Chapter 23: Stephen - Reckless Love

I arrive at the hospital in record time. In the car, I called Datu to find out the police strongly suspect the workers on strike rigged a car to collide with Raul’s side of the vehicle. It’s unclear whether whoever organized it realized that Ava and Landon would also be in the car. Unconscionable if they did.

As I walk through the emergency-room door, Celia Tucker is speaking to a doctor. It’s not a surprise she’s here—she’s actually good in a crisis—but her presence makes it crystal clear that Ava and Landon are in serious condition. She doesn’t get out of her bed in the middle of the night for something minor.

“Stephen,” she says when she spots me. “Your blood type makes you a universal donor, doesn’t it?”

“Does Ava need blood?” Fear lands heavy on my limbs. Datu’s description of how the Santos vehicle spun and then somersaulted several times hadn’t eased any of my worry.

“Landon,” the doctor with Celia says.

My mouth goes dry. If Landon dies, I cannot even imagine the pain Ava would go through.

“None of the immediate family is well enough to donate, so we asked Mrs. Tucker for extended family,” the doctor continues. “No matches so far. We already used the blood we had on site that matched to get him stable, but we may need more when we reassess later.”

“I’m not…” I start to say, but then the timeline that’s been bothering me since I heard about Landon clicks into place. When I stare at Celia, willing her to deny it, she doesn’t break eye contact, just tips her chin higher in defiance. It’s such an Ava move that my heart squeezes in recognition. The stone of truth drops so hard that I want to sit down, but my emergency training tells me there’s no time. “I’m a universal donor,” I admit. “Landon’s blood type is also rare?”

“Yes,” the doctor admits. “You’re willing to donate?”

My brain spins with what Celia hasn’t admitted in words, and I want to ask Celia if Ava knows, if they’ve been lying to me this whole time. Would Ava really have lied to me this whole fucking time? To my face, even when I asked?

“Take me to wherever you need me,” I say to the doctor, and just before I follow him, I turn to Celia and say, “Keeping him from me is a step too far.”

“I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” she says. “His father is Raul. You’re just the donor.”

Rage rises in me with such swiftness that I almost can’t control it. Landon is symbolic of everything I ever wanted, ever hoped for. All this time, I thought Ava chose to have Raul’s baby. That I left the country, and she moved on as though I wasn’t worth a single thought, let alone any regrets.

Did Ava know Landon was mine all along? Did she use my baby to land the rich husband she wanted?

Suspicion makes me nauseous to the core.

“Ava’s in surgery, but she’ll be relieved to hear you played such a vital role in saving her son—as a universal donor,” Celia says.

“When this is done,” I say, looping my finger around the waiting room, “we’re having a conversation. Do not forget for one second what I used to do for you and everything I know.”

Threatening her is a mistake, but I’m beyond caring.

* * *

In another room, a nurse hooks me up to a machine that’ll allow me to donate more blood than normal. They explained the process to me during their intake, but I’m still numb, trying to get a handle on what I think I’ve just learned.

Or did I? Celia didn’t confess anything outright. But my mind keeps circling.

Landon is my son.

Ava had my child.

I don’t know what the fuck to do with that possibility. If she knew and didn’t tell me… Let me believe for months that Landon is Raul’s…

Does Raul know that Landon isn’t his biological child?

There must have been some uncertainty, or why would they test? The DNA result removed that doubt. Didn’t it?

Questions keep piling up with no answers in sight. With Ava in surgery, there’s no way to know for sure. I can’t trust Celia to be truthful. She’ll look out for everyone else involved in this knot of lies before she’ll even spare one thought for me. Classic Celia Tucker. Fuck with people’s lives. Accept zero blame.

If he’s mine, she’s fucked with the wrong person this time.

“Landon?” I ask the nurse when she comes to check on the blood I’m donating. My voice is rough with emotion. The idea of losing him after only just realizing I might have what I’ve always wanted causes an unbearable ache. “Is he going to be okay?”

“He has a bad concussion, some substantial lacerations on his extremities, and he lost a lot of blood. But he’s alive, and he’s fared better than both his parents.”

Not both. One.

The other is an imposter.

I think.

I’m pretty sure.

“I was told they were considering airlifting someone off the island?” I ask to still my spinning thoughts.

“Not Landon,” she says. “Raul. Swelling on the brain. He’s in an induced coma.”

“Ava’s injuries?” I’m pushing my luck. The nurse shouldn’t be giving me all this information without confirmation that I am, in fact, family. But I’ve always been good at commanding authority in a room—getting people to do things or tell me things they wouldn’t otherwise. A skill set the Bellerive Police, Celia, and Owen have found valuable.

My heart is lodged in my throat as I wait for the nurse’s response. I need the truth, and only Ava can give it to me. But god, what if she’s so injured she’ll never be able to tell me?

“Collapsed lung. Broken ribs. Concussion.”

I sag with relief, but anger follows quickly behind. Ava and Landon could have died.

I clench the hand that isn’t hooked up to the IV and then release it, over and over, as though that simple motion will make me feel less murderous. Whatever happens to Raul, he deserves it.

But Ava and Landon? Unacceptable. They shouldn’t be punished for his wrongdoing.

I take deep breaths, hoping my heightened emotions aren’t as clear to her as they feel to me. The urge to find whoever did this, to make them pay, keeps surging.

But Ava and Landon aren’t the only reason I’m here.

“Lorraine Foster?” I ask. “Any chance you know where she was admitted?”

“How do you know her?”

“She’s my mother,” I say. “My sister, Vanessa, rode in the ambulance with her.”

“I can find out for you,” she says as she finishes inspecting all the connections and the blood that’s being collected. “My husband works at Reckless. He’ll be sad to hear about Mrs. Santos and her son.”

“Ms. Tucker,” I say mindlessly. “She didn’t take his name.” And for the first time, it dawns on me that her choice might be significant, that maybe she wasn’t just clinging to the Tucker name and everything it means on this island. Maybe she never went all in on being a Santos like I’ve accused her.

Wishful thinking, probably.

The reality is that she and her mother are just as likely to have cooked up some scheme to pass my child off as Raul’s to fund Ava’s perfume start-up.

If that’s true, I don’t know that I can ever forgive Ava. The weight of the world settles across my shoulders.

I’ll never forgive her.

My heart cracks at the pressure that awareness brings. She’ll have done the one thing I cannot get past.

Maybe she never expected me to come back.

But she didn’t have to pass my child off as Raul’s. She didn’t need to use Landon as a pawn. What she’d been doing previously to fund her business ventures was definitely the hard way, but all her siblings made those pathways work. She didn’t need to use my child to get Reckless funded.

When the nurse comes back to unhook me, she passes me a slip of paper. “Your mother is in room 306. Broken hip.”

“Thanks,” I say taking the paper.

“Can’t let you leave for at least fifteen minutes.” Then she spiels off a bunch of other things I should be doing to help my body cope with the blood loss before she passes me some cookies and a juice box.

“Any news?” I ask as I unwrap the cookies and take a bite. No part of me is hungry—I actually feel nauseous—but I don’t want to stay here any longer than I have to. There are so many unknowns, and sitting here doesn’t bring closure to any of them.

“Celia Tucker’s in full mama bear mode with the staff.”

“I bet.” For all her faults, it’s probably true that Celia is taking people to task, making sure that Ava gets the best care possible. When Maren hurt herself in Chile, Celia flew there to be at her bedside, and she’s often poking around in the lives of her children. She’s not a good mom, protects her kids in ways that can punish them, but she’s not unfeeling. It’s just that at the top of her list of people and things to care about are herself and the Tucker family position in high society—pretty much in that order. If her kids or anyone jeopardize either of those things, she loses perspective. But no matter the situation or circumstances, Celia always believes she knows best. When I worked for her, she could be mildly infuriating.

Now that I might be on the receiving end of her extreme interference, she’s intolerable. If I see her, I don’t know that I’ll be able to keep my temper in check. If she’s really kept my son from me or has been part of some sort of cover-up, she’ll be the one begging me for forgiveness.

And god help whoever orchestrated this accident. I’m not sure any god will be able to interfere in my wrath.

“I want to see him. Landon.”

“I should check with Mrs. Tucker.” The nurse bites her lip.

From my pocket, I withdraw my ID for Tucker Securities and pass it to her. “I’m part of his security team. It’s my job to be with him.” The idea of him dying before I get to see him, examine him, call him mine. The worst pain imaginable.

She stares at my ID and then gives a subtle nod before handing it back. “Once your wait is up, I’ll get you up there.”

“Thank you.”

I need to confirm with my own eyes that he’ll get better. That I didn’t discover he’s mine just to lose him.

* * *

The nurse returns, and when I stand up, lightheadedness sits at the edge of my consciousness. But I ignore it. I’ve persevered through worse for less.

Landon is my son. Most likely my son. God, I wish I knew for sure, without this hesitation nagging me. If I believe he is, but the DNA test turns out to be true, if I misinterpreted Celia’s look of defiance, I’ll be crushed. Might never recover.

She leads me out the door and then signals for me to walk beside her to a staff elevator, which we board and ride one flight up. We pass the nurses’ station without issue, and at the very end of the hall, the nurse stops and turns to me.

“He’s in the room to the right. I need to get back downstairs before anyone notices I’m gone.”

“Thank you,” I say.

She continues down the hall to the flight of stairs, and I don’t look around, conscious of how that action seems suspicious, before I slip into his room. Technically, I’m not part of the Santos family security, but I am supposed to be managing the fallout from the accident. If they called Owen, he’d support me. But I still feel covert, like I’m not supposed to be in here.

It’s a private suite with only one bed, which shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. Landon’s figure seems so small on the mattress, machines monitoring all his vitals. I’m shocked none of the Tucker family is here yet. Ava would be so upset if she knew Landon was in this room alone.

I draw the chair next to Landon’s bed, and I drink in his features. All the things about him that I noticed and dismissed. Ava’s genes are strong—there’s no doubt about that—but there are shades of me, of the Foster DNA, that sit in the shadows of his features. Or I think there are. Maybe I just want there to be.

No matter how much I might want to sit here all night, I need to talk to my sister to figure out what she knows, determine how this accident happened, and I have to be there for my mom too.

And god help me, when Ava’s out of surgery, I’m sneaking myself into her room too. I will get answers.

Without giving myself time to second-guess my choice, I call Gage. He’s the one Ava’s always been closest to, and from what I’ve gathered, his wife, Ember, is now one of Ava’s best friends. It’s the middle of the night, but if Celia hasn’t phoned all the family, I’ll get that chain started. Ava and Landon need all their help, not just Celia’s meddling.

“Hello?” Gage answers, groggy. “Stephen?”

“Ava, Landon, and Raul were in a bad car accident. You and the rest of your family have to get down to the Tucker’s Town Hospital. They need you.”

“Shit,” Gage says, and I can hear Ember’s confused murmurs in the background. “When they picked up Landon, something seemed off. I should have—I don’t know why I didn’t… Is everyone…” His voice grows thick. “Alive?”

I fill him in with what I know, and he promises to be here as soon as he can. He also vows to contact his other siblings.

“Your mom is already here,” I say.

“Of course she is,” Gage says, his tone exasperated. “Probably making sure her spare kidney is still useable.”

“I thought Celia was better.”

“She is,” Gage says, “but knowing my mom, she’ll want all her options kept open in case she relapses.”

I’d love to contradict him, say that Celia’s here because she loves Ava. But if she really loved Ava, she’d be sitting in this hospital room with the person Ava loves most in the world, taking care of Landon because that’s the only concrete way to take care of Ava when she’s in surgery. Nagging the doctors and nurses isn’t going to do anything when Ava’s fighting for her life.

It doesn’t take Gage long to push open the door behind me and rush in. He’s in sweatpants and a T-shirt, rumpled but here.

“Mom’s in the waiting room, trying to get updates on Ava,” he says. “Dad’s traveling with the hockey team. I don’t know why she didn’t call any of us to come help. We wouldn’t show up for her, but we’d all show up for Ava and Landon.”

“Did you tell her I called you?”

“Yeah,” Gage says. “She seemed a bit pissed off about that. Sawyer, Nathaniel, and Maren are also on their way. We’ll take shifts. Make sure they both have someone at their bedsides.”

“When Ava gets out of surgery…” My voice is thick at the thought of her not coming through it.

“I’ll call you,” Gage agrees. “No question.” He claps me on the back.

After I stand to go, I stare down at Landon. I should leave. No, I need to leave. “I’m coming back. My mother is on the third floor, and after I have things with her figured out, I’ll sit with Landon again.”

“More the merrier,” Gage agrees. “Landon told me how much he liked you when you were on their detail. He’ll be glad to see you.”

His comment makes my chest unbearably tight. Obviously, Gage doesn’t know that Landon is mine, might be mine. He’s not that good an actor.

“You all right?” Gage asks, pulling up a second chair to Landon’s bedside.

“Yeah,” I say, distracted. My issue is obvious, but it’s not something I can say out loud, not until I understand more about how this happened. If it’s happened. I need to leave this room, but everything in me wants to stay. The idea of missing one more second of Landon’s life is a piercing ache. “I can’t decide if he’s still so little or if he’s so big.”

“Little,” Gage says with certainty. “So much life left to live. Thank god he’s okay.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose, willing all these confusing feelings coursing through me to fall into something that resembles order. Just when I think I’m okay, another surge of something—anger, despair, frustration, confusion, love—causes an emotional short circuit.

“I’ll be back,” I say, and it takes all my effort to walk out of the room.