Page 13 of Rescuing Our Bride

She asks more questions about what we were like as kids and how Penny managed to handle us as teenagers. Jax and I take turns answering them. It stings to share these memories with Anna because she should be hearing them from Penny firsthand.

But she can’t. Thanks to that son of a bitch, Patrick.

“Penny sounds like an amazing woman. You were lucky to have her.”

“She always said she was the lucky one.” Jax coughs, clears his throat, and coughs again. “I miss her every fucking day.”

“Me too. Fucking cancer.” Fucking Patrick Calhoun. I keep that to myself. No sense in reminding Anna of what almost happened to her.

I didn’t plan on sharing Penny’s entire story with her. I doubt Jax did either, but she’s a good listener. She wants to know about our lives like our history is important. Before I know it, Jax and I are spilling our guts about Penny’s last days and last wishes, all the little things we did to make her comfortable. To make her last days the best days they could be. We laid our grief bare for her.

I’m still reeling from our trip down memory lane and the emptiness of life without Penny in it, that I don’t notice the tears tracking down Anna’s cheeks.

Until a sob breaks free from her throat. Shit.

9

ANNA

“Sorry.” I scoot my stool back from the counter, knocking it over in my haste to escape Jax and Mark, and the embarrassment of breaking down in front of them, which only makes things worse. “I’m sorry.”

I’m at the peak of a complete and total ugly cry. I’m flushed and no doubt blotchy. I can almost feel the splotches spreading across my skin like a rash. Wrapping my arms around my ribcage, I try to hold back the sobs racking my body, but another manages to break free. My breathing is ragged, and my eyes burn from the tears currently in free fall over my bottom lashes. I squeeze my eyes shut in the hopes of stopping them, but the dam is broken.

Just like my heart.

Getting to know Mark and Jax, and listening to them laugh, poke, and prod each other with childhood stories was wonderful. It felt like I’d known them all my life. Like I’d been there beside them through the thick and thin of it. But when the conversation turned to Penny’s cancer, how hard it was to watch her suffer, and how they stayed by her side and took care of her until the end, all I could think about was my mom.

And how I’m failing her.

She must be worried sick. Worried sick? She is already sick. She’s dying, and I’m here doing what? Pretending to be kidnapped while I hide out from Patrick, shirking my responsibility to my family? Pretending to go on dates with two amazing, albeit misguided, men who took care of their foster mom, held her hand while she took her last breath, while I’m letting my mom die without her only child by her side? After all the sacrifices she’s made, the dreams she gave up so that I could chase after my own?

God, I fucking hate myself right now.

But I’m not the only guilty party for my mother’s emotional pain and suffering in this house tonight. I may have been a willing accomplice, but Jax and Mark are the reason I’m not holding my mother’s hand right now.

“Hey, Anna. Hey. It’s okay. You’re okay.” Jax is approaching me, hands raised, palms out like I’m a wounded animal. There’s a wariness in his expression and his voice that wasn’t audible in any of the stories about Penny he shared over dinner. “Everything is going to be okay.”

“Stop,” I scream at him through broken sobs when he reaches out for me. “Don’t touch me.”

More sobs and whimpering noises. I hate how pathetic and weak I sound. I wish I was stronger. I need to be stronger than this. For her.

“Take me back.”

“What? Take you back?” Jax and Mark’s questions hit me at the same time. They sound as shocked as I feel hearing the words come out of my mouth, but I mean them.

“I’m going to marry Patrick. Take me back.” My entire body is shaking, but I ball my hands into fists at my side and use the pain of my nails digging into my palms to force my eyes open and meet their shell-shocked gaze. I poured every ounce of conviction into those words, but I know if I can’t look them in the eyes when I say it, they won’t believe me. “If you don’t take me back now, I’ll just go on my own. You were going to let me go anyway, right? That was the plan? To set me up with a new life? Well, this is the life I’m choosing. I’m marrying him. I’m marrying Patrick and there isn’t anything you can do to stop it.”

“The fuck you are marrying him,” Mark shouts.

“The fuck we can’t do anything about it.” Jax’s voice ratchets up another decibel. “We already did something about it. That whole speak now, or forever hold your peace part? We spoke the fuck up, Anna, and what did your savior Patrick-fucking-Calhoun do to stop us? Nothing. Oh, wait. He did do something. Used you as a human shield. Real prince fucking charming, that fiancé of yours. You’re not going back, and you sure as fuck aren’t saying I do. Not to him. Not fucking ever, Anna.”

“I don’t need your blessing, Jax. I’m going home with or without your help. You can’t watch me twenty-four hours a day.”

“You said you wanted a family someday. Do you want Patrick to be the father of those kids? He won’t love them any more than he loves you—which is not at all. You’ll all be his property. Then he’ll mold them so they end up just like him. Cruel, ruthless, and heartless.” Mark’s words are like a sucker punch to the solar plexus.

My stomach churns, threatening to upend its contents at the mere thought of having children with Patrick. Something I know he’ll want, despite not loving me. Mark is right about that. I have no illusions about my fiancé’s feelings for me. I’m nothing more than a prize-winning broodmare in his eyes. No, when I marry Patrick, there will be no children. I’ll take precautions to make sure that never happens. When he doesn’t get what he wants from me, he’ll find someone else and, if I’m lucky, he’ll want a divorce. No bastard children for Patrick Calhoun. He’ll have to take one of his girlfriends on the side as his wife. Or he could kill me.

I can’t cause him any trouble if I’m dead, right?

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