Beyond Bloodline - Unbreakable Bonds

forty two

The woman he'd grown up in the shadow of all his life, all but begging for her attention, his supposed mother, was a lot of things— arrogant, headstrong, indifferent. The one thing he could never envision seeing her as was defeated. She was strong, always working, never stopping and held no regard for anything other than her husband, her son and her work.

She was scary.

Now, lying in bed, frail with obvious tear tracks down her cheeks and dark ringlets of hair sprawled across the white pillow she laid on, she looked anything but. Looking at her now, he didn't understand why she'd sparked so much nausea in him so just attributed some of it to his own expectations.

He'd never be so affected if he really, truly didn't care.

"What are you doing here?" her expression was ugly as she struggled to sit up, picking the oxygen mask she'd removed to speak to her nephew and taking a couple calming inhales. "I told you to scram already."

"Oh, don't mind me," a smile quirked on his lips, a tinge of mirth leaking from his eyes. "I'm just here to gloat."

Her lips pursed. "Get out," she calmly said after a while.

"I won't," he said, smile morphing into a sneer. "What can you do about it?"

Her eyes flashed angrily as she made a lunge for him, nails hooked like sharpened, deadly claws.

Nigel made to move out of her reach but stopped when she fell short, hissing and bending over as she placed trembling fingers on her kneecaps. He glanced over, a terrible feeling crushing his gut as he reached over and pulled the covers back, eyes blinking rapidly at the morbid sight that greeted him before he let go of the blanket like he'd been scalded.

Her legs were shattered beyond repair and even if she did survive this, he didn't think she'd ever fully recover her ability to walk. How was she still so calm, so collected?

It was really scary.

"This is all your fault," she said, words falling venomously from thinly set lips.

"Don't you get tired?" he scoffed. "How the hell did the blame come back to me?"

She didn't respond immediately, eyes taking on a glazed look as she stared into the distance. It was only hours ago, too suddenly, the truck had collided with hers and Rob had protected her upper body from metal and glass. Her legs hadn't been so lucky, crushed under the weight of collapsed, heavy metal as they waited for paramedics to arrive and she gradually lost the feeling in her legs.

"I wouldn't be calling Rob and angrily going back to search if it weren't for you," she said. "I just wanted to prove I wasn't blind and capable of recognizing and finding my own son. Can't I? Obviously, I got my husband to come along with me."

Nigel silently reclaimed his seat as her eyes filled with a crazy light.

"What did I do that was so wrong?" she scoffed, turning to stare bitterly at him, tears streaming down her face. "Not love you? Not bother? Why should I? I just wanted to take care of my own son. Instead, I was stuck with you."

"What happened to him?" he asked, pulling himself out of the negativity he was about to sink into. "Your son, who was he?"

"It was a stillbirth," she said, inhaling again and then beginning to fiddle with the oxygen mask. "He was born with a weak heart so that's what everyone thought. Rob and I mourned a long time, I don't think we ever really stopped."

Nigel pursed his lips but didn't interrupt, letting her go on as much as she wanted to. Maybe she needed the opportunity or just didn't know who else to say it to, but she ended up spilling out a lot.