Hold on to Hope

Of their lives revolving around mine.

Waiting for the day it would end.

Once I’d started the spiral of hopelessness, I didn’t know how to get out of it.

Climbing out of it now was the only choice I had left.

I gave an apologetic glance to the customers who were standing there gaping, unwilling parties witnessing this shitshow going down.

Jenna led my mom to the back, and I followed, knocked in the guts again when I stepped into the kitchen and found Carly floundering in through the back door.

Flustered and rushing and attention darting all over the place.

If I had to put down money, she’d just chased Frankie out.

When she saw me, a tear burst from her eye, and she was shaking her head through the disturbance, looking between me and Everett like she didn’t recognize me, either.

Apparently, we were making quite the entrance.

Welcome to the family, Everett.

But I knew them well enough to know they would welcome him. Do anything for him. Protect him and keep him, which was exactly why I was there.

As soon as we got into the kitchen, Mom whirled on me, her nails scratching at her chest. “You broke my heart, Evan.”

Her words scraped my skin. Hit me like a blow. No, they made no impact on my ears, but fuck, I felt them all the way to my soul.

Shame slammed me. “I’m sorry. I’m so goddamn sorry. The last thing I ever wanted to do was hurt you.”

I hugged Everett a little tighter because the last thing I wanted was for him to be in the line of fire.

None of this was his fault.

It was mine.

She blinked frantically. “You didn’t want to hurt me? God, Evan . . . you destroyed me. I . . . I . . . I haven’t slept a full night in three years. Three years, Evan. Because the only thing I’ve been able to do was worry about you. Wonder if you were safe or sick. Happy or alone. If you were alive.”

She clutched her chest again on the last like the thought made her physically ill.

“And now you show up here with a child? A child who looks like he’s at least a year and a half old? How could you do this to me? How?”

There’s a thing about growing up the disabled kid.

People watched you like you were different.

Treated you like you were different.

With too much care or with outright disdain.

Fawned over you, made concessions, or treated you like you were dirt, unworthy to breathe the air.

I’d been called both special and a pussy a thousand times.

Thing was, the only times I’d ever cried in my entire life was over this woman.

When she was in pain. When she walked in fear.

When I’d been a little boy, and the only thing I’d wanted was to be able to protect her from my piece-of-shit biological father, but there’d been nothing I could do to stand up for her because I was just a weak little kid.

Now, standing there as a man? I wanted to fucking weep because it’d turned out that I was a pussy after all.

A coward.

One who’d run when everything had felt too dark and bleak.

Turning away for a beat, I gripped at my hair, hardly able to look back at her because Mom was sure as hell not making concessions right then.

Wasn’t about to give me an easy out.

I didn’t deserve one.

Could feel Jenna and Carly watching in their own horror, and everything trembled when I forced myself to speak. “And I’ve spent every day of the last three years hating what I did and feeling like it was the only decision I could make at the same time.”

WHY? she begged.

I hesitated, warred, then finally said, “I just . . . needed to find myself. Away from all of this.”

It was bullshit.

She knew it was, too.

Because grief was striking on her face and then she was throwing herself at me.

Wrapping her arms around both of us.

The same arms that had fought for me my entire life.

Through all my disabilities.

My genetic defects.

My deafness and this fucking transplanted heart that some days I wondered how it was still beating.

Because of her. That was why.

This woman who’d wrapped me in comfort and joy and steadfast belief.

Refusing to give up hope when she’d been told there was nothing left to be hoping for.

She hugged us tight, tears seeping into my shirt. Could feel her sobs. The tremble of her body. After a long time, she pried herself away, her face full of anguish, only to shift and pull Everett into her arms.

She was whimpering, hugging him and murmuring and kissing the side of his head.

And she didn’t even know his name.

It was the reason I’d come.

The reason I’d known this was the only place I could go.

She looked over at me through the tears in her eyes.