a smile, but quickly brought her hand to her jaw, cupping it gingerly. It was like the act of smiling, which was rare for her under normal circumstances, was impossible now.

  That eye scanned the bed and when it found a cylinder that was nestled in between her covers, she groaned and pressed it multiple times.

  Donna stormed to the side of the bed and I expected her to snatch the device from my mother. Smack her hand like she was a disobedient child. “One click is more than adequate. If you abuse the pain meds-”

  “Look at my mother,” I interrupted. My words were muffled because I didn’t even realize that my hand was still over my mouth. I dropped it and focused my anger, my fear, on Donna. “Leave her alone.”

  Donna’s fierce red lips parted like she wanted to remind me who was in charge, but I raised an eyebrow, reminding her that I could, and would, report her ass.

  “I’ll leave you two to catch up,” Donna spat out. She held her head high, like she was so much better than the likes of us. “Tug the cord if you need anything.” She aimed one last dig at my mother. “I know you’re used to people waiting on you hand and foot.” She was out of the room before I could scowl, trip her, or otherwise demonstrate just how badly I wanted to hurt someone.

  But I didn’t really want to hurt Donna. I wanted to murder the person who hurt my mother.

  Now that we were alone, there was nothing to keep me from taking full stock of what happened. I was still near the door, my hands rattling at my side and turning my entire body to some wretched leaf in the wind. I couldn’t look at her eye, the one that I felt on me. I couldn’t look at the gash beneath the other one, red and furious and discolored. Small cuts seemed to be everywhere, like she’d been thrown through a glass window.

  Or...

  “Jesus Christ, did someone throw you onto the coffee table?” I gasped in horror.

  Most glass coffee tables were more fragile than sturdy. Time chipped the edges. A crack here and there. She’d found that monster of a table at a garage sale, and the thing was indestructible. Both me and Rose had stood on it, jumped off of it, hit knees, elbows, and shins. It didn’t suffer a dent through our childhood and when I came home as an adult, I would marvel at the fact that while everything in our house seemed to be falling apart, the table was still standing.

  My stomach twisted when my mother let out a snort. I knew that sound; knew the cadence and rhythm of it. It was usually filled with disgust. Not today. Today, it sounded like she was choking on blood.

  She cradled her chin, like she was trying to hold her face together. “I know you always hated that table. Now you don’t have to worry about it.”

  I thought it was impossible for my mother to surprise me anymore, but she’d outdone herself. “Are you making jokes right now, Mom?”

  She let go of her jaw and looked at me with the same shock that seized me, and then some. “What did you just call me?”

  “What? I...” Realizing what I’d done, I bit my lip. I wanted to yell at her. Like countless times growing up, I wanted to run away.

  I’d called her ‘Mom’. Twice in less than five minutes.

  My heart had the audacity to swell in my chest that she’d noticed. I shut that shit down immediately.

  I refused to believe that she cared. I refused to believe that calling her that was anything other than an involuntary twitch. The stress, the hurt, the fear. It was like laughing when you got bad news. An uncomfortable, inappropriate response to being upset.

  I refused to give her the pleasure of winning.

  “That’s what you have to say to me?” I stalked to the chair that was the furthest from her bed. I dropped onto it with a scoff and flipped my hair over one shoulder. I yanked at the red strands with disgust. I was disgusted with myself for being so weak. Furious at her because even in the hospital, after someone tried to literally beat her skull in, she still missed the point.

  “How about we not talk about my slip and you tell me what happened to you?” I clenched my teeth and cleared my face of emotion as best I could.

  “The last time you called me ‘Mom’ was before the fire,” she said softly, ignoring me. Her eye was glued to me, telling me lies, like usual. Tricking me by glossing over with tears. “Do you remember? You asked me if I was free to go to some school thing.”

  I struggled to ignore the fact that she remembered the day I closed my heart to her, gripping onto something irrelevant. See? It was just ‘some school thing’. She doesn’t care about you.

  If she could lie and manipulate, I could too. Of course I remembered that day. I’d skipped into her bedroom, inhaling the cinnamon incense she loved to burn. I let the warm scent wash over me. Embolden me. Deep down, I knew the answer would be no, just like it always was, but there was something about that incense and Mick Jagger’s wail that gave me hope. She only listened to music when she was in a good mood.

  I’d won the Scholastic contest and they were framing my essay and giving me my own bookcase filled with fifty books of my choice. I’d barely opened my mouth before she dismissed me completely.

  “Mom, there’s this thing at school-”

  “Didn’t I tell you to knock before you come into my room?” She’d growled, not even looking up from what she was doing. She was focused on her toes, painting them a sparkly, glossy red. The gleam of it reminded me of the essay I’d written about The Wizard of Oz. I’d titled the essay, ‘Home’. I’d lied, writing that my mother read the story to me when I was younger, pulling the book off the shelf whenever I was afraid. I wrote that the words, and her embrace, had reminded me that no matter how scary the world got, you could always go home.

  When she’d shooed me out of her room before I could even share my news, I promised myself that when I finally got away, I’d make a real home for myself someday. A place where my children were always celebrated. Where I’d show up with bells and whistles and scream the loudest, even if it embarrassed them, because I knew what it was like to have nothing but silence.

  The fire happened the next day and I turned my heart to stone and swore that I’d never call her ‘Mom’ again. Sure, she’d brought me and Rose into the world, but it was pretty obvious that if I counted on her for anything, it would only lead to more disappointment. She wasn’t ‘Mom’. She’d never be ‘Mom’.

  And now, with IV’s wrapped around her arms and her words muffled because her jaw was packed with gauze, now she wanted to act like she noticed? Like she cared?

  So I lied to her. “No, I don’t remember.” I lied again when I shrugged my shoulders when she looked genuinely sad that I’d forgotten.

  There’s nothing genuine about her, remember? It’s all smoke and mirrors and disappointment.

  Right?

  I pushed away the doubt and t
hat stupid hope and struggled to rebuild the wall around my heart. It had been damaged when I got the call that she was in the emergency room. Whole sections had crumbled to the ground when I saw her in the hospital bed. The foundation shook when she appeared to be moved by me saying a word that flowed from a place that had been dead to her for years.

  I swept my hair to my back and focused. I had to know what happened. Someone had to pay. “That woman-”

  “Donna?” She rolled her eye and immediately reached for that button and pressed it. “We’re old high school friends. No one told her that it takes more than a nice ass in acid wash jeans to take my crown.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed. “I really don’t want to go into Mean Girls, circa 1980s, Mo-” I stopped myself. I was about to say it again!

  One side of her mouth lifted slightly and I let out a groan of frustration.

  “She said she saw your car?” I continued, getting back on track. “Who did this to you? Who hurt you?”

  I expected more bullshit. If my mother was the queen of anything, it was bullshit.

  She reached for the button and I bit my lip. Sympathy flared in my chest, but she bypassed the pain medication and pressed a button on the side of the bed. It lifted her upper body a few inches. My gut twisted as she cringed with discomfort as she situated herself. She tried to lick her lips, but they were too swollen and the tip of her tongue was barely visible before closed her mouth and breathed through the pain.

  Her eye was filled with a steely resolve I’d never seen before.

  “I did this to me, Sadie.”

  ~

  "What the fuck are you talking about?"

  I scooted to the edge of my seat, eyeing the cord that dangled from the wall. Whatever transpired that had landed her in the emergency room clearly included brain damage. She was delirious. Next, she'd tell me that the Alex Trebek had climbed out of the television and driven her to the hospital.