Within These Walls (35 page)

THE MINUTES TICKED by as I sat in my office, staring at the computer screen.

Things were far worse than Roman had let on.

Financially, the family was still well off, thanks to the mastermind who had been my grandfather, but the company was failing.

If I hadn’t come back when I had, layoffs would have been imminent. Even still, I would need to be pretty damn creative to keep people in their current jobs.

My eyes drifted up to the clock again and then back down to my phone.

Five minutes.

I tapped my pen against the glass desk, silently waiting, as the last few minutes wasted away, knowing I wouldn’t get shit done until my phone lit up.

Seven o’clock on the dot, Marcus’s name flashed across my screen.

I immediately picked it up and answered, “Hey.”

“Hey, J-Man.”

“How is she today?” I asked.

I could almost hear the smile through the phone line.

“You’re like a broken record.”

“Marcus.”

“Okay, damn. She’s okay. She’s finally eating. Grace and Molly have been staying with her around the clock, and she’s slowly returning to the land of the living.”

“It’s been three weeks.”

“Yeah, I understand, but you left her—in the middle of the night. How did you expect her to react?”

Leaning back in my ridiculously overpriced leather chair, I pinched the bridge of my nose. “When are you going to tell her?”

“Tomorrow. I’m going over there for dinner, and Molly is going to announce that she sent in the appeal, and it went through.”

“Think Lailah will believe her?”

“I don’t know, but that’s why I’ll be there. I’ll help back it up.”

“Good.”

“She’s not happy,” he confessed, his voice sounded tired and full of regret.

“That makes two of us. But I’d rather have her hate me and live a long, healthy life than have her love me and die tomorrow, knowing I could have done something to stop it.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing, Jude,” he stressed.

I ignored his comment entirely. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing anymore.

“You have the money. Make it happen. I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” I said before ending the call and tossing the phone onto the desk.

“You know, when you asked for immediate access to your bank accounts, I didn’t think twice about it,” my brother said as he entered the office. Hands in his pockets, he leisurely walked to my desk and took a seat in front of me. “Rich kid on the streets for several years? I just figured you’d had enough. But now, I wonder, what did you need all that money for, Jude?”

“None of your fucking business,” I answered, rising from my chair.

His eyes wandered up my exposed forearms where the dark ink of my tattoos showed. “All right, but it will be my business if it turns into something illegal.”

Bending down, I placed my hands on the desk in front of me, so I could meet his smug stare. “Like you’re one to talk, jackass.”

He flew out of his chair, and his face came inches from me. “Don’t you dare judge me, Jude. You weren’t here. You left me with a fucking loon of a father and a board who thought I was a moron. Well, it turns out, they’re right. I’m good for one thing—public relations. Put me on a magazine, shove me in front of a camera, and I’m golden. But ask me to run a company, and this is what you get—absolute shit. So, congratulations, brother. I hope you enjoyed your extended vacation, pretending to be a commoner in California. This is your goddamn fault. Have fun cleaning it up.”

I jumped over the desk, and my fist went flying, punching him hard across the cheekbone. He went flying. “You have no fucking clue what I’ve been through, what I gave up to be here!” I roared, pinning him down to the floor.

His lip was bleeding, and his eyes were fuming with hostility. “Seems we have a lot to learn about each other then,” he hissed.

I pushed away from him, and I paced around the room. “Just get the hell out of my office—and leave me alone.”

Wiping the blood from his lip with his collar, he got up and walked to the door and stopped. “You know, if this is going to work, we’re going to have to work together. You might be smart, Jude, but you don’t know shit about the public side of this company. As far as anyone knows, you’ve been in a cave for the past three years, and they’re all dying to know why. We’ve got to give them something.”

“I’m sure you’ll figure something out,” I sneered.

And I’d be damned if he didn’t.

I woke up the next morning to see my face plastered all over national news.

“Next up, Jude Cavanaugh’s tortured past. We have an inside look at how losing his fiancée turned this young man into a recluse.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I muttered, throwing the remote across the room.

I got out of bed and maneuvered around the untouched boxes toward the kitchen. Since arriving in New York weeks ago, I’d been staying in this furnished upscale apartment that Roman had found for me, and I still hadn’t unpacked a single box.

Moving in would make it too real, too permanent, and I was having difficulties coming to grips with my new reality. It was the reason I counted down the minutes each day until Marcus called to check in, and it was the reason I still hadn’t visited my parents after being home for three weeks.

Dressed in loose-fitting pajama bottoms, I made my way into the sleek, modern kitchen, shaking my head at the size of it. Why Roman had thought I needed all this was beyond me. He always had been over the top. His own apartment was twice this size and three floors up. We were practically roommates.

I started a cup of coffee and walked briskly over to the door where the weekend paper had been delivered. For three years, I’d lived virtually off the grid, and now, I couldn’t go five minutes without turning on the news or picking up the newspaper.

I made a quick breakfast, grabbed my coffee and paper, and sat down at the table, prepared to read all about me and whatever clever story my brother had managed to whip up overnight. Flipping through, my fingers tabbed the crisp pages, and I had the briefest flash of Lailah lying in her hospital bed, reading one of her worn paperbacks, her fingers thumbing the frayed edges. She loved books, real books, just like I loved real newspapers. Something about the smell and feel of the words right in front of you was irreplaceable.

Like her.

My chest ached from that one tiny memory, and I no longer cared about what the paper said. Roman could do what he wanted—paint me as the poor, grieving broken man—but it wouldn’t change anything.

I was here, and she wasn’t.

I might have been that broken man after Megan had died, but Lailah had saved me, and now, I was saving her—by being here.

Food forgotten, I cleaned off my plate and walked up to a lone box standing in the corner of the vast living room. Taking a deep breath, I cut it open with a knife and slowly began the process of coming to terms with my new reality.

Breaking down the last of the boxes, I folded and hung the few clothes I had side by side, next to the closetful of suits my brother had had waiting for me upon my arrival. How he’d gotten my measurements I’d never know.

Seeing my old clothes stacked up next to my new ones was odd. My ratty old T-shirts, worn and faded with years of use, were next to priceless suits from top-of-the-line designers. As I stood there in my towel, readying myself for my first visit to my parents’ house in over three years, it was like looking at two halves of myself—the old and the new.

But which was old? And which was new?

My entire life, I had been raised for one thing—the family business.

You are this company’s future
, my father would tell me as I traipsed behind him as a young boy.

It had been what I wanted, what I was good at, until the pressure got to be more than I could handle.

My three years in the hospital had taught me that I could be more than what I had simply been raised to be.

Now the question was, could I be both? Do I even want to be?

Looking at the closet again, I reached out and grabbed the nicest T-shirt I could find, deciding to bench the internal debate for another day. I had a family reunion to attend.

For as long as I could remember, our time growing up had been split between Manhattan and what my parents would describe as the country. For most of the year, my father had lived and breathed work, and during those times, which always seemed to coincide with school, we would live in the city. Although my father had been absent much of this time, my mother had been very atypical of our high-society lifestyle, and she’d immersed herself in the lives of my brother and me. When I hadn’t been with a tutor or the occasional nanny, I had been with her. Growing up in a place like New York could be stressful on a shy kid, but she’d made it like a game, a giant mystery the three of us were employed to solve.

During the summer, however, when my father had taken much-needed vacation time, we’d be whisked away to the summer home upstate. It was there, in the country as my parents had called it, that I’d found my real childhood home. Far away from the noise and chaos of city life, everything had moved at a slower pace out there. Even my father’s relentless drive had lessened in that house. I’d see him go on evening walks with my mother, pick roses for her in the garden, and laugh with her while they sipped lemonade.

As I drove out of the city that Saturday afternoon, heading down the winding roads toward the house my grandfather had built and passed down to our family, I realized I’d never get to bring Lailah here. I’d never walk her through the gardens my parents loved or pick roses for her like my father once had for my mother. It was the first time I doubted my decision.

Two long lives without each other—is it worth it?

Turning off the road, I drove down the tree-lined driveway until I came to the main gate. Hoping my security code hadn’t been voided, I entered the six-digit combination and waited. The click of the gate had me lurching forward again. Apparently, they had retained some hope after all.

After entering the gate, the view was still as breathtaking as I remembered. Intricately laid bricks made a circular path down the palatial estate of my childhood memories. It still reminded me more of a castle than a house, but as a kid playing hide-and-seek in the cupboards and hallways, it hadn’t mattered what it was called as long as I wasn’t the one getting caught. If it weren’t for my mother, I didn’t think I would have gotten those rare moments away from tutors and textbooks.

The front door opened as I pulled up front, and I saw tears leaking from my mother’s eyes as her hands went to her mouth. She’d aged since the last time I saw her. The dark blonde hair she’d always kept perfectly styled was now gray around the edges and cut short. Tiny lines had formed around her green eyes, and she’d traded her designer pantsuits for something a bit more casual.

Rising from the car, I slowly walked the short distance to where she stood.

“My baby boy,” she choked out, lunging into my tight hold.

“I’m so sorry, Mom,” I said, apologizing for everything from being a selfish person to a horrible son.

“You’re here now,” she replied, taking a step back. Her eyes roamed over me. “That’s all that matters. Let’s go inside, shall we?”

Her arm still linked in mine, I followed her through the double doors, taking a deep breath as I entered. There was always a faint smell of lemons and fresh flowers in the entryway. As the smell hit my senses, I couldn’t help but travel back a ways to long-forgotten summer days when Roman and I would torment the cleaning staff as they had spent hours polishing the ornate wooden banister.

“It hasn’t changed a bit,” I commented, taking a look around at the circular foyer.

A large bright bouquet of flowers sat in the center on an antique table that had been my grandmother’s.

“No, not here,” she said sadly. “But in other places, yes. Your father and I live here permanently now. We sold the penthouse in the city two years ago when…”

I nodded, not needing further explanation. Roman had already filled me in on the physical demise of my once formidable father. Early signs of dementia had set in a few months after the accident, and my mother had made the decision to relocate to the country, tucking him away from the board. It must have been obvious to the investors that my father wasn’t well, but Roman had believed that the board held out hope I’d return and take over instead of my brother.

“I missed you,” she said.

We took a seat in the grand living room together.

“I know. I missed you, too. I just had to…I couldn’t come back.”

“You don’t owe me an explanation, Jude. I can’t begin to understand what you went through when Megan died. It hurts me that you didn’t come to me. It does, but I will never hold that against you. A heart does what it needs to in order to heal. Please tell me you’ve allowed yourself to do so?”

“Yes,” I answered. “I was finally able to say good-bye.”

She took my hand in hers. They felt softer, thinner than I remembered.

“Then, why do you look so destroyed?”

“It’s a long story.”

“No story is ever too long for a mother to hear.” She smiled.

I didn’t know where to start, so I started at the very beginning. I told her about the accident and losing Megan—how I’d never gotten to say good-bye and the pain I’d caused by forcing her parents out of the organ donations.

“They didn’t reconsider after she passed?” she asked.

“No,” I replied. “Megan’s mother was so broken by her death. I don’t think either of them had anything left to give at that point.”

I told her about my work in the hospital, about moving up and obtaining my license. She actually smiled and seemed proud.

And then, I told her about Lailah.

I told her about the way Lailah lit up a room, how she babbled when she was nervous, and that she had the most amazing heart—the most amazing broken heart of anyone I’d ever known.

“She’s dying,” I managed to say.

I went on to explain, detailing our late-night pudding conversations and how I’d discovered I was the reason she’d missed out on her first transplant.