Chapter 33

Watching Nathan with Gabriella was different. He was gentle, more reserved. Not that I didn't like how he treated me. His relationships with other people would always be different. But it made me feel uneasy all the same, almost insecure. It didn't matter that he'd just told me he loved me back at the beach before all this shit went down.

I was barely holding all of my pieces together. Everything from the night my parents died sat just beneath the surface, begging to come tumbling forward the second I let my guard down. When his phone rang and he'd gone so pale... I knew something wasn't right.

"Did you ride out here with him?" Nathan asked.

Gabriella nodded before she was back with her face buried in his chest while she sobbed. "It was so scary. I didn't know about the last time and maybe that's a good thing..."

I helped Nathan lead her over to one of the big cushy chairs. She sank down and reached for the box of tissues that sat on the table next to it. "I'm sorry. He's only been in my life for such a short time, but now that I've finally gotten the chance to know him..."

"What do you mean?"

Nathan looked at me. Both of us had assumed that Gabriella was some young girlfriend the old man had kept under wraps.

Her eyes widened in shock. "I wasn't supposed to say anything yet. This kind of puts pressure on me because everyone is going to want to know why I'm here."

Nathan set a hand on her knee and gave it a soft squeeze. We both kneeled in front of her as she collected herself enough to tell us what was going on.

"Just start at the beginning," I said as I grabbed her free hand that wasn't currently clutching a snot-filled Kleenex.

"Oh... well. I'm an only child. I grew up with my mom and grandma. Grandma didn't trust Mom to be alone with me because she was always off getting high or partying, but she was still around a lot when I was a kid. She vanished when I was a teenager and I haven't heard from her since I was fifteen."

"I'm really sorry to hear about that." No one should have had a childhood like that, but at least she had her grandma to help raise her.

She sighed and blew her nose before she continued. "Well, when I turned eighteen, I got a letter with a key to a safe deposit box. Inside of it was a bunch of documents and one of them was information about my dad..."

Nathan froze and looked over at me. So Drew wasn't an older man with a thing for pretty young women. Gabriella was his daughter. That explained a few things. Even though she was at the house all the time, the two hadn't been overly affectionate.

"But how long have you been in town? I haven't seen you around much outside of the last year or two." The wonders of such a small town, you noticed when someone was new.

"Only that long. My grandma's house was in Hoqium. I moved out here when she passed away. I wanted to get to know my dad, and it was something she wouldn't have let me do when she was alive. She was always scared that he was just as bad as my mom."

If she'd learned even one thing about Drew, it was that he wasn't anything like her mom, and maybe that's why he'd freaked out so badly when we'd found the drugs at the property a while back. How long had he been with Gabriella's mother and had he known that she existed before she'd shown up at his doorstep?

"Excuse me?"

We all paused as a man in scrubs and a lab coat stood at the entrance to the waiting room. He held a clipboard to his chest and looked us all over. "Are you the family for Mr. Morris?"

Gabriella sniffled and nodded.

The man instantly relaxed. "Perfect. It appears that Mr. Morris had a heart attack. His heart is very weak right now, but he's expected to make a full recovery. We're going to move him to a different floor, so you all should be able to visit with him shortly."

When he was out of the room, the floodgates finally broke. Something snapped in my chest and I collapsed onto Gabriella's lap, the cries that I'd been holding all afternoon ultimately bursting out. Her fingers threaded through my hair and I had no idea when I'd lost my hat. Maybe back at the beach. Not that it even mattered. Nathan wrapped himself around my back and it was in that moment I realized just how close I'd been to losing the last person I'd considered family.

But wasn't my family growing again? I had Nathan back in my life and now, if what she was saying was true, we had Gabriella. Life didn't feel so lonely, so hopeless. But it was that scary reminder that everything could end so quickly.

"Shh. It's okay." I let go of Gabriella and flung myself at Nathan. His arms were the comfort I needed, the home I craved. He was my everything; the shelter from the storm the day that should have been perfect had turned into. The love of my life.

I gasped for breath as he rubbed soothing circles on my back. His chin rested on my shoulder as he left small and tender kisses against the side of my head. In that moment, I realized Nathan was just as capable of being sweet and tender with me as he had with Gabriella.

"You're not allowed to scare us like that again, old man."

Drew wheezed out a laugh as we all walked into the room. His skin was ashen, and he looked small and fragile under the hospital sheets. The nasal cannula in his nose did nothing to make him look any more put together, the perfect picture of near death.

Gabriella rushed around us and grabbed his hand, bringing it to her lips to kiss the back of it. "I know you didn't want to tell anyone yet... but I had to tell them."

Drew's smile was small as Nathan stood in the doorway. "I'm sorry, kid. You should have been the first person I told."

Nathan nodded and entered the room. He sat in the chair in the corner and looked out the window. His elbows draped over his knees and his head in his hands. "You've known you've had a daughter for two years and didn't tell anyone."

"Longer."

Nathan's head shot up. "What?"

Drew sighed and coughed a few times. "When Natasha found out she was pregnant, her mother stepped in. I wasn't allowed to see her or the baby. It was for the best because I'd failed to help Natasha to begin with."

The whole reason Drew had stayed at the beach instead of moving to Seattle with his family was to stay close to the daughter he wasn't allowed to see.

The look of betrayal was hard to miss on Nathan's face. "Well, I guess I should go call everyone and let them know you're in the hospital again."

As he moved to leave the room, Drew grabbed his hand. "Let me tell them everything else?"

He looked between his uncle and Gabriella and nodded. I followed him out into the hall.