Marcos shifted in his chair. “It was my call,” he said, taking the blame. “I knew if we asked you, you’d say no.” He cleared his throat, glancing away momentarily. Running a hand over his buzzed head, he met her gaze again. “I’m sorry. We can take you back to your mom’s at any time you want. I’m asking now, will you please stay here—at least while you recover—so we know you’re safe. Hillcrest is still out there, and the safest place for you and Luke is here with us.”
I continued up when Marcos finished. “I know we have a lot to work through. I know things are up in the air, but we want to work through things with you. If you want to, of course.”
Maya eyed us both warily, her eyes flicking between Marcos and I while she thought it over.
I waited, wondering if she was going to hand us our asses or not—the old Maya would have. Maya had changed a lot in the last ten years, and one of those things had been her fiery personality. It was something I noticed the first time I saw her again. Life had been very hard for her, and I wished that we had known sooner.
I wished for the hundredth time, that things were different.
Maya
Thenextday,Iwas sitting on the couch in the living room, waiting for Marcos to come home with Luke. Marcos had made sure that Luke was still going to school while I had been both held hostage and in the hospital, for which I was grateful. It made me wonder what would come of his court order.
We hadn’t talked about it yet. We hadn’t talked about a lot of things yet.
It was an unnerving feeling being back in this house—our home—and not beingwiththem. My heart hurt and my headwas conflicted as to why I was there. I placed a lot of trust in Nico, believing above all, that everything would be alright.
“It’ll be alright,” Nico said beside me, resting his hand on my knee.
The backdoor opened before I could respond, and Luke called out, “Mom!”
“In here!” Nico yelled.
Luke’s feet pounded on the wood floors as he ran into the living room. Just as he was about to pounce on me, Nico stood up and caught him. “Easy, man. Gentle.” He shook his head.
Luke grinned sheepishly as Nico let him go. “Sorry,” he said to me.
I grinned and raised my arms for Luke, as Nico walked out of the room to give me privacy with my son. Luke gently slid into my arms and hugged me. I held him tight as tears welled in my eyes; I never wanted to be away from him like this ever again. “Hey, buddy. I missed you.”
“I missed you too, mom.” He held me tighter. “I’m glad you’re home.”
“Me too, buddy. Me too.”
Luke slowly pulled away and sat on the couch beside me, leaning against me and looping his arm through mine. “Are we living here now?” Luke asked softly.
I rested my head on top of his and grabbed his hand. “Would that be ok? I mean, at least for a little while?”
Luke turned and looked up at me with a massive grin. “Yeah, I like the idea of living with dad.”
My heart pounded in my chest at Luke’s words. I didn’t know how I would ever take him away from Marcos again. If things didn’t work out living here, all of us together, I would never be able to break Luke’s heart—or Marcos’s—and separate them.
I would never be able to do that to them.
“Alright, buddy. We’ll give it a chance,” I agreed.
“Awesome! I can’t wait to set up my room! Dad said we could go shopping! He already painted it my favorite color! Did you see?” Luke hopped off the couch, talking excitedly.
I grinned and nodded. “Yeah, I did see. I saw there was a big bed in there too! And they got all new furniture!”
“Yes! Can we grab my stuff tonight?”
“Uh.” I was surprised Marcos and her guys hadn’t already grabbed his stuff, as they had already grabbed all of mine.
Before I could respond, Marcos walked into the living room from the kitchen, like he’d been standing there all along, just out of sight. “We can grab whatever you want tonight, and whatever we can’t get, we can go for this weekend.”
I stared at Marcos, wondering if I even had any say. This whole co-parenting thing was going to get interesting if we had issues talking to each other. I didn’t even know if we had issues talking to each other, because I hadn’t been able to really talk to any of them since my rescue.
And before my capture… things were way different between us all. I was struggling to keep up with the status quo.
