I interrupted her with a snort. “We never cooked together, Phillipa.”
She flinched again at my use of her first name instead of “Mum”. “We did, sweetheart, and I’m so sorry you were too young to remember because I do and they were some of my favourite times. You always wanted to put candy in everything, gummies in the cookies and sour cherries in cakes. They were truly awful, but you loved them, so we made them.”
Something flickered at the back of my mind but I clamped down on it. “When did they stop?”
She knew that I knew the answer. “When you were seven, after you got shot in the horrible accident.”
I pulled Zeus’s hand closer onto my belly and stared at it, loving the coarse brown hairs on his arm and the way the feathers merged with his skin like they were part of him. My big, bad fallen angel had saved me back then and he’d saved me every day since just by existing.
“I don’t want to hear this, Mum. I want to wake up Zeus and the rest of my family and mourn my fallen friend with them,” I told her honestly.
She sucked in a breath but nodded. “I know. I’m so sorry, honey. He was… a sweet boy and I’m sorry I couldn’t move past my own worries to see that and get to know him better.”
Sorrow slammed into my throat and brought tears rushing to my eyes. They spilled over as I stared at her and shook my head. “I don’t get what you’re doing here. I’m sorry but I don’t have it in me to comfort you or make you one of your martinis.”
“I deserve that.” She nodded even though her voice was bruised from my words. “I just wanted to see you well and whole with my own eyes. They wouldn’t let me in at first but I’m your mother so I just waited in the main reception until it was late enough they were all asleep each night. Only a few of them have come and gone, honey. Most of them have been living here the eight days you’ve been unconscious.”
Her words were filled with wonder as she stared around the room at the scattered bikers, their rough faces and scraggly beards, their cuts and the weapons visible if you looked hard enough at the opening of their boots and the backs of their pockets.
She saw disgusting outlaws.
I saw brave knights in rebel colours.
“I just wanted to tell you that I love you,” my mum tried again and when I looked back at her face, I saw it was damp and crumpled like a used napkin. “I just wanted to say it with a small hope that you’d see I was being honest. I just wanted to tell you that if you’re willing, I’d like to be in your life again.”
“I don’t think so,” I said immediately and then regretted it.
She looked down at my hand where it rested on the bed and gently reached out to run the back of her pinky on the needle scars there. “So beautiful and so brave. I never deserved a daughter like you.”
My throat burned but I didn’t say anything as she stood up and hesitated.
“Even if you don’t want to have a relationship with me moving forward, I need you to know that there’s something… Very wrong with your father. I thought maybe I could talk to your, er, gentleman friend about it.”
My heart clenched. “You know something?”
She bit her lip. “He left some files on his desk when he left after I told him you’d been injured in a shooting again. I haven’t seen him since but I was curious so I read the papers.”
“Bring them here,” I told her instantly, struggling to sit up further so I could properly relay my intensity. “Go home and come straight back with them.”
“Okay,” she said with wide eyes. “Take care of your sister while I’m gone.”
“I always do,” I snapped and winced when my mum ducked her head and scurried out of the room.
I tipped my head back into the pillow and tried to take deep breaths.
Mute was dead.
Mum wanted reconciliation.
The world had gone fucked.
Zeus stirred beside me, his hand flexing in mine as he rolled out of his bend and into awareness. The second he hit upright, he opened his eyes and found mine staring at him.
“Loulou,” he rasped, and there was so much emotion in that one word that I’d thought I’d die from it.
Just my chosen name on the lips of the man fate had chosen for me at seven years old. It was the most beautiful and poignant thing I’d ever heard.
“Zeus,” I breathed back.
We stared at each other, his eyes devoting every inch of my face to memory. There was a panic to the way he searched me as if he couldn’t believe I was whole and real before him. It made my heart ache to think of what he must have gone through when he thought I might not wake up.