She paused, and I heard her shaky exhale.“I’m still afraid.”
I squeezed my hand into a fist, not unlike the one clamping my heart in my chest.“And I wish I was there to hold you.”
“You can’t be here, not when you’re needed in Detroit.Sorry.I should have asked you sooner.How’s Alyssa?”
Her voice was stronger.Millie liked to be the caregiver instead of the recipient.That was something she and I would have to deal with.I couldn’t offer her much, but I was damn well going to take the best care of her I could.
I blew out a long breath.“She called me son.”
Millie sniffled.“I’m glad you had her in your life.”
Luka
Alyssa passed away soonafter I returned to her hospital room.While it was peaceful—a soft sigh before the blaring of machines—Mikey shocked me.We cried and held Alyssa’s hands after the hospital staff disconnected her from the monitors.
He was her son by birth and blood—I was the boy she’d taken in and who’d never felt good enough to fully accept her love.
“I’m gonna have her cremated,” he said, staring at me with bleary eyes.“She wanted that.”
“Okay.”
“And she didn’t want a funeral, but we’re gonna have a party at her place this summer, after the season.I gotta get back—Coach is breathing down my neck.”
I nodded.“That’s because they need your pitching arm.”
His smile was short and sweet—cocky as hell.I’d missed it.
“You know it.But now I gotta go out and throw those pitches, knowing my mom’s never going to see another one of my games.”
With that, he broke down in my arms.I held him up, and I held him tightly.Just as he’d held me during those years when my parents proved again and again and again that I didn’t matter.
Once the storm passed, I gave him the moment to gather himself.
“I…”
“Don’t you dare apologize,” I said.
“I wasn’t going to.”He swiped at his wet cheeks, his grin rueful.“I was going to say that you’re going to make a great dad, Luka.A fuckinggreatone.I’m kind of jealous of your kid because she’s going to have such a good man in her corner.”
I choked up as I grabbed the back of his head and slammed his nose into my pec.He grumbled for a moment before sighing, letting his body go loose.
“I miss her,” I whispered.“Already.”
“Forever, man.There’ll be a hole where she was.”He groaned.
“I heard that’s the unexpressed love trying to get out.”
He tugged himself out of my embrace and narrowed his eyes.“That’s strangely poetic.Beautiful, man.Perfect.Yeah.”He nodded.“Yeah.It’s just all the love I still have for her.”He clapped my shoulder.“You, too, right?You’re gonna mourn her, too?”
“Every day.”
He smiled and squeezed my shoulder.After a slow, deep breath, he tipped his head toward the door.“Guess we better get this over with.I need to be at the game tomorrow, and you need to get home to your girls.”
“What’s this about a woman and a baby?”
Every muscle in my body clenched as my mother waltzed into Alyssa’s hospital room, as pretty as you please.As if she had a right to my grief, my decisions…my life.
Luka
