Beautifully Knight (Jordan Knight Fanfic, Liadan #5)

Awakenings and Alohas

-MARIA-

My lower eyelids twitched involuntarily and a high-pitched, borderline unbearable noise rang in my ears. In an attempt to dull the pain, I moved my fingers in circles along my temples as I tried to avoid the makeup-smudged face with unwavering bloodshot red eyes that wouldn't stop staring from the old chipped mirror in front of me, but it was futile. The ache was unceasing and like a bystander to a highway wreck, I couldn't look away from myself.

Instead, I took in my every movement—my shallow breaths, my hiccups, the tears in my eyes that would no longer fall because if they did; my eyes would run dry, my puffy cheeks, my tangled hair, my chapped lips, my despair.

After nineteen years with Tony, it would seem that I'd have grown accustomed to the ever-present uncertainty and explosive, tumultuous discord that apparently plagued his family and followed them everywhere they went. From my sweet husband's reluctance to bring me around his father when we were kids, to my own glimpses into their dysfunctional dynamics throughout our adult lives, I should have known how to brace for the chaos. How to cope with the crazy. How to process the unexpected.

But I didn't.

Somewhere deep inside I'd learned how to sense when something bad was lurking. Butterflies fluttered in my soul and I tossed and turned at night, uneasy about what the future would bring. Yet, I still wasn't ready to face the turmoil. I wasn't built for battle.

I tried to tell myself that I was being dramatic. Unreasonable. Things with my in-laws weren't that bad. Tony didn't seem to think that they were, anyway. He didn't see eye-to-eye with his father and stepmother on most things and anytime they crossed paths, they bumped heads. He went no-contact with them for years at a time to preserve his mental health, but at the end of the day, they were still family, not the enemy. He could look past their wrongdoings and the pain they inflicted when they really needed him. He could do the right thing even after enduring the brunt of their worst behavior, so I could do it too. I could forgive. I could be the bigger person. I could. But I couldn't.

When it came to Antonio and Mallory, I always felt like I was walking into a war for the wellbeing and safety of my family. Just their mere presences set me on edge and stirred up emotions that terrified me and made me lash out. It was instinctual. Like a reflex that I just couldn't control no matter how hard I tried. And as terrible as I knew it was, for the split-second of a moment that I'd thought that burden was forever gone, I'd breathed easier than I had in weeks.

It was a dark, ugly, fleeting thought that I'd never admit to aloud, but when I'd first stepped out of the family waiting room to find my mother trying her best to console Mallory while she sobbed uncontrollably and nearly drowned out the voices of the four surgeons who were explaining that "Mr. Holloway" had suffered a cardiac event and could no longer progress through the transplant process, I'd felt relief.

Not because something bad had happened to my father-in-law or because my step-mother-in-law was suffering—I felt genuinely sorry for their pain—but because I knew that the danger hovering over my family had lifted and I no longer had to worry about losing the man I loved more than words could express. I mourned his heartbreak and devastation that would be inevitable, but I hoped that Tony would be able to make peace with the man who'd hurt him more than I'd ever comprehend and finally begin to heal the wounds to his heart that had been open for far too long. I prayed that he'd be able to find the closure that Antonio was incapable of giving him and we would be able to move forward past the darkness that had hovered for so long.

Yet as quickly as that thought came, my world was flipped upside down again when the doctor continued to talk and mentioned that the "elder Mr. Holloway" was sedated and stable while they tried to determine the best "plan B."