Unforgettable: Always 2 (8 page)

I stood motionless for a long moment, staring at her, wishing to fucking hell I had some access to a time machine. Some way to reset the last three years, to remove her completely from my life. And then I let out a sigh of my own, one of self-disgust and frustration. It was true I’d been rattled, but rattled or not, I was still me. And I didn’t do regret. Nor did I waste time and energy wishing for something totally out of my control, and wanting to change my past was very much wishing for such a thing.

“I don’t hate you, Amanda,” I said with a small shake of my head. The words scratched at the silence. “I just …”

I couldn’t finish. I didn’t know what I
just
was.

“Okay.” She nodded, a brief dip of her head, and let out another wobbly breath. “Okay. Would you like me to take you to meet Tanner now?”

I returned her small nod with one of my own. “I would.”

“Okay. Just let me get my keys.”

I didn’t move as she walked passed me. For a second, the urge to thread my fingers through hers and tug her to my body crashed over me, and was gone just as quickly. I had no clue if it was an instinctual urge, a base sexual urge, or something deeper, something profound, but like so much of my feelings at the moment, I didn’t want to know.

So I didn’t reach for her, didn’t take her hand in mine. Instead, I turned my gaze to the window in the far wall and watched blankly as the trees moved in the summer breeze beyond.

A few minutes later, I heard the sound of keys jingling.

“Are you ready?” she asked behind me.

I let out a soft grunt. Was I? Could a guy ever be ready for something like this?

Turning on my heel, I gave her a small nod. “Yeah. I’m ready.”

“Want to put some shoes on?”

Her question made me blink. A hesitant smile curled her lips.

“I mean, I know you Aussies are laid back and all, but … shoes might be a good idea for where we’re going.”

I didn’t ask where that was. I knew. How could we be going any other place than the hospital? But I knew I’d crack if that word was uttered aloud. I suspect Amanda knew it as well.

I’d never felt so fucking brittle.

Climbing into Amanda’s small hatchback ten minutes later, I looked over the back. There was the evidence of Tanner’s existence. A baby seat was strapped onto the bench seat, its upholstery a brightly colored collection of trains and trucks. Resting in the seat was a child-size baseball cap, a smiling cartoon lion on its front, TANNER printed beneath it in cheery letters. Hanging from the handgrip above the window was a mobile made of equally colorful shapes. On the seat beside was an overnight bag, open, with some of its contents spilling out. My gaze snagged on a pink bra. I recognized that bra, remembered taking it off her more than once in Sydney. Remembered throwing it over my shoulder once in playful exuberance. It had become stuck on my bedroom’s ceiling fan and proceeded to circle above us as we made love …

“I keep a bag ready in the car.”

At the sound of Amanda’s soft voice, I dragged my eyes – and my mind – from the bra, to look at her where she now sat behind the driver’s wheel.

“In case I need to stay over at the hospital.”

There was the word. An invisible fist smashed into my gut. Cold and brutal.

I drew in a swift breath, willing my expression to stay relaxed. “Do you do that often?”

She started the car and put it into gear. “More recently than at the … at the beginning.”

With that, she pulled away from the curb. The drive to our destination was quiet. Neither of us spoke much. There were questions in my head but I couldn’t ask them. For good or for bad, I’d sunk into an introspective funk.

Amanda occasionally commented on the traffic but I wasn’t sure if it was to me, or to herself.

I don’t know if it was the first street sign for the New Dawn Children’s Hospital that released something in me, but as I watched it grow larger through the windscreen, and then disappear behind us as we passed it, I shook my head. “You didn’t pick me up from the airport in your own car because you didn’t want me to know? About Tanner, I mean?”

Amanda flicked me a quick glance. Her grip on the steering wheel tightened. “Yes. And no. Chase had offered to collect you while I tidied up the house. I was in the middle of it when she came around. I was freaking out. It wasn’t until she pointed out I’d hidden all evidence of Tanner that I realized that though. I thought I was cool.” She grunted and rolled her eyes. “Hiding anything that belongs to your son is far from cool though. Chase sat me down, looked me in the eye and told me I had to get my act together. And then, just in case I didn’t get her point, she repeated it in sign language and added a few
fuckings
in there for good measure.”

My laugh surprised me. “I can see Chase doing that.”

Amanda smiled, her eyes on the busy road. “Yeah. She all but stopped swearing aloud when Tanner was born. Reserved her foul language for signing. It’s about the only time she
does
sign, when she wants to swear at someone or something.”

“A considerate aunt?”

It was Amanda’s turn to laugh. “Maybe. Something tells me Tanner will be well-versed in signing profanity when he’s …” She petered off. Anguish crossed her face. The expression made my chest tighten. “When it was time for Chase to go get you,” she continued without finishing the sentence, “I knew I had to do it. I didn’t want to and yet, at the same time, I did. I didn’t want to face you, I knew when I told you it wasn’t going to be good, but the thought of seeing you …” Another one of those quick glances came my way. “As I said before, I was selfish. I wanted to see you so much it hurt, and I wanted to see you not as the deceiving mother of your child, but as the girl you fell for back in Sydney. So I took the Speeding Dragon.”

Her confession scraped at my fraying nerves. A dark lick of anger stirred in me again. I swallowed it, fixing my attention on the road ahead. As if sensing the tension Amanda didn’t say anything else.

We stayed that way right up until we pulled into a parking space at the hospital. When Amanda killed the engine, neither of us moved. I was hit with a powerful urge to tell her to reverse out, to drive me to the airport. If I was at the airport, I wouldn’t be here, I’d never have to see …

It was Amanda’s soft hand on my arm that jerked me from the futile and cowardly reverie. I looked at it, noting the chewed nails, the ratty quicks. Gone were the neat nails with their white tips I remembered. There, on her hand, was a wordless story of a harrowing nightmare I hadn’t been aware was happening. Ignorance is bliss. And yet I couldn’t help but think, in this case, there was something innately empty about it as well.

“I know I’ve said this so many times the words probably mean nothing now,” she said, “but I’m sorry.”

I raised my gaze to her face and met her eyes, saw the heartache in them. The grief. The worry. The fear. The absolute terror.

“I know,” I said, covering her hand with mine. It wasn’t an acceptance of her apology, but it was an acknowledgement of what she was going through. It was the best I could give her at that moment. Maybe it was the best I’d ever be able to give her. And to think only a short while ago I was contemplating marriage, a future together, all three of us …

We climbed out of the car. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t
not
stop to look at that baby seat in the back and its smiling-lion baseball cap. At the name written in happy letters beneath that lion.

“Bren?”

I dragged my eyes from the cap and offered Amanda a smile. “I’m okay.”

“But not gravy?”

“Not gravy,” I answered honestly.

She nodded. “Let’s go.”

You know that smell hospitals have? That distinct smell of disinfectant, artificial air and food? I’m very familiar with that smell – Mum’s a nurse, remember? I’d spent more than one day of the school holidays whiling away the hours in the waiting room when child-minding plans had fallen through and there was no choice but for me to go to work with her. Added to that, playing football for most of my childhood and teenage years, the emergency department was my friend growing up. The smell of a hospital never instilled in me any sense of dread or heartache like it did for most people.

The second I exited the main foyer, however, and entered the hospital proper, with its distinct, ubiquitous, chemical-clean smell, my gut clenched and my mouth turned dry. A cacophony of electronic beeps from monitors, buzzers of patients in their rooms, doctors and nurses discussing said patients, all assaulted my ears, the horrible circumstances for me being at the hospital turning the familiar sounds into something harsh and jarring. Twisted the sickened sensation building like a storm inside me.

“Hi, Amanda.” A woman in pale green scrubs approached us from the opposite direction as we walked up the corridor toward a closed door. “How are you doing today?”

Amanda stopped and smiled at the woman. They spoke. Amanda indicated to me with another smile and a wave of her hand. I know I should have connected to the conversation, but I couldn’t. My head was roaring. My pulse was choking me. The door loomed before me. Closed to the rest of the world.

Above the door was a sign. ONCOLOGY. I stared at it. My gut clenched.

“Bren?”

I jumped at the feel of warm fingers on my arm and jerked around. Both women were regarding me – Amanda with a soft smile, the woman (was she a nurse?) with an apprehensive frown.

“Brendon,” Amanda continued without removing her hand from my arm, “this is Julie. Julie is the head nurse of the Oncology unit.” She gave Julie a warm smile. “She looks after Tanner for me when I’m not here.”

I looked at the woman, opened my mouth, then closed it again. Jesus, what was wrong with me?

“Julie, this is Brendon,” Amanda’s hand slid from my arm to find my fingers, “Tanner’s dad.”

A flicker of sympathy filled Julie’s face and then the apprehension dissolved into a wide, welcoming smile. “Hello Brendon. It’s wonderful to meet you. I can see where Tanner gets his looks from.”

I blinked again. I couldn’t connect. I couldn’t …

Amanda’s fingers squeezed mine. Not hard. Just a wordless message to let me know there
was
a connection. Hers and mine.

“G’day,” I said, although to be honest, it may have come out as a blurting sound, nothing like a word. “How’re you going?”

Julie gave Amanda a wicked grin. “Oh, I see what you mean about his accent.”

“I know,” said Amanda.

I turned to look at her. She shrugged up at me, her cheeks pink.

“Your mom and dad are in there at the moment, hon,” Julie said, her focus back on Amanda. Her grin faded, once again a warm, gentle smile. “And Chase.”

“Thanks, Julie,” Amanda said. “How is Tanner?”

It didn’t escape me that she let go of my hand. I should have been relieved, given how angry I was with her. Instead, I felt … lost.

Julie gave her a funny little head nod. “He’s waiting for his mommy.”

“I’m here. And so’s his daddy.”

Julie turned her smile to me. “It was nice to finally meet you, Brendon.” And with that, she left, walking down the corridor away from us.

“You okay?”

I swung my dry, hot stare to Amanda and nodded.

“Me too.” She approached the door, pumped waterless disinfectant into her palms from the dispenser, and then gave me a nervous smile. “Let’s go.”

Without another word, she pushed the door open with her shoulder and crossed the threshold. After disinfecting my own hands, I followed.

Taking that first step through the door was difficult. Daunting. And at the same time I wanted to run through it and find the son I didn’t know I had, before the universe tilted and threw my life into chaos once more.

We were a few steps along the corridor of the Oncology ward when I saw him – a man in a brown tweed suit, glaring at me from the open doorway of a room just past the nurse’s station.

Charles Sinclair.

Amanda’s father straightened, his eyes piercing and direct behind the lenses of his rimless glasses. His jaw bunched. I drew a slow breath. To say he’d never been my biggest fan was an understatement, but the contempt radiating from him surprised me.

Amanda took my hand in hers as we came to a stop in front of him. “Dad, you remember Brendon?”

Charles ran a slow inspection over me, as if cataloguing every crease and wrinkle in my shorts and T-shirt and filing them under FAIL.

I offered my hand. “Mr. Sinclair.”

He didn’t take it. “You’ve been conspicuously absent in my daughter’s life, Osmond. At a time when she –
and your son
– needed you the most. Can’t say I didn’t expect it, to be honest. I always knew you weren’t—”

“Dad,” Amanda groaned, embarrassment and regret filling the sound. “I told you not to—”

“I would have been here, Chuck,” I said, dropping my hand and ignoring his not-so-subtle insult, “but until two hours ago, I had no clue I
had
a son.”

His eyes narrowed behind his glasses. The lenses were spotless. Meticulously cleaned. “And why’s that, do you think? Why do you think my daughter didn’t
want
to let you know you’d messed up her life, hmm? What does it say about you that she’d rather face this alone than with the Neanderthal who got her—”

“Dad,” Amanda snapped. “Enough.”

He stopped talking, but he didn’t stop glaring at me. There was some serious hate there. At that point in time, I didn’t give a flying fuck.

“Excuse me for being rude, but this
Neanderthal
is here to see his son, not stand in a corridor and trade insults with you.”

His chest puffed up. It was a ridiculous sight. He stood no taller than my chin and was reed thin. And yet there he was, a father defending his child, protecting his child, with the only weapon he had – words.

Would I be equally as combative if the situation was reversed?

I didn’t need to think about the answer. I was ready to do whatever was needed to help a son I hadn’t met yet. There was no doubt in my mind I’d use more than words to protect Tanner if necessary. I’d use every weapon I had at my disposal.

“I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again while I’m here, Mr. Sinclair,” I said, forcing my voice to be calm, composed, despite the turbulent state of my mind. “I hope we can put the hostilities aside until my son’s life is no longer at risk.”