CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Alec cooked and plated the main course with total focus. Plenty of relatives popped their heads into the kitchen at one point or another during dinner, but he didn’t encourage anyone’s help, not even Cordelia’s. Five minutes with her and she’d get out of him that his father had come begging for reconciliation—and that Alec had stomped those wishes into the ground.
For the past hour, the words she’d said to him at his apartment two weeks ago had been playing over and over inside his head: I never even had a chance to know Gordon, but your dad is still right here. Don’t you want to at least try to make things better while you still can?
And the truth was, Alec wasn’t exactly proud of himself as he whipped up another batch of the cashew-based bell pepper sauce. Once dinner was over, once they’d served the cake and the band started playing, maybe he should do something crazy like force himself to find his father and open the door. Not all the way, but wide enough that William would know he was finally prepared to give listening a shot.
Suddenly, a scream sounded from the dining room. One that had Alec dropping the spatula and running into the barn.
His father was no longer at his seat of honor. Instead, he was lying on the ground with Suzanne ripping open his shirt and tie. She had already started CPR by the time Alec dropped to his knees beside them.
“Dad.” Alec grabbed his father’s hand, hating himself. What the hell had he been thinking? How could he have ignored the signs in the kitchen, William’s gray pallor, the sweaty sheen of his skin? “Can you hear me?”
“He’s unconscious.” Harry was on his knees on the other side of their father, along with Drake. “He had a heart attack. We’ve called 911.”
Soon, sirens sounded outside the barn and the local paramedics were running in and strapping William onto the gurney and starting an IV. He came to just long enough to swallow some aspirin, and to see Alec standing beside him, and then the paramedics were hurrying him into the ambulance.
“I need to go with him to the hospital,” Alec insisted. “He needs to know I’m with him at all times.” No one argued as Alec got into the back of the emergency vehicle, while Harry, Suzanne, and Drake said they’d follow in their cars.
As he sat beside the gurney and took his father’s hand, Alec noticed just how similar their hands were, with large palms and long fingers. But there were dark spots and wrinkles on his father’s skin. In Alec’s mind, his father was still the same man he’d been thirty years ago when tragedy struck their family. But somewhere along the way, William Sullivan had aged.
Alec hadn’t been able to stop time, but he’d been hell-bent on keeping forgiveness and understanding at bay as if time actually had stopped. For three decades, he’d let anger and blame fester. Inside himself and between the two of them.
To what end? he suddenly had to ask himself. So that he could lose his father before they’d ever really had a chance to know each other?
No. His father couldn’t die. Couldn’t disappear on him like Gordon had. Like his mother had.
Not when there was so much unfinished business between them.
Not when Alec had been such an ass to him for so long.
Not when he’d never given his father another chance to be a father.
Not when he’d never given himself a chance to be a son.
Shock. Fear. Frustration. Myriad emotions swirled within Alec. But to his surprise, one emotion rose above all the rest.
Hope.
Alec had never hoped so hard for anything. Never wished, never prayed, never bargained so intently for an outcome before. For his father to make it through this and come out the other side. Better. Stronger.
Alec would trade anything, give up every penny, to get his father through this.
He thought he’d learned long ago that hoping, wishing, was pointless. But he couldn’t believe that anymore. Refused to believe that. Hopes and prayers were all he had right now, and by God, he was going to give them everything he had.
“You’re going to be okay.” Alec’s voice was rough, raw. “You have to be. I won’t leave your side, Dad.” His voice broke on Dad.
The ambulance stopped in front of the Emergency Room, and the doors were flung open by hospital personnel. One of his siblings had already called in William’s information, and the doctor was planning to take him immediately into the cath lab for surgery to inflate a balloon that would clear the blockage in his heart.
They had to pry Alec’s hand away from his father’s. He didn’t know how long he stood there after they’d gone, fear clamping down on his chest so hard he could barely breathe.
He felt a hand on his arm. “Alec.” Cordelia’s gentle voice was the only thing that could have soothed him even the slightest bit. “The paramedics got your father here in record time and he’s in great hands. The surgeon worked on a colleague of my parents, who couldn’t sing her praises enough.”
“He tried to talk to me in the kitchen,” Alec confessed, needing her to know everything, needing to admit what he’d done out loud. “But I wouldn’t listen to him. Wouldn’t even let him say thank you for tonight. I should have stopped plating the damned salads and let him talk. You were right, I should have given him a chance. But I never did.” Alec had never felt so bleak, so lost in the dark. “If he dies, I’m to blame.”
* * *
“Alec, no.”
Cordelia took his hand and drew him into a small meditation garden to the side of the waiting room. There were big windows along the outer wall, so the doctors would be able to find Alec easily if they needed him. So would his siblings, who would be walking in any second. But before they arrived, they needed to speak privately.
“Your father is a very strong man,” she said in a firm voice. “He’ll pull through this. And when he does, the last thing he’s going to want to hear is that you blame yourself for anything that just happened. I know you’re stunned right now, and scared. But I won’t let you take the blame for this. None of us will.”
The steel in her words finally made him look at her. “He doesn’t know, Cordelia.” Her heart broke at the grief in his voice. “He doesn’t know I love him.”
“He does.”
“How could he? When he told us Mom died, I yelled I hate you over and over at him. That’s the last thing he knows. That I hated him. Because I haven’t let anything change since I was five years old.”
“I guarantee there’s no possible way he believes you hate him. He would have understood why you said it, because you’d just lost your mother in the most horrific way possible. And he wouldn’t have blamed you for it. No father would.”
“I’ve spent the past thirty years making sure he couldn’t forget.”
“No,” she said again, even more forcefully this time. “You’ve spent the past thirty years doing the best you can, the same way he has. I may have only spent a couple of hours with your dad at Summer Lake, but it only took a matter of seconds for me to know how much he loves you. And that he’s never given up hope that the two of you can find your way back to each other.”
The tears that fell from Alec’s eyes as she spoke told her how much he wanted that.
She put her arms around him and held on tight. Soon, she knew his family would need him with them in the waiting room, their big brother who always held them together. Through thick and thin. Good times and bad. Alec was the one they could count on to keep them whole.
“Stay,” he said, and she was holding him so tightly that his request reverberated from his chest to hers. “Please.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she promised him. “Whatever you need, I’ll take care of. You can count on me, no matter what.”
* * *
Alec and Cordelia sat with Harry, Suzanne, Roman, Drake, and Rosa in the waiting room. After discussing the details of the surgery, they’d all been sitting silently. Waiting for news. Waiting for the doctor to come out and tell them everything would be okay.
Aunt Mary was still back at the barn corralling and comforting one hundred-plus worried Sullivans and family friends. If anyone was up to the task, though, it was Mary.
Just as Cordelia was clearly up to the task of making sure he and his siblings had whatever they needed as they kept vigil in the waiting room, having gotten coffee and soda and water for everyone during the past few hours. But when she went to refill Harry’s coffee cup, Alec grabbed her hand and pulled her down into her seat. He wanted her to stay right there beside him. Her hand in his. Her gentle voice soothing him. “We don’t need anything.”
Except her. He needed her. Because she was his lifeline, his rock, the one person who would get him through tonight.
She curled her fingers through his, then laid her head against his shoulder. And for the briefest moment, a tiny ray of light shone through the darkness. Just from knowing that he didn’t have to do this alone.
His brothers, his sister, his cousins—all of them were there for him too. But Cordelia wasn’t at his side because they shared the same bloodline, or family history. She’d chosen to be with him, to be his friend, to stand beside him even when the chips were down.
He’d almost blurted out that he loved her at Tanglewood, while James Taylor was still singing “Fire and Rain.” But he’d been so stunned by what he felt that he’d forced himself to come up with a million rationalizations for why love couldn’t ever make sense for him. That he was destined to hurt her the way his father had hurt his mother. That he couldn’t stand to give her false hope for a forever after that might never come. That since he was incapable of changing his bleak past, it meant a bleak future was also set in stone.
Now, suddenly, he realized that in the same way he’d screwed things up with his father, he was blowing it with Cordelia.
What would it take for him to accept the truth of what he felt for her? A horrible accident? Another hospital waiting room? Or would it be the day she finally gave up on him and found a man who wasn’t afraid to love her the way she deserved to be loved?
Gordon had given Alec the ultimate gift in bringing Cordelia into his life. Finally, he could see that no matter how bad his past, only a total idiot wouldn’t grab at a future with her with both hands. And not let go even when his dark memories, the nightmares from his childhood, tried to wrench her from him.
“Cordelia.” He didn’t care that they were sitting in the waiting room with his family all around them. In fact, he was glad Harry and Suz and Drake were there. Glad they would all hear what he had to say. “I need to tell you something. Here. Now.”
She lifted her head from his shoulder and shifted to face him. “What is it?”
“I—”
“William Sullivan’s family?” The doctor who had been operating on their father stepped into the waiting room, and all of them jumped out of their seats.
“Yes,” Harry replied. “We’re William Sullivan’s family.”
The doctor smiled at them. “I’m very happy to let all of you know that the procedure was a success. Your father is going to have to take it easy for a while, and lay off the hamburgers,” she said with a grin, “but I know a fighter when I see one. And no wonder, with his kids all here waiting for him to be a hundred percent again. I’m sure you have questions and I’ll be happy to answer them all. I’d like to get William settled into recovery first, and then I’ll come back out to chat.”
“When can we see him?” Alec asked.
“Let’s give him a few hours to sleep off the anesthesia, and then we’ll see if he’s up to a short visit.”
People liked to say money could buy happiness—but Alec would happily give every single penny he had just to be able to sit at his father’s bedside and watch over him until he woke.
“I promised him that I’d be at his side when he woke up,” Alec implored. The doctor had to understand how important this was. “I need to be there with him in recovery, not in a few hours, but now.”
She looked like she was going to refuse his request, but then at the last second she nodded. “Just you. And only if you remain quiet and stay out of our way.”
People very rarely gave Alec Sullivan orders, not when he was always the most powerful man in any room. But he was more than happy to obey the doctor.
The kiss he gave Cordelia before he left the waiting room was one of new hope. And, though he hadn’t yet had a chance to say the word, love.
* * *
Cordelia lifted her fingertips to her lips, which were tingling from Alec’s surprise kiss. Everyone was doing their best not to make her uncomfortable by staring at her, but she could tell they were all more than a little surprised by Alec’s behavior.
“I’m so glad your father is going to be okay.” Cordelia hugged Suzanne, and then Harry and Drake. When everyone sat down again, they were all much more relaxed now that the doctor had given them good news.
“Dad will be glad to see Alec in the room with him when he wakes up,” Harry said. “He’ll know what it means, that it’s the olive branch he’s been waiting for.”
“Hopefully it’s more than just that,” Drake said. “Hopefully Alec will not only listen to him, finally, but also talk to him.”
“For the first time, Alec seems to want to talk.” Suzanne looked at Cordelia. “About more than just Dad.”
Cordelia was still flushed from the kiss Alec had given her—and from the anticipation of whatever he had been about to say before the doctor walked in. He’d looked so serious. So determined. And yet, at the same time he’d seemed totally vulnerable, as though he’d finally stripped away his armor.
Alec’s siblings knew Cordelia and Alec were friends. But she was pretty sure none of them had guessed they had also been lovers. Not until he’d kissed her in front of them all.
“I care about Alec,” she said softly. “Very much.” Maybe it would have been easier to stay silent, but they’d welcomed her into their family circle, and she wanted to be as honest with them as she’d always been with their brother. “I know you won’t be surprised to hear that he’s become my best friend. He’s always there for me and I always want to be there for him too.” She made herself look Alec’s siblings in the eye. “But if you’re hoping that he’s changed his mind about…” God, she was really wading into the deep end, wasn’t she? “About relationships or falling in love, I don’t think he has.” Her stomach was clenched and her throat was tight. “I know other women have tried to change Alec, but I could never do that to him. He’s never tried to change me—he’s simply accepted me for who I am and what I believe. And I feel the same way about him. Whatever changes he wants to make, whether it’s with his father or his job or even his haircut, I’ll be right there supporting him in any way I can. But those changes will always be up to him, not me.”
Suzanne took Cordelia’s hand, one woman in love comforting another. “From the first moment we met, I knew you were special. And it’s obvious my brother feels the same way, regardless of what he has or hasn’t said to you about his feelings.” She squeezed Cordelia’s hand. “No matter what happens from here, if you and Alec stay just friends—or if he finally pulls his head out of his you-know-what and realizes how good the two of you are together—as far as I’m concerned, you’re already one of us. You’re part of our family, Cordelia.”
“Just like Gordon.” Cordelia’s words were thick with the overwhelming joy of belonging to such a wonderful group of people who would always have her back, no matter what.
“No one understood Alec better than Gordon,” Harry told her. “Not even the three of us.” He smiled as he added, “But you, Cordelia, seem to understand Alec best of all.”
That’s because I love him, she thought. And though she didn’t speak the words aloud, something told her she didn’t need to.
Because Alec’s family already knew.