Page 47 of Every Sunset
“I don’t think we’ll be able to fix it back up, kid. Let’s put it that way,” Maddox replied as he glanced to me with a strained look. “Your mom was lucky to walk away from the crash.”
“Jesus mom!” Max hissed.
“I’m fine. I was lucky, so you can quit your worrying. Just head to bed. I’ll be home soon. You don’t need to come to the guys place,” I told him as steadily as I could. My adrenaline surge was still causing me to shake, and I was freezing cold too, which wasn’t helping.
“I’ll meet you guys out front,” he said after a deep sigh that we heard down the phone line.
“Be there in a couple,” Logan told him, then he hung up.
“Why did you tell him? Now he’s just gonna be worrying about me again. I don’t want him to do that,” I growled looking between the two of them.
“He’s your son, Anna, and he’s almost grown. He’s gonna worry about you now, and I think you have to just get used to that,” Logan sighed.
“It isn’t like he wouldn’t have worked out something happened anyway. The cut on your head is deep, and he’d definitely be asking questions when your car was missing,” Maddox asked.
“He’s fifteen!” I snapped. “He’s a kid! He should get to be a kid. Its not his responsibility to look out for me. I can take care of myself and my son.”
“You’re gonna have to accept the fact he’s almost an adult one day soon, Anna. I know you want to shelter him but you can’t. It’s too late. Your kid is smart, and whatever he’s been through, it’s made him open his eyes to the reality of how shitty life can be. That’s not your fault, but it’s happened and you can’t change that. Maybe instead of trying to pretend he’s still a child, you need to embrace what a good man he’s growing into,” Maddox told me, somewhat brutally. I knew it was all true, but it still hurt.
I didn’t speak again for the last few minutes of the drive. I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t argue with the truth. My mistakes were what had forced my son to realize the shitty realities of this world, and Maddox was right that there was nothing I could do to go back and change that.
My son had been forced to grow up in a matter of moments that night at our apartment, and ever since I had been attempting to take that back. To make my child a child once more. But that was never going to happen, and having that pointed out so clearly made me pull my head from the sand I had been trying to bury it in for weeks, once and for all. It was time to stop trying to push my son to go backwards and be a kid again. It wasn’t going to happen. All I could do now was embrace the amazing man my mess had proven him to be, and pray he found his way. Nothing would stop me from being at his side, but he wasn’t going to let me stand before him as I had for so many years until that night. Even knowing it was the truth didn’t cause me to feel any less terrified for my boy.
CHAPTER 19
LOGAN
“She okay?” I asked as I saw Maddox peeking into the guest room we had basically had to strongarm Anna into sleeping in the night before. The only reason she had finally given in was because Max pleaded with her to listen to us. The fact he was already upset and visibly shaken by the state of his mom had been enough for her to give in and stay the night.
We’d wanted them both close after what had happened. Maddox hadn’t seen any signs of Anna having a concussion, but that didn’t mean she didn’t. She was also pretty shaken up herself and she was moving stiffly, the bruises across her chest and her slightly swollen shoulder, all caused by the seat belt, clearly bothering her.
After the scare of seeing her car wrapped around that tree as we drove towards it, Madd and I weren’t ready to let her out of our sight. Max too. He was really shaken up and anxious. We knew if they went home Max would never sleep a wink, worrying about his mom all night. They were better off with us, under our roof where we could take care of them both and keep them safe.
“Still sleeping. Max is in there with her. He must have gone to check on her and fallen asleep,” Madd replied. “Leave them for now. Anna needs to rest, and Max was exhausted.”
“Do we need to keep waking Anna?” I asked. Madd and I had been taking it in turns to go in every hour through the night to wake Anna enough to ask a few questions and check she was still with us. She’d shown no signs of confusion, but plenty of annoyance. Clearly, interrupting her while she slept would not be advisable in the future.
“Nah. She’s good. I want to go out and look at her car in the daylight while she’s still out,” he said.
“I can call a tow company to come move it. I guess it needs to go straight to the scrap yard.”
“It does, but I want to take a look at it first. I know Anna said no one is coming after her and Max, but something doesn’t feel right. The angle the car was hit at looked deliberate to me, and I want to check it out properly.”
“She said the guy was likely drunk. He probably just swerved into her,” I reasoned.
“Maybe, but if he was drunk enough to do that, how the hell did he keep control of his own car when they crashed? He should have wrecked too, but he didn’t. Anna said there wasn’t any sign of the other car by the time she looked out at the road. Something doesn’t add up.”
“You think someone hit her deliberately?”
“I hope I’m wrong,” he sighed as we both started down the stairs and headed for the kitchen.
“Anna promised us that no one is coming after them.”
“I know, and I believe she believes that, but she could be wrong. We don’t even know what happened to her. Maybe whatever it was, it isn’t as dead and buried as she thinks it is. I just…I thinkwe should be cautious, is all. Last night was too fucking close. She could have been killed in that wreck.”
“Don’t say that, Madd,” I growled. I still didn’t understand how, but my feelings for Anna were insanely strong in just the matter of weeks I had known her, and I knew Maddox felt the same. We had both fallen for her so much faster than I ever would have believed possible. But it had happened now, and even if Anna didn’t realize it yet, she was already ours.
“Just stay here with them both and call me right away if Anna starts vomiting or acting oddly. I’ll just go and take a look at the crash site before the road gets too busy,” Maddox told me. Even though he was the younger brother of us both, he was usually the one dishing the orders out nowadays. I was good with it though. Maddox was smarter than me. He had always been, and he knew what he was talking about in this situation. He'd dealt with countless crime scenes in the years he was with LAPD.
