Unforgettable: Always 2 (7 page)

But, as I was discovering with every second that passed since I stepped from the plane in LA, the Amanda I was currently looking at was not the Amanda I’d known. Perhaps she’d never
been
that Amanda. Perhaps
that
Amanda had been a product of my idolization.

Before I could respond to her unexpected declaration, she pushed herself to her feet and crossed into the kitchen. I watched her snag a tissue from a box on the counter. Watched her wipe her eyes with it.

Feeling like I’d been thrust back into a vacuum where everything pressed against me, I unfurled to my own feet. “Hey,” I said, walking toward her. “Whatever’s going on, we can work it out. You know that, right? Is it your dad? I can talk to him if it is. Make him see I’m not the dumb jock he thinks I am.” I reached for her hand, attempting to draw her to me.

She shook her head and pulled her fingers free of mine. The eternal optimist that I was couldn’t help but feel bruised.

“Amanda?” I said her name again. “Why are you selfish?”

She slumped against the counter, crossing her arms over her breasts to stare at the air behind my head. “Seeing you, kissing you … it sent me into a tailspin and I … I just wanted a little bit of normalcy for a moment, is all,” she answered. Her voice sounded like dry sandpaper. Its tortured tone sent another lick of unease through me. “It’s been … Ever since …”

She let out a slow breath and turned to look at me. I could see her arms tighten against her chest. “I saw you, Brendon, at the airport, and for a moment I forgot the reason you were here. For a moment, I wanted nothing more than to pretend we were just two young people reconnecting after a stupid breakup. Two people who would spend the day screwing like rabbits and laughing and enjoying being together. I’d planned to tell you why I asked you here at the airport. If nothing else, I want you to remember that. I’d planned to tell you then. Before we kissed, before we made out in the shower … before Chase came along and told you about Tanner … I’d planned to tell you before all of that.”

I swallowed. I don’t know why, but I was having difficulty drawing breath.

“Tell me what?” I frowned, staring at her. “Why am I here, Amanda? Why am I
really
here?”

“It’s time I take you to meet your son, Bren,” she said as an answer.

“
No
.” The word left me on a shout. I can’t remember the last time I’d shouted at someone in anger. Seriously shouted. I shouted at Amanda. One single word, but a shout all the same. I’d had enough. Enough of the confusion. Enough of the frustration.

Frustration. Shit, I didn’t do frustration. It ripped at me. Made me feel weak. Trapped.

Amanda hadn’t wanted to trap me eighteen months ago, but I was trapped now. Not by the existence of our son, but by Amanda herself. By her refusal to be straight with me. To keep whatever the fuck was going on from me.

Jesus.

Jesus, I was … I was …

Dragging a hand through my hair, I fisted it at the back of my head and glared at Amanda. “Tell me what’s going on. In case you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m walking a fine line here. I flew halfway around the world without knowing why, because you asked. I’ve taken the news we have a son well. I’ve rolled with everything you’ve thrown at me so far, but now, I just want to know what you haven’t thrown at me. What you haven’t—”

“I lost him!” Chase charged into the room, color high. “But I found a … oh, he’s back.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. It dawned on me the piercing above her right eyebrow was a tiny little skull and cross-bones. God help the poor sod who one day decided Chase Sinclair was the woman for him. She was going to make his life a living hell. “You came back. So the cab I was following all the way to the airport wasn’t you?”

I shook my head, incapable of finding a word to say. I was close, very close, to losing it. I didn’t know whether to be grateful for Chase’s arrival, or resentful. Like frustration, however, resentment wasn’t something I allowed myself to experience.

Chase rolled her eyes and let out a breath. “Great. So a taxi driver out there now thinks he’s got a dragon nut stalking after him. Yay.”

I didn’t say anything. Neither did Amanda.

Chase slid her gaze from me to her sister. “Did I interrupt something?”

“I was …” Amanda muttered. “I was just about to tell Brendon where Tanner is. It’s time we went to see him, for Brendon to meet him.”

“What?” Chase turned her right ear towards Amanda, thrusting her head out in a melodramatic way. “I can’t hear you. I’m deaf, remember?”

“Chase,” Amanda snapped.

She held up her hands. “Okay, okay. Just trying to cut the tension here. You two need to start acting like grown-ups. There’s such a thing as words, you know. You should both use them. I hear they’re quite useful at times.”

“Chase.”

The hands went up again, this time with an exasperation I was feeling myself. “Oh for fuck’s sake, can we all just get in the car?
I’ll
drive. We’re going to get stuck in traffic if we don’t go soon, and you drive way too slow.”

I let out a tight breath.

“Before we do …” Amanda walked into the kitchen to a tall wooden cupboard, opened the door and withdrew something from it.

I could see what it was before she crossed to where I stood. My heart thumped faster. Harder. Tried to punch its way from my throat.

She stopped directly in front of me, gaze locked on my face. “This,” she extended her hand toward me, “is Tanner.”

I stared at the photo in her fingers.

“
This
is Tanner,” she repeated. I didn’t miss the emphasis on the word “this”. But I didn’t understand it either.

Pulse pounding in my ears faster than it should, I took the photo from her and studied it. A toddler grinned up at me, devilish mischief dancing in blue eyes so like my own I could never question his parentage. A tuft of thick blond hair – again, the same color as mine – sprouted from the top of his head, shaped into a short, spiky Mohawk. In his right hand was a bright yellow Transformer toy. In his left, an apple half munched on by baby teeth. He was wearing a bottle-green T-shirt with the words
Try and Stop Me
across the chest and a pair of shorts that showed off his chubby legs and knees. His feet were muddy. At those muddy feet a puppy sat – a black and white scruffy mutt with no discernible breed – just as muddy as he was.

I stared at the photo. At my son. Drank in the sight of him. The obvious joy he was feeling at the moment he’d been immortalized by the camera.

A tight band wrapped around my chest and squeezed. It stole my breath. My throat thickened. My head throbbed. My son. I was looking at my son.

It was like looking at a photo of myself when I was that age. And yet, I could see Amanda in Tanner as well. In the shape of his jaw. In his eyebrows. My eyebrows are arched and bushy. Tanner’s fair eyebrows mimicked Amanda’s – straight blond horizontal lines above his blue eyes.

Those eyes held mine to the photo. Kept me prisoner. I couldn’t look up from it, not even when I heard someone move to stand beside me.

“He’s a cheeky little imp,” Chase said, her shoulder brushing my arm as she looked at the photo. “I remember the day that was taken. He’d just finished hitting Robby over the head with Bumblebee and thought he was all sorts of clever and awesome.”

“Who’s Robby?” I murmured, incapable of lifting my attention from Tanner.

If Chase heard my distracted question, she didn’t answer. It’s possible she didn’t. She was standing on my right, and Chase’s hearing is at its worst on her left.

To be honest, I didn’t give a rat’s arse who Robby was. Not at that second. I was completely preoccupied with Tanner. A rush of sheer happiness crashed over me. I smiled at the photo, all too aware my eyes were prickling with wet heat. He was gorgeous.

I know
gorgeous
is not a word guys tend to use unless they’re describing a hot chick, but he was. Gorgeous and full of life and fun. I could see it. There, in that photo.

My son.

Silence stretched in the room. It took more effort to raise my focus from that photo than it did to bench-press 136 kilograms. Chase and Amanda were both watching me.

“What’s going on?” I asked. A tickle in my brain said I was missing something very important. Something … “Why isn’t there any sign of him here?” That tickle turned to a cold finger, pressing at my heart. The hair on my scalp crawled. “Doesn’t he live here? Where is he?”

Adopted. She adopted him out. Why else wouldn’t he be here? With his mother?

The thought slammed me hard. I frowned, staring at Amanda’s face.

“Where is he, Amanda? Why do we have to drive to see him? Who does he live with?” Another thought popped into my head, a brittle connection to a possibility I didn’t want to ponder. “Who’s Robby? What’s he to my son?”

“Brendon,” Chase began, her voice louder than it should have been in the small room. So it wasn’t just me stressed then? For some fucked-up reason that made me feel better. But not by much.

“No, Chase.” Amanda stopped her with a hand on her arm. “I got this. I should have got this months ago. Eighteen months ago. Then Bren wouldn’t be looking at us, at me, like I was … like … ah, fuck, Bren.”

She closed her eyes and stood motionless, save for her fingers pinching at her thumbnail again. She stood there, silent, before opening her eyes again and meeting my gaze with an unwavering, unreadable stare.

“Tanner has Philadelphia chromosome-positive leukemia, Brendon,” she said, her voice calm and yet at the same time hollow. Broken. “He was diagnosed last month. Unless he has a successful bone marrow transfer as soon as possible, the doctors have given him six months to live. Maybe less.” She stopped and drew a slow breath. “It’s rare for the parents to be a match, but
sometimes
they are, and the first ones tested are family and siblings. That’s why I contacted you,” she continued. “That’s why you’re here.”

I blinked, looking at her, trying to comprehend the words that had come out of her mouth. I must have misunderstood. I must have …

My brain caught up in the space of a heartbeat. Caught up and rebelled against what it had heard.

Leukemia.

Cancer.

I blinked again, staring at her. “Are you serious?” My voice was little more than a rough breath. It was the most ridiculous question I’ve ever asked in my life.

In my twenty-five years of living.

Living.

Six months to live …

A tear tracked a path down Amanda’s right cheek. She nodded, a strange hiccupping action of her head. Her eyes however, didn’t move from mine.

My knees crumpled beneath me. They’d been trying to desert me, abandon me, since I’d learned of Tanner’s existence and I’d denied them the victory. But now whatever determination and strength I’d had before was gone. Robbed of me by four words: Philadelphia chromosome-positive leukemia.

I fell onto my arse, hitting the floor with a thud. The room rushed at me, even as the air vanished. I gasped for breath, but none came. My chest turned to a vice; my gut a churning mess. I stared up at Amanda from the floor, my head roaring.

“No,” I said. “No. You can’t do this to me. You can’t call me to the other side of the world, tell me I have a son and then tell me he’s dying. You can’t do that.”

Amanda did that horrible, hiccupping head nod again. A part of me recognized how tormented, how haunted she looked. How drained and beaten. Another part of me saw her as something else: something cold and deceptive. Something I didn’t want to be around.

The rest of me … the rest of me …

I shook my head, teeth clenched, and tore my eyes from the woman in front of me, fixing them instead on the photo in my hand. Tanner grinned up at me, thrumming with life and energy and playful joy.

“Bren …” Amanda’s choked voice filled the silence. “I had no choice, don’t you see? I’m desperate.
We’re
desperate. It’s not just Tanner who needs you, it’s me as well. I need you.”

“You can’t do that,” I growled from the floor. My eyes felt full of burning sand. The image of Tanner blurred. “You
can’t
do that.”

“But she
did
, Brendon,” Chase said. “As fucked up as it is, she did. And now it’s time to step up and show us what you’re going to do about it.”

When I was eight years old and in awe of my older brother, Ben – who could do an ollie on a skateboard
without
falling off even once, already had his green belt in taekwondo and was allowed to stay at home alone when Mum needed to race to the shops to buy milk – I got into a fight at school.

A new kid, Gregory Blake, had joined my class a month earlier. He’d moved from the big city and was having difficulty with the playground dynamics of our small country school. Gregory was shy, a little wimpy, and wore glasses. I was tall for my age and already stronger than most boys in my year, let alone boys in the years above me. I was also playing football twice a week, for both the school and the local youth club. In other words, I was not only a tough bastard physically, but a school hero. (Our school was all about footy. Soccer players were shunned for reasons I still don’t understand.) Gregory Blake decided, in his first week at school, that I was his best friend.

He followed me around like a puppy, and bought stuff for me from the school canteen. I’d only have to mention I’d like a packet of chips and he’d be at my side a few minutes later with them. It took me quite a while to realize, I’m ashamed to say, that he wouldn’t spend his lunch money on his own food in case I casually mentioned I wanted something.

Gregory’s parents were rich. Not more-money-than-God rich, but better off than anyone else’s parents at our school. But Gregory’s parents rarely did anything with their son. They didn’t come to any school events, nor wait for him to finish class inside the school grounds, like the other parents. It wasn’t until years later, when I was old enough to truly ponder Gregory’s behavior, that it dawned on me he was lonely.

Because I’ve never been a horrible kid, I never told him to go away. My other friends – friends I’d had since kindergarten – thought he was annoying. I just shrugged and let him tag along.

He skimmed the surface of my daily radar, filled the hole in my stomach whenever the food my mum packed wasn’t enough, and occasionally said something funny enough to make us laugh about the other boys in the playground. Those somethings were most likely so witty they went over our heads, but eight-year-olds are not discerning in their humor. When Gregory said Richie Gribble was a “mouth-breathing knuckle dragger” we all laughed ourselves silly. My “real” best friend at the time, Lochie Perkins, laughed so much snot came out his nose.

The next day after school, Richie Gribble cornered Gregory outside the sports equipment shed and beat the crap out of him. He was found crying and bleeding by the school groundskeeper. He’d pissed his pants, had one of his front teeth broken, and his glasses were nowhere to be seen.

He never came back to school.

The kids didn’t know what had happened until the day after the fight. No one knew where Gregory went. He never contacted anyone at school to let us know.

I found out what Richie had done halfway through our afternoon art lesson, when Lochie leaned over and confessed
he’d
told Richie at footy practice what Gregory had said about him. I remember looking at Lochie like I didn’t know him. Like he was a stranger. I’d slept at his house more than once. We’d shared our lunches since we were five. I knew everything about Lochie, about how he was going to be a racing car driver when he grew up, how he didn’t like when his big sister walked around the house in just her underwear, and how his doodle sometimes got hard when she did, which made him feel weird.

Lochie was no friend of Richie Gribble, nor was he a dobber. And yet, here was my best friend fessing up to the fact he’d told Richie what Gregory had said about him even though we
both
knew Richie would hurt Gregory because of it.

Why?

When I asked Lochie that very question, he shrugged. “Dunno.”

That afternoon – outside the same sports equipment shed where he’d beaten Gregory – I turned Richie’s nose to a mushy, bloody pulp. Knocked him on his arse.

That night, as Mum sat beside me on my bedroom floor, her hand resting gently on my back, disappointment on her face, I understood something far beyond my eight years: I wasn’t just angry at Richie for beating up Gregory. I was angry at Lochie as well. I’d taken my disappointment with my best friend out on the school bully, and while my big brother crowed about it the next day, and told everyone he was proud of me for sticking up for a friend, my disillusionment with Lochie tainted the joy I felt at Ben’s approval.

Lochie had betrayed the trust of someone who’d been “with us”. Sure, Gregory hadn’t ever been to either of our houses, but he’d sat with us at lunch, he’d shared his food. Lochie had eaten more than one Frosty Fruit icy-pole purchased by Gregory. Gregory had been hurt because his trust had been betrayed, and for reasons my eight-year-old brain couldn’t truly fathom, I’d been hurt as well. And that betrayal had made me angry enough to hurt someone in retaliation.

I’d regretted it the moment it happened. The second Richie fell to the ground – blood and snot spreading over his top lip in a disgusting mustache, tears leaking from his eyes, his hands trying to protect his face as he blubbered “No stop I’m sorry I’m sorry” over and over – I regretted it. But I never said sorry to him. And I never had a sleepover at Lochie’s place again.

I need you to understand the significance of this little window into my personality. I may no longer be that eight-year-old boy with blood on his fists and righteous anger in his heart, but I still have the same core values and opinions. And I still – no matter how much I wished otherwise – have the same visceral reaction to my trust being shattered.

And what I’d just learned, what Amanda had just told me?

Yeah, my trust was beyond shattered.

Before I knew what I was doing, I was on my feet, towering over both Chase and Amanda. Furious. I’m a big guy. I’m not called Brendon the Biceps in any kind of ironic way. I’m a big guy with a latent strength beyond the norm, and I was pissed.

Torn apart.

Everything I thought I
knew
about Amanda, every opinion I had …

It wasn’t just that either. In the few hours since discovering I was a dad, I’d ridden an emotional rollercoaster the likes of which I’d never experienced before. I’d ridden that fucking rollercoaster and, in patented Brendon Osborn optimism, saw the best in it. I’d accepted I was a father, I’d accepted my life had irrevocably changed, but I’d moved beyond the loss of holding Tanner as a baby to already placing myself in his life. Running with him, playing with him. Living life large with him.

I’d done that. In a short time, yes, but that was who I was. I’d already gone there, in my mind, in my heart.

And now Amanda was taking that away from me as well. Not just taking it away. Ripping it from me. Tearing it to pieces in front of me. And as ugly as it makes me sound, I couldn’t help but wonder if the only reason I was there was because our son was sick.

Bone marrow.

I’d paid enough attention in my one semester of Human Biology 101 to know
exactly
the significance of the words
bone marrow
when connected to leukemia. The significance was that I wasn’t here to be a father … but a donor.

Amanda hadn’t asked me to come to her, to be in her life, because she missed me. She needed me to come to donate my bone marrow to my dying son.

And yes, she
was
correct: the chances of a parent being a match were rare, but still there. I knew that from my studies as well. Amanda must have been beyond desperate to call me after all this time. To reveal to me the secret she’d kept for so long. She’d have to know I’d be angry, hurt. But that fact didn’t assuage my anger. Not at all.

I curled my fist and glared at them both, an empty ache in my chest even as anger continued to spread through me. “I’m assuming you’re not a match?”

She shook her head. I could see she was wracked with grief at the meaning behind that unspoken
no
, but I was too angry to let it stop me.

“You’re not a match, so you call me. You kept the fact I have a son from me for over a year and a half. You decided I wasn’t
important
enough to be in his life, not
significant
enough to be in his life. Until me being in his life is what’s needed to keep him alive.” I swung around to stare at Chase, standing beside her sister, hugging her with one arm. “And
you
ask me what I’m going to do about it? As if I’m the one who’s fucked up?”

Amanda sobbed, her eyes swimming with tears and grief as she stared up at me. My insult was brutal. Harsh. Callous. I knew that. But I was angry. So very angry. And so very hurt. Fuck, I’ve never felt so hurt, so helpless and … and … weak, in my life.

Life. It all came back to life. To living.

“I’ve run out of fucking time, Brendon,” Amanda cried, her face contorted with wretched pain. “This is not how I wanted to tell you. Since the day I found out I was pregnant I’ve tried to work out how to tell you, knowing how much it would change everything. And then when Tanner started to get sick … From the day he was diagnosed I tried to work out how to tell you, but I was scared.” She dragged her hands though her hair. “And now I’ve fucking run out of time and our son is dying and all I know is I need you. Here. I need you here to save him, to save us. I need you, his father.”

I glared at her. “His father. The one who never got to
be
his father until you needed—”

“Hey!” Chase shoved at me, planted her small hands square on my chest and shoved. I staggered back a step and glared at her.

Chase glared back. I could see she was shaking. Trembling. I could see she was scared, facing me down like this, but like Richie all those years ago, she was copping the rage I felt for someone else.

“She fucked up, Osmond.” Chase narrowed her eyes and slid her arm around Amanda’s shoulders again. “She knows that. She’s known that since the day Tanner was born and you weren’t there to hold him. Do you have any fucking clue how many times I’ve watched her holding your son and gazing at him with tears in her eyes, full of regret that she hadn’t told you about him? Do you have any clue how many times Tanner’s fallen asleep in her arms to Amanda telling him about you? About how incredible his daddy is. Huh. Incredible, my ass. You have no idea of many times I found her staring at your picture on her phone, as Tanner slept in her arms. None.”

“Chase …” Amanda whispered. “Don’t … please …”

I doubted Chase heard her. She was either too intent on tearing me a new one, or she
couldn’t
hear her. Whatever the reason, she didn’t turn her sneer from me. “And of course, you have no idea how many hours she’s cried since the doctor told her your son has leukemia, but trust me, she’s cried enough for both of you. And when she knew she had to call you, when she had to face her fear of you hating her, she
still
did it.
She
stepped up. She did what was best for
your
son and called you. So stop acting like a fucking caveman and step up yourself. Step up and show me why she’s never stopped loving you. Step up and—”

“Enough,” Amanda snapped. She gripped her sister’s upper arms. “Enough, Chase.” Her words were clear. Modulated.

Chase shook her head. “I hate this, sis. I hate … He’s dying. My nephew is dying … and all you two care about is your pride? Who did
who
wrong? Do you really think it matters now? Do you really think your pride is going to help the situation? You fucked up, sis.
He
knows that.
You
know that. So get over it. It’s done. It’s time to move forward and get your fucking acts together. Now.”

She shrugged out of Amanda’s hands and ran from the living room.

A part of me wondered how the door didn’t splinter with the force of her slamming it shut behind her. The rest of me still raged. I fixed my eyes on the back of Amanda’s head, waiting for her to turn. To face me. To look at me.

“She really does like you,” she whispered, her shoulders slumping.

The wounded attempt at humor sheared at any control I had left. “I don’t give a fuck,” I snarled. “I’m not here to be liked. I know that now. I’m here to be cut open.”

Amanda slumped further, hunching over herself, head down. Her shoulders shook as a raw sob tore from her. “I’m sorry, Brendon. I’m so sorry. I wish I could tell you how sorry I am.”

“Sorry for what, Amanda? For not telling me about Tanner? Or for ever meeting me in the first place?”

She turned then. Fixed me with a level stare, her shoulders no longer shaking. There was steel in her eyes. “I will
never
be sorry for meeting you. Never. Not even the
you
standing before me now. If I’d never met you, I wouldn’t have Tanner, and he is the most incredible, beautiful, wonderful thing I’ve ever had in my life.”

I drew in a slow breath. The
you
standing before her wasn’t a good one. He was resentful and furious. I recognized that, and yet I couldn’t let it go. It was Richie Gribble and Lochie all over again.

“Now,” she went on, wiping at her cheeks with the back of a shaky hand, “if you can put your hatred of me aside for a while, I’d like to take you to meet your son. If you still want to meet him, that is.” She was trying to be strong, to be fierce. I could see that. I’m ashamed to say, I didn’t care at that point.

I had no clue how she’d imagined this all going – my arrival, my reaction to her news – but I doubt it was facing down a resentful Brendon. Amanda had never seen this kind of emotion in me during our time together. Hardly anyone had seen this emotion in me. The last person was probably Richie Gribble. For her to be standing there now, alone, and facing me down … it took courage. But I couldn’t applaud her for that at the moment. I don’t know if I ever could.

“Tell me honestly, Amanda,” I said. “Do you think I would walk out that door now and
not
go see my son?”

A sigh fell from her. Eyes closing, she slumped, all defiance and bravado gone. “No, I don’t. As much as you hate me, and I don’t blame you for doing so, I know you. I know you won’t do that.”