Page 69 of A Lifetime in 30 Days
Behind her, the other officer yelled, “Drop the gun! Drop it!”
Gail didn’t drop the gun; instead, she started to turn the gun so it would be aimed at herself, but the officer who had been in front of her fired, shooting her in the leg. She dropped like a ton of bricks; the gun she’d been holding skittering across the ground.
Aden backed them up as more officers came from everywhere, one picking up Gail’s gun, another turning her over onto her stomach so he could pull her hands behind her back. Vanna watched in shock as the woman she’d once wanted to like and accept her was cuffed, blood gushing from her leg, as she continued to yell and rail at Vanna. This time when tears stung Vanna’s eyes, she let them fall freely. Instead of pushing back on the anger, the hurt, the confusion she’d been grappling with for weeks, she let it all loose until gut-wrenching sobs escaped and her legs gave out beneath her.
Chapter 21
A dam had broken, and Vanna let it surge. The tears, the screams, the defeat she felt in the moments after Gail had been shot and arrested, powered through her like a bulldozer, until the entire world spun around her.
Strong arms kept her from falling to the floor and possibly hurting herself. Aden had gone to his knees too, continuing to keep his grip on her even as she needed to let go of the weight that had been holding her upright for so long. It had pulsed through every fiber of her, daily struggles mingled with the remnants of the new storm that had come to ravage her life. Every day of this month, she’d been cognizant of all that she was carrying, but she continued to move on, to press through, because that’s what she’d been so used to doing. It was what so many women felt they had to do. But all of a sudden, it all became too heavy. Too much to remain standing and hold on to, so she let it go.
“What ... what did I ever do to her?” she choked out the words. “What did I do to deserve any of this?”
Vanna usually hated aWhy me?cry, but she couldn’t help the words, couldn’t keep them contained any longer.
“Nothing, baby,” Aden said, keeping one hand at her back to steady her while his other hand rubbed up and down her arm. “This was never about you.”
“But it was!” she screamed. “Didn’t you hear her? It was always about me. She hated me because I took her son away from her and thenI didn’t treat him the way she thought I should. Then he dies and that’s my fault too.” She shuddered at those words.
“No, ma’am,” Jamaica said as she knelt down on the other side of Vanna. “You are not going to sit here and blame yourself for that whacko woman or her trash-ass son. They were a mess before you even met him.”
“She’s right,” Aden said. “You know that, Vanna.”
She knew what they were saying, had heard and digested the words, but she didn’t want the excuse. No, in this moment, she wanted to take the blame, to hold it near and dear for every day that she’d used all her energy to push those thoughts away. If she embraced it now, maybe it would be over sooner. Maybe this hurt and anger would leave her the hell alone. “I can’t do this!” she screamed this time, and started to push herself up off the floor.
Aden moved with her, giving her permission to lean on him as much as she needed to. “Let’s go over here and sit down.”
“No,” she said in an eerily soft voice. “I don’t want to sit at the table that was so prettily decorated for my birthday party.” Another sob broke free. “It’s my birthday, dammit!”
“Oh, Vanna,” Ronni said, tears filling her eyes. “Honey, I’m so sorry it turned out this way.”
“I should’ve known,” she said. “Shouldn’t have expected—” She let those words trail off because they didn’t feel right against her tongue. None of this felt right, and she couldn’t figure out how to fix it. Vanna always fixed things, especially for herself. Whatever went wrong, she figured it out and did what was required to get through it. That was her thing—it was her superpower. But not this time.
“I don’t want to be here,” she said. “I want to go home.”
“Okay, I’ll take you home,” Aden said.
“We’ll follow you,” Jamaica said. “We’ll take the celebration back to your house. And it’ll be just us.”
Vanna looked at them, each of them—her best friends and their plus-ones, and Granny. They were her support system, the people shecould lean on for everything, and yet she knew she hadn’t leaned on them enough. Hadn’t shared all her thoughts and fears in these past weeks. And Aden, the man who’d come along and pushed himself into a space she was perfectly fine with being empty. Why did she need a hero when she could be one for herself?
But what was she supposed to do in moments like now, when she couldn’t do it? Couldn’t immediately pick up the pieces and do the things she needed to do to move on?
“Yeah,” she said with a slow nod. “I’d like it to be just us.” And she reached out to take Aden’s hand. “Take me home.”
Home had turned out to be Aden’s place, as sometime during the ride, Vanna decided she didn’t want to go back to the house where she’d once lived with Caleb. Not at that moment. So Aden had suggested his place, and a quick text to the group had them all rerouting and landing at the door of Aden’s cozy town house. They’d had a couple of drinks, two more toasts to the birthday girl, and then they’d all headed home.
Jamaica and Davon offered to take Granny back to the house, while Vanna had accepted Aden’s invitation to spend the night there. He’d extended that invite to Granny as well, but Vanna had heard her grandmother tell him, “No. She needs you tonight. And I trust you to take care of her.”
That’s how she’d ended up sleeping in Aden’s arms all night. Now, as sun poured through the window through the half-raised shade early the next morning, she pulled the charcoal-gray-and-white sheets up over her shoulder and rolled onto her side.
Memories of last night filtered through her mind as she blinked slowly to remove the sleep from her eyes. Aden’s bedroom was as neat as the other parts of his house she’d seen last night. The living room, with its brown-and-beige decor, and the kitchen, with the huge table he’d told Granny was bought at his mother’s insistence because she expectedhim to help his sister in hosting some of their family holiday dinners. Something he hadn’t done yet because he’d been so busy opening the gym and now the supplement storefront.
His bedroom was large and airy, as he only had the bed and two dressers in it. A huge TV was mounted on the wall across from the bed, and she’d glimpsed a walk-in closet last night before she’d taken over his bathroom for a long, hot shower. He’d let her take the shower alone and had one of his T-shirts and the sheets already turned down for her when she emerged. Exhausted from last night and the prior month’s events, she’d been asleep by the time Aden joined her in the bed.
Sometime during the night, she’d awakened enough to recall she wasn’t in her own bed but that a wonderful man had her tucked safely in his arms. So she’d drifted back to sleep until this moment, when she’d awakened to thoughts that threatened to suffocate her.
There was no box of cards on Aden’s dresser that she could flip through and find some semblance of strength and encouragement for the day. No, today she would have to figure this shit out on her own. She would have to decide what her mood was going to be and how much of what had happened last night she was going to carry.
