Page 63 of Bully's Second Chance
“Not in a hospital, but essentially, yeah,” I murmured.
“Essentially?” she asked.
I nodded. “I had a family member recently passed away in my house. He was hooked up to all of these machines, and he spent the last four years of his life in a bed much like this one. Lily was helping me take care of him during his last few weeks here on Earth.”
She reached out and squeezed my shoulder. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
I nodded, swallowing my tears as I tried to stay strong. “Thank you.”
Then, her hand slid down my arm until it wrapped around my wrist. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I snickered. “What? About my dad dying?”
She nodded, but she didn’t say anything, and I figured what the fuck could it hurt? So, I drew in a deep breath and released Lily’s hand long enough to watch her reposition before I found the words I wanted to say.
“My father’s death wasn’t a shock to any, Miss Guadalupe. He was sick for a very long time, and we all saw it coming. But, I think that was the issue: we saw it coming. We were too prepared for his passing, and that took its toll on all of us. On the nurse who fell in love with him at some point in time while taking care of him. On me, who had to watch him deteriorate over the years. On Lily, who essentially got tossed into the situation because I had to take a business trip I couldn’t get out of. And when he died, a piece of all of us died with him.”
She rubbed my back. “You’re a great deal stronger than people give you credit for, aren’t you?”
I scoffed. “I don’t know about all that, now.”
“Just calling it like I see it, is all.”
Her husband grumbled on the other side of the room before he flipped over, trying to get comfortable on the pull-out mattress the small couch in the corner provided. I watched the way Guadalupe looked at her husband with all of the care and love in the world.
It made me wonder if Lily looked at me that way when I wasn’t looking.
“You remind me of my husband, you know,” she said.
I nodded. “Thank you for the compliment. He seems like a good and steadfast man.”
She giggled. “He’s also too strong for his own good.”
I furrowed my brow. “I don’t follow.”
She sighed as she rubbed her hand up and down my thigh. “Sometimes, my husband won’t tell me things because he thinks he’s trying to spare me. You know, sparing my feelings and my emotions. But, what he doesn’t know is that nine times out of ten, I already know what’s going on, and I’m just waiting for him to fill me in.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I said the only thing that had been running through my head all damned evening. “You guys must hate me,” I murmured.
Guadalupe giggled breathlessly. “No, we don’t hate you. We simply don’t know you. I mean, we didn’t even know Lily was seeing someone, much less that things had gotten so serious that you two were trying for a child.”
I shook my head. “We weren’t trying to get pregnant. We just had a few encounters, and I wasn’t sure if—” I stopped myself in my tracks before I said anything that might bury me because if this were a man talking about my own daughter, I knew my head would’ve already popped off and blown through the roof. I took a long pull of my coffee and leaned back, focusing my eyes on Lily’s sleeping form. Even though she had regained consciousness, she still looked so pale. And I hated it.
She looks like my father did before he died.
“I’m sorry,” I said with a sigh, “I just don’t know what Lily would and wouldn’t want me saying, is all.”
Guadalupe patted my knee. “And that’s how I know you’re a good man. Because even though you’re on the chopping block and you have all of the information to defend yourself, you still want to talk things over with her and make sure you’re not saying something she doesn’t want you to.”
I smiled softly. “You think so?”
She smiled back. “Of course. It shows me who you are as a man, even if my husband won’t admit it.”
I looked back over at the sleeping Yuslan. “He really doesn’t like me, does he?”
She shrugged. “Eh, Lily’s as close to a daughter as we ever got. So, if it were your daughter, what would you be thinking?”
I didn’t skip a beat. “That I’d want to beat the shit out of the person who put my little girl in a hospital.”
