“I’ve learned my place,” I told him. “This is up to you. You have to let her go but you decide if you go with her or not.”
“It’d be easier for you.”
“It wouldn’t make a difference to me. I know your weak spot, Gabe, and you know that we’ll find her no matter where she is.” It was an empty threat. I’d never go for Chastity, but he didn’t know that. “Just think about it. Don’t make any hasty decisions,” I echoed the words he once said to me. The knot in my chest unfurled. With nothing more left to say, I walked away, leaving Gabe alone with his father.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Lucas
I’d been under the false impression that being at home would make recovery easier. Away from the clinical setting of the hospital, I believed that I would be comfortable but that wasn’t the case. Our home became an obstacle that I had to master with the use of a wheelchair. Not only did the house become a prison but people stared. The pitying looks and the careful questions almost drove me to madness. If it wasn’t for Mia, I’d have lost my shit at every fucker with no remorse.
Mia, Link and the baby were the reason that I gritted my teeth together every single day and worked through exercises and routines that the hospital provided. They kept me afloat when I felt like I might be swallowed whole by the reality of how much my life had changed.
I refused to stall work any longer. It was conducted from home, much to Mia’s dismay, but she understood that this was the situation we were in.
By the time I’d been fitted for my prosthetic, hope had started to grow in me again, but it was doused quickly. It wasn’t the answer to all my prayers. I needed to learn to walk with it and get comfortable wearing it for long hours. There was hurdle after hurdle and I knew what Mia meant when she said she was tired. The struggle was relentless.
As I was exhausting myself, Mia began to glow. Six months from the horrific night, the dark fog that’d descended around us had finally started to clear. She began to emerge from her shell again. The twelve-week mark of her pregnancy had lifted a weight from both of our shoulders and Mia cried every time she heard our son’s heartbeat fill the room. It was in those moments that my missing limb didn’t bother me. Mia’s thought process of karma, or some twisted trade still sat in my memory, and I held on to the fact that as long as our baby boy was delivered safe, then I’d lose them all. When her bump became difficult to hide, we let others know the news, but Mia kept it low key. There would be no fuss. She still worried that we were tempting fate.
I watched her quietly, sitting in the summer sun out in our backyard with Link under the shade of a tree. Her dress was short, straining over her stomach and showing off the scars she’d gained. She still refused to leave the house in an outfit like that. Mia covered herself up to avoid the stares and whispers that still hadn’t quite died down. I doubted they ever would.
“Stop being such a stalker,” she said, shielding her eyes and looking at me. “Come and join us.”
Pushing myself away from the doorframe, I walked towards my family. My gait wasn’t as smooth as it’d once been, but I could walk without support. Months of work to get to this point and I still wasn’t completely satisfied.
As I joined them, Mia went to get up, but I waved her off. “I can do it.” Carefully, I lowered myself onto the ground and landed on the ground beside her, hissing at the impact. “See.”
“I saw, love.” She leaned over and kissed my cheek. “You’re doing better than Link.”
Our eldest cub had just started to crawl, adding an extra worry to our plate. Mia could barely leave the room because Link would be on the move and I couldn’t quite give chase properly yet.
“You are the worst person for my ego, sometimes,” I mumbled.
“I like to keep you grounded,” she told me in response. The smile on her face made my heart skip. Mia leaned back on her hands and took in a deep breath, tilting her head to the canopy of leaves above us. She squeezed her eyes shut and grimaced.
“He’s causing you trouble?” I asked, placing a hand on her swollen bump. Mia adjusted it until I felt the baby kicking hard towards the top of her stomach.
“He’s relentless today,” she said, dropping her head back down.
“Ezra’s excited about tomorrow. Aren’t you, son?” Mia had already picked out a name that was used privately between us and close friends. I removed my hand from her stomach as Link started to crawl off the blanket she’d put out for them. “I don’t think so, cub,” I said, hauling him off his hands and knees and into my lap. Link laughed in response and kicked his legs.
“They better both behave tomorrow,” Mia said, pulling faces in Link’s direction as he vocalised the word ‘Ma’. I wouldn’t admit that his first words would be Mom, not until I heard the full word from him. Mia always seemed so smug that she was the first thing he recognised. That was easily remedied when I reminded her, he looked like me. She had high hopes that Ezra would take after her in that department.
“Are you sure we can’t just elope?” she asked quietly.
“You’re ashamed to get married to me?”
Mia’s eyes grew large. “No! I would never be ashamed to marry you.”
I chuckled to myself, and Mia gently shoved her shoulder against mine. There was never a doubt in my mind that Mia didn’t love me how I was. You didn’t go through everything we had to throw it all away. There had been so many opportunities for her to walk away from me and this life, and at every turn she’d dug her heels in and made it known that she belonged.
Our original wedding date of April had been postponed. Neither of us had been in a fit state to stand in church and exchange vows. Mia had suggested waiting a year — long enough for her to have the baby and for us to get back up onto our feet. I was too selfish to wait that long and told her she had as long as it took for me to start walking again. The moment I had my prosthetic fitted, we settled on the end of August.
“Can you believe that we’re finally going to do it? I can finally make you a Foster,” I said, beaming.
“Shh,” Mia said, waving a hand in the air.
“Why?”
