But he couldn’t fix his daughter. He couldn’t help her, and it was slowly killing him inside.
The last four and a half years, I’d watched as he’d slowly lost hope.
But I’d seen a side of him yesterday, a side that I’d missed.
“Pace and Oakley are going to get married,” I said into the quiet of the room about two hours later.
We were in the waiting area—a private one seeing as Octomom now had so many reporters and friends in the waiting room that they’d stuck us in a side waiting room that was rarely ever used. A fact in which you could tell seeing as the damn chairs were so old that even when I sat in them, they creaked. And my boys were no small men. I honestly feared for the integrity of the seats, but so far they’d held up.
Trance, who’d been staring at the door like a lost puppy since we’d arrived in this room, slowly turned his head toward me.
I could tell that I had Ford’s and Banner’s eyes, too.
“What did you just say?” Banner asked, sounding adorably confused.
“You heard me,” I said, knowing that he had. My boys missed nothing. “They’re going to get married.”
Trance shook his head, like he couldn’t believe what was coming out of my mouth.
“Are you okay?” Ford asked, sounding amused. “You’re speaking nonsense.”
There were a few chuckles from the rest of our group, but I ignored them.
I grinned then.
“When I walked out of the room, I stopped at the nurses’ station. That was how I knew where to go while they were in surgery,” I explained.
“And…” Ford pushed.
“Well, apparently Pace stopped them outside of the operating room because Oakley was having a panic attack,” I said, making Trance tense beside me. “He made them push each other close, and he took her hand and calmed her down.”
“That’s Pace,” Ford grinned. “He’s always been like that, though. That doesn’t mean that he’s going to marry her.”
“After he was done talking her down, he told her that they were going out on a date after they were all better.” I smiled. “And she said yes.”
“Just because she agreed to a date doesn’t mean that she agreed to marry him, Mom.” Banner rolled his eyes.
My lips curved into a smile.
“Trust me,” I said. “This is happening. It’s a matter of when now, not if.”
Nobody refuted that because they didn’t know what to say to it, I was sure.
“Why doesn’t Pace have anybody here waiting on him?” Banner suddenly asked.
I looked over at my youngest son just as Ford said, “His parents are assholes. His dad divorced his mom when they were young, got sick of all of them and started a new family. One with a sane woman as a wife.” Ford snorted. “Not that I blame him, I just wish he would’ve taken Pace with him. Anyway, so he has a sister and a mom. And both act exactly like the other. Which sucks, because Pace is a really good guy. The only good thing he has is an aunt, and Pace told me she couldn’t arrive in time for the surgery. I’m supposed to text her when he gets out.”
“Why’s his mom so bad?” Banner wondered.
“He got a letter while he was deployed from his mom asking for money,” Ford said. “When he ignored it, the sister sent one. Told him she was going to kill herself if she didn’t get the five hundred bucks she needed.”
I curled my lip in disgust. “What the fuck?”
Trance’s eyes were dancing as he looked at me.
“Baby,” he said softly.
I turned a narrow-eyed look toward him. “What?”
“You’re getting all growly and cute,” he said. “Pace is not a stray dog. You can’t adopt him. He probably doesn’t want help, anyway.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “We’ll just see about that.”
And we spoke on and off about Pace for the next hour, getting increasingly more and more tense as the time wore on.
The procedure itself was supposed to take three hours for Oakley. Pace would be done momentarily.
But it’d already been well over two, and we hadn’t heard a word on his surgery.
“Maybe I should go check with the nurses.” I paused. “Maybe they forgot to give us an update on Pace.”
Trance caught my hand before I could fully stand. “Sit, baby.”
I sat, leaned into him, and closed my eyes.
I was nervous.
I’d done a damn fine job in talking over the last couple of hours, but my nerves were starting to fray.
“How do you know that they’ll get married, again?” he asked curiously.
I knew what he was doing, trying to get my mind off of what was going on.
Well, it wouldn’t work.
I was still thinking about my baby.
But I’d humor him for the time being.
“When he walked into the room yesterday, he had the same look on his face that you had on yours the moment I was able to see you clearly,” I whispered. “The look of utter devotion. Of the willingness to do anything to make sure that I never saw harm. Y’all were too busy staring at our girl. While you were doing that, I was staring at our boy.”