but right now, he was a little boy who needed his mother. “I’m scared to death I’m going to screw things up, but you know what scares me more?”
“What?”
“Losing the people I love because I’m too afraid to step up.”
Saying those words out loud socked him right in the gut. Or maybe that was the hollowness inside him—the deep, heavy misery he’d felt from the moment Kayla walked out the door.
He took a deep breath. “Not all love feels like this. What you’ve been living with? That’s not the good kind of love.”
He’d never realized that before—how many kinds of love there were. Some kinds were toxic, and maybe that wasn’t love at all.
But what he’d felt with Kayla—so pure and good and perfect—that was the kind worth fighting for.
His mother closed her eyes and squeezed his hand. “You’re so brave.”
“I’m not.” He managed a weak smile. “I just fake it really well.”
She shook her head sadly. “No, you’re the real deal. I wish I’d learned how to do that. How to be brave before it was too late.”
“It’s not too late, Mom.” Not for her. Maybe not for him, either.
A siren sounded in the distance. He knew better than to hope Bud might have called an ambulance, so he stood and looked down at his mom. “I’m going to carry you out to my car, okay?”
His mother hesitated, then nodded. “Okay.”
As he stooped down and slid his arms under her, she wrapped her arms around his neck and held on tight. “Where’s the girl?” she murmured. “The one here with you before.”
He hadn’t realized she’d even been aware of Kayla, and his heart twisted at the mention of her. “Gone.”
His mother drew back, looking him in the eye as he carried her across the room. “I hope she’s coming back.”
Tony swallowed hard, blinking back the surge of emotion. He thought about his father, his mother, his brother, his whole fucked-up childhood. As his gaze landed on the cross-stitched wall hanging, he felt the strangest surge of nausea mixed with hope.
“She’s not coming back,” he said, turning his back on the living room, on the wall hanging, on his asshole stepfather, wherever the hell he might be. “But I’m going after her.”
…
An hour later, Tony dialed his brother’s number. It was after midnight in Australia, which he knew was a ridiculous time to call. And if Joel was out on a fire—
“Hey there.” Joel’s voice was tinged with sleep, but he sounded alert. “Everything okay?”
Tony took a seat in the same chair Kayla had warmed only days ago. “Mom’s in the hospital.”
“Shit. Is it serious?”
“Yeah.” Slowly, he filled his brother in on the events of the last few days. He told him about Leo’s call and finding their mom on the floor. He told him about her leaving the hospital and returning to Bud.
And he told him about Kayla. All of it—even the messy stuff.
“Wow, bro. I’m glad you were there.”
“Me, too.” He rested his elbows on the table. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“With Mom or with Kayla?”
“All of it.”
His brother said nothing for a long while, and Tony began to wonder if they’d been disconnected.
“Did I ever tell you about the time Marc dumped me?”
“What?” Tony frowned. “When was this?”
“A few months after we started dating. Long time ago. I was doing the same stupid shit I always did where I wouldn’t let anyone in. Didn’t want to talk about Mom or Dad or Bud or any of that because it was too damn hard.”
Tony held his breath, conscious of how familiar this sounded. “What happened?”
“He told me to go fuck myself.” Joel laughed, able to see the humor in the situation. “Told me that until I learned to open up, I was never going to have any kind of meaningful relationship.”
The familiarity hit him like a punch in the throat. “What did you do?”
“I got mad at first. I never liked talking about that shit, you know?”
“Yeah.” Tony swallowed. “I know.”
“But eventually, I figured out that if I didn’t pull my head out of my ass, I was going to lose the person who meant the most to me. So, I planned a grand gesture.”
“A what?”
“A grand gesture. Like in the movies, when the guy wins the girl back by holding a boom box over his head or beating up her bully or whatever.”
Tony thought about Kayla’s love of rom-coms. About what on earth could help him win her back. “What was your grand gesture?”
Joel laughed.