Falling In Deep: (Book Two in The Bridgeport Lake Summer Series) by Danielle Arie

Author:Danielle Arie [Arie, Danielle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Danielle Arie Books
Published: 2020-03-28T04:00:00+00:00

Seventeen

-Mila-

My biological mother ran away when she was seventeen. She left in the middle of the night, without a word to Grams, to be with her druggie college boyfriend. She refused to give the state any information about her family when I was born. So, they put me in state care, and I moved from home to home, to home, to home, until the day they told me they’d located one of my biological family members. The day they told me about a sixty-three-year-old woman named Loretta Hill.

I met her at a ‘50s diner. She had my eyes. She bought me a milkshake, and asked if I wanted to come and live with her. I didn’t know what to think about her at the time, but the idea of having a stable home sounded ten times better than the foster parents I was living with. They had three kids of their own, and apparently, they’d accepted me because they needed a live-in babysitter. And those kids were awful.

I said yes, and made the move from southern California to Grams’s house farther north. She didn’t ask much of me, but I liked living with her, so I did everything I could to make her life easier. I pulled straight A’s, cleaned the house every day when I got home from school, and took a job at the ice cream shop —the only place that would hire a fourteen-and-a-half-year-old. I tried to give her the money from it, but she always shook her head and told me I was family. That I needed to stop trying so hard. That she loved me just because I was hers. That Jesus loved me, too.

She was way too good to me.

She was dying . . .

“Mila?” Nolan’s voice pulled me out of my reverie, back into the room with the doctor and the nurse, telling me Grams had two days left at best. Nol wrapped his arm around me.

My mind spun out of control.

I couldn’t breathe. “There’s no hope for a recovery?” I asked tentatively. I knew the answer. I saw her numbers. I’d hoped anyway.

The doctor shook his head. “Her organs are failing. Unfortunately, there’s nothing else we can do.”

“We’re transferring her to the hospice wing,” the nurse added, handing me a pamphlet as the doctor said his goodbyes. “Here’s some information on end-of-life and what you can expect to see.”

She left the room, and my knees went weak, Nol tightening his grip around my waist. “Hey, hey, hey . . .” he whispered, turning me toward him. “I got you.”

I buried my face in his chest, just breathing in the familiar spicy scent that had always been Nolan. He rubbed my back, his chin resting on top of my hair. “I’m here, Mi.”

I opened my mouth to tell him I couldn’t do it, that Grams couldn’t leave me. That I was alone. That Trent was gone. That he might leave me, too. But nothing came out except choking sobs.

“It’s okay,” he whispered, running his hand across my back.

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