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The last time she’d taken off, she’d stolen six grand in cash from his safe and went MIA for three months. She didn’t call again until she was in fucking Brooklyn without a car, strung out on god only knew what and crying for his help. He told himself he was just enabling her, but he couldn’t help himself.
Every time this happened, he felt like a goddamn failure.
He wasn’t her parent, but he was as close as she was ever gonna get to a dad. He didn’t really remember the guy his mom had been sleeping with when she got pregnant with Sofia. Only that as her belly got bigger, he stopped coming around. He wasn’t even sure Sofia knew the guy’s name, and it wasn’t like they could ask their mom anymore.
Dei had promised both himself and his mom that he’d do whatever it took to keep her safe, and he thought joining the military was the right thing to do. The Marines offered him pay and education and the promise of a future if he could just tough it out.
And maybe under different circumstances, that would have been the case.
But now he was down two limbs, an eye, most of his dick, and one of his balls. He was living off his salary from Midnight and his VA benefits, which was enough to keep his mortgage paid, the lights on, and food in his belly.
Life could have been a lot worse, but he wasn’t sure it would get any better.
He had more than he was expecting to, though. His recovery had taken the better part of two years, and when he was finally set free to figure shit out on his own, he couldn’t for the life of him figure out how anyone would want him now that his body was a mess.
It didn’t matter what his therapist said or his Zoom support group of guys a lot like him who had moved on with their spouses or even into the dating world. He was struggling to see his own worth.
But it wasn’t just his body. It was also his failed attempt to keep what was left of his family from falling to pieces. And because of that, he didn’t trust the same curse wouldn’t touch the people in Key Largo who were starting to fill all the empty spaces in his life that his mom, grandfather, and sister had left behind.
Jeremiah and the guys from Irons and Works were quickly becoming more than just casual friends, and Dei was already to the point he would die for them. He just wasn’t sure he deserved them.
Especially with his sister’s recent antics sneaking in and ruining their peace.
Dei had been crushing on Felix for a good, long while now, and seeing Felix at his door with his drunk sister had damn near been a bridge too far. Dei wanted to hold him close and feed him soup and tea and beg for forgiveness. But instead of that, he’d just unloaded on him and then walked him home like he was a neighborhood teenager who’d gotten lost.
He felt like a complete ass. He probably should have checked in with him the next morning, but instead, he just…checked out. He took three days off work, put in as much effort as he could to find Sofia, then wallowed facedown on his bed until he was forced to rejoin the living.
Now it was Thursday, and he was sitting in front of the building where his mom would live out the rest of her life, trying to find the courage to go in and pretend like everything was normal.
Dei turned off the engine after twenty full minutes, and he ignored the rush of humid heat as he pocketed his keys, then reached for his cane. His fingers slipped on the handle, and he caught it right before it hit the ground. He had to brace himself on his prosthetic, and he hissed through his teeth when it made contact with the pavement.
His leg was aching something fierce, and he was worried another trip to the VA hospital was in his future. Those days were a lesson in both patience and control because a 9:00 a.m. appointment meant he’d be seen somewhere around noon after dealing with reception over lost paperwork, and ID verification, and all the other shit that came with a busted system.
He was grateful that his therapy and prosthetics were covered and weren’t going to leave him bankrupt like his mom’s care was threatening to, but it still wasn’t something he enjoyed going through. Hell, the madness at the VA made him wonder some days if it wouldn’t be worth it to just plop his ass in his old wheelchair and give up trying.
The thought was almost laughable, though. Dei had never been that kind of guy, and he wasn’t going to start acting up now.
He kept as much weight off his stump as he could manage, making his way to the doors, and he gave the woman at the desk a little wave as he headed for the elevators. His mom was now in full-time care, which was on the third floor. She didn’t leave her room much most days, and last week, the doctors had reduced her meals by half since she wasn’t eating and digesting a lot of it.
He’d been there to see the nurse giving her some sort of chicken broth gelatin that made him want to puke, but he kept it together and tried not to see this whole thing as her careening toward the end. He didn’t want her to be suffering anymore, but he also didn’t quite know how to live in a world she wasn’t in either.
The hallway was silent, so his heavy gait and the click of his cane sounded louder than usual. He hurried up as much as his sore hip would allow, and eventually, he pushed into her room. Dei let out a small breath of relief when he spotted her by the window, sitting up in a chair with a sketch pad on her lap and a box of crayons on the table beside her.
She was scribbling a brick-red one over a blank page, and she didn’t look up when he grabbed a chair and sank into it.
Dei took his time looking at her—at the way her hair was mostly grey now, though there were still streaks of midnight black in her coarse curls. Her hands were skeletal—all the fat gone—and her skin was thin and broken in some places.
Then she looked up at him with her big brown eyes, and for just a second, he caught a glimpse of the mom who had worked her ass off for so long to try and take care of them.
“Hey, Momma.”
She blinked at him, then dropped the red crayon on the floor and reached for a yellow one. Dei stared at it, then bent over and plucked it off the ground, sliding it back into the box. Before he could sit all the way back, she made a growling noise and slapped the crayons, sending them flying across the room.
“You know that’s a pain in the ass for me to pick up,” he told her. He gripped the arm of the chair and attempted to stand, but his hip gave out, and he dropped back down. He was more than willing to accept who he was in the body he now occupied, but there were days he missed being able to function with ease. “Your nurse isn’t going to like that very much either.”
She just blinked at him, then began to color with the yellow crayon. He had a feeling she was going to get pissed once she realized she couldn’t grab the other colors, so he used the tip of his cane to roll a few closer to his chair. He set them on the table and held his breath, but she left them alone.
“I don’t know if karma’s the right word for this, but I’m assuming you did this a lot for me and Sofia when we were little.”
