“Got a good thing going here, and I know it. It’s not on my agenda to screw it up, though my agendas never really have a way of working out the way I think they will.”
I gathered all the to-go containers Darcey put together and let her kiss me on the cheek. I was walking out when I heard her ask Asa if he had seen her daughter yet. I had a feeling Brite’s favor he was about to lay on the southern playboy was going to involve family. Yikes, that could end up bad because I had heard from Rome that Brite and Darcey’s daughter was a handful, a real wild child.
I didn’t see Saint for the rest of the week. The shop was slammed with early-spring business, Rowdy got a cold and was out for a few days, and Phil’s condition was rapidly deteriorating. It got so bad at the end of the week I wanted to move him back to the hospital, but he refused to go. He couldn’t keep anything down, and his hospice nurse was talking about a feeding tube. It was stressful, I felt like I was walking across a lake that was frozen and I was just waiting for everything to give under my weight. I stayed the night with him for the entire end of the week, which meant I didn’t see anyone else. At some point during the week, as I watched him get sicker and sicker right before my eyes, my brain automatically started switching him from Phil to Dad in my head. It was my dad that was dying, my dad that was trying to put on a brave front for me, my dad that looked at me with sad, periwinkle eyes because he knew our time together was getting shorter and shorter.
I didn’t want anyone to see him like this. The entire group tried to come by, but Phil just wasn’t up to it. I had to bail on the plans I had with Saint on Saturday night, which bummed me out, but I was where I needed to be. When there was a knock on the door a few hours later, I almost fell over when I opened it and saw that it was her. She didn’t ask to come in, just handed me some kind of protein drink and told me to see if Phil could maybe keep it down. She told me she had asked the oncology staff for a solution that might hold off the feeding tube for a while longer.
All I could do was stare at her. Gratitude and something stronger coursed through me. She reached up and wrapped me in a hug that for just a split second made me feel better. She pressed a quick kiss on my mouth and told me that while I was taking care of Phil not to forget to take care of myself. I was exhausted and emotionally drained, but just that little five-minute visit from her, that easy way she had about being in tune with what other people were going through, reached deep down inside of me and didn’t let go.
Maybe it was because my mom had always been so cold and dissatisfied, maybe it was because I had searched for approval that was never coming that when I looked at Saint’s beautiful eyes and saw her empathy and compassion, I knew she was going to be it for me. She was everything I had ever wanted, ever needed. When she looked at me like that, any question I might have had about loving her went out the window. It was more like how could I not love her? She was impossible not to fall in love with.
I kissed her back a hundred times harder than I intended, but I wanted her to feel all the things I knew she would freak out about if I tried to tell her. She told me to call her over the weekend if I got a free minute, and left taking my heart with her.
When I went back inside and offered Phil up the concoction she had brought over, he just looked at me with a knowing gleam in his eyes over the top of the oxygen mask that obscured most of his face. I flipped him off and slumped back in the recliner that I had moved next to his bed. I wasn’t ready to talk about it. Especially when I knew that Saint would run the other way if I tried to tell her how I felt. Not being loved back was something that had hounded me my entire childhood. I didn’t know that I would be able to handle it coming from her.
I stayed with Phil all through the weekend. Saint’s shake was magical, so she sent me the ingredient list and I stocked up on supplies so I would be able to whip it up for him whenever he needed. Phil slept pretty much all day Saturday and I was contemplating going into work and trying to play catch-up while he was out, when Cora showed up at the condo.
I didn’t want her to have to see him like that, to feel sorry for him, but she just used her little body to push past me and told me to get lost. Phil was just as important to her as he was to me, and Rome was home with the baby until later that night. She told me in no uncertain terms I still had a life to live and unceremoniously kicked me out of my dad’s condo. I wanted to be irritated at her. Someone so small shouldn’t be that bossy and immovable, but I had to admit I needed the space to get a breather.
I went to the shop and plowed through a week’s worth of paperwork that had piled up. I rearranged all the appointments I had canceled on throughout the last few weeks. When it was time to close the shop down, Rule wanted me to go to the bar where Shaw and Ayden worked and grab dinner. The two of us hadn’t really spent much time together that didn’t involve working lately, so I was tempted to say yes. But as much as I enjoyed hanging out with Rule, I missed Saint and spending time with her more, so I asked for a rain check and called her.
“Hello!” She was screaming into the phone to be heard over the screeching and childish giggling in the background.
“Hey. Cora is with Phil, so I have the night free. I was hoping you didn’t have to work and we could hang out.”
“Hold on a sec.” She muttered something and I heard more screaming while she found someplace quieter to talk to me. “Sorry, Faith had to go to the hospital and asked me to watch the kids. She was having Braxton-Hicks contractions and freaked out. I don’t know how long she’s going to be.”
That was kind of a bummer since I really wanted to spend time with her, and I didn’t know when the next chance I was going to get was going to be.
“I hope she’s all right.”
“She’ll be fine. Do you want to come over here? I’m making them grilled cheese for dinner and then I’m going to put Finding Nemo on and hope that settles them down.”
I had never really been around kids. I mean now that Rome and Cora had a baby I was getting more used to it. Really, though, I would walk barefoot through lava if that’s what it took to spend time with her, so why the hell not?
“Sure. Give me the address.”
She rattled off an address that was down in Littleton and I took off. I didn’t stop and worry that her sister had made it clear she didn’t like me, that I didn’t have the first idea what one did with a bunch of kids running around. All that mattered was that she was there and that’s where I wanted to be.