Watch What Burns (19 page)

“You know, Aus, if you carry on like this you will start receiving slaps,” Tom tried to jokingly quip with her, but it seemed to fail him.

“Like what?” Austin asked, trying to get away with issuing a smirk. “Look, my husband’s already put me in my place several times, and I know that after I see Sienna I’ll be fine. All of this seems to be taking a lot out of me.”

“I get that,” Tom remarked, his tone now caring yet still meddling with a concerned undertone. “I know we both are living married life, you with Gracie and everything, but I still want to be the guy that got you to come back here and reclaim your life. You know you can always come to me.”

“I know,” Austin smiled up at him. “We need to make a pact and get back that part of our life.” She watched him smile and she knew that if anything, Natasha’s reappearance had solidified her trust and belief in the power her family had to look after and protect one another.

“Come on, she’s in here,” he said and lead her into a new room, the entire area was glass walls and patients, each with their own health issues, each reliant on the hospital to help them, but right now, she wanted to know her sister was okay. No one else mattered in that moment.

Walking in, Austin was shocked at how lifeless her sister looked. Lying in the bed with heavy eyes and wires and tubes streaming from her, Austin felt her own heart rate accelerate. The rhythmic beat of the heart monitor thrust her back into the past, remembering that heavy lull the drugs created, she remembered how she felt with people when they first came in, how easy it was to just close her eyes and forget for a moment. The blast of memories forgotten did nothing to calm her. She just hated to know that her big sister was now in the same predicament she had been in years before.  Yet the moment her eyes met Sienna’s, she was intrinsically drawn straight to her bedside.

“Oh Senna,” Austin whispered, using her old nickname she had used as a child. It was a comforting bid to tell her heart not to break anymore.

“I’m okay,” Sienna immediately said the moment she saw Austin’s solemnly drawn expression. “Aus, I would rather she did this to me than you.”

“I don’t,” Austin said taking her sister’s hand in hers. “Look at you, Sienna.”

“I’m alive,” Sienna replied tiresomely, her hand giving Austin an extremely weak grip. “I was scared I wasn’t going to make it, but waking up to see Tom’s ugly mug was one of the best sights ever.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Tom defended, playing hurt. He noticed how Austin’s laugh was quite half-hearted, and he stepped towards her. “She’s going to be fine. She’ll be kicking your butt when she can if you don’t quit with the blame game, Aussie.”

“That sounds like a painful action,” Sienna winced at the idea, and tried not to think about moving her leg too much. “I think I’ll leave off the assaults until I’m either not high or not going to cause myself more pain. Then you better watch your back.”

“I’ll use my time wisely until then,” Austin joked, trying to make them think the dark cloud clasped around her was gone when it was only tightening.

“I can still use my hand to slap some sense into you,” Sienna teased her baby sister, praying she would just cheer up. “Aussie, please see this isn’t our fault.
It’s Natasha’s again. She has a grudge and that’s on her. You are allowed to live your life, and Tyler is his own person. He chose the right girl.”

“I’m sorry,” Austin mumbled, still in a miserable tone. “I guess I’m feeling a little under pressure right now, and having Alice
arrive on my doorstep like she did panicked me.”

“What else happened?” Sienna asked, even though she could feel the drugs swirling in her bloodstream, and her eyes becoming harder to keep open, she was determined to see a smile on her sister’s lips before she caved and slept some.

Austin looked to her brother in worry.

“It’s okay, she can handle it,” Tom coerced her, knowing that soon the drugs in Sienna’s veins would knock her out again, but until then she was up to chatting and knowing what was happening in life.

Feeling her brow furrow as she remembered the events, she cleared her throat and spoke. “Natasha attacked the house while we were waiting for Tyler to get back from you. Terrified Gracie and then left after saying that she was coming for me, or Grace. I don’t know. I wasn’t really listening.”

“Yeah, I can see her getting you and you going easily,” Sienna joked, her voice getting heavier. “Don’t
you lose your fight, Austin, or I won’t ever talk to you again.”

Austin did laugh at that, and she knew that Sienna spoke the truth. “I’ll try and remember that if the time arrives. How about you sleep and I’ll let mom and dad get a glimpse of you so they know you’re fine?”

“Sounds good,” Sienna breathed out, agreeing with seeing her parents right now.

Leaning down and giving her sister a kiss on the cheek, Austin began to leave the room, hearing Tom say he would be back soon with their parents. Austin hated leaving Sienna, and selfishly wanted to remain by her side, but she knew the rest of their family needed this moment of solace.

“Tom,” Sienna called out, her voice slowly silencing on her. “I need a favor.”

Tom looked at Austin hesitantly.

“It’s fine, Tom, I’ll tell the others how she is,” Austin pushed him, then looked to Sienna, smiled and mouthed how much she loved her.

***

“I’ll call you when I need to be picked up,” Austin spoke down the phone. “Love you, handsome. Enjoy daddy daughter time.” She giggled as she listened to her husband and daughter literally sing goodbye to her and she put her phone down.

“Gracie’s got Ty singing I see,” Tom joked as he watched his sister linger on the spot, a blissful look on her face. He watched her look up to him and he was glad to see the exhausted, broken look lost from her gaze. “You got a good night’s sleep I see.”

“I did indeed,” she quickly told him. “Tyler’s taking today off to look after Gracie and try and work past what happened.”

“Well she will definitely get passed it with that husband of yours singing,” Tom teased, laughing a little at the thought of Tyler playing pop stars with his three year old daughter. “While they’re doing that, let’s go see that sister of ours. She’s got a visitor by the way.”

“Oh?” Austin mused for a moment. “She does?”

“You know them,” Tom told her cryptically, and literally pushed her into the room.

Austin stood shell shocked at the sight before her. “Michael?” Austin asked confused as she stepped into the room. Her heart was thudding in a totally different manner than it had the last time she had stepped foot into this room. “What are you doing here?”

Michael took a moment to look at Sienna, who nodded and gave a smile, allowing him to look at Austin again to speak. “We’ve got something to tell you.”

Not wasting a minute, Sienna seized the moment. “Michael and I have been dating, long distance of course, for nearly two years now,” Sienna admitted, and immediately she felt a blush of shame graze upon her pale complexion. “After last night I needed him to be here,” she continued to admit and her eyes watered on her.

Austin watched Michael’s face whiten, his eyes widening as they focused on her. There was only one Pearson he was after seeking approval from and that was her. He sat
forward, waiting for her to move, speak, hell even show signs of breathing would be a good move.

“
Erm,” Austin started to answer, at a loss for words. “I need to go.”

Leaving with her heart in her throat, Austin needed her husband. She wasn’t heart broken in the sense that Michael and Sienna had found one another, she
was heartbroken that they felt the need to keep this a secret and not trust in her to accept this.

She thought Natasha was her biggest problem, but knowing her sister had kept a secret for so long was bigger torture.
Her family of no secrets, no lies, and all trust was quickly shattering.

AUSTIN wanted so much to go back to her sister, but a part of her was being childish, reminding her over and over again that her best friend and big sister had been lying to them for God knew how long.

Grabbing her phone, she rang the one person that would not only help her, but would quite literally save her from herself. Ringing Tyler felt like the right thing to do and she needed him for the moment.

“Hey you,” Tyler answered the phone breathlessly. “We just hung up a few minutes ago, what’s up?”

“Nothing,” she lied and giggled at the sound of her husband’s struggling breathing. “What’s she done to you?”

“Had me doing laps,” he joked back at her. “Now,” he said, catching some composure and rhythmic breathing. “What’s going on?”

Taking a moment, Austin caved, “Did you know Michael and Sienna have been dating?”

“No,” Tyler responded, his voice full of shock. “Well they kept that quiet. I didn’t know Sienna was able to keep a secret.”

“Or Michael,” Austin replied bluntly. “I just walked into the room to find him beside her bed, holding her hand. They were so casual about it, and I just couldn’t stay there, Ty. How horrible am I?”

“Aus, you’re not horrible,” Tyler argued back at her, dually noting her actions. “It’s a shock, hell I’m shocked and I’m not there. You’re allowed to be hurt by this.”

“I just don’t understand how they thought this was the best thing,” Austin pondered down the phone at her husband, a hand coming up to rub her brow and loosen the frown from it. “I’m now looking like the bitch, and I don’t know how to face them. I feel angry that Sienna and Michael kept this from us, after everything.” She paused for a moment before weakly asking her husband for help. “What do I do?”

“Honestly?” Tyler asked her, making sure she wanted his opinion.

“Honestly,” Austin practically begged.

“I think you need to hear them out, Austin, and I know right now you’re about to give me some hard-headed retort about why your stubborn ass can’t just forgive. I know it’s hard to comprehend, and maybe yeah okay you need to sleep on it to get your head around it, but it’s happened, and to be quite honest, Sienna and Michael are each other’s match.”

Austin sighed heavily and closed her eyes, “You’re right, I do need to get my head around it. It’s happened, and I can’t change that.” She stood trying to wrap her mind around the new situation, but she couldn’t imagine Sienna and Michael together, her brain couldn’t compute the new shift in everyone’s relationships. “I just don’t know how to face them, especially Michael.”

“Face him when you can, and hash it out with him,” Tyler advised her, giving her gentle understanding while, also, giving her the best advice he could contemplate. He was giving her guidance that she could work with. “You have a right to be angry,” Tyler told her honestly. “I’m angry too. The amount of times we’ve teased them both, the amount of time we spend together, and they both felt we wouldn’t understand or accept it, but you just need to remember one important thing.”

“What’s that?” Austin
asked, her voice tender as she allowed Tyler to counsel her through this minor crisis she felt swamped in.

“They will have their reasons for this,” Tyler announced, acting like the wise one. “Whether they are good or not
is irrelevant, but they will have their reasons and we need to respect that.”

“You’re right,” Austin agreed, finally seeing some sense as her state of shock began to fizzle away. She looked up and realized she had to face this now. “I’ve got to go. I’ll see you soon, Handsome,” Austin told Tyler as she watched Michael nervously approaching her. “I really don’t want to talk to you right now.”

“Hear me out,” Michael stepped in, fighting for his side in this. “Hear Sienna out, please.”

“What is there to hear?” Austin asked with an incredulous tone. “I can’t believe I trusted you with every little thing, but all this time you’ve been holding out on me.”

“It’s not like that,” Michael fought back, unmoved from making her hear him out.

“How could you not tell me, Michael?” Austin asked, not withholding how hurt she was from her voice. “I should have known,” she started to laugh at
the sudden rush of irony that bolted through her system. “Every time I asked you about your love life, teased you about getting older, you always brushed me off. When in actual fact you were lying!”

“We have history,” Michael started to say; he was becoming sheepish all of a sudden.

“Yes, exactly,
history
,” Austin stated to him bluntly. “You and I are best friends. We had an almost chance. We didn’t go there, Michael. We hashed this out years ago! It shouldn’t matter.” She threw her hands up in the air in frustration. “You and I, Michael, are nothing. I’m not tied to you and you aren’t tied to me either. Not in the way that prevents you from telling me you’re in love with my sister!”

“Austin, we were on the cusp of something amazing,” Michael stated, stepping forward with his plea.

“Until you ruined it,” Austin muttered at him, willing to spark a reaction. “Then there was nothing. I loved you, yes, I will admit it, but you knew I was always set to be with Tyler. The
you and I
we created died that day you decided to change the game with those girls, and we re-established ourselves as best friends, confidantes even. We have been that for nearly four years now. You’re my husband’s best friend too, one of my daughter’s favorite people. We share everything, Michael, and I am hurt that you couldn’t tell me this one thing.”

“It was Sienna’s idea too,” Michael stated, knowing it wasn’t a good excuse, but he needed Austin to know how double-sided this situation was. Their decision was entirely mutual. “We both decided on this.” He looked to Austin who stood waiting on the reason. She wasn’t, for once, butting in or running her mouth so he acted first and spoke up. “It started as a long distance thing. Why should we tell everyone when we didn’t know if it was long lasting or not. We needed to tread carefully, but then we just got lost in the semblance of the relationship we had created.”

“But I thought we told each other everything,” Austin commented, her voice becoming quieter with the sensitivity she was beginning to feel about this all.

“I know, and we do, but this was different,” Michael started to say, trying to master the adequate words that would make this better.

“If Sienna hadn’t been shot, would you have ever told us?” Austin asked, knowing the response before she had even verbally asked the question.

“Eventually,” Michael stated bluntly. “The moment Tom called me, I felt like my heart was thrown into my stomach. I’ve never felt that sick in my life.” Michael looked up to Austin, his eyes watering, “Someone had shot the woman I loved and I wasn’t there. The moment I got here and saw her, I knew I couldn’t hide away anymore. I want my life with her and I want it here. I want an easier life.”

“What about New York?” Austin questioned his motives, unable to see him giving up a lifestyle he once thrived on before her eyes.

“What about it?” Michael asked her, snorting a little. “I feel like that job runs my life. I don’t want a career and no life. I want Sienna and then my life is complete.”

Austin felt her heart stutter its beating for a second. “You really love her don’t you?”

“I really do,” he agreed, smiling meekly at her, his body language becoming impish and shy as he laid his heart on the line.

“Then why couldn’t you just tell me?” Austin pressed the matter. “I wouldn’t have been this annoyed. God, I think it’s amazing, Mike. I love the fact that you have found yourself someone to love. I just wish I hadn’t found out this way, when everything is the way it is. It feels like you were forced to tell us, and that’s not how I wanted to find out you had finally found someone you want a life like Tyler and I have.”

“I know,” he solemnly replied, but he looked to her with intent. “Can I just say one last thing?” Michael asked
, he was needy and ready to tell her all.

“Sure,” Austin remarked back, giving him grounds to speak.

“After loving your sister, I know now how toxic you and I were for one another. We hid what we really wanted and we used one another when all we needed was someone we could trust. I won’t regret that though, Aus. I can’t. You saved me and made me a better man. Even if I did royally fuck up, you rejecting me was the best thing you did.”

“I’m so glad you fucked up,” Austin teased, laughing at little at the idea of not having this life. “I might be a greedy bitch, but I love having you in my life and having Tyler. I am at my happiest with this life.”

“I know you are,” Michael smirked at her, nodding at how well he knew. “I want that with Sienna. I want to love her and have you - exactly how you are with Tyler and me. I get it. You just need to understand that when I heard she was shot, I had to come here,” Michael replied, his tone soft as he spoke. “I couldn’t wait. I had to be here. I felt like a part of me was frozen. I knew she was okay, but that wasn’t enough. How did I know she was okay when I hadn’t seen her or spoken to her?”

The look in Michael’s eyes shocked Austin to the core. Her entire body recognized the look of a panicked man. Tyler had lived with it for a while after the fire as he tried to straighten his life out, and it was one look she prayed she would never see again.

“It was after I got off the phone to Tom, I knew I loved her with everything in me, Aus. I need her more than anything in my life, and the distance kills me over and over. I want her, I want my life with her, and I will love her with everything I have for as long as I can,” Michael admitted, his eyes watering with his admittance. “But I can’t do that without you beside me, ready to tell me when I’m fucking it up.”

“You’re fucking it up by thinking you depend on me,” Austin pointed out, giving him a smirk as he looked to her with shock. “You need to love Sienna, and the rest just happens. It might seem crazy, and I reacted badly by leaving, but trust me, life has a crazy way of just falling together.”

“You’re living proof of that,” Michael commented with an all knowing tone to his voice.

“Exactly,” she said and looked around to see if Tyler had arrived yet. She wanted nothing more than to go to Sienna, but she had to process the secret that had been sitting just below the surface of all their lives.

“Are you going to go back and see her?” Michael asked nervously, unsure if he wanted to tell Sienna her sister wasn’t coming back to see her.

“Later,” Austin replied, offering a small smile as she found herself at a dangerous crossroad - did she stay or did she leave? Her fight or flight response was kicking in, and she could feel herself needing Tyler, or her mother, to knock some sense into her. “Tell Sienna I’m going to go home and come back later,” Austin gave up, unable to understand this right now. “I’m going to bring Gracie by, but I need to make sense of this. Tyler’s on his way.”

“Tyler’s here,” Michael pointed and watched Austin turn around to come face to face with her husband.

“Sorry, Aus, I am not taking you home until you’ve been in there and seen your sister,” Tyler spoke as he walked towards her casually. “Gracie’s fine with our parents and right now, I’m not letting you waste any
opportunities,” Tyler told her sternly, taking control of her that moment. “You’ve heard Michael out; you have to hear Sienna out too. It’s only fair.”

“Good to see who still wears the trousers here,” Michael commented, amused at Tyler’s stubborn way with his wife.

Austin literally spluttered on that comment, “This is just a facade.”

“In there now,” Tyler pointed to the main entrance of the hospital. “I will carry you if need be. And I won’t make it pretty. You’ll be over my shoulder before you can even attempt to disagree with me.”

Allowing her eyes to widen, she smiled, but opted for walking herself into the building and back to her sister’s room.

***

“Thank you for forcing me back there,” Austin said as she fell beside her husband. “I needed that little kick.”

“Little?” he quipped, raising an eyebrow to her comment. “Baby, you needed to be practically dragged back into that hospital.”

“Okay, okay,” she laughed and shook her head. “I needed my husband to shake me and make me see what the hell I was doing wrong.” She looked up at him, a devilish grin on her lips, “I’m actually quite excited about everyone finding this out.”

“You’re plotting something,” Tyler commented, watching her face as if the ideas were lighting up her face repeatedly. “You need to let everyone just find out on their own terms.”

“I know, but now I’ve seen them together, I see so much of what we used to have when we were fresh and new, and I want everyone to enjoy it,” Austin told him, sighing heavenly at how she remembered their relationship growing and getting stronger every day. Yawning heavily, she looked up to him, “You look tired.”

Tyler laughed, but he could see the exhaustion of the past few days beginning to catch up on her. “You sound tired,” Tyler joked back with her, teasing her.

“I am,” she mumbled at him, the lack of sleep catching up on her.

“Want to go upstairs?”

“No,” she murmured as she snuggled down against her husband. “Here is good right now.” The way her husband’s arm curled around her told her he agreed with her and she settled quickly, feeling sleep finally coming easily to her.