It shouldn’t have bothered me that she worded things that way. That she said she would never have hurtMisha. It shouldn’t have pissed me off or saddened me to feel like she didn’t seem fussed about hurting me.
“And I get that, and I’m really not here to be a dick to you. I just came to say my peace, and to tell you that Misha needs you.” With a firm set of my jaw, I said a polite response instead of asking why she hadn’t mentioned me.
I didn’t fucking care. Icouldn’tcare. It was pointless, and I was a fucking adult. Why did it matter if my mom didn’t love me as much as my brother? I was fine. It was nothing.
“Good. Then I’ll be home soon, and I’ll make sure he’s okay – I won’t let him be hurt more.”
“Fine. Glad to hear you can come back and be there for him.” I snapped a little. “Hopefully you don’t have to go back to work again before he feels better.”
Okay, yeah, I was a little bothered. A tiny piece of me was lashing out because I wasn’t enjoying being in second place, even to Misha.
She sighed. “I do want to be there more. I wanted to be a better mother – to be more present. But I couldn’t when you were born. Some things are more important and it wasn’t personal. But I’ve booked a sabbatical now – I did it the minute Misha called me to tell me he was struggling. So I won’t be going back to that job, and I will be here for your brother like you wanted me to – I know he’s important and his happiness is what I need to focus on.”
“More important than me?” I couldn’t bite my tongue. “You’ve been around for Misha more than you were with me. I barely remember you for the first few years of my life – I onlyremember dad. And you’ve never once missed work for me, but now that Misha is hurting, you’re straight on the phone for some time off?”
Being a doctor was great. Helping people, curing sickness, and being the last friendly face a dying person saw? I was proud of her for all of that and she was amazing for it. But that didn’t make up for the fact she had chosen that job, those strangers, over me an awful lot. It didn’t change the fact I had been the one to help Misha more than her because she had thought other things were more important.
She sighed like I was annoying her – as though I was the one being ridiculous or something.
“It’s nothing personal, Lincoln. You can’t take it that way just because I bonded better with your brother and tried to be home more for him. It’s not my fault.”
Whose fault was it then? Was it mine? Should I have done something different as a fucking five-year-old to make my mommy love me more?
“Fine.” I snapped. “It’s no problem.”
With a nod of my head, I walked away, almost storming down the corridor, barely able to restrain myself from saying nasty things I knew I would one day regret. I wanted to tell her to fuck herself and that I had been fine enough without her, but it was a lie. I’d wanted my mommy more than once as a kid and I may have been twenty-five but I still wanted her. I needed her. It was fucking annoying, really.
“Lincoln.” She called my name out, and I turned my head to face her, despite knowing I wouldn’t be able to hold my temper back for much longer. “I’ll be home by the end of the day.” She said before she disappeared into her hotel room with a click of the door.
I knew grief changed people, but to see it happening – to spot the way my mother hadn’t seemed even the tiniest bit concerned about me, was something else entirely.
Moments later, I got into my car, turned the engine on, and pulled out of the road the hotel was on. Then the tears started falling and they wouldn’t stop. So much so I had no idea how I made it home, or just how long I had been idling on the driveway, engine running, entirely in my own world. It wasn’t until the passenger door opened and a vanilla scented angel climbed in next to me, her hand coming down to grab mine.
“Bunny?” Sapphire murmured. “What is wrong? Talk to me and tell me what hurts and I’ll fix it.”
I shook my head, not sure what to say or how to explain why I was having a breakdown over nothing and everything all at once. All I knew was that despite her offer, and knowing just how much she meant her words, there was nothing she could do to fix things.
“Dad’s dead and mom loves Misha more than me. And I feel like a fucking child for being pissed about it.” I wiped my eyes a little rough. “I don’t know how to help Misha feel better. I don’t know how to keep our family safe, and I don’t know how to get over everything that happened.” I nudged my chin at her. “I love you, and you died too. You might have come back, but for a moment there you were gone, and I can’t handle it all. I can’t keep pretending that everything is fine, because it’s not.”
Sapphire didn’t say anything back to me at first. She just climbed onto my lap, resting her head on my chest.
“None of this is fair.” She whispered after a moment. “I don’t know how to make you feel less sad inside, but I promise I will try. I will be here to do whatever it is you need me to do.” She swallowed a lump in her throat. “I also promise that I love you. That I will never pick Misha over you, even though I love him,too. We are all a family, and we are all equal – you will never be worth less than anyone else.”
“You sure about that? I was a dick to you for a bit. None of the others did that.” I said.
She shook her head against my chest, her arms holding on tighter. “You were hurt for me, had my back, and looked out for me in ways I needed it. But you were never a dick, Lincoln. You have always been kind and strong, and I know that will not change. So yes, I am sure. I am sure that I love you, and I am sure that you are more than enough – you are a good man, and anyone who doesn’t see that is an idiot. And if you and Misha were hanging on the edge of the cliff, and I could only pull up one of you, I would let you both fall. Then I would jump. Because I would not choose between you or pick him first.”
She held me even tighter, as though her touch could ward away the darkness in my head. We stayed together like that for a rather long time. It had to have been uncomfortable for her, but she never said a word. She just stroked her hand down my arm, whispered random niceties and promised that whatever it was that bothered us in life, we could face it and we would be okay.
She wasn’t leaving me, and I wasn’t alone.
Eventually my words came back properly, the tears dried up, and I could explain what had happened and why I was feeling so out of whack. Sapphire listened intently to each word and never once did anything other than support me and offer words of comfort.
If I’d known how much she would mean to me the second I met her, I wouldn’t have wasted any time. I would have locked her in my bedroom and spent the rest of my life trying to show her how much I needed her and wanted her…
Chapter Twenty One
Turned out even a morning spent shopping for fancy dresses designed to make me feel better wasn’t enough to make me happy for more than ten minutes at a time. Or maybe people were simply just horrible, and I was a realist who knew that.
