Miss St. Claire raises her brows. “Orange juice. I think I can handle that. Anything else?”
I shake my head.
“All right.” She disappears, and the door falls shut behind her.
The nurse stays quiet as she approaches the computer monitor. I watch her fingers flit across the keyboard. Her nails are long and curled just enough to tap the keys with a lightrap, rap, rap, and they’re painted the same shade of red as her rose tattoo. I take in the close shave of her hair, bleached a whitish blond, and the naked row of piercings along her ears. I wonder what kind of jewelry she dons when her shift ends. I wonder if she wears big silver hoops like my mom used to slip on when Dad wasn’t home.
The longer I watch her, the more I think of Mom, and the more my throat burns. Even as a prisoner, she sacrificed herself for me. At least now, wherever she is ... at least she’s free.
“Okay, honey,” the nurse says, giving the screen a final tap and turning toward me. “I’ll give you a little space. But remember, if there’s anything you need, just press the call button, and I’ll be here.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
Surprise crosses her features. “Of course.”
“Your tattoo ... does it mean anything?”
“This one?” She tilts her head, rubs the rose, and when I nod, she releases a long breath, her hand falling back to her side. “It did once. I got it when I was young and stupid, for someone who was older but stupider.”
She stops, like that’s the end of it, but it can’t be. So, I wait and hope she’ll say more.
She squints, watching me. Eventually, she breathes in deeply and continues. “Later, when I realized my mistake, I couldn’t stand the thing. I wished I could rip it off. It wasn’t until I grew up and got these”—she raises the bottom of her scrub top a few inches, revealing faint stretch marks etched into her flat, ebony stomach—“that I learned the value of scars. You can’t erase them, that’s true, but you can shape and define them however you want. In this case,”—she gestures to her stomach before lowering her shirt—“these define the beginning of my sacrifices as a mother. And in this case,”—she trails a long red fingernail along her rose tattoo—“you see these? The petals falling?”
I nod, chewing my lip. I don’t know why my eyes sting with the pressure building behind them.
“I added these not long ago. They’re my reminder that roses don’t last forever, and that even scars can be beautiful.”
I stare at the rose. At the incomplete stem and the drifting petals. It is beautiful, poetic too. The back of my shoulder and upper arm bite and prickle, mocking me along the seam of my stitches. I imagine what that would feel like: to define your scars instead of letting them define you. For a second, I even allow myself to imagine me, scars and all, being beautiful.
Easton
Fuck, my eyelids are heavy. I consider opening them, but the last time I did, it was to searing pain, the news I’d lost a kidney, and an IV hit containing enough morphine to knock me back out within seconds. This time, when my eyes squint open, it’s to bright lights and hushed, angry whispers that make me wish for another hit.
“Well, if you hadn’t run away when things got bumpy—”
“Bumpy? Is that what you’re calling getting impregnated by another man and pretending the child is mine?”
“You wanted biological children! You couldn’t have any. I did what I felt I had to do to keep our family together. Do you realize the sacrifice that took on my end?”
“Yes, such a sacrifice to climb into bed with a man on the cover of a firefighter calendar. Despicable. Your manipulations and deceit are despicable—”
“Oh, please. If that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black. As if you haven’t had your fair share of flings on the side. Besides, you knew when you proposed to me what my mother put me and Perry through after our father left her, and I made it implicitly clear what I wanted out of a marriage. Don’t act as though you didn’t know and love me. Youadmiredmy drive for perfection, and if it wasn’t for my ‘manipulations and deceit,’ you wouldn’t have passed the bar on your third attempt.”
I hear a grumble. “We’ll discuss this later. For now, just plaster on one of your smiles and appreciate that your son is alive. He could have ... he could have died today.”
A sniff. “Died.” It sounds like a truck horn when she blows her nose. “My sweet, loyal, brave boy, about to cost us ourentirereputation over that girl—”
“Oh, shut up, Bridget.”
Releasing a breath, I shut my eyes and try like hell to drift away again, but when I shift slightly, my groan of pain gives me away.
“Darling! Oh, darling, you’re awake. He’s awake!”
“Well, yes, Bridget, I do have eyes.”
Tension stiffens my shoulders when my mom’s face appears like a floating head above me. Her nonstop nagging and fussing over me fades into the background of her haggard appearance. Smudged mascara runs under her bottom lashes, her nose and cheeks pink, knuckles whitened around the Kleenex clutched in her grip. I shift my gaze to the left, where Vincent stares down at me, hard lines etched between furrowed brows. He doesn’t say a word, but for the first time in my life, his stern hazel eyes are subdued and glassy.
I clear my throat, try to sit up.
