He frowned, looking down at me. “Really?”
I nodded. “And then you will live many more years with your family.”
He laughed. “My family don’t want me anymore.”
I shook my head. “They don’t want drunk Wayne. They’ll take sober Wayne any day. That’s why Gran and I have gotten you a spot at a sober living facility for the next year.”
His eyes widened. “Sober living for ayear?”
I grilled Gran about his past rehab stints. They were all places with a thirty-day detox program, but not the therapy and long-term sober living required to really heal someone like Wayne.
I nodded. “It’s a deal breaker for me. If you don’t agree, I won’t give the liver.”
He frowned. “I don’t want to take anything from you, Millie. Anything that could hurt you—”
“Wayne.” I shook him a little, making my voice firm. “The man I love needs a parent. You’re all he has. I want to marry him and have kids with him someday and they’ll need a grandfather.”
Tears lined Wayne’s eyes as he nodded, causing them to spill over onto his yellow-tinged cheeks.
“Can you do that? Can you be a good future grandpa for my kids?”
Ashton and I hadn’t said it but I knew we were in this for the long haul. Eventually I’d convince him to marry me and have some babies.
He burst into sobs and I stood, taking him in my arms, unable to hold back the tears myself.
“It’s so hard.” Wayne choked up. “Being alone with my thoughts. There’s so much darkness there and death.”
I nodded, my chin pressed into his hair. “I know. I know a thing or two about death, but we gotta focus on the living or we become ghosts ourselves.”
I released him and we both wiped our eyes.
“Hey, this place has therapy, and vegan food. It’s going to be great,” I told him with a smile.
His face fell. “I don’t mind a little therapy, talkin is good for the soul, but if they put tofu on my plate, I’m outta there.”
I smiled. “I’ll sneak you in bacon on Sundays, how’s that?”
He groaned. “Fine.”
I sat with him, talking for the next hour. Sober Wayne was amazing. He was chatty and sweet and you could feel his need for human affection. Every time I touched his hand or hugged him, he looked like it was the first time someone hugged him in forever. Maybe it was.
We said our goodbyes, and I turned to leave, but when I got to the doorway, he called my name.
“You’re just like my Jenna.” He smiled, but it quickly turned into a frown and then he just lay back and stared at the ceiling, as if merely saying her name pulled him into some dark memories.
I didn’t know what to say. What did it do to a parent to know you killed your own child, even if it was an accident?
“Hang in there, Wayne. We’re gonna get through this.”
He just nodded and I left.
I sighed with relief the moment I started Ashton’s truck. Everything I’d done over the past week had given me purpose. Saving Ashton’s bar, saving Wayne. I hadn’t felt this useful and needed in over a year. It felt so damn good that I grinned all the way home.
Ashton
I stared at Millie as she made me breakfast in my apartment kitchen. There wasn’t even talk of her moving back into the apartment down the hall. She just unpacked her bag in my apartment and that was that. I liked that about Millie, loving her was so damn easy. She didn’t need labels or long talks about fucking feelings. She knew where she stood and we just worked. Now I watched as she made me eggs benedict, while sipping water for herself. It was six a.m., neither of us slept much, and she couldn’t eat past midnight because of the surgery. I offered to just nuke myself a burrito but she said the cooking helped clear her mind.
Which told me she was nervous.
