“How can you be so nice to me? I didn’t drive him home that night—”
“We’re not going through this again, Jenna,” she said, switching to English with a stern tone. “You spent two years utterly depressed, crippled by your guilt. I don’t blame you, because it was not your fault. It happened. You went home early. He got another ride…”
Her voice faded out in a sob. That sob stabbed me to the core. I squeezed my eyes shut and buried my face in my hands, but Helena pulled them away just as quickly.
“Stop hiding. Stop running away. Listen to me!” She squeezed my hands. “You are like my own daughter. You know that. I tell you all the time. The only thing worse than losing Braco would be to lose you, too.”
“But—”
“No but. You get up. You wash your face and you go to this man. You tell him how you feel, all right? You tell him you love him and want to be with him. Be brave, Janja. It takes courage to get through this life, because if you aren’t brave, then life and circumstances will grind you up into dust.”
Be brave, Janja.
My breath stung in my lungs and tears clogged my throat. My eyes were so impossibly sore, yet tears continued to pour out. I had no idea where they were coming from.
I shook my head. “I’m so scared.”
She stroked my hair. “We all are. Every day we are here, we never know what is going to happen. But life is meant to be lived. Do you think if I had the choice that I would choose to go back in time and not have a son, just so I could avoid the pain of losing him? No. Never. I carried that baby and raised him and held him in my arms and kissed him and loved him. And I remember the wonderful boy that he was. Yes, I think about the amazing man he would have become, but I’m grateful for every day that he was on this earth. I’ll never regret it. And you shouldn’t, either.”
I rubbed my eyes, hearing the truth in her words, and suddenly an inexplicable calm settled on my shoulders. The soreness and grief were still there, but there was comfort, too. There was love. The love I felt for Helena. The gratitude for having her in my life.
And she was right. If I had the choice, I’d go back and relive everything again. I’d be more than grateful for the time I had with Brock. The memories. My relationship with his amazing parents. All of it. No regrets.
No regrets.
Helena must have sensed the change in me because she just stroked my hair and spoke comforting words in our native language. Soon, my head was on her shoulder and she was singing an old folk song that my mama used to sing when I was little.
I was exhausted and depleted, but also fraught with worry about William. After ten minutes of silence, I slowly rose from the bed and went to my dresser to retrieve my phone.
When it bloomed to life, there was a stack of text messages and notifications of missed calls. Shit. Everyone was probably sick with worry about me while I was off having my pity party. When I should have been there for William…
Just as I was about to open my text-messaging app, the doorbell rang. I took a deep breath, and Helena rose from the bed, grabbed my hand and said, “Let’s go see who it is, okay? And then after that, you’ll speak to your young man. I hope I will meet him soon. In fact, I expect to meet him soon.”
Nodding, I wiped my face one last time with a tissue. Helena opened the door and together we walked into my front room. There, Alex stood talking with Adam, Mia, and a somber and dazed-looking William, whose head was heavily bandaged.
Joy infused the blood pumping through every vein the minute I laid eyes on him. I couldn’t suppress the goofy smile or the warm, overpowering relief I felt when I saw that he was okay.
I rushed to William, stopping myself just before taking him into my arms when I noticed him visibly stiffen. “Wil,” I breathed.
His jaw tensed and he stepped away from me, then held out a familiar lacquered box. My tiara. But the expression on his face was glacial. That brought me up short, and I stared at him over the box instead of taking what he offered me. His eyes dropped to the floor.
And the tension…you couldn’t have broken through it with a jackhammer. Adam and Mia shared a long look. Then she turned to William, placing a hand on his shoulder, which he promptly shrugged off. “Uh, Adam and I are going to wait for you outside by the stairwell.” She threw a significant glance at Alex.
“Oh, yeah…Mia, I have to talk to you two about something. I’ll go too.”
The three of them filed out. Beside me, Helena put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed it before following the others, gently closing the door behind her.
The minute it closed, William spoke in a monotone even flatter than normal. “I came to deliver this to you. I won the duel and I am giving you the tiara, as promised.” He thrust the box toward me again. This time, I took it from him, flipping it open to make sure the tiara was inside and then setting it aside on a nearby table.
“Thank you. I’m so—”
But he had already turned away and was heading toward the door.
“Wil, wait!” I said and grabbed hold of his arm. He jerked it away like I’d burned him.
My gut twisted in panic. “William! Please. Please let me explain. I’m sorry.”
He hesitated, then slowly turned toward me. “I waited for you. Mia texted you. I called. You didn’t answer. All day I sat there worrying about you. I was in a hospital—I loathe hospitals. That’s a fact you don’t know because you never bothered to get to know me well enough to know that. I had to sit there and go through every stupid test without you. They had to sedate me to get me in that fucking machine to do a scan on my head.”
I gasped, realizing the depth of his anger in the simple use of that curse word. I’d never heard him say it before, and it sounded more venomous coming from him.
I felt like garbage. Less than garbage. And yet all I could choke out was, “I’m so glad you’re all right.”
“You weren’t there for me,” he repeated.
“I know. I’m sorry. I was…” My voice died before I could complete the sentence. I was selfishly freaking out and thinking about myself instead of you.
“Please, William. Can we talk?”
He blinked. “We are talking.”
“You’re mad at me. And you have every right to be. But please, can I explain what happened? I—I freaked out when I saw you go down. There was so much blood. I thought I was going to lose you, and I started to relive losing Brock—”