Deception (15 page)

She smiled. “I just know how much you hate seeing people cry.”

And once again, everything was about me. I really had to put a stop to that. But unfortunately, everything
was
about me. My father made damn sure about that.

A few minutes later, Aiden’s phone beeped. “Mum said she’s pulled through the transfusion and that Kai and Nathan are now organising a hospital room for her. She’ll let us know which one and when we can go see her.”

That probably meant Kai would find a hospital and organise all the paperwork so that they would think she’d been in there for a transplant, and then Nathan would convince everyone there that they had not only seen her, but had also worked on her during her surgery.

I turned to my mum. “She’s going to be all right.”

She smiled as a few tears slipped from her eyes.

“I think we have you to thank for that,” Aiden said to me.

Mum pulled her eyebrows together. “How so?”

“Well, Mrs. Grey… I mean, your mother,” Aiden corrected. “She had lost a lot of blood, and Jade gave her blood for the transfusion she so desperately needed.”

“No. Oh, my God, no,” she mumbled to herself with a horrified look on her face.

“What’s wrong?” I asked cautiously.

She stared at me for a second too long before putting on a fake smile. “Sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s just, I never wanted you to be put into that sort of position.”

I glared at her, willing her to say something more, but she didn’t. “Bullshit, Mum.” I stood up, unable to sit still any longer.

“Excuse me,” Mum said, getting all parental on me.

“Don’t try to make it out that I’m overreacting to something I’m not. I can tell you’re lying, and I’m sick of it. Didn’t you get that from the last time I was here?”

She looked down at her hands clasped together in her lap. “I’m sorry. It’s just, it’s… I keep forgetting you’re not the little girl I needed to try to keep safe.”

“No, I’m not.” I sat back down between her and Aiden. “And it’s about time you started telling me the truth.”

She looked me in the eyes. “I know. And I will.”

“So, start talking,” I said bluntly.

She readjusted herself on the sofa so her back was against the armrest. “Your father and I met when I was in my late twenties. I knew I was different, but I thought I was the only one. Then when he showed up, he said he could show me things I never knew were possible. He taught me how to teleport and showed me how easy it was to
make
someone do something by hooking into their minds. I thought I knew him. I thought he was one of the good guys. But then I got pregnant, and he started talking all this crazy shit, wondering if you were going to be like us, or if you’d go one step further and be able to do things not even we could do.”

“So, what happened?” I prodded when it seemed she wasn’t going to pick back up.

She sighed. “He started wanting to do different experiments on you when you were still a fetus. When I refused to allow him to touch me to get to you, he flipped out and started acting all crazy. I teleported away from him as fast as I could and have been trying to keep you away from him ever since.”

“And what about this place?” I asked, looking around the room. Its style was very similar to Aiden’s place on the Gold Coast, with modern furniture and amazing ocean views as far as the eye could see.

“After I left your father,” she continued, “I came across some more people like us in the US. We stayed with them for a while, but then your father found us, and I had to hide you someplace else, which turned out to be the Gold Coast.”

“What about the guy who lives here?”

“Jack?”

“Yeah. What is he to you? And what are you to Gemma?” I asked, hoping to God she wasn’t going to tell me I’d had a little sister all along.

“Jack was one of the people I met when I left your father. He helped me hide you, and over the years, one thing led to another. I don’t think I have to spell it out for you.”

She was not going to get away from it that easily. “I think you do,” I said.

Her face contorted in embarrassment. “We’re not married, but we are together, okay? Does that satisfy you?”

“Yes. And what about Gemma?”

“Jack was married when I first met him, but during childbirth…”

“She wasn’t like us?” I interrupted.

“No, she wasn’t.” Her eyes glazed over. She was probably thinking back to when Gemma’s mother had died. I wondered if she’d been friends with his wife, but that wasn’t a question I was going to ask.

“Jack didn’t know what to do, and I did. I helped out with Gemma while he mourned his wife,” Mum explained. “About a year later, we got together, and I’ve been helping to raise Gemma ever since.”

“Sounds like you’ve been raising her more than you raised me,” I said, moving back towards Aiden. He put his hand on my hip and gave it a little squeeze.

“I’ve been doing more than just raising Gemma while I’ve been here,” she said, getting her back up. “This whole time, we’ve all been trying to find a way to stop your father from finding you and lead him on an endless goose chase. But I’m not going to apologise that we thought it was best we keep you as far away from all this as we could. We were trying to protect you, and if that meant I wasn’t there as often as a mother should be, then I’m sorry, but I would do it all again. My job was to protect you, and that is what I’ve been trying to do all these years.”

I didn’t say anything. I knew she’d done the right thing, but admitting it still didn’t feel right. How could I say to my mother it was okay that she’d left me alone all those nights, even if it was to protect me, when at the time, all it did was break my heart.

Aiden’s phone beeped, breaking the silence. He shifted in his seat as he pulled his phone from his jeans pocket. “They’ve got her in the same hospital we took Nikki to get the bullet out.”

“Good. At least we know how to get there.” That was probably why Kai had chosen that particular hospital.

“Let’s go, then,” Mum said, sounding both excited and nervous.

“Have you seen her since you left all those years ago?” I asked.

She nodded. “Only a few times, though she never saw me. So many times I thought about speaking to her, then just erasing her memory, but it just seemed too cruel.”

“Well,” I said, placing my hand on hers. “Now you’ll get that chance.” I turned to Aiden. “Lead the way.”

“You got it.” He transported us to the little alcove Lucas had taken us to the first time we’d visited the hospital. “They’ve got her up in a recovery room in the ICU. They’re not that strict with visiting times up there, so we won’t have to worry about being seen.”

“Do you know how to get there?” Nikki asked, seeming more apprehensive than she had been before.

Aiden nodded. “Kai sent us a map of the hospital. Her room’s not too far from here.”

“Then let’s go,” I said, squeezing Aiden’s hand.

He led the way down what seemed endless corridors until we reached a set of locked doors.

“Crap,” I said.

A nurse walked by the other side of the door and stopped when she saw us. She turned and strode over to push a button on the wall, opening the doors. “Hi, you must be Amanda,” she said to my mum. “We’ve been wondering when you might get a chance to come see your mother.” Someone had fed this nurse a whole lot of BS about my grandma and my mother, but we didn’t know who. Her memories were wiped clean of traces of the intruder.

“Amanda?”
I said to both Aiden and my mother.

“Don’t ask me. Mum didn’t mention anything about using different names,”
Aiden said, giving an almost unnoticeable shrug.

“It makes sense, though,”
Mum said.
“That way, it’ll make it harder for Adam to track us down.”

“Good point,”
I agreed.

We followed the nurse to my grandmother’s bed, where she left us.

Mum stood at the edge of the curtain, chewing her bottom lip, too afraid to open it. I put my hand on her shoulder, but didn’t say anything. I didn’t think anything I could say would make her feel any better or less nervous about seeing her mother after so long.

She closed her eyes and exhaled deeply, then slowly pulled back the curtain. My grandma was asleep on the hospital bed. A waffle blanket was pulled up under her arms. Tubes stuck out of her arms and nose.

I looked to Mum and saw tears welling in her eyes and her bottom lip quiver. She walked slowly over to the bedside and tentatively picked up her mother’s hand.

Aiden found a chair and pushed it behind my mother, who automatically sat down.

Seeing my mother so vulnerable was almost too much for me. I felt as if I were invading a special moment between her and her mother.

Aiden came up behind me. “Why don’t we give your mum some time alone?”

Holding back tears of my own, I nodded. “Mum,” I said, putting my hand on her shoulder. “We’re going to give you some space. Call me when you’re finished here or if you want some company.”

Without taking her eyes off her mum, she nodded.

“Okay, we’ll see you soon.”

Aiden and I made our way out of ICU and back to the alcove where we had arrived.

“Oh, my God,” I said, my voice barely a whisper as I leaned my back against the wall.

Aiden stood in front of me, putting his hands on my hips. “Yeah, it was pretty intense.”

I ran my hands up his arms and around his neck. “Let’s get out of here,” I said, leaning my head against his chest.

He kissed the top of my head. “Where do you want to go?”

“As much as I would love to run away until I had time to get over everything that has happened tonight, I really think we should see if they found out anything about my father—which they most likely wouldn’t have, considering he was practically a ghost. And besides, I think we should probably see how Chels is getting along.”

Unsure if there were a few “normals” still lingering around the house from Aiden’s party, we transported to our bedroom in England.

“I just want to get out of this dress before we go downstairs,” I said, heading towards the closet. I pulled out a pair of jeans and a long-sleeve top and changed as quickly as I could.

Aiden came into the closet just as I was finishing up. “I may as well get this shirt off.” He pulled it over his head and flung it onto the tub chair. Not so long ago, my brain would’ve turned to mush whenever he was without a shirt, but all I felt then was a longing to be that person again whose biggest fear was dealing with a psychopathic human
without
any special abilities. He pulled a dark-grey t-shirt off the hanger and slipped it on.

“Let’s go.” He held out his hand.

I placed my hand in his, and we walked like normal humans downstairs, letting our not-so-human sensing ability lead the way. We found everyone sitting on one of the lounges in the party room, but only next-gens and Chelsea were there.

“Hey,” Chelsea said. She was sitting next to Lucas, who had obviously done as he’d promised in keeping her safe.

“How’s your mum?” Anna asked.

“She’s a bit of a mess but that’s to be expected, right?”

“Yeah, of course,” Anna said.

Aiden and I sat down on the empty side of the couch. “Where’s Kai and Nathan?” Aiden asked.

“Kai’s gone to get some sleep, and Nathan has gone home to get cleaned up,” Dave explained.

I turned to Lucas. “Make sure you say thanks to your dad for saving her.”

“Will do.”

I heard the faint sound of a toilet flushing, then a minute later, the bathroom door opened. Georgia stopped short when she saw that Aiden and I were there. “Right, then,” she said, wiping her hands on her dress. “If you don’t need me for anything else, I think I’ll get going.”

“No, come on, stay,” Anna said, patting the seat beside her.

Her eyes flickered towards Aiden and me, then back to Anna. “Thanks anyway, but I’m a bit tired. I think I’ll go home and go to bed.”

“Bullshit,” Lucas said, coughing into his hand.

Georgia blurred as she rushed at her brother, stopping behind him. She wacked him over the back of his head with her hand. “Jerk,” she said, then disappeared and didn’t come back. Even at the worst of times, they were at each other’s throats. And once again, I was glad that I was an only child… but then there was Gemma. What was she to me? I guess she would be like a stepsister. I wasn’t really sure I wanted one.

Aiden nudged my thigh with his. “What were you thinking about?”

I shook my head quickly, trying to clear my thoughts. “Nothing really. I was just thinking about everything that’s happened tonight.”
“And everything Mum told me about how she met my father and how she ended up with a life over in the US,”
I said for his ears only. I wasn’t quite ready to share that part of my life with everyone in the room. We had more important things to be talking about.

“I’m guessing no one found anything in the room we found Mrs. Grey in?” I asked Anna and Dave.

Dave slouched against the lounge and put one foot up on the coffee table in front of him. “No. He’s too smart for that.”

“Of course he is,” I muttered under my breath. “How are we supposed to stop someone who is invisible? All we know is what my mum knew of him eighteen years ago.”

“Does she know anything useful?” Chelsea asked.

“Nope. She’s been trying to find a way to stop him all those years, and she still can’t. So what hope do we have?”

Aiden leaned into me. “We can’t give up hope.”

“He’s going to slip up one of these days,” Anna said, being her optimistic self once again.

I strained a laugh. “I don’t see that happening anytime soon.”

“Or you’ll just suddenly be able to do some more freaky crap, and the tables will turn,”
Aiden said.

I hated to admit it, but that was a more likely possibility than my father slipping up.

“We better get going,” Chelsea said to Lucas.

“Huh? Where are you going?” I asked.

“Um…” Chelsea paused as she looked at Lucas. “They’ll be changing Mum’s bandages soon, and Lucas said he will come with me, instead. You know, just to give you guys a break.”