What makes you feel alive?
The struggle. To breathe. To live. To not let go.
THE MUTTERS BEHIND THE CLOSED door awakened me. Whoever stood there lost their patience quickly. The stomping on the floor tipped me off. Then the voices started bleeding into my ears and the puzzle pieces fell into place.
Mama raised her voice. “I don’t actually care. My daughter is very sick, and you were well aware of that. You know her, after all. Now go away, boy, and don’t you come back here. Rosie is fighting for her life, and make no mistake, I blame you for it. What makes you think she’ll want to see you?”
“Mrs. LeBlanc.” His voice had an edge I couldn’t decode. Dean Cole wasn’t the groveling type. “I apologized. Let your daughter decide for herself. I assure you, she wants to hear me out. Ask her.”
“She’s asleep.”
I opened my mouth with the intention to call out to them, but nothing came out. The unwelcome transformation my body had gone through in recent hours left me speechless. Literally. No longer able to move my head, I found myself fighting for my next blink. Everything was sore. I had to take shallow breaths purposely, to make sure that my ribs wouldn’t crack. I needed to tell the nurse to up my painkiller dose. But I didn’t complain. Morphine would only make me sleep more, and there was so much going on around me, I didn’t want to miss a thing. The other reason I didn’t want to be given more narcotics was naked, raw fear. What if I died in my sleep? My eyes were heavy, but I fought to stay awake.
I was desperate to see Dean again. Did he screw up? Yes. Badly. Was I mad at him? Sure. Furious. But when you were on your deathbed, there was no time to be mad. Vindictiveness was thrown out the window, along with any other soul-eating, negative trait that was ingrained in us. When you were on your deathbed, time reminded you just how precious it really was. Feelings were bare and open for the world to see, poke, and dig into.
“Charlene.” Vicious interfered from the hospital hallway outside my door. “Rosie loves Dean. He has a reason for not meeting her in the Hamptons yesterday, and I can tell you that his reason doesn’t suck. At least ask her if she wants to see him.”
“Fine, but not right now,” Mama huffed, and I heard her smacking her thigh. “As I said, she really is asleep right now, and I’ll be damned if something like this nonsense wakes her up while she should be resting. Go. I will call you when she wakes up.”
“New York is three hours away, ma’am.” Dean tried to reason with her.
“And that’s a long journey, huh, Mr. Cole? My daughter made it to see you here. You didn’t even bother to show up.”
That shut both of them up. A few minutes later, the door opened and Mama walked in. I didn’t know where Millie or Daddy was, but I guess they were all taking turns to watch over me. Every single waking moment was spent with someone else. It made reaching out to Dean by a text message or a call impossible. Asking for personal space wasn’t fair to the people who stopped their lives to cater to me.
The mattress dipped as my mother came to sit by my side.
“How are you feeling, sweetheart?”
I opened my mouth and tried to talk, but my words came out as a desperate hiss. “Been better.”
She laughed and sniffed, wiping away a couple of tears. I wondered if all families were messes of epic proportions when a youngster was dying, or was it just mine? I wasn’t a kid anymore, but I was used to being everyone’s baby. Vicious called me Little LeBlanc. Dean called me Baby LeBlanc. Everyone else, Rosie-bug. And so a part of me came to foolishly believe that I had more time.
“Everyone’s keeping you in their prayers. I go to the church down the road every day. Baron is talking to a fancy pulmonologist from England. He is going to fly him here if things don’t get better soon. But they will, my dear girl.” She stroked my forehead, tears running down her face. She was no longer trying to hide or wipe them. “Sweetheart, you will get out of here walking. I know you will.”
Her forehead met mine, and I closed my eyes, feeling warm tears leaking under my lashes. I didn’t want to cry, especially not in front of Mama, but I didn’t feel like being strong anymore. Being strong sucked. Wanting to be independent and strong was what got me here in the first place.
Being strong made me weak.
“Mama,” I sniffed, “I’m going to be okay, right? I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you about Todos Santos. I know you meant well. I just wanted to stop being babied.”
“I know, honey. I know, I know,” she repeated, kissing my forehead and my tears again and again. It didn’t escape me that she didn’t answer my question.
It did not escape me at all.
I was perched on the porch outside the Hamptons’s mansion I had rented, letting the rain crack at my fucking face, because I deserved it.
Just to make sure that I was a full-blown loser and not a half-assed, miserable idiot, I drank vodka straight from the bottle, trying to feel how she felt when she was locked outside for fuck-knows how much time.
I earned it. Each and every piece of shit life was handing me. Fair and fucking square.
I shouldn’t have drunk three bottles of vodka in twenty-four hours. But I did. Because that bullshit they feed you about hitting rock bottom and seeing the light? It’s just that. A load of crap. In reality, when you hit rock bottom, you lie there for a long, extended nap, because rock bottom is still solid ground. Especially when the rest of your world is hanging on by a feather for balance. Being an addict whose life crumbles in front of him is tiring. More so than being the darling son, the sharp businessman, the manwhore who would give you four orgasms before he even touched you.
I found that out the hard way.
Truth was, weakness invited more weakness. And knowing that Rosie was dying didn’t throw me into knight in shining armor mode and help my drinking problem disappear. It served as the heavy brick that drowned me into the depth of misery.
Sprawled on the steps of the mansion’s entrance with a bottle to my lips, I stared at leafy trees trying to fight the wind away and laughed at how pathetic I had become.
It was a Monday. Noontime. The rest of the world was buzzing with life. I was buzzing with anger. I needed to think of a way to get her back. Vicious’s word with her parents didn’t help one bit.
I didn’t bother to answer my parents when they called. The one thing I did do was show up at the hospital at random hours, demanding to see Rosie. At first they kicked me out because she was asleep. Later on, it was because I was too drunk to function.
At least I had somewhere to stay while I was waiting for Rosie to see me. Oh, yeah. Karma is not the only one who is a bitch. Irony has a twisted sense of humor, too.
Vicious tried to be there for me, but I shut him out. Trent was worried, but he couldn’t leave Luna, and Jaime was pissed off, because neither Vic nor I told him what made me go batshit crazy on the world and bail out on my girlfriend.
Nina stopped calling, now that she had the money—at least I had that going for me—although I couldn’t even appreciate her absence from my life, because after all, essentially, my biological mom stopped giving a fuck the minute I paid her to.
Holy shit, asshole. Your life is a hot mess.
A rental car pulled up in front of the mansion’s door, and I didn’t need to see the occupants’ faces to know who they were. Volvo. Always with the fucking Volvo. The fib of white picket fence and three perfect kids they were trying to feed the world. I actually bought into this shit. Until now.
Fucking Vicious gave him the address. He must’ve had, because I sure as fuck didn’t.
My mother was the first to get out of the car. She didn’t open the umbrella in her hand, just light-jogged the distance from the silver vehicle to the front porch, rubbing her arms, even though she was in a tailored, pink wool coat.
“Sweetheart.” Her face was made up, her hair perfect, and she didn’t look nearly as crushed as I was by what my father had done. Same father I could see behind her shoulder, throwing the vehicle into park and sitting in the driver’s seat.
Fucking coward.
“We have to talk, honey. We can’t go on like this.”
“We can, and we are. Go away,” I groaned. I looked like shit. I acted like a little one, too. And I was drunk off my ass, which she could see. My mother ignored me, took the stairs to the door, and pushed it open. “I’m making some tea. You should join me, dear. It’s cold out.”
My mother still acted like the loving parent that she was, even when I put her through hell. Even when she was the very last person I should be mad at, because every time she looked at my face, she saw her husband’s unfaithfulness with her sister. In my eyes, which were Nina’s. My lips, which were his. My very being was supposed to be a thorn in her heart. But somehow, she always made me feel like that heart beat for me.
And that was what made me scrape my ass from the porch and jerk a finger, pointing directly at my dad.
“Stay where you are.” I raised my voice. “She’s fine, but you’re not welcome here, you cheating piece of shit.”
Two minutes later, she wrapped a quilt around my shoulders, and I was sitting in a stranger’s kitchen drinking strong tea for the first time in my life. What man under sixty drinks tea willingly? Me, I guess.
“Listen to me, honey.” Mom propped forward in her seat across from me and took my hand in hers. She was still warm. How was she warm? Well, not sitting outside for hours upon hours trying to atone for your behavior had something to do with it. “I know that you’re mad and confused. You have every right to be. And if you think for one second that I just rolled over at the time when it happened and let him get away with it, you’re dead wrong. I filed for divorce, Dean. I didn’t want your dad after I found out what he did. And, frankly, I did not want you, either.”
Ouch.
“You’re still here.” I sneered, my eyes dead.
“I am.” She smiled. “Because of you. You were worth it. Once I realized that you were mine to take care of, I wanted you. So much so that I was willing to give Eli another shot, even though he did not deserve it. Your father messed up. Big time. But things are not always as they seem. You should know that better than anyone.”
She referred to Millie and Rosie. And she was right. Even though I didn’t truly love Millie, and she didn’t truly love me, it still happened.
“It was your idea that I should bond with her. I spent my summers on her farm,” I ground out.
Mom shook her head. “Dean, you were begging to go. You said you loved it there. From my point of view, she stopped using drugs and was living on a farm. She sold us lies. I figured that you would tell us if you didn’t like it there. I asked you, Dean. Every single summer, I asked you if you liked it there. You always said yes.”
“I wanted her to love me.” I swallowed, darkness clouding my expression. “Jesus, I sound pathetic. Even to my own ears.”
My mother’s eyes were glistening with unshed tears. I hurt for her as much as I hurt for me, but not even close to as much as I hurt for Rosie.
The front door opened and closed, and my mother stood up and looked behind her shoulder, her face serene.
“You have a lot to talk about, you and your dad, but I will say one thing, Dean. Love is not perfect. Life is not perfect. Yet, they’re both extremely beautiful things you should treasure every day. I’m happy with your father. And whatever happened in the past belongs just there—the past.”
Eli walked into the country-styled yellow kitchen and took the seat my mother occupied a second ago. I took off the mask I put in front of Mom and gave him my douchebag face. The one I now knew I got from him.
“Thought I told you not to leave the car.”
“Thought you knew better than to go around firing orders at your father, Dean Leonard Cole.”
I unfolded my arms and leaned back in my chair, smirking.
“Guess I owe you a thank you for finally telling me I’m your biological son. If I throw in a few hundred more grand, are you going to give me more details about it? Maybe where I was conceived? And, of course, if Nina is a screamer.” Not that I didn’t know the answer to the latter. Nina had a thing for making me feel uncomfortable. Really uncomfortable. I couldn’t recall one summer where I didn’t catch and/or hear her and Owl getting it on. It made me gag, but I couldn’t do shit about it. Thin walls. Plus, sometimes I would walk into the kitchen or the living room and they’d be porking each other and grinning at me. No wonder I loved lying on the hay outside so much.
“I can help you.” My father ignored my bullshit, which was rare for him. He never let me get away with being a dickhead. Not even at thirty.
“With what?” I laughed.
“With your self-destructive spiral. And with understanding the truth better.”
“Your truth cost me six hundred thousand dollars.”
“You know money isn’t the issue here. It never was, Dean. I had no indication that you were ready for the truth to come out, so I left it for you to decide. Son,” he placed his glasses on the table, pressing his thumbs to his eye sockets, “your mother and I miss you. We want to make this right.”
I looked down at the phone on the table. Vicious texted me that morning saying he still hadn’t managed to defrost the LeBlancs and talk them into letting me see Rosie. I had nothing else to do, anyway. Might as well burn the time by listening to my piece-of-work dad.
“Hold on, asshole,” I muttered as I got rid of the quilt and turned the heater on.
Dad watched as I tucked a blunt into my mouth and puffed a cloud of smoke, pursing his lips. He didn’t like it. But this time, he was going to have to suck it up.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” I asked when he stared at me for a minute straight. What the hell was wrong with him? He looked like he’d been crying, which made me feel uneasy. Not that I thought that men who cried were pussies—okay, I’ll rephrase: that depends on the amount of crying, situation, and circumstances—but it felt odd to think that Eli Cole produced actual human tears. Normally, he looked so unflustered by the world. While he could be sentimental, he was always collected. Extremely so, down to the smallest bone in his body. And right now he looked very, very scattered.
Dad shook his head. “Nothing.” He tapped the round, oak dining table, ignoring the healthy amount of F-bombs I showered him with. I tried to keep my language PG-13 whenever I was around my parents, but I wasn’t feeling very respectful toward my dad at that moment.
“I’m always in awe of how alike we are.” He pinched his lips together.
“You have a weed and alcohol problem, too?” I laughed, tipping the ash into an empty vodka bottle and taking a sip from a half-empty beer can.
“I did,” he said.
My jaw almost dropped at this revelation. That was definitely news to me.
“Elaborate.” I took another hit of the blunt, before he snatched it from my hand and put it out.
“Hey.” My eyebrows pulled together. “What the fuck?”
“The fuck is that I’m your father, and you’re going to act in accordance with the social codes we ingrained in you from a young age, at least around us. That means you don’t drink or smoke weed in front of me and cut back on the F-word, Dean. It doesn’t make you tougher. It makes you sound like a goddamn thug, and I spent a lot of money on your education. Enough to assure that you’re not a thug. So, while I am content with indulging you when you and your preppy, trust-fund baby friends talk the big talk behind closed doors, to me you will be polite and straitlaced. Understood?”
Hello, bucket of ice to the face, thanks for sobering my ass up.
Dad stood up, snatched a can of beer from the table, and started walking around the kitchen, pulling a small trash can and throwing all the vodka bottles, rolled cigarette butts, and beers into it as he talked. “Back to our main topic—addiction. Yes, Dean, I was an addict like you. Not weed. Where I grew up in Alabama, weed wasn’t a rich man’s vice. But after I graduated from law school and married your mom, I had a lot on the line. I had my own father to impress, and he was far less thoughtful and supportive than I am. The only way I could take the edge off of all the pressure was to drink. So I did that. Excessively. Every. Single. Day.”
I smacked my lips shut and stared him down, trying to figure out if I was hungover, drunk, or in that sick space in-between. I drank so much that weekend I constantly felt like throwing up. I didn’t remember when my last meal was, but I was pretty sure it didn’t stay in my stomach after all the late-night puke-fests I was throwing for myself.
“I was drunk ninety percent of the time. A high-functioning drunk, mind you, but I don’t recall a day between the ages of twenty-two to twenty-eight when I wasn’t tanked-up. Even at work, when I couldn’t risk smelling of whiskey, I would get into the bathroom and drink Listerine before important meetings. I was far worse than you, Dean. Far worse.”
“Well, you’re good now,” I muttered. Mature as a fucking toddler. Was I a class act or what?
Dad took the trash can—threw it through the motherfucking window like a rock star—then went ahead and took another one from the bathroom, filling it with more bottles and cans of alcohol.
“I’m well, because I had a wake-up call, Dean. You know when?”
“Enlighten me, Master.” I talked back just for the sake of talking back, and it wasn’t funny or adorable on a fucking thirty-year-old. Dad must’ve shared the sentiment, because he shook his head and continued.
“It happened when one time I came home late from work, crawled into my bed drunk and disorientated, and made love to my wife. Because when I woke up the next day, I remembered that Helen was not even supposed to be in Birmingham. She went to visit her mother in Fairhope. So I looked to my right and saw her sister. I looked to the woman sleeping beside me, and I knew I’d fucked up my whole life, as you like to call it.”
That made me sit up straight.
“She tricked you?”
“Well, I think we both know that Nina wasn’t the type of woman to allure me.” Dad looked incredulous. Guess not. Nina was the exact opposite of Helen, my mom. She wore skimpy clothes, chain-smoked, and flirted with everyone and their cat. My mother was country-clubbish and yuppie, her hair always looked like she just walked out of a woman’s magazine, and she was reserved and polite, but never overly friendly to men.
“But, Mom.” I held my head and shook it in disbelief. My mother took bullshit from no one. This was why my sisters and I were well-behaved. She knew how to hammer it home, all right, when she wanted to. “She told me she wanted to divorce you. How the hell did you pull it off?”
Dad bobbed his head, throwing the second trash can full of drinks through the window as well, before turning his head to face me. “Baron is picking up everything I’m throwing out, and so you don’t have access to it, I will be taking your wallet and making sure your fridge is filled with food. You’re detoxing starting today, Dean.”
Vicious is here? What the fuck? I really did hit rock bottom this time.
“About your mother—no, she did not forgive me. Not at first, anyway. When I saw Nina in my bed and she told me what happened, I was mortified. I kicked her out and called Helen. She cut her trip short and got back home. I came clean immediately. She packed me a bag and threw me out.”
Despite my best intentions, a smirk formed on my face. “Good for Mom.”
I was the bastard child who was rooting for the cheated woman.
“She made me pay, that’s for sure. I slept in my office for those nine months. Helen sent me so many half-filled divorce forms my mailbox got clogged. Nina ran away. I tried to find her but couldn’t. She went under the radar, and it was a different time. Easier to disappear. No Internet and things like that.” Dad tucked his hands into his pockets and looked out the window, his brows wrinkling. “Your mother filed for divorce two months before you were born. It wasn’t even about the cheating.” He laughed bitterly. “Because trust me, I had no clue what I was doing when I slept with Nina. Don’t remember one second of it, thank God. She was just tired of my problem, and my lack of motivation to fix it. She deserved better, and she knew it.”
“Then what happened? Why did she change her mind?” I was still sitting at the table. Things becoming clearer somehow. The story started to make sense. Not a lot, and not completely, but I didn’t feel quite as lost as I had been feeling the past few years about the whole Nina ordeal.
“You happened.” He turned around and smiled at me like I was Sirius, which couldn’t have been right, because Rosie was Sirius. But every person has their own Sirius in their life, I suppose. The one that shines brighter than the rest. “You were born, Dean. We found out about you through the news. “The Walmart Baby.” Your mother knew instantly that it was Nina. Wasn’t hard to figure it out. She called me, and we drove together to the hospital where they had taken you. Your mother wanted you so bad, she was willing to give me a second chance. Said you deserved it all, even though the woman who brought you into this world didn’t.”
“I don’t understand.” I shook my head. “You made me spend time with Nina and Owl. Almost every summer. All summer. Damn, Dad.” I stood up, pacing back and forth. “Owl was the one who gave me my first blunt at twelve. Nina gave me my first sip of beer when I was fucking nine.”
“Language,” my dad instructed, and I rolled my eyes, feeling like his son just a tad more than I did when I stormed out of that café. “We had a little arrangement with Nina. Mainly because providing you with a safe, stable life was our main concern. She wanted to see you in the summers, and we complied as long as she was sober. That was the condition. Nina got paid for the time you spent at her house. The money was supposed to go to trips, clothes, things like that. We weren’t stupid. We knew that she pocketed the money and saved it for herself. But we hoped the time with you might inspire her to get better. Like it made me stay sober and grow as a human being.”
“Only Nina is not a human being,” I finished for him. He shook his head, and I wasn’t sure if he agreed or disagreed with that statement.
“Everyone’s human. Some people are more human than others. Nina made many mistakes along the way, but I made one of them with her. And you make mistakes, too. Mistakes that will have grave penalties if you continue down this path.”
I had nothing to say about that. It wasn’t about Nina anymore.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” I ran a hand over my hair. “Why did you let me pay her? Why did you meet me on her terms? It makes no fucking sense.”
“But it does, Dean. It makes perfect sense.” He took a step closer to me, and we were face-to-face now. Same height. Same hair. Same eye color. Fuck, how could I not have seen that earlier? My father and I looked exactly like one another. That was why people never asked if I was adopted. Because I wasn’t. Not fully, anyway.
“I didn’t know if you wanted to know your father or not, and I left it for you to decide. I knew that if you really wanted to see me, you would shell out the money. It’s not a big deal for you—the money—you have more than you could ever spend. So it wasn’t something that I was worried about. But if you didn’t want to know, if you weren’t ready to face this truth, and I served it to you anyway, I wouldn’t have given you anything. I would have taken something from you. Your choice.”
I looked down at my feet.
“I wanted you to choose to know me, Dean. But in the meantime, I tried, son. Every time we’ve met since you became an adult, I tried tipping you off. I even wanted to come clean on Thanksgiving night, but you never dropped by.”
My jaw locked, and I felt something I hadn’t had the pleasure of experiencing in a long time. Relief. Things made sense now. I was still angry as fuck at my dad, and I still loathed Nina with enough hatred to last for a few generations. Nothing got fixed. But at the same time, at least I had my answers. And in a sense…my peace.
Nina no longer had leverage over me. My biological dad turned out not to be a junkie or a criminal or an asshole. He was a man I knew and loved. It just so happened that he crushed me, and I needed to step away until I would forgive him.
And I would.
But not right now.
“So this brings me to the real topic I came here for.” Dad put his hand on my shoulder, and I looked at it like it was a giant cockroach.
“Spit it out and leave,” I told him.
“Rosie,” he said.
“What about her?” I asked, my heart beating faster just from hearing her name again. Being away from her was like having my flesh torn from my body. The kind of longing that wasn’t sweet and romantic, but threatened to tear my fucking guts out.
“It didn’t escape me that you and I had the same sister problem,” Eli said, walking me over to the window, his hand on my back. I let him, waiting to see where he was going to go with it. “My drinking almost killed my relationship, but, ironically, it also saved it. And it also gave me one of the most important things I have in life. My son. I’m afraid that you won’t be as lucky as I was. Rosie is sick. Very sick, from what I’m hearing. Time is not on your side, and you cannot afford to wallow in self-pity. That’s the one thing money can’t buy you, Dean. Time. So I suggest you go to the hospital right now and start your groveling, because there’s a long way to go.”
“They won’t let me see her,” I said, just as Eli pointed at the parking space. Vicious was standing there, leaning against his rental Audi with his arms crossed, looking directly at my window.
Right next to my parents’ Volvo.
Goddamn adorable asshole.
“Your friends want you to get the girl. Your father wants you to get the girl. Your mother will probably kill you if you don’t get the girl. So…are you going to get the girl?”
“I’m going to get the girl,” I muttered, transfixed on the vision of Vicious doing something nice for once in his goddamn life.
“Even if it means you need to stop drinking?”
“Even if it means I need to stop living,” I corrected, breathing hard. “Yes. I’m getting the girl.”
I grabbed my coat from the hanger and bolted through the door, leaving my dad to sit there, surrounded by oracle silence.
I am coming to get you, Rosie.