by K. M. Scott
Cruel. Vicious. Cutthroat. Victor Stone’s son could be nothing less.
Taylor had succeeded in being that person, but I never had. Forever caught between trying to be like them and hating the very idea of being anything close to them, I was the other son of Victor Stone. Never cruel enough but aloof and cold. Not vicious but closed off. Not interested in being a cutthroat businessman because of what I’d seen my father and brother do to people who got in their way.
People like Nina’s father.
“As soon as I walked into that art gallery, I regretted bringing the actresses along,” I admitted to Nina there in that hospital room. “Not that I ever really wanted them around to begin with, but I knew from just one look at you that you’d think I was some jackass player. That bothered me. I didn’t understand why at the time. I mean, I rarely cared what people thought. The women were all Karl’s idea. But that’s why I came back that night. I didn’t want you to think I was the kind of asshole guy who goes places with multiple women hanging around him.”
I looked around to see if anyone was listening to me sit there and confess all of this to her. Nobody was there. We were alone.
“Just like when I waited for you outside the gallery. I needed you to know I wasn’t the guy you’d seen in there earlier. Part of me needed to show you I wasn’t like the rest of my family, even though I couldn’t tell you that then.”
For a moment, I stopped and thought about how trusting she’d been getting into my car that night. She didn’t know anything about me. We’d only had a single shared glance inside an hour earlier, and there I stood thinking she should just jump into my car because I offered her a ride.
I looked at Nina’s face so peaceful and calm and smiled. “I want you to know I’m convinced neither of our daughters would ever do that. Tressa is entirely too suspicious, and Diana would be too afraid. But you know who would jump in a stranger’s car? Ethan. I don’t even have to think twice about that,” I said with a chuckle.
Maybe it was the artist in her and my son that made them take chances the girls and I would never dream of. Whatever it was that made her get into that car with me, I thanked God every day since then she did because it was on that drive up to the house we now shared that something happened inside me. I never forgot how I felt when she jerked the steering wheel out of my control and nearly killed us that night. For the first time, possibly ever, I cared about someone other than myself.
Selfishness had been such an ingrained part of my life that I didn’t care about anyone or anything. In that way, I had been like my father. When you grow up knowing nothing else, how surprising is it that you become just what your parents instilled you to be?
But I wasn’t cruel. That always meant something to me. To be cruel would mean I was like my father and Taylor. I was just careless with others and their feelings because I didn’t know any other way to be.
That night, I found another way when the car spun out and ended up on the side of the road. When I saw how frightened Nina was, something deep inside me ignited. I’d gone to see her thinking I could protect her from Karl and what he wanted to do to her. Maybe if I gave her enough money, she could disappear from the city and go live happily ever after somewhere Karl wouldn’t be able to reach her.
Then, in a flash of lights and the sound of brakes screeching on a highway going upstate, I suddenly didn’t want to just make her go away to be safe somewhere with someone else. I wanted to protect her like a man should.
With everything I had.
I spent the rest of that drive with a single thought in my mind. What did I have to do to have her in my life every day from then on? While I was busy doing my best to be clever and sexy so she’d fall for me, that’s all I thought of. If the answer was I had to buy her something, then I would. If the answer was I had to be something I’d never been, then I’d be that person.
And it never occurred to me not once since that night that I should want anyone other than her by my side. Whatever that took, I’d do it.
Thinking back to those first days of us always made me smile. Being around her gave me something I’d never had before. She was light and open and sweet in a way I’d never experienced before, and every day I was around her made me want more of that in my life. No matter how much darkness crept into me, the lightness from her banished it. All it took was one of her gorgeous smiles that lit up her face or for her to say something silly to make me want to fight back the demons inside me always trying to make me run from her.
I’d keep her at arm’s length, and she’d push for more of me. I’d be secretive, and she’d demand the truth. I’d vanish into my past, and she’d find me.
The idea that Nina Edwards was saved by Tristan Stone made for interesting headlines and gossip on Page Six. The billionaire player swept the average working girl stuck in a dead end job at an art gallery off her feet. That’s what they said, and the world thought it was the truth.
But it wasn’t. The truth was far more than just a headline.
Nina Edwards saved Tristan Stone, not the other way around. Her way of being open and kind offered him the chance to be something better than all he’d ever known with all his wealth. What she gave him cost nothing but was priceless.
I stood from my chair next to her hospital bed and leaned down to kiss her. Pushing her soft brown hair off her face, I pressed my lips to her forehead and whispered, “You saved me. You gave me what I never had, despite having everything a man could want.”
Looking up, I closed my eyes and quietly prayed, “Please, God, let her come back to me so I can tell her that again. So she can hear how much I need her. Don’t take her yet. Please, God.”
Chapter Seven
Tristan
Behind me, I heard someone’s breath catch, and I turned around to see Tressa with tears in her eyes staring at her mother as she lay there perfectly still in the hospital bed. My daughter held on to the doorframe so tightly that the tips of her fingers turned white, like she feared she couldn’t remain standing if she let go.
“Oh, Dad. What happened?”
I hurried over and took her in my arms. She let go of the doorframe and hugged me tightly, a very un-Tressa thing for her. “She’s going to be fine. The doctors just needed to put her into a coma so they could find out what’s going on. That’s it,” I explained. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
Tressa shook her head as she stepped back from me. “I know you, Dad. You didn’t sound right when you called me. I heard it in your voice. You’re afraid something’s really wrong.”
Forcing a smile, I took her hand and squeezed it. “I was just feeling a little out of control. Seeing your mother in distress made me get a little crazy there for a minute. She’s going to be fine, honey. Right now, she’s just resting while they figure out what’s going on. That’s all.”
The suspicious look in my daughter’s dark eyes told me she wasn’t entirely convinced by my rosy predictions. I didn’t want her to worry, but she knew me best out of all the kids after working with me for years. She’d seen me at my professional best and worst, so she knew when I was merely putting on a good face.
“A medically induced coma is serious, Dad. What’s really going on?” she asked in that worried tone I never heard outside of work.
Shaking my head, I admitted the truth as I turned to look back at Nina with all those machines hooked up to her. “I don’t know. She seemed fine, honey. We were enjoying date night, and then the next thing I knew, I was calling 9-1-1 and she was gasping for air.”
“She told me she wasn’t feeling well last week when she called me about all of us having dinner together. All the way up here I thought about how I hurried her off the phone after barely asking her what was wrong. I was so busy with work that I didn’t even bother to push her for details when she said it was the flu. God, I don’t even think I told her I hoped she’d feel better. I just did what I always do—rushed off to get back to work. What if we kept talking and she might have said somet
hing that could tell the doctors what’s going on now?”
I turned back to face Tressa and shook my head. “Don’t do this to yourself, honey. Your mother loves you for exactly who you are. It’s not a crime to love your work. Do you actually think Nina Stone would have kept it to herself if she had something she wanted to say?”
A tiny smile made Tressa’s face light up. “No. In that way, she and I are like twins. We’ve never been the type of women who are afraid to say something. If it’s on our minds, it’s coming out of our mouths.”
“And if anyone should be wondering how she could be so sick without noticing, it’s me,” I said with more regret than my words could hold. “I live in the same house with her, see her every day, and I didn’t know anything was wrong. She said she was fine after having the flu last week.”
Tressa reached down to take my hand in hers. “Was she hiding something because she didn’t want to worry us? I can’t believe Mom wouldn’t have told you if she wasn’t feeling right.”
I gave her hand another supportive squeeze. “I don’t know. Maybe she didn’t want to worry me, but it’s not like your mother to not be upfront about things. She prizes honesty above all else. She always has.”
Honesty. That had always been Nina’s demand from me. She couldn’t abide by even a tiny, white lie. For a man who’d spent his entire life lying in one form or another, her insistence on complete and utter truth seemed like something entirely foreign injected into my life in the beginning.
I never wanted to lie to her, though. That I did I excused as a necessity to keep her safe, but once everything with Karl ended and we began our life together, I didn’t lie to her anymore. I didn’t have to. She accepted me for who I was, so why would I ever not tell her the truth?
But now as I stood there with Tressa, the two of us watching Nina lay still in that hospital bed as the machines did their work to help keep her stable, I wondered for the first time if the woman who believed in truth no matter what had kept something from me. Had she known something was wrong with her and kept it to herself?
If so, why?
“Dad, maybe we should go out into the hallway before Diana gets here,” Tressa said quietly. “Seeing my mother lying there like that made me feel like I was going to pass out, and you know me. I’m not like that. I’m worried when Diana gets here that she’s going to be a mess.”
After thinking about how my other daughter would react, I had to agree. I loved Diana, but having her break down the minute she saw Nina in that hospital bed and with all those machines around her would only make things more difficult for everyone. Better to prepare her first.
“Okay. I just want to talk to your mother before we go.”
I sat down next to Nina’s bed and bent over to kiss her hand. “Tressa’s here, honey, and we’re going to go wait for Diana. I want to make sure I explain things to her before she comes in to see you.”
Moving around to the other side of the bed, Tressa gently touched her mother’s cheek. “Mom, I’m here. I’ll stay with Dad until the doctors figure out what’s going on. I know you’re going to be fine, though.”
I stood and kissed Nina softly on the forehead. “Okay, honey. We’ll be back in a little while. I love you.”
Like always, I waited for her to tell me she loved me too. Every time I ever told her I loved her, she said it back to me. Now, as I heard nothing but silence from her and instead the dull noise of those machines I already hated and blamed for keeping her from saying those three special words, I worried I’d never get to hear her say anything to me again.
Diana hurried down the hallway, her heels clicking off the white tile floor with every step. From yards away, I felt the panic coming off her in waves. I’d spent far too many days and nights with her when she was sick and terrified as a child to not know when she was scared.
And at that moment, I knew before she even reached me how scared Diana was that her mother might never be okay again.
“Daddy! What’s going on? Why aren’t you in there with her?” she asked as she ran up to hug me.
“It’s okay, honey. Tressa and I just wanted to wait for you. The doctors were in there with your mother, so we figured it was a good time to come out here,” I lied in an attempt to make her believe things were fine.
I hoped the panic I heard beneath my words wasn’t something she could hear.
Diana released me and turned to take Tressa into her arms. “I’m so glad you’re here. Is Ethan here yet?”
I answered for her. “No, not yet. He has to fly all the way back from vacation, so I don’t expect him for a little while. How did you get here, Diana?”
She wiped tears off her cheeks and smiled. “I drive now, Daddy. Didn’t you know?”
Shaking my head, I silently admitted I didn’t.
Yet another thing I didn’t know. Or maybe I did. Maybe Diana had told me all about her driving now and not being afraid of cars anymore. It would be something she’d tell me.
Maybe her mother had told me all about what she was feeling as she got sicker and sicker and I didn’t pay attention like I obviously hadn’t paid attention to Diana sometime in the near past when she told me she drove now.
Regret settled into every cell in my body. How long had I been too busy with everything else to not know what was going on with my family?
“It’s okay, Daddy. I didn’t want to tell anyone until I knew for sure I could do it. Even Mommy didn’t know. Only Cole knew the secret, so I don’t want you to feel like you forgot something big,” Diana said with a gentle smile.
Obviously, my sadness was showing through more than I thought if Diana was worried about me. I needed to make sure I worked harder to put a brave face on for her, Tressa, and Ethan, when he finally got here.
“Is Cole here with you?” I asked as I looked down the hall for any sight of him.
“No, I didn’t want to wait for him to get home before I came. He’ll be here later, Daddy.”
I nodded like I assumed I should and focused on what I needed to do next. “Let’s sit down so I can get you caught up on things, okay?”
Her smile disappeared, replaced by an expression of pure worry that settled in her eyes and made her look like she might burst into tears at any second. Tressa took hold of her hand and together they sat down next to me.
“So, they don’t think it’s allergies, like I initially hoped. Your mother seemed to think she was having some reaction to pollen. At least that’s what she said to me while we were waiting for the ambulance.”
Careful to watch my tone so it didn’t sound too serious, I punctuated my words with a smile. Tressa nodded along, but Diana grew more and more concerned with every syllable I uttered.
For a long moment, she didn’t say anything, but finally she asked, “So you were able to talk to Mommy?”
“Yes,” I answered, nodding even as I knew I needed to break the news to her that her mother had since been put into a medically induced coma. “She was able to talk to me at the house before the ambulance ride here.”
My effort to hide the truth from Diana, or at least soften it for her, came to an abrupt end when she stood up and said, “Well, then I want to talk to her. I must have misunderstood you when you called, Daddy. Thank God.”
It broke my heart to see the hopefulness in her that my news would destroy. I glanced up at the sign a few feet away that said ICU and shook my head. Before I could find the words to explain what happened after we arrived there at the hospital, Tressa pointed at the sign.
“Diana, Mom’s in the ICU. She’s not really in any condition to talk much now. We can see her, but what Dad’s trying to say is he doesn’t want you to worry. She’s going to be okay. Just don’t get upset when you see her.”
“But Daddy said she could talk.” Diana turned to look at me and shook her head. “I don’t understand. If she could tell you what she thought was wrong, why can’t she talk now? Did something happen after she talked to you?”
“Honey, y
our mother’s breathing made her vital signs go crazy. The human body can’t handle that, so the doctors put her into a medically induced coma. I don’t want you to focus on that last word. The doctor explained it’s to protect her organs while they figure out what’s wrong and how to fix it.”
I’d never in my life had to say such terrifying words and pretend to be perfectly calm about what they meant, but I knew my daughter. Unlike her sister who could handle most things that life dealt her, Diana had never been strong enough for all she’d experienced. Instead of making her tougher, all she’d been through only made her frailer, emotionally. Yes, she’d made tremendous progress in the years after her accident and she lived a normal life with Cole now, but I saw in her trembling hands and the tears in her eyes that I hadn’t been wrong about worrying how she’d take the news about Nina.
She stood perfectly still, as if what I’d said stunned her. I held my breath waiting for her reaction, and it felt like the rest of the world fell away, leaving just my two daughters and me standing together in that hallway. Then her mouth opened, but no words came out.
Finally, she shook her head and began to cry. “No. No! She can’t be in a coma. I know what a coma means, Daddy. I know what that means. You have to make them bring her out of it! She can’t stay in a coma!”
I pulled her into my arms as she sobbed, “Daddy, please tell them to do whatever they have to. She can’t be in a coma.”
Gently, I rubbed her back and tried to make her understand that her mother would be fine. The problem was I didn’t even know if I was convincing myself, much less anyone else.
“Honey, the doctor assured me they’re doing their best. They needed to make sure her breathing was under control, and they couldn’t do that without taking this step. Now that she’s resting, they can work to figure out what’s happening.”
Tressa stood behind Diana with her head hung. Nothing I said seemed to make her sister feel better, so she stepped up next to her and said, “Diana, you have to keep reminding yourself that Mom’s strong. You’re forgetting that. Just like you, she’s strong. She’s going to be okay.”