They were going to do their best to keep their noses as clean as humanly possible for a good long while, and it was unlikely that they would ever get the kind of power that they’d had before.
I was free of all that.
And now I could live my life as Mason’s wife, and as Toby’s stepmother. But Toby didn’t see me as a stepmother; he saw me as a mother. I was his mother, and it swelled my heart with warmth and love to know this. He’d never known his biological mother. And now he had me. I wanted to be the best mother I possibly could be. That was my life now. To be the best wife and mother that I knew how.
My world had changed. All in just a few short weeks. That kind of radical change was hard for anyone to go through unscathed, but I felt as if I’d been reborn twice as strong stepping out the other side of it. I was ready for whatever life could throw at me next. I had been chased by the devil and it had not been enough to stop me.
After the nurse came back in with the discharge papers, I grabbed my stuff and went down the hall to see Mason. He was there alone in the room. Toby was sitting on a chair.
“Mommy!” Toby yelled as he leapt off the chair and ran into my arms.
“Hey, baby,” I said. I kissed him on the cheek and held him closely. Oh, it felt so good to have this beautiful child in my arms. My love for him was so strong. I knew that I would do anything for him. Mason and I were bonded through him.
“What did the doctor say, honey?” Mason asked.
I told him the good news. “How about you?”
“They think I may have a fractured knee, a broken rib, and a concussion. But I’ll be ok. They are just waiting on the CT scan results to make sure that I don’t have anything else internal going on.”
I kissed Mason softly on the lips and sat down in one of the chairs beside him. Toby took the other one.
We sat there in silence just enjoying being with each other, waiting for the doctor.
“Toby just had some scrapes and bruises,” Mason said. “He will be fine.”
“That’s good news,” I said. “I can’t wait to get home.”
“Yeah. I’ve got a car on its way up. It should be here shortly,” Mason said. “I didn’t figure either one of us felt like driving.”
I laughed. “Wow, what are we laughing at? The fact that we all almost got killed?”
“I think it’s more about hiding how scared we are and to celebrate the fact that we won’t be almost dying anytime soon.”
That was the truth. “It just feels weird,” I said.
“What does?”
“I feel like I’m supposed to be scared of something. I feel like someone is still after me.”
“Yeah, I guess that might happen for a while. You’ve been so scared for so long, now your mind wants to punish you by making you constantly remind yourself of how scared you were and how terrified you can be. There are bad things out there. It just so happens that none of them are after you at the moment.”
I laughed. I loved Mason’s logic and his philosophies. “You should totally write a book, or start some streaming channel giving life advice.”
“Really? Who the hell would listen to what I have to say?”
“I would,” I said.
“I would too,” Toby said.
“There. You’ve already got fans.”
“Ok, then maybe I’ll give it a shot,” Mason said. “I could totally pump some money into it and have it off and running in no time.”
“Really? You wouldn’t want it to grow organically?”
Mason paused for a moment to consider it. “Nah. I think it’s expected of me to throw money at anything I can. I mean, I can’t take it with me.”
The doctor came in then and basically confirmed the diagnosis he’d come up with before. There were no extra internal injuries sustained in the crash. Soon, Mason would be released, but of course they wanted him to see his own doctor within a day or two to keep monitoring things. He agreed he would, but of course he did it in his half-assed Mason way.
“I will make sure he does,” I told the doctor.
Mason gave me a strong look. And then he smiled.
“Oh, yes. You are going to have to get used to me making sure you look after your health more carefully.”
“I guess, I can live with that,” Mason said.
EPILOGUE
Mason
(2 months later)
I licked my lips nervously as I watched Libby walking down the aisle towards me. She was ravishing, radiant, by far the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. I could hardly believe that I was actually married to this perfect looking woman. I had to pinch myself to make sure I was wide awake and to make sure that I didn’t fall over in a dead faint. It was so crazy. During our first wedding, where we’d eloped in Vegas I had only been a little bit nervous, and most of that was about whether or not she would say yes to my question. But now we were at our real wedding and it was a big deal.