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My friends leave the room, and my dad, who I hadn’t noticed until now, closes the door behind them.

“Oh darling, what happened? I called Patrick, but his mother answered and said he had been attacked too and was in the hospital. Is it the same man? Your father called the police department and—”

“Mom, stop,” I interrupt. “I’m not with Patrick, Mom. Never was.”

My mom’s horrified face turns to me and the usual guilt I would feel at disappointing my parents isn’t there. This is it, the moment I come clean, stand my ground. No place like a hospital than to rip off the band aid.

“Sit down, we need to talk.”

The saying, she was too stunned to speak really does apply here. My mother stares blankly at the white wall after I tell her everydetail. The black mailing, the club, my relationship with Brad, all of it. My dad stares at his lap, and I’ve spent the last four and a half minutes counting the seconds on the clock that’s hung on the wall, as it goes round and round.

Not able to take the painful silence a minute longer, I speak up. “Please say something, anything. I’d rather you yell than be silent.”

My father clears his throat. “I don’t know what you want us to say, Gabriella.”

His words feel like a slap to the face.

“Oh, I don’t know, Dad. How about, we love you? We’re glad you didn’t die. I’m sorry we’ve made you feel this way. We should have protected you better. We should have made you feel like you could come to us for anything and that we wouldn’t judge. How’s that for starters?”

“Gabriella, please, we need…”

“What, Mom, you need what?”

“Time. That is a lot to process.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

“Gabriella, watch…” my dad scolds, but I’m done. I am so over the way they made me feel. I let it all out.

“My tone, my words? Is that what you were going to say? I am done pleasing you. If you can’t accept me for who I am, and what I do and who I love, then I don’t want to be in your lives. I have never ever felt enough, and I’ve finally found people, friends, a man who makes me feel like I’m enough, and there is nothing you could say to change how I feel.”

I sag in relief, waiting for the guilt to hit me, or the bundle of nerves to knot in my stomach after displeasing my parents, but it doesn’t come. Instead, it feels like a burden I have spent my life carrying has just been lifted from my shoulders and I can finally breathe.

The door creaks open and Ali peeks her head inside. “I’m sorry to interrupt but, Gabby, it’s Brad…”

Chapter Sixty Two

Brad

I always wondered what it felt like when you were dying. After I watched the life leave Scotty’s body, I wondered what he felt, what he saw, what he experienced, and, well, now I know. Maybe it isn’t the same for everyone, but for me, all I saw was her.

But someone, maybe Scotty himself, was watching over me when I flat-lined twice. Once in Gabriella’s apartment and the second time on the operating table. When I came round, the nurse asked who Gabriella was because I asked for her when I was drifting in and out of consciousness.

“Your vitals look good. You’re a lucky man. Your friends helped save your life,” the nurse says as she hangs up the bag of fluid on the stand beside my bed. The clear liquid feels like ice water as it enters my vein through the back of my hand. I’mhooked up to an IV for liquids, and I’m told I had a transfusion after I bled out on the table when they removed my gall bladder.

“Yeah, I am feeling damn lucky,” I rasp, my throat feeling dry and sore from the tubes.

“Your sister, Alessia, keeps calling the ward. I’ve told her you’re out of surgery and she’s on her way but, there’s someone else here to see you. Can I let them in?”

I nod.

She leaves the room, and it’s only a few moments until Gabriella stands in the doorway. A white hospital gown drowns her tiny frame, her hair a wavy mess, hanging over one shoulder, and a bandage wrapped around her head like a band.

She worries her bottom lip with her teeth, and I smile.

“Hey, baby girl.” Her hands cover her face as she lets out a cry and then runs towards me, throwing her body over mine. I wince from the pain, but I don’t care. I hold on to her like it will be the last time and inhale the last remnants of her cherry scent.

“You have no idea how good it is to hear you say that,” she says, her face nuzzling into my neck.