Page 71 of Where He Ended

“Mom,” she repeats me. She chuckles and winces from the motion. “I don't deserve to be called that.”

“Stop, please.”

Her eyes drifted aside. I follow them, realizing she's looking at Laiken in the distance. “She told me that she loved you in a way I never had. That she pitied me.” My mom inhales sharply, like talking takes all her effort, but she keeps talking. “I was so miserable after Laiken said that. I didn't want to believe that I'd wasted all these years of my life waiting around for a man that never loved me, when I could have been spending those moments loving my own child.”

She reaches up and touches my jaw. Her fingers come away wet with my own tears. “You don't have to regret anything,” I whisper thickly.

“I do.” Her smile is sad and tender at once. “But if the last thing I did with my life was save yours, Dominic, maybe it'll make up for some of my sins.”

“Don't talk like you won't have time to fix things later.”

“I told you, I wasted too much time waiting for later.” Her eyes shut, her lashes touching her cheeks. “I love you, son.”

I choke on my own words. “I love you too, Mom.”

Her smile remains, but the rest of her is gone.

There are sirens all around me. I can barely hear them over my own shouts. I grasp my mother, holding her to my chest, and when multiple people try to pry me away, I fight them off. I don't want to let go of her. She's my mother, dammit! She's not supposed to die! Not now.

I don't stop fighting until a new set of hands grabs my face.

Laiken.

She's crying too, and when I see that, I ease up enough so that the paramedics can take my mother away on a stretcher. Laiken gives a great sob, collapsing against me. We fall on the grass, neither of us able to stand anymore.

I want to be strong for her.

I want to make everything right.

I've lost so much that I can't be anything more than a broken man in the arms of the woman he loves.