TYLER (Blake Security Book 2) (5 page)

TYLER

The day of Ariana’s birthday I gave Mom her meds and read to her until she went to sleep. Then I kissed her softly on the forehead and went downstairs to check on the dinner I was making. I had broken the cardinal rule of friendship and begged Brandon to tell his parents he was taking his sister to the city for dinner and to an under eighteen club. I rented a hotel room for Brandon, and my best friend told his mom and dad that he and Ariana were going to stay overnight and drive home the next day. It hadn’t been easy convincing him. Brandon made me swear that I only wanted Ariana to stay over so we could “cuddle” and that I wouldn’t take it any further than that. For the first time in my life, I lied to him. I suspected Brandon knew that I was lying, but it made us both feel better that he didn’t know my real intentions. The other thing that helped was that Brandon had started dating Zoe Augustus a few months before. I knew that they were having sex because Brandon told me. Zoe was a senior like Brandon, and she’d just turned eighteen. A night in the city in a hotel room that he hadn’t had to pay for, as well as a nice dinner I had footed the bill for, and Brandon couldn’t say no. On his way out of town, he dropped Ariana off, and when I opened the front door, Brandon put two fingers to his eyes and pointed them in my direction. I grinned at him and waited until he was gone to pull Ariana into my arms and kiss her deeply.

“Happy birthday, baby.”

She smiled and snuggled into my chest. “Thank you,” she giggled then and said, “You smell like pasta sauce.”

“I made seafood étouffé.”

Ariana pulled back and looked up at my face. “That’s my favorite.”

“I know,” I said, kissing her on the forehead. “You told me the night I took you to New Orleans for dinner.”

“You made it all by yourself?”

“Mostly. I ran back and forth upstairs for tips from my mother.”

Ariana looked impressed, and when I took her hand and led her into the dining room where the table was set and the food was laid out, she suddenly had tears in her eyes. She took in the roses in the vase in the middle of the table, the burning candles, and the wrapped gift box that sat next to her plate and threw her arms around me again. “This is the best birthday ever.”

I pulled her in for another hug and put my lips to her ear and said, “We’re just getting started.”

We sat down and ate, and Ariana sweetly raved about my dinner, which wasn’t really all that good. After dinner was finished, I took the dishes to the kitchen and didn’t let her help. I had a little chocolate cake that I brought back in with two candles burning in the center of it. 

“Oh my God! You made cake, too?”

“I wish I could take credit for it, but unfortunately my culinary skills don’t extend to pastries. I bought it…but it’s the thought that counts, right?”

“I love it, and yes, it is.” I sang happy birthday to her, and she made a wish and blew out the candles. While I cut and served the cake, I teased her and tried to get her to tell me what she wished for. She flushed bright red every time I tried and refused to tell me. That gave me hope that she was wishing for the same thing tonight that I was.

We ate cake, and then I said, “Okay, time to open your gift.” Ariana picked up the little box and shook it. I laughed. “You don’t have to guess what it is.”

“I like to envision it in my head before I open it,” she said with a grin. She started gently pulling it open at the seams, and after several minutes of waiting, I handed her a knife. “Patience,” she said, “I’m savoring it.” I rolled my eyes, but the fact was that I thought she was the cutest thing I’d ever seen. When she finally got the paper off, she pulled the lid off of the white box and sucked in a big breath of air. “Oh my God, Tyler…it’s gorgeous.”

It was a delicate gold cross pendant with a strip of small diamonds that ran down one side of the cross. “Turn it over,” I told her. On the back, the delicate metal had been engraved with both of our initials and the date.

Ariana had tears in her eyes. “Tyler it’s so pretty. I love it so much.” She leaned her face into mine and kissed my lips.

“I’m glad you like it. Here, let me put it on you.” She lifted her hair and turned her back to me. I slipped it over her head and fastened it around her neck. When she turned back around, I picked the cross up with my fingers and stroked it gently before leaning in to kiss her again. “It looks as good on you as I knew it would.”

Our kiss was soft and sweet at first. I could feel the tears on her cheeks as they soaked into my skin. Ariana was the one who pulled me in tighter and deepened the kiss. She parted her lips and invited my tongue in, and I reveled in the fact that she tasted like Ariana and chocolate, my two favorite things.

When we came up for air I said, “So, did you get what you wished for?”

Ariana’s cheeks flushed again, and she smiled and stood up. Taking my hand and urging me to my feet as well she said, “Not yet.” I could see the desire burning in her eyes. I didn’t need to ask her again what she wished for. I took her by the hand and led her upstairs to my bedroom.

When we got there, I closed the door behind us and searched her eyes. “Are you sure?” She pressed her forehead into mine and said, “It’s what I wished for.”

It was what I’d wished for too, for a long time, and it was everything I thought it would be and more. Afterwards, while we lay there in each other’s arms, she whispered, “I love you, Tyler.”

I’d meant to say it first; I’d just gotten so carried away. I hugged her tightly and said, “I love you so damned much, Ariana.” I kissed the side of her face, and she snuggled into me. It wasn’t until she’d fallen asleep that I took off the condom and realized it had broken. I was too on top of the world to worry about it. I was sure it would be fine.

TYLER

              It was a week to the day that Ariana and I had spent the night together. We hadn’t had a chance to make love again since then, but I closed my eyes and relived it every night. Each time I kissed her, I felt closer to her, and I knew that she was the one whom I wanted to spend my life with. She’d been my bright and shining light during the worst storm of my life, and she hadn’t faltered.

              I was in my room getting ready to pick her and Brandon up. We were meeting Sam at the edge of the lake. A bunch of kids from school and some of the men and women from Sam’s college would be there. We were having a bonfire to close out the end of winter and the beginning of spring, not that there was much to that in Louisiana. It was a good enough excuse for a party though.

              I’d just picked up my keys, and I was headed to tell Mom good night when I heard my father’s raised voice. I’d grown accustomed to the sound of it after he was drunk. He was slurring his speech, and his tone sounded almost shocked as I heard him say, “No, you’re crazy! I can’t believe you would ask me that.”

I hated when he talked to my mom like that. I was going to intervene, but I was curious what it was Mom was asking of him.

              “Please, Bobby. The pain is so bad.”

              Dad’s voice softened, and I stopped outside the door and listened. “Oh, baby. Oh God. I’m so sorry, but I can’t. I can’t do that and live with myself.”

              “Even if I’m asking you to, begging you?”

              “Please listen to yourself. You’re asking me to end your life.” My whole body stiffened. What the hell was going on?

              “I’m just asking you to give me a little more pain medication than usual. I’m so tired, Bobby, and it hurts so much…all the time.”

              I knew Dad was crying when I heard him say, “Baby, I can’t. I just can’t!”

Mom was crying too when she said, “Bobby…please…”

              “No!” He screamed that. I flinched at the sound of it and then realized that suddenly I couldn’t breathe. I ran down the stairs and almost ran right into Mom’s nurse.

              “Is everything okay, Mr. Petit?”

              “Yeah,” I said, barely able to talk. “I’m just…I have to go.” I brushed past her and ran outside, gulping in the fresh air as soon as I hit it. Every time I think things couldn’t get worse, they do. I waited until I could breathe normally again before getting in my car and going to pick up Ariana and Brandon. For tonight, there was nothing that I could do about what I’d overheard. I was sure Dad wouldn’t do it.

I found myself wondering as I drove,
“Why didn’t she ask me?”
As soon as that thought ran through my head, a violent shudder ripped through my body. There was no way I could do it. That’s why she didn’t ask me, because she knew.

*****

              Almost as soon as Ariana and Brandon got in the car Brandon asked, “Are you okay?”

              “Yeah, I’m good.” Brandon was in the backseat and Ariana the front. I looked over and smiled at her. She smiled back, but I could tell she was wondering what was wrong, too. I parked the Challenger in the small lot near the river, and we took a bag of marshmallows and a blanket down to where the party was already in full swing. The college crowd had brought a keg, and there was a chick passing out paper cups. Ariana and I both passed, and while Ariana roasted her marshmallows and Brandon bullshitted with Sam and some other guys, I lay back on the blanket and stared into the fire. Ariana stopped what she was doing and laid down next to me after a while and said, “Baby, is there something going on? Is your mom okay?”

              “She’s the same.” I wrapped her up in my arms and held her there under my chin and against my chest for a really long time. The party was going on around us, and several times Sam and Brandon came by to ask if I was okay. I kept insisting that I was, but I was sure that my friends all knew differently. Unfortunately, none of them could possibly know how serious my thoughts were.

*****

              I spent as much time with Mom the following week as I possibly could, even cancelling on Ariana a time or two. My friends all tried to reach out to me and find out what was going on, but I just kept telling them all I was fine. There was no way that I could tell them what I’d heard Mom ask my dad, not even Ariana. I didn’t just think about the words though, I thought about the sound of her voice as she told Dad how bad the pain was and how tired she was of fighting. I couldn’t stop thinking about that and couldn’t stop wondering if keeping her alive was the most selfish thing that we could do.

              I was in the middle of reading her new book to her a week later when she said, “Tyler.”

              I put the book down. “What’s up, Mom?”

              “Baby, I have to ask you a favor.” I felt a pain in my chest. I knew what she wanted, and I didn’t think that I was any more capable of doing it than Dad was.

              “What do you need, Mom?”

              She reached her pale, skinny hand over and put it on my face. I leaned into it. The tears were already forming in my eyes. I was praying that I was wrong and she wasn’t going to ask me. “I need to go, Tyler.”

              “Go where?”

              “Go…you know. It’s too hard for me now. It hurts too much. This is no kind of life. I’m ready to go.”

              I could feel the tears slowly spilling down my cheeks. “Mom, please don’t ask me to help you do that.”

              “I asked your father…but he’s not as strong as you.”

              “Mom, I can’t.”

              “Baby, please! Please help me.”

              I was sobbing then. “I can’t, Mom!”

              She started to say something else when the bedroom door was shoved open. Dad rushed in, smelling like booze as usual. “No! Do not listen to her! She has no idea what she’s asking. The medications have gone to her brain.” I was stunned at first. Dad was yelling at the top of his lungs while Mom lay there in excruciating pain, crying and asking me to end her life. Without thinking it through I put my hand on Dad’s big chest and pushed him out into the hallway.

I shoved him into a wall and said, “Do not yell in front of my mother.”

              Dad reached out and shoved me back into the other wall. “She’s my wife, and this is my house and I’ll fucking do as I please.” That was it for me. That flipped the switch that had already been loose. I grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and shoved him so hard into the wall that the plaster cracked.

              “You don’t get to be the master of the house any longer. You’re a drunk piece of shit, and we don’t need you.” I shoved him into the crack in the wall and stormed out of the house. There was only one person who could calm me down. I needed to see Ariana.

*****

              I picked up Ariana, and we were lying in each other’s arms in an old barn on her father’s property. She knew something was wrong, but I hadn’t told her what. I just told her that I needed her, and she didn’t hesitate to meet me there. Now I was just holding her, not talking. Probably an hour passed before I said anything and when I did it was, “Is it selfish of me to want her to go on living when she’s in so much pain?”

              “It’s human,” she said. “You’re not ready to give her up. She’s your mother. That’s human.”

              “So what if I’m never ready to give her up?”

              “At some point we all have to accept that’s not always up to us. Maybe if you think of it that way, that her pain would finally stop, it won’t be as hard for you to accept when it happens.”

I ran my hand through her soft hair and brushed my lips against the side of her face. “It’s not fair. None of it is fair. It’s only been a year; she was supposed to have two.” I cried as she held me, and it was then that I made the decision that this was something I had to do.

******

              When I got home, I sent the nurse on her dinner break and sat next to Mom’s bed again. She had her eyes closed and her breathing was shallow as it had been since she’d started taking the morphine. It was hard to tell sometimes when she was awake or asleep.

“Mom?” She didn’t answer, but when I took her hand in mine, she opened her eyes slowly. It always seemed to take her several seconds to focus lately. When she did, she offered me a weak smile.

“Hi baby.”

“I’m sorry, Mom. I’m sorry about earlier.”

“It’s okay. I know I’m asking way too much. I would do it myself if I could.”

“Shh, Mom. Don’t say that, I’d never let you do that.” I rested my head next to hers on the pillow. I felt her weakly place her lips against my forehead. I knew that I had to do this for her, but I’d never hated anything so badly in my life. When I finally had the strength to pull my head back up and look at her, I said, “You’re sure, Mom? This is what you want?”

She licked her dry lips. “I can’t stand the pain anymore, Tyler. I’m so sorry.” I brought her hand to my lips and kissed it.

“Don’t be sorry, Mom. Don’t be sorry for anything. All you have ever done is take care of everyone else. It’s time I did something for you.”

I laid her frail hand down gently on the bed and got up and went to the cabinet that held her medications. I took out the vial of morphine and held it in my hand. A chill ran through my body as I realized that I was holding my mother’s departure from this life in my hands. I held both my own pain and the relief of hers. I didn’t want to play God, but since He didn’t seem to be doing his job and Dad had proven himself useless once again, I would be forced to do it for them. I took a syringe down off of one of the shelves. I’d given her the medication many times by injecting it into the port she had in her chest. Her poor veins had been stripped from the chemotherapy long before all of her hair had fallen out and her bald little head still held the tattoos and scars of the thirty radiation treatments she’d had to endure.

I put a needle on the syringe and drew the thick liquid into it. I’d researched for hours the effects of a morphine overdose after the day I heard her ask Dad. I knew she would turn to me next. I wanted to make sure it would be a pain-free death for her if I decided to do it. I’d never imagined that I could go through with it, but the pain in her eyes was tearing me apart.

Once the syringe was full I twisted off the needle and dropped it into the sharps container and walked over next to the bed. Her eyes were closed again. I hoped that she was asleep and that she’d wake up and tell me that she’d changed her mind. I knelt down next to her again with the instrument of death in my hand and slid my free hand back into hers. As if she had heard my thoughts, she fluttered her eyes open and said my name.

“I’m here, Mom.”

She was dying, and in excruciating pain, yet again she managed a smile for me. “Where is the nurse?”

“She’s downstairs. I told her to take her dinner break. She’ll be gone for at least an hour.”

She nodded almost imperceptibly and said, “It’s time, my love. You’ve brought me nothing but joy and pride in my life, and I thank the Lord for giving you to me. You’ve always been the strongest one of us. Your father didn’t mean to leave all of this on you…he just wasn’t built to handle it like you were. Please forgive him, Tyler. Please take care of him.”

“I’m only worried about you right now, Mom.”

She smiled again. “I’m so lucky,” she said with tears in her eyes. “Please help your father move past this. He can’t do it on his own.”

“Mom…”

“Let me finish, honey. You and the family business will be all your father has left when I’m gone. Please help him, Tyler. Please help him rebuild it and please forgive him…don’t leave him alone.” She closed her eyes again, and I could see the evidence of the pain as it clouded her face. When she opened them back up, she said, “I can’t fight anymore, honey. I’m so sorry, but it’s time.”

I gently wiped away the tear that had escaped and was rolling down her cheek. “I know, Mom. I’m sorry that I’ve tried so hard to keep you here when you were hurting so badly. It was selfish, but I just don’t know what I’ll do without you.” I felt my own tears begin to well up, as I leaned forward and kissed her paper-thin cheek. She was a shell of the woman she used to be.

“You’ll be a great man,” she said. “That’s what you’ll do. You’ll make me as proud in death as I was in life.”

“I love you so much, Mom. I couldn’t have asked for a better mother.”

“I love you more,” she said with a little smile. It was what she used to always tell me when I was little. “Good-bye my heart.”

I put the syringe into the tube that came out of her chest and pressed down on the plunger. “Good-bye Mom. I love you.” When the syringe was empty, I pulled it out, put the cap back on her tube, and tucked it underneath her. Then I put the syringe in the same container as the needle and knelt back down by the bed. I laid my head down on the pillow next to her once more and listened to her breathe. The tears ran silently from my eyes as I lay there and her breaths became shallower and long, agonizing seconds stretched out in between them. They were agonizing for me anyways as I waited for her to die. It was less than ten minutes later when she slowly pulled in her last breath. I waited for the exhalation, but it didn’t happen and I knew she was gone. My quiet tears turned into deep, heart-wrenching sobs, as I wrapped her up in my arms and held her for the last time.