Revel (Second Chance Romance #1)(37)

But she’d never been so miserable. She’d laid in the bathroom and cried for almost 20 minutes, thinking about the injustice of what had happened today.

It made her question the point of life, when all it seemed to bring was painful moment after painful moment. Why did anyone even have children? Knowing the risks and knowing that life could be flimsy and unsteady, why did people do this to themselves? Having a child meant being scared forever. It meant possibly leaving them behind, even when you weren’t ready.

After the day Melanie died, Charlotte couldn’t put her heart into her work. She’d show up at the office late, she’d leave early. All she wanted to do was go back in time and save Melanie. Save her mother. Save herself.

Charlotte was on the very edge of a mental break. And she knew that wasn’t a safe place for a doctor to be. People depended on her to keep it together and be in the right frame of mind to make the hardest decisions.

But Charlotte couldn’t do it anymore. After years of being strong, she had nothing left. Not after seeing it happen again. A life lost for no good reason at all. And justice would never be served, more than likely. Just like it would never be served for her mother.

Charlotte decided she needed a sabbatical. She needed to get away from Nashville and return to her other home.

And that is how Charlotte Sanders ended up back in Charleston.





Chapter Fifteen


Declan had told his father’s nurse that he’d be coming by in the morning to check on him.

“He isn’t doing well,” the woman warned him over the phone. “He’s in a great deal of pain. It’s important you spend as much time with him as you can.”

“Does he ask for me?” Declan said, running his hands through his hair.

“He doesn’t need to,” the nurse said flatly. “You’re all he has.”

Declan sighed. She was right.

“I’m on my way,” Declan said. “Just make him as comfortable as you can.”

As Declan walked outside into a perfect Charleston day, he glanced over at Charlotte’s house. Her car was still in the driveway.

She hasn’t left yet, he thought. Is it ridiculous to hope she’ll stay?

He shook away the thought. There was probably no way in hell he’d ever see or speak to her again. Not after what she knew. Before she’d run away, he’d wanted to tell her he knew he’d made the wrong decision. That it had eaten him alive ever since, that he’d never been able to find any sort of contentment with the secrets he held. If he could go back in time, he’d do it all different. Especially, since despite keeping his mother’s secrets, she’d still taken her own life anyway.

He couldn’t think about that right now. It was time to focus on what was at hand. His father.

It was the one relationship he had left. He couldn’t let that one fall apart, too. Not when there was so much still yet to be said.

********

“Where the hell have you been?”

Henry DeGraff sat propped up in a hospital bed that had been set up in the DeGraff living room. Henry couldn’t climb stairs anymore, so it made it easier for him to be on the first floor, where everything was more easily accessible.

“Well, good morning to you too, Dad,” Declan said as he sat down in the silk upholstered chair next to his father.

Henry DeGraff’s appearance was alarming. He’d once been a man with a large presence. He was well over six feet tall with a broad chest and shoulders. He’d been incredibly handsome his entire life, a man who could charm women and intimidate men. But now he was a mere shell of his former, robust self. Henry was shriveled up and pruned. His legs were thin, his shoulders bony. His skin was papery thin and pale. He’d lost 50 pounds in the past 4 months.

Declan found it hard to look at him. It broke his heart.

“I thought you’d be around more,” Henry sniffed. “I’m dying here and you’re still partying away. Probably drinking and f*cking and- “

“Jesus,” Declan interrupted. “Can you stop? I’m here now. I’m not going anywhere. Just… Don’t.”

Henry shook his head, “I don’t mean it in a bad way. You should be doing those things, you’re young and healthy, with all your life ahead of you. And more money than sense. You’re living the dream. And I’ll be dead soon, so you won’t have to feel bad about doing any of it.”

“Stop it with that bullshit,” Declan said. “What, you think you’re going to die and I’m going to suddenly have this need to go on a debauched rampage?”

“I would hope so,” Henry grinned. “It would make me proud.”

Declan laughed, “Well, in that case…”

They had a rare moment of peace between them.

“I just,” Henry continued. “I want you to be happy. Do the things you want to do, not the things you have to.”

Declan looked at his father, “Since when the hell do you care about anyone being happy? They must have really hit you up with the morphine today.”

Henry laughed, and to Declan it sounded a little like the past. It was a deep, guttural chuckle from the well of what was left of his father. Declan had forgotten that, despite his misgivings toward Henry, he really loved the sound of his laugh. It had a low and hearty timbre to it. It was one of the world’s most pleasant sounds.