Finding Purgatory (27 page)

“We could do the co-parenting thing. She would have everything she needs at my place and yours. We’d figure something out so I can work, and you can go to school. And we would date.”

She laughed. She couldn’t help it. She wasn’t laughing at him; it just sounded so weird. “You want us to date?”

There was a smile playing at the edge of his lips. “I’m not saying we would work out. You’re a pain in the ass, Tor. The idea of a forever with you makes me very tired.” He was teasing, but Tori’s smile faltered. She was well aware she was no prize.

“Hey.” Raphe tapped on her chin. “I don’t know what’s going on in that squirrelly brain of yours, but cut it out. You know I love you. I’m still a little pissed off, so I’m not going to be any good at blowing sunshine up your ass.”

She smiled, and he put his hand to her belly. “What I can promise you is no matter what happens between us, I will cherish and protect her forever. I will do whatever’s best for her. Maybe I can’t give her as much as your sister could, but she’ll be happy and loved.”

“Christ. You came up with all of this in the, what, hour you’ve known about her?”

“I don’t know who it is you think you’re talking to. You think I believed you were with someone else? I know you better than that.” He bumped the underside of her chin with his forefinger. “You love me.” His look softened, and Tori knew he was going to kiss her.

She shot off the bed.

“Tori, you—”

“Yeah, I heard you the first time.” Tori had reached her limit of being patronized. She stepped a few feet away. “I can have it all. Forgive my sister. Let her make up fifteen years of abandonment by buying me a future. I could come home to you and our baby. I could have everything, and maybe that’s your idea of heaven, but that’s all nonsense. What if that’s not what I want? I don’t believe in heaven.”

Raphe raised an eyebrow at her. “You could have just told me I was making you uncomfortable.”

Tori flushed.

“It’s not heaven, you know,” he said. “I think life is finding a middle ground between perfect happiness, which I agree doesn’t exist, and all the crap. Finding purgatory.”

She snorted. “Purgatory.”

“You think I’m painting you a story of hearts and rainbows? If you did decide to stay with us, with me, your sister, and the baby, it’s not going to be easy. But nothing is. Would it be easier for you to leave us? Be by yourself with nowhere to go? You stay here, and we’re going to have some really bad days. I think the choice is whether you’re going to throw in some really good days while we’re at it.”

Tori rubbed the back of her neck. “I came back, didn’t I? I came back to tell you the truth.”

“Did you come back to stay?”

“I don’t know.”

At some point, she was going to have to accept a few truths. Ani would always be her sister. Raphe would always be the father of her child, and even if she chose never to see the little girl, the baby couldn’t be erased. This was her life, better or worse.

Her head was heavy. “Can I stay with you? Here. Tonight, I mean,” she asked her shoes.

“Will you call your sister and tell her you’re okay? Or at least text.”

She huffed out a laugh and dragged her cell phone out. “Yeah, I can do that.”

He kissed her forehead. “Yes. You can stay tonight.”

Chapter 27: Turning Page

“D
o you know how many degrees exist? This is crazy. I swear, if I find a degree in underwater basket weaving, I’m going after that one just for shits and giggles.”

Ani tamped down the urge to smile. “Checking out universities?”

The last month with Tori had been very different. She was still spiky, easily irritated, and exasperating as ever, but she no longer looked like a wild animal about to bolt. She didn’t talk about moving out of Ani’s house. The week before, Ani had gone into her room to leave folded laundry and saw Tori had hung a picture of the group trip to Disneyland. It was the first thing that personalized the otherwise nondescript room.

And now she was looking at schools.

Tori leaned back on the couch, hands folded over her enormous stomach. “I was just looking at degrees. How am I supposed to know what any of that crap means? I don’t know what I want to do.”

“It’s not like you have to decide on a degree up front. Everyone has to take the same general education courses. That’s usually about two full years of classes if you go full time.” Ani chuckled. “Life can be a crapshoot when it comes to choices like that. Most people don’t end up using the degree they studied for anyway.”

“Did you always know what you wanted to do?”

Tori almost never asked Ani about her past unless it had something to do with their parents. “Not really. I had this vision in my head of wearing power suits and having a huge office that overlooked the city. All I knew was I wanted to walk around an office like I owned the place and have people working under me.”

“I guess you got what you wanted.”

“If it’s any consolation, I think I’m in the same boat.” Ani tapped her forefinger against her lips in thought.

“What do you mean?”

Ani almost dismissed the conversation, but work with her therapist had helped her understand it was important to talk about these things with the people in her life. “Being a successful, self-made business woman used to give me satisfaction, but it doesn’t anymore. I’ve been thinking of making a career change, potentially going back to school, but I have no idea what I’d want to do.”

“Really?”

Tori sounded as incredulous as Ani felt. Though she’d been thinking around the edges of this idea, it was the first time she said it out loud. It seemed much more real and a little frightening.

“I’m very lucky not to have to worry about making ends meet. Doing what I do is lucrative, but I’ve never been passionate about it.”

“Maybe you should enroll in the spring semester instead of me.”

“Maybe we can both enroll.”

Tori scowled, but there was no heat behind the look. Then her features pinched, and she gasped.

“Tori?”

Her sister held one hand out in a stopping motion. “I’m fine,” she said through gritted teeth. Her other hand went to the apex of her belly and she hunched over.

“Are you having contractions?” Ani ignored her sister’s hand and stepped to her side.

“No. It’s too early.”

“You’re thirty-eight weeks, sweetheart. That’s not too early.”

Tori shook her head a bit frantically and straightened up. “See? It’s gone now. I’m fine.”

“Tori—”

“I’m fine!” She sounded like she was about to panic.

Ani knelt at Tori’s feet and tried to catch her sister’s eyes. “Was that the first one?”

“No.” Tori bit her lip. “But it’s those other contractions. What are they called?”

“Braxton-Hicks?”

“It’s just that.”

“When was the last one you had?”

Tori hesitated. “Ten minutes maybe.”

Ani’s stomach twisted. She gave Tori’s knee a comforting squeeze. “This might be the real thing.”

“No. It’s too early,” she said. “Raphe isn’t here. He needs to be here.”

Raphe had been sent up north for three days of training. He’d hated to go, but Tori had put her foot down, positive at that point that she was going to be pregnant forever. “It’s okay,” Ani said in a soothing tone. “We’ll call him. This might take a while. He can still make it.”

“It’s too early.” Tori’s tone was sharp, but her lower lip trembled, and the only thing Ani saw in her eyes was naked fear.

She perched on the arm of the chair and gathered Tori into her arms. Her sister started to cry. “It’s okay, baby. It’s going to be fine. I’ve got you, and I’m going to be there every second. It’s going to be okay,” she murmured, stroking Tori’s hair. “I won’t leave you. I promise.”

“Agh. Fuck. This kid is trying to kill me.” Tori threw her head back on the scratchy hospital pillow as another contraction loosened its hold on her. She closed her eyes and caught her breath, appreciative of her sister’s hand in hers.

“Fast labor is good, I think. I was in labor for a solid twenty hours with Mara.”

Tori opened her eyes. Ani’s voice hadn’t wavered, but there was a telling tightness at the corners of her eyes. Maybe it was the mood swings—if they’d been bad before, labor had brought a whole new range to Tori’s emotions—but she was so grateful Ani was there, she almost burst into tears. Again. True to her word, Ani hadn’t left her, not even once. She had to be hungry—it had been hours—but she hadn’t complained. She let Tori squeeze the hell out of her hand during the contractions and soothed her fear with soft conversation in between.

Tori sniffled. “Raphe needs to get here. He’s going to miss it.”

“Maybe not.” Ani patted her hand. “His plane is landing in twenty minutes. He might make it yet.”

Tori was worried. And scared. And she just wanted this whole thing to be over, but at the same time, she wasn’t ready.

She was needy for Raphe, and that wasn’t good. She needed to be able to leave the baby with him and take off, free of guilt. For weeks now, her thoughts had gone around in circles, making her dizzy. Irrevocable consequences were a hellish idea.

She was distracted by Ani’s fingers, gentle as she pushed a sweaty strand of hair away from Tori’s face. “Mom and Dad wouldn’t let me cut school to be there when you were born.”

Tori rolled her head to look at her sister. “You were troublesome even then,” Ani said. “Mom went through full labor with you, dilated to ten, and all that. She was in labor for over twelve hours only to have to have a C-section anyway.”

Tori didn’t know whether she wanted to laugh, cry, or beg for surgery. She settled on a strangled laugh that turned into a sigh. “I wish she were here.” It was a ridiculous thing to say. She didn’t remember much about her mother. “It might be nice for her to see karma coming back to bite me.”

Ani’s smile was soft, and she cupped Tori’s cheek. “They would be proud of you, sweetheart.”

Tori was about to answer, but another contraction hit. She reached for Ani and cursed under her breath.

As that contraction faded, there was a knock at the door. “Hey, can I come in?”

Tori groaned when she saw Shane. “What are you still doing here? You’re supposed to get Raphe from the airport.”

“See, that’s the benefit of having a boyfriend. You make him do all the grunt work so you can be where you want to be.”

“Ian’s here?” Ani asked.

“Technically he’s headed for the airport.” Shane gave her an apologetic look. “Indy wanted to be here. She’s out in the waiting room. Ian said he’d keep his distance.”

Whatever Ani might have said died on her lips when Tori gave a short scream, another contraction coming on the heels of the last. After a few seconds, Tori realized this one wasn’t quite the same as the others. Fear and adrenaline were overwritten by an inherent need. She shook her head back and forth. “I need to . . . I want to push.”

Time got fuzzy.

There were urgent voices—Shane, Ani, nurses, her doctor. There was a tremendous amount of pain and a hurricane-force pressure that hit the center of her body. Shane was on her right and Ani on her left, both telling her she was doing great and it was almost over.

And then the seriously pissed off cry of a baby.

There was a flurry of activity as the impossibly tiny being was toweled off. The world had gone out of focus, the sounds around her warping. The only thing she saw was her baby, and the only thing she heard was her hearty cry. And a moment later, all she felt was the slight weight they placed on her chest.

She was slimy and wrinkled and gross, and yet Tori’s breath caught in her throat because the baby was also exquisite. Her fingers trembled as she reached out to touch the little thing. Nine months, all this drama, and Tori still couldn’t believe she was real.

Ani kissed her temple, and Tori remembered the rest of the world existed. “Look at her, Tori. She’s beautiful.”

Tori was whimpering almost as much as the baby.

Another burst of activity and the cord was cut. Tori gave a little cry of protest as the baby was whisked away, but the doctor assured her it was just for a minute. Ani and Shane patted her arms and rubbed her shoulders.

When the nurse returned with the baby, Tori was both desperate to hold her again and scared out of her mind that she was going to do something wrong.

“You got it, honey,” the nurse said in a sing-song voice. She laid the blanketed baby in Tori’s arms. “Just like that. You’re fine.”

Tori watched the baby blink, watched her lips move, and watched her tiny fingers curl.

Fascinated.

Frightened.

“I’m going to tell Indy and see where Raphe is,” Shane said. He squeezed her shoulder. “You done good, kid.”

Tori hardly heard him. She was enraptured by the warm, squirming girl in her arms.

The emotion welling in her was too big, too much. Her body couldn’t possibly withstand the enormity of it. She was going to collapse under its weight. Yet with it came a cloying feeling, a need, a desperation. She couldn’t lose this baby. She couldn’t bear to be without her. In an instant, the idea became abhorrent, and she was terrified the baby was going to be yanked out of her arms.

Tori looked up, finding Ani still beside her. “I want her. Please, can I keep her? Please?”

“Of course. Of course. Shh.” Ani wiped away her tears. “Of course you can keep her. You’re her mother, Tori. She’s yours.”

“But we don’t have anything. I was so stupid. I should have let you set up a nursery.”

“Don’t worry about that. You’re not stupid. I’ll take care of it. I promise.”

For once, Tori let herself believe Ani without second-guessing. Her concentration shifted to the baby.

Her daughter.

Hers.

Two hours later, Tori felt more like herself. Kind of. A painfully uncertain, ultra-protective version of herself, but she wasn’t quite as emotional as she had been.

Raphe stood by the window with his daughter in his arms.

“You sure you’ll be okay?” Ani asked for at least the fifth time.

Tori gave her sister an impatient look. “We’ll be fine. You haven’t eaten or anything.” Ani needed to stretch and sleep and do whatever she had to do to prepare overnight for bringing a newborn baby home.