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deadass I’ve been reading some of ur shit && I just think it’s HILARIOUS that you made a fic where you are the main character. I can’t think of anything more self centered. Oh wait??? Adding yourself to each fic. NCITW, Through The Collar, Pumped Up Kicks… need I go on? Grow up and write something worth writing. Also not everyone is a fan of Usocest so I’d take that shit down if I were you.
Look, most of us that write, write with ourselves in mind. That's just the nature of writing. You can deny it all you want but there is usually a little bit of yourself in every character.
author’s note: my deepest apologies for how long this took. life be lifing. i'd read this one carefully. certain things are revealed and/or inferred indirectly.
pairing: roman reigns x black!oc x jey uso
warnings: angst. strong themes regarding infidelity, domestic violence, and death. psychological elements. some scenes may be triggering and difficult to read. reader discretion is strongly advised.
words: 5k+
song inspo: ❝ somewhere only we know❞ by keane
credit: photos from pinterest and google images. fic and chapter title graphics by me. mdni divider by @strangergraphics
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Heaven feigns a loud sigh and blows out a dramatic breath, making the curls spilling over her face to fly forward before tossing down against her cheek. She pushes back a tendril and tucks it behind her ear. Shrugging and another feigned exhale accompany the way she looks at her nails. Short, almond, painted the perfect shade of white that matches the loose dress with flowy sleeves, a cinched waist, and brushes the top of her knees.
“I guess I won’t be able to find her…”
Her intentional announcement is accompanied by the way she carefully, slowly, and methodically takes step by step, the blades of forest green grass tickling the portion of skin exposed on her feet from her sandals. “I can’t believe she really beat me….” Continuing to lean into the performance, it’s only when she catches the the glimpse of an arm with a complexion several shades lighter than the tree she hides behind that Heaven makes her grand reveal.
“There she is!”
The shout comes seconds after Heaven jumps forward and attempts to grab her. Happy, loud giggles as she breaks free from Heaven’s loose hold and starts to run away. Her little legs only taking her so far before Heaven grabs her again, this time the two of them falling into the ground.
The pasture absorbs their bodies like a memory foam pillow, molding around the curves of Heaven’s body as the little girl lays on top of her and continues to laugh happily from the way Heaven playfully tickles.
“You found me!”
“I did,” Heaven’s smile deepens, her eyes narrowing from the fleeting glimpses of sun that rains down on her, peaking through the head of dark curls every time she writhes and wiggles from the tickle session.
It’s when she rolls over, however, and Heaven can feel the full strength of the sun that her smile settles, her shoulders sink deeper into the grass, and her eyes shut. There aren’t enough words to adequately describe the level of…peace she feels in this moment. The sun is bright but the heat is almost nonexistent. The aroma of fresh flowers that don’t crush under her weight but instead bow almost in reverence around their bodies. Faint whistles and swishing sounds of the wind brushing against the most beautiful example of God’s finest work that Heaven has ever seen.
Never an outside person, there’s nothing that she can list off as a con for the space that feels less like a pasture and more like a safe haven.
Rolls and valleys of endless greenery and forestry. There’s an aura that feels almost too good to be real. Like it contains and conveys a level of peace that defies and contrasts reality and what exists in the realm of capabilities.
Heaven feels so….light.
She feels free.
The sort of free that one prays for but rarely ever achieves.
At least….not in this life.
The laughter once more draws her focus as mischief flashes in her pretty eyes before she jumps up and starts to run off once more. Heaven’s smile deepens as she too sits up and starts to give chase when she stops. Turns her head just enough to where the breeze brushes past her hair, whipping it against her face as her brows start to cave inward and the smile falters.
Something…..
Something’s not right.
She continues to turn around, the peace that encompassed is now one that unsettles. It’s all so perfect. Too perfect.
And then she hears it. Hears the sound that makes her entire body still and toes dig into the ground that suddenly feels impossibly softer than before. As if it's adapted. As if it’s molding itself to her feet to keep her planted when her knees begin to wobble and balance falters.
Giggles.
That of a child. A little girl.
And not the one a few feet away.
“Macy…”
Heaven turns around, eyes foraging the vast plains as if trying to seek out the voice. Seek her.
She starts to step forward when a small tug on her dress forces her to turn around. Heaven looks down to see the little girl staring up at her with that same gaze of excitement and with that happy smile that reveals a top and bottom row of small, perfectly straight, white teeth. Impossibly white, almost.
A recurring theme of this place, it seems.
Impossibility.
Releasing the fabric, she instead makes a beckoning motion with her fingers before reaching for Heaven’s hand, all five wrapping around and giving a light squeeze.
It’s a grasp that the older woman allows, but it’s the extent of permission granted as Heaven plants her feet in the ground. The crumble of the young girl’s smile evokes a heavy lump in the back of Heaven's throat and births a weight that sits on her chest. Anchors her body down both physically and metaphorically, as she drops to her knees, hands to the child’s shoulders.
She swallows, feeling that familiar burning sensation that’s intensified by the way the sun beams down on her. “You are an amazing little girl, sweetie.” Words that comes from a place she can’t identify, but it’s a place that feels familiar. Natural. Innate. “But I know another amazing little girl, and she needs me. She—she needs me more than you do.”
And Heaven needs her. Perhaps more than the other way around.
It’s a realization spurned simply from the sound of her daughter’s laughter. One of the best sounds in the world, and one that she can’t push from her head. Hears on repeat at a volume that feels like it only knows increase.
But the space reserved for her sweet Macy is shared with concern for this girl in front of her who reminds her so much of her daughter. Heaven expects the disappointment that flashes in her eyes, but it’s when she briefly breaks away that the guilt forms.
“Honey—”
Heaven stops when she realizes the girl isn’t going far. Just quickly scuffles a few feet away to a strip of flowers and picks two before quietly returning to Heaven who observes them with marvel and curiosity. It’s such a strange variation of which she’s never seen before. A crossbreed of roses and tulips.
One pink and one blue.
But the curiosity travels when the girl reaches with her free hand and pushes past the swell of the material to touch Heaven’s stomach. It’s a touch that makes her gasp from the memory that instantly slams into her.
The baby…
For the first time since awaking in this sort of paradise, dread begins to seep in. But it’s monetarily paused when she watches the girl’s smile revive as she lifts her eyes to meet Heaven’s and offers the flowers that are easily and naturally accepted. Even as the confusion remains.
“I don’t….” She stumbles. “I don’t und—”
Her small fingers rubbing gently against Heaven’s belly as she drops her eyes once more before lifting them and nodding happily. But once more, another unexpected act when the child lunges forward and hugs her.
Heaven’s shoulders instantly relax, the flowers still gripped in her hand as she returns the embrace. She closes her eyes, another wave of ardent emotion overtaking her. A sense of despondency and regret.
Like she doesn’t want to do this.
Like she doesn’t want to leave.
Like she doesn’t want to leave this little girl. Because leaving her almost feels like….it feels like she’s leaving Macy.
But she’s not. She’s leaving her because of Macy.
So why does it feel like there isn’t much of a difference?
If any.
“It’s okay.” Heaven gasps as the child breaks her silence. Her small voice, light and pure, sounding and reminding her so much of Macy. “And it’s okay you didn’t keep me. I know you wanted to.” The quietest intake of breath is followed by the way Heaven's eyes shoot open, electricity dancing up her spine. Her fingers both somehow tingling and numb concurrently.
What….what did she just say?
The little girl presses her body closer, as if wanting to mold the two of them together, to soak in and capture this moment as much as she possibly can.
To never forget.
“Bye, mommy.”
——————
A multitude of senses are triggered almost immediately and simultaneously, but the first thing that Heaven can detect in this new realm of consciousness are the sounds. A variety of them, most of which are sounded out by a consistent, regulated beep that’s both familiar and disconcerting. That discomfort is exacerbated by the way she struggles to open her eyes, several flutters and focused efforts needed to lift and maintain. An uphill battle similar to that of pushing a large boulder up the steep heel of setbacks but one she overcomes and largely because of the new sound that’s added to her immediate environment.
“Heaven?”
Another familiar sound that's partially drowned out in the midst of Heaven also becoming more aware of her surrounding. The sounds. The sterile, non-existent smell in the room. The heaviness of her body and cool, foreign sensations up and down her arms. A throbbing one near her right shoulder. She manages a deep breath through her still closed mouth when the view of the still slightly blurred television is replaced with a set of eyes similar to her own.
Her mom’s.
“Oh, thank God.” Heaven groans lowly as her mother reaches to caress the top of her head, watery eyes locked on her. “My beautiful girl.”
Blinking several times over, Heaven continues to work to reach the point where she can communicate, but the grogginess is consistent and persistent. Awareness intermittent, to a certain extent. Enough to where she hears and sees the way her mother briefly turns her head and calls for a nurse before she’s focused on her daughter once more. “Heaven, do you know where you are?”
Heaven offers a small nod, and it might be the easiest thing she’s done. A hospital. She’s in a hospital.
But why?
And because Shelia Jackson is nothing short of sharp—if not psychic—she reads the question that doesn’t even need to be asked.
“Honey….” Heaven observes the subtle motion in the middle of her mother’s neck, a small bulge forming and disappearing. A swallow. A deep one. “You were attacked—”
Perhaps additional words follow the word ‘attacked,’ but it’s all incoherent mush that’s barely audible amidst the rush of memories that slam into Heaven with enough force to send her back if she wasn’t already lying down.
The fire.
Macy.
Jey.
The hotel.
Roman.
Macy.
Whatever time has passed since her entire world began to crumble before her very eyes is suddenly filled with horrifying remembrance of what initially brought her to the hospital.
And she doesn’t mean her own admission.
“Macy,” Heaven croaks, a sting in the back of her throat as she forces herself to speak for what must be the first time in—how long has she been asleep? “Where—where’s Macy?”
An attempt to sit up brings about a sharp, sudden pain in her shoulder as Shelia drops her hand to Heaven’s forearm.
“Careful, baby. You—” She stops, Heaven’s furrowed brows lifting to meet her mother’s eyes once more. “You were shot.”
Once more, a stillness that halts her movements and attempted efforts at answers. Heaven….remembers it. Remembers being at the hotel, at hearing a knock at the door, expecting to see the woman in front of her on the other side.
It wasn’t.
It was someone else she thought she knew. Someone she thought she loved. And maybe she did. But whatever love existed for the man she’s spent the better part of her life with died the moment he left her baby inside that burning building.
And once more, Heaven casts aside any thoughts and considerations for herself. She can work through that later.
She needs to get to her daughter.
She needs to get to Macy.
Heaven attempts to snatch her arm away from her mom, ignoring the stinging sensation of the IV in her arm shifting from the sudden movements. Shelia presses her lips together as Heaven continues to find her voice. “Where’s Macy?”
Shelia opens her mouth, her own sympathetic expression unchanging when rushed footsteps draws the focus of both mother and daughter. Shelia straightens as Heaven remains steadfast in her efforts to, one, get up, and two, get up to find her daughter. Regardless of the nurses and doctor moving towards her.
The doctor, an older man with a balding head and crows eyes but a seemingly genuine disposition, steps closer. His voice calm and soothing. “Mrs. Uso—”
“I want to see my daughter,” she interrupts, uncaring of feigning pleasantries for the sake of it. Being nice and displaying manners is the last fucking thing on her mind. “Where—”
An additional set of hands and the feeling of being surrounded and overwhelmed heighten Heaven’s anxiety, as words and fragmented sentences continue to float in and out.
“….bullet missed the heart and lungs….”
“………significant blood loss…..”
“……hemorrhagic shock……”
“………..emergency surgery….....”
“……,…babies are stable….....”
“……..two days……”
All of it is relevant information, of that, Heaven is certain, but it’s the last portion of shared information that sticks with her and answers just one of her many questions. One that is near the top of the importance list.
“Two days?” She breathes, realizing only then on top of administering information as the nurses inspected her, he was also asking her a set of basic questions she’d apparently answered in the midst of growing internal panic. “I—I’ve been out for two days?”
Shelia, standing closely, hand on the railing of the hospital bed, opens her mouth to speak but is interrupted by her daughter once more as another realization returns to Heaven.
“Macy….we—we’re supposed—supposed to know—” She shakes her head, ignoring the rising level of physical pain and discomfort in her body and face as certain facial motions evoke a stinging, throbbing sensation in her cheek. “Where’s Macy!”
Because Heaven remembers. Recalls the conversation with Macy’s medical team. If she’s been unconscious for two days now, then that means it’s either time or close to the time where they should have a better understanding of Macy’s status.
If she sustained any brain damage.
And if so….how severe.
Determination and resilience sometimes result in success, as is the case when Heaven finally manages to sway the doctor. Her mother’s cosign in the form of a whispered statement to the doctor also being a helpful additive. If the situation were different, Heaven would perhaps press on what was said, but it’s inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.
The only thing that Heaven cares about, the only thing that matters, is seeing her baby girl.
That’s it.
It’s what remains the constant in the back, front, and all over her mind as she’s helped out of the bed and into a wheelchair that’s brought in a few minutes later. The journey from her room to the pediatric ward of the ICU includes the accompanying of her mother, two nurses, one who pushes her in the wheelchair and the other who guides the IV pole. Assisted ambulation eventually guiding Heaven to her destination.
Energy shifts the minute she’s wheeled into the room as if making way and place for her arrival. Dread rebuilds and returns with a startling vengeance as the discomfort that’s floated through her body in a variety of ways since her return to consciousness is no longer germane in place of a greater calamity. The room, roughly the same size as the one she was excerpted from, suddenly feels so much smaller with the congregation of bodies. White coats. Scrubs. Machines galore making the same sounds she awoke to. All surrounding the bed to where the only thing she can make out is the thin, white sheets, faint outline of short legs, and slightly elevated feet. Hushed whispers and a set of eyes that land on her, wearing a variety of expressions. But it’s two in particular that capture her focus longer than the rest, that briefly distract her from attempts to obtain a better view of her baby.
“Heaven….”
Roman is the first to speak, Nathan only a few feet away, but Heaven locks gazes with the elder of the two, and her stomach twists into an abundance of knots. Flashes of their last interaction—the hotel, Jey, the gun—once more another flood of memories. Ones that she briefly remembered when she came to but shoved aside for the sake of her child. But only a few feet away from the man whose last statements to her were ones of disgust and hurt is another story. She can’t look way nor can she ignore how…..tired exhausted he looks. Deep, dark bags under his eyes. Frizzy hair lazily pulled back unlike the neat but he’s always ensured to perfect before leaving the house. Even his attire, the wrinkled fabric of his shirt and sweat pants, visibly thrown on in haste and with little regard for appearance, it’s so….unlike him. But it makes all the sense.
He’s exhausted. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. Truth be told, Heaven wouldn’t be surprised if he’s simply a reflection of herself with marginal differences.
Roman steps forward as Heaven squeezes her mom’s hand and holds onto the nurses forearm with her other hand while they help her to her feet. He gaze flicks between the two of them, unspoken communication as she naturally reaches for him, fingers snapping around his forearm. She swallows, an array of words needing to be spoken, truthful, honest communication never having a more appropriate time to be had. But once more, it’s a necessity that must be shoved to the back burner.
Her eyes water as he lifts one hand to her face that Heaven is almost certain must be slightly swollen, on top of bruised, given the flashes of intermittent pain that accompany her speech. “Macy…”
He mimics her motion, a prominent bulge and disappearance in the middle of his neck. “They’re about to wean her sedation to see….”
His inability to continue is all the answer she needs.
Heaven can’t allow herself to think about the reason why for his difficulty in completing his answer.
She motions with her chin towards the bed where Macy lays, offering a small smile to her nephew who simply returns the gesture with a small nod and a flash of regret in his warm eyes. Heaven recalls her last interaction with him, too, and mentally adds him to the list of people she needs to speak with.
Just one of many. But as Roman assists her to Macy’s bedside, her mom and the nurse guiding her IV pole close behind, the emotion that was already brewing reaches its boiling point.
A sharp intake of breath when she looks down at her baby girl, eyes closed, face still scuffed up, arm still wrapped, far too many wires connected to her. Far too many medical personnel surrounding her. She shouldn’t be here. In this bed. In this sterile room. In this situation.
This should have never happened.
“Mrs.—”
“Heaven,” she corrects, hand trembling as she reaches to stroke Macy’s cheek before flitting her gaze to the doctor. “It’s just Heaven.”
He nods before offering a gentle explanation as to the steps seconds away from commencing. Similair to what Roman said, just verbalized in a mixture of medical and regular terminology. But it’s when the actions are initiated that Heaven’s chest feels like it’s about to cave in on itself. Seconds that feel as if they’re being stretched into hours. Announcement of each task accompanied by Heaven’s grip on Roman’s forearm tightening, her eyes, as well as his, never once leaving Macy’s peaceful expression.
They’re paralyzed and frozen in time waiting and watching with a shared level of trepidation mingled in with burning hope.
Because in that moment, it’s all they have.
“Macy,” Heaven whispers, stomach clenching as she works to find her voice. It doesn’t matter that Macy’s hair, pulled back and tucked under her head, reveal the absence of her hearing aids. Heaven isn’t speaking to Macy for her to hear. She’s speaking to Macy for her to feel. “Baby, you gotta wake up. Mommy…mommy and daddy are here waiting for you.” Though her focus is on her child, her eyesight doesn’t need to be set on the man beside her to know that he has a visible reaction to her words. Barely an hour out of her own sedation, Heaven also doesn’t need to have regained control of all her faculties to know that this is the first time she’s ever openly referred to him as such.
As Macy’s father.
She continues, ignoring the pain from her shoulder as she bends over, the arm of the bed digging into her stomach. “I came back for you, May May.” Her voice cracks. “Now I need you to come back for me.”
Another reaction to poignant words, from both her lover and mother, are lost in the sea of irrelevance at the sight of something. Subtle. So so subtle and minimal that Heaven is partially surprised she can make it out through her blurred vision. And for a moment, she questions herself. Questions if her desire is overpowering her sense.
And then it happens again.
That same motion with increased visibility that’s caught by others as well, Roman’s deep voice whispering from beside her.
“Macy?”
Once more, voices are drowned out as Heaven feels the weight in her stomach dropping and caving when visible progression results into fluttering. Macy’s eyes begin to flutter, each motion evoking sounds from around but none more than her parents who stand her bedside.
“Macy?” Heaven cries and watches as her little girls eyelids fully lift and remain open, granting the room with a set of soft brown eyes that haven’t been seen in almost three days. Heaven has to grip Roman’s arm once more to keep from fainting. The shock of her awaking temporarily halts what would be the most logical next step for her parents as the doctor says something that's lost in the midst of endless relief.
Her lips press together, lines creasing in her forward, the faintest hint of a scowl similar to that of when she’s awoken premature from a nap. Confused. She looks confused, and understandably so.
But as a nurse begins to sign what would be the start of a basic line of questioning, Macy’s eyes instead flick to the left where her teary eyed parents stand beside her overcome with joy.
Joy so overwhelming that Heaven can barely make out what Roman says as he shifts just enough to lean over and kiss Macy’s forehead. But it doesn’t stop her, nor him, from following the length of Macy’s non injured arm as her fingers flex. Similar, small baby steps that lead up to the way she lifts her arms just enough to sign with her hands. Slow, laggard movements, tension in her fingers from days of non-movement causing her to take longer than usual, but the result is so so worth it.
Mommy
Another heartfelt sob erupts from Heaven’s mouth right as Macy’s eyes shift to the left, to Roman, and her fingers makes a different motion. Her fingers move a smidge quicker than before.
Daddy
Heaven places her hand over her heart, issuing an abundance of silent prayers as the tension of the room immediately melts away to make way for immense gratitude. If not for the vast amount of relief felt at Macy awake and coherent, perhaps Heaven would have focused more on it. Sensed the swell of emotion from beside her at Macy's acknowledgement.
The acknoweldgment of her father.
Her real father.
But it’s the final signing she does that allow humor to mingle in with gratefulness.
Cookie.
Only then as several of the adults in room break into light laughter does Heaven start to tune back into the conversations at hand. The nurse who was signing with Macy cracks a small, meaningful smile. She talks while signing. “I definitely think we can see about getting you some cookies, sweetie.”
At that, Roman clears his throat, still caressing the top of Macy’s head as Heaven reaches for her hand. “No. It’s….it’s her stuffed animal.”
“She doesn’t go anywhere without it,” Heaven finishes. Nathan and her mother move closer, attempting to interact with Macy whose hands have returned to her side, her expression unchanged. But the mere fact that Heaven is looking into her baby girl’s open eyes instead of them closed and indicating an outcome from the worst sort of nightmare is more than enough for her.
The doctor begins to task the nurse with signing a set of basic questions for Macy, most of which, Heaven is sure, is standard protocol. Most likely to gauge her level of awareness, though her being able to identify her parents is more than enough for Heaven.
Macy simply being awake is more than enough for Heaven.
With everything transpiring, the array of voices filling the room that’s suddenly far less morose than when she initially entered, Heaven is moderately surprised when she overhears a set of footsteps. Perhaps it’s the almost rushed pace, or maybe it’s the lingering essence of always being daddy’s little girl that has her turn around to see her father enter. But it’s the way he stands closer to the door, away from Macy’s bedside and how he beckons over her mother that gives Heaven pause. Especially when she watches the way her mother’s smile dips and transitions into a confused frown as she walks over.
Her attention is especially secured when her father angles his and Shelia’s body away, not once seeming to pay attention to the fact that Macy, his only grandchild, is awake. Ignoring her is one thing, but Macy?
Concern spikes, however, when, even without seeing their faces, Heaven can infer from their tense postures that something….something is wrong.
That nagging, uncomfortable feeling dancing up her spine as she speaks up. “What is it?”
And the feeling intensifies when her parents turn to her and cook up the quickest, most insincere “nothing” that she shoots down immediately. “What is it?”
Shelia presses her lips together. “Heaven.”
“Tell me.”
Heaven doesn’t intend to raise her voice as much as she does. She especially doesn’t intend to snatch away the focus from Macy via Nathan and Roman’s confused expressions, but Macy’s lack of her hearing aids leave her oblivious to the conversation at hand.
Thus, Heaven pushing once more. Something in the base of her stomach tells her that she needs to. That she can’t and shouldn’t accept whatever excuse or lie her parents want to feed her for the sake of avoiding whatever fallout the truth may carry with it.
That’s what caused all this mess in the first place.
But the truth that’s disclosed is a truth she could have never anticipated.
“They found him,” her father answers. “They found Jey.”
Something about hearing his name sends chills up Heaven’s spine. Evokes a myriad emotions. Anger dominating them all. But the anger is shoved aside in favor of clarification. “What—what do you mean they found him?”
Heaven remembers Jey attacking her. Recalls the struggle for the gun. Everything after that is nothing more than a blank page, but in her mind, Jey should be locked up somewhere. He attacked her. Tried to kill her. Almost killed her daughter.
He should be buried under that damn jail.
“He went on the run after….” Shelia trails off, her husband taking her hand as he offers a small nod.
“They located him though. Received an anonymous tip,” he continues. The pause, however, increases Heaven’s anxiety. The omission of what she would guess is a key piece of information having her press once more.
“What—”
“He was shot, Heaven,” he finally answers, voice void of any emotions and the concern in his eyes undoubtedly reserved for her and Macy. But primarily her and having to share such jarring news. “They found him unconscious. Beaten and shot. He’s apparently in critical condition. It doesn't look good. They don’t think he's going to—”
She’s unsure if it’s the way she turns her head away, staring at the ground, working to process the information, that makes her father pause in his explanation. Most likely. It’s certainly not from being choked up or holding any ounce of remorse or grief.
Jey’s sins are far too great and grave for her to extend any sort of compassion. Empathy has limitations, and Jey reached his the moment he left her daughter in their burning home. Perhaps the shock of what occurred has her in a state of emotional paralysis, but him attacking her, trying to kill her, isn’t even what drives her fury with him. It’s Macy. His crimes against Macy are unforgivable.
Though lack of empathy doesn’t deprive her brain from springing out several thoughts, most of which circle around a single word.
Who.
Who attacked Jey?
It’s an unasked question, however, that still has little to no emotion attached to it.
Nothing that Heaven actually feels. Truth be told, she’s not exactly sure what she feels. At least not until she happens to look behind her, wanting to ensure that Macy, though not physically possible, has not overheard news Heaven hasn’t the slightest idea how she’s going to break to her sweet little girl.
Especially if….
But it’s halted when two other expressions snag her focus.
Roman and Nathan. Twins in so many different ways, their personalities and dispositions almost identical. The first few seconds reveal brief, minor distinctions that, if not for how well she knows both father and son, she could have easily missed. The subtle tick of Roman’s jaw and motion of his bushy brows, weary eyes flashing with something unidentifiable. Similarly, there’s a discreet rise and fall of Nathan's shoulders followed by his mouth shifting before his expression lands in the same place as his father’s. Identical, nonchalant, calm, stoic look on their faces. And while she certainly wouldn’t expect either to emote any sort of despair or sorrow, it’s the lack of something she would expect to see that makes her still.
Shock.
They don’t….they don’t look shocked.
Not even a little.
And there’s something unsettling about that for completely different reason. Something that has her stomach in knots and spurns widespread disquiet. “What—“
An interrupted, unasked question lost in the midst of another sound inserted into the commotion of the room, voices layered over one another, but that consternated tone overpowering the rest.
“Macy?”
Her daughter’s name being called is what forces Heaven to return her focus to her child, the sight of which immediately makes her stomach churn.
“Macy.”
Macy doesn’t respond though, and her silence isn’t due to the lack of her hearing aids and thus inability to hear. It’s because of the sudden, jerking motions of her body as medical staff swarm around her right as several of the machines connected to her baby start alarming loudly and frantic, some slow and intermittent, some speedily and with urgency that matches that of the team around her.
“She’s seizing.”
“Her oxygen is dropping.”
“She’s coding.”
“Clear the room now!”
All sentences that whip past Heaven as she attempts to close the distance between her and her innocent baby, the view completely obscured by scrubs and a white coat. Arms and hands moving and reaching with purpose and necessity, some of which, however, serve as barriers.
“Macy!”
It’s an out-of-body experience, the heartfelt sound of her baby’s name ripped from her mouth. From Roman’s. Both of them being restrained and forced away from a scene neither can look away from. Their efforts valiant and without respite, even as Heaven feels the sharp pain of the IV ripping out from her arm what with her desperate flailing and swinging of her arms against the nurses holding her back. Her and Roman's voice nothing but heartbreaking echoes of the deepest sort of terror as they scream for their child.
“MACY!”
And similar to the same sight that haunted her that night, as she once more poured every ounce of energy in her body to get to her daughter, Heaven. continues to push. As does Roman. They continue to fight and resist. Tenacity undeterred as the cacophony of noise is usurped by a single, continuous, uninterrupted sound.
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Just a little oneshot that popped into my head and I had to write it down! I hope you enjoy 💕
You can read more Tama stories here: Tama Tonga Master List
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The ice pack on Tama's shoulder had long since lost its chill, but the dull, throbbing ache radiating down his back was a stark reminder of tonight's match. The deafening roar of the arena crowd was finally out of his head, replaced by the sterile, rhythmic hum of the hotel suite's air conditioning.
Through the crack in the door of the adjoining bedroom, the soft, even breathing of his girlfriend provided a quiet soundtrack to his insomnia. He ran a heavy hand over his face, exhausted to his bones but entirely too wired to sleep.
Then, the screen of his phone illuminated, buzzing with a harsh, urgent vibration against the wood.
He reached for it quickly to silence the noise, fully intending to send whoever was calling at two in the morning straight to voicemail. But the name glowing brightly on the screen made his blood run cold.
Eden.
"Shit," he breathed out, the words slipping into the quiet room as barely a whisper. He hadn't seen that name flash across his screen in over a year.
He threw a quick, cautious glance toward the bedroom door. She was still asleep. Heart pounding against his ribs, Tama grabbed the phone and slid the glass balcony door open, stepping out into the cool night air and pulling the door shut behind him before hitting accept.
"Eden?" he answered, his voice low, tight, and guarded.
"Hey," her voice came through the speaker. It was soft, hesitant, and laced with a familiar tremor that instantly began chipping away at his heart. "I know it's late."
Tama leaned heavily against the cold metal of the balcony railing, the scattered city lights blurring in front of him. "Why are you calling so late? Something wrong?"
"I saw the show," she said quietly. "Are you okay? You took a really bad hit at the end."
He let the silence between them stretch, the sound of her voice echoing in his ears long after the words had faded. It was as if Eden had crawled through the phone line and nestled herself in the hollow of his chest, breathing new life into old wounds. He closed his eyes, fighting the urge to let her back in for even this single, stolen moment. "I'm fine," he replied, willing his voice not to shake, not to betray the electric current of panic and longing that threatened to undo him. But he couldn’t let himself get swept away, not again. "But I... I can’t talk long." He pivoted, his eyes scanning the dim outline of the hotel suite behind the glass. The TV in the bedroom still flickered with silent blue light, illuminating the soft tumble of hair on the pillow; his girlfriend, fast asleep, oblivious to the ticking bomb Tama cradled in his palm.
There was a pause on the other end of the call, a subtle shift as Eden processed his words. "I’m not alone," he added, voice dropping lower, the words heavy with implication. It wasn’t meant to be a warning, but somehow it came out that way.
A thin, icy breeze swept across the balcony, but it was nothing compared to the chill settling over the conversation. He heard the faintest intake of breath from Eden's end, a hitch he recognized from years ago, back when they would lie in the dark, talking about everything and nothing until sunrise. He could practically see her now, sitting cross-legged on her bed, twisting a strand of hair around her finger, eyes searching the ceiling for answers.
"Oh," Eden said, and her voice was so quiet he almost missed it. "I didn’t know you were seeing anyone."
He hesitated, caught between two versions of himself, the one perched here on the cold balcony, tethered by the fragile beginnings of a new life, and the one who still answered when Eden called. He exhaled, watched his breath fog the night. “Yeah… it’s kinda new, I guess,” he said, the words coming out heavier than he intended. The confession tasted strange in his mouth, foreign, like someone else’s line in a play he didn’t audition for.
A beat of static hummed between them, the silence thickening against the city’s distant traffic.
“I don’t want to…I’ll let you go,” Eden said, her voice tightening, brittle as glass and twice as fragile.
“No,” he blurted, the word outpacing reason, a reflex that startled even him. “Don’t.” The plea lingered, raw and unguarded, and for a moment it hung there.
They both listened to the slow pulse of their breathing, strangers again after all this time, desperately orbiting the gravity of what went unsaid. "Tonight," Eden spoke, her voice soft but steady now. "You looked so different."
Tama pressed the heel of his hand against his throbbing shoulder, feeling the bruise beneath his skin pulse in time with his quickening heartbeat. "Different how?"
"Tired," she said. "Like you're carrying something heavy."
The words landed with uncomfortable precision. Tama turned, bracing both hands on the balcony railing, watching the city below breathe its electric light into the night. The metal bit cold through his palms.
"I saw you too," he admitted, the confession surprising even himself. "Last month. That article in Rolling Stone about your gallery opening."
"You read it?" The hope in her voice was barely concealed, a small crack in her composure.
"Yeah." He couldn't tell her he'd read it five times, couldn't explain how he'd memorized the description of her latest exhibition—"Eden Cole's haunting new collection explores the liminal spaces between memory and reality." Couldn't admit that he'd recognized himself in every brushstroke of the featured painting, that fractured face staring back from the magazine page.
"You never came to see them in person," she said at last. Her voice was light, almost offhanded, but Tama heard the years of hurt under the surface; a hairline fracture running the length of a sentence. For a moment, neither of them filled the silence. The balcony’s chill pressed through his thin t-shirt, and all he could think of was the time, years ago, when Eden had painted his portrait: how she’d forced him to sit still for hours in their shoebox apartment, the smell of oil paints hanging dense in the air. She’d titled it “Unsaid.”
He gripped the phone tighter, thumb blanching white, as if he could squeeze out a better version of himself through sheer force of will. His mind ticked through the plausible excuses; injuries, scheduling, the never-ending grind of tour dates, the unspoken expectation that he keep his distance for her sake, but he couldn’t bring himself to say any of them. They all sounded cheap, disposable, like the plastic trophies lining the shelves of his old childhood bedroom.
He took a shaky breath. “I’m sorry, darlin’. You deserved better than that.”
There was a pause, and for a fleeting second Tama wondered if she’d hung up, if the old Eden, the one who never chased what wasn’t hers, had finally learned to let go. But then he heard her breathing, slow and deliberate, as if she were counting out the seconds necessary to keep her voice from breaking.
"Did I?" she finally asked, and her tone stripped him bare, all pretense gone.
Tama ducked his head, staring down at the city’s neon veins, the traffic pulsing in patterns he pretended to understand. Of course she deserved better. She’d always been the brave one, the one to stick her hand in the fire and come away with something beautiful, even if it meant getting burned. He, on the other hand, was always looking for a way to douse the flames before they caught.
He thought about the mess he’d made of things with Eden, the slow-motion car crash of their inevitable undoing. The months he spent in Japan, coming down alone in nondescript hotel beds, missing her so badly it felt like a dislocated joint. He could still remember the way she’d look at him when he finally came home, her hands threading through his hair, her eyes a question he was too scared to answer.
"Yeah," he replied, voice soft and uneven. "You did. You do."
He heard her inhale, a sound so small and so sharp it made his throat ache. "Funny how that works," she said, almost to herself.
He let the words settle over him, heavy, pressing him into the present. Tama felt the two halves of his life collide, violently, inside his chest. He was still trying to piece together the fragments when Eden spoke again, her voice steadier now but no less raw, "Funny how some people stay the same, and some people–"
"Change," he finished, the word falling between them like a dropped glass.
She laughed, short and breathless. "Yeah. Change."
Neither of them said anything for a long time. The city below kept moving, ignorant of the standoff being waged ten stories above. Tama looked up at the stars, searching for something like clarity, and found only a sky empty of answers.
“Why’d you really call me tonight?” he asked, not sure whether he wanted to know.
Eden hesitated, then exhaled. “I guess I just wanted to hear your voice, see if it still sounded the same.”
He closed his eyes, letting her words settle over him like a second skin. If he’d been any braver, he would have told her the truth: that he’d kept every voicemail she’d ever left, that he’d memorized the way she said his name when she wasn’t sure he was listening. That the sound of her voice was the only thing that ever steadied his hands when they shook, hours after a match, when the adrenaline crashed and the pain came rushing in.
Instead, he gripped the phone tighter, and said quietly, "It’s still me, sweetheart.”
"Still you," she repeated, and her voice held something that sounded almost like disappointment. "I'm not sure if that's comforting or terrifying."
Tama shifted his weight, his bare feet cold against the balcony's concrete. The city lights twinkled below, indifferent to his turmoil. "Probably both."
"Eden, hold on," he whispered, turning toward the glass door. Through it, he could see the blue glow of the television casting shifting shadows across the bedroom. His girlfriend's silhouette appeared briefly before the bathroom light flicked on. He watched her, heart hammering, skin prickled cold; track his absence with slow, confused motions. She squinted at the clock, then at the balcony, then laid back down.
Eden was still on the line, her breath a feathered static in his ear, her name a molten thread pulling him back to a life he no longer had the right to claim. He could picture her, awake and waiting, on her own side of the world, unsatisfied by the silence and unwilling to hang up first.
“Sorry,” he said quietly.
There was another brittle pause, Eden’s silence as loaded as a needle. “Look, I don’t wanna cause trouble…” Her words trailed off, but Tama could picture the way she’d press her lips together, as if physically restraining herself from saying more, from reaching through the static to touch the part of him she remembered.
He shifted his grip on the phone, knuckles aching, head resting against the icy glass of the sliding door. Trouble. That was always the word people used when they wanted to pretend they weren’t the ones lighting the match. But he didn’t blame her; he’d called her too, a hundred times in his head, and always hung up before she had the chance to answer.
He thought about his girlfriend in the next room, how she’d looked at him over room service just hours ago, her laughter a balm against the ache that never quite left his bones. He’d thought he could make a new life, one where the past stayed locked in the back of his mind, but Eden’s voice was a skeleton key, turning old locks with effortless precision.
He could hear her exhale, could imagine the way her hand would hover over the “end call” button, not quite ready to sever the line. “If you’d rather–” she began, her tone careful, “we can just hang up. I don’t wanna be that person.”
Tama swallowed, guilt and want colliding in his chest, scattering his thoughts like loose change. He forced a laugh, too thin to be convincing. “You’re not causing trouble, darlin'. That’s not it. I just–” He realized he had nothing to offer her but apologies and weak reassurances. “It’s good to hear your voice, that’s all.” Even as he said it, his eyes drifted back to the wavering blue light of the bedroom.
He wondered if Eden could hear the lie trembling under the surface of his words, if she recognized the old reflex, the way he’d always tried to smooth the jagged edges of conversations he didn’t know how to finish. Maybe she did, because she went quiet again, and in that silence Tama felt the weight of the years compress into the space between two heartbeats.
He stood there, suspended, not wanting to let go but unsure how to keep holding on.
"Do you remember the night before you left for Japan that last time?" Eden's voice was a whisper now, barely audible over the distant traffic. "You told me you'd come back for me."
Tama closed his eyes, the memory hitting him like a fist to the sternum. That last night, her face illuminated by moonlight streaming through the bedroom window of their tiny apartment. The way she'd traced his features with her fingertips as if committing him to memory. The way he'd promised, knowing even then it was a lie he'd tell himself again and again.
"I remember," he said, his throat tight.
"Did you mean it?"
He couldn't answer. The words lodged themselves in his chest, painful and sharp. Behind him, through the glass, his girlfriend stirred, rolling over in her sleep.
"Eden, I–" He stopped, pressing his forehead against the cold balcony railing. "We can't do this."
"Do what?" Her voice was steadier now, almost challenging. "Talk?"
"Reopen old wounds." His voice came out rougher than he intended. "I hurt you enough the first time."
"And you think silence is better?"
He pressed his forehead against the chilled pane, eyes slipping out of focus as traffic signals changed from red to green and streams of headlights shifted direction in perfect, mindless choreography. It was so different from the world he and Eden had built together; hers all color and raw nerve, his an endless negotiation between risk and restraint, never quite managing to meet in the middle.
“Anyway, I should go. I’m opening a second gallery tomorrow night and still need to finish this painting.” She sighed, her breath soft in his ear, as if equal parts pride and fatigue.
He pictured her standing among her works-in-progress, paint smudged down the side of her wrist, the blue of some new sky or bruise covering the tips of her fingers. She’d once painted through a migraine so blinding she had to keep one eye closed, and when he’d finally gotten her to lie down, she’d murmured, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” before lapsing into a fevered dream.
“Second gallery?” Tama asked, trying to keep his tone light. “That’s huge, Eden.” And it was, the kind of thing she’d sketched in the margins of her notebooks when they were younger, before life unspooled and they’d become people with separate histories. He tried to summon gratitude that she’d made it, that she was living the kind of life he’d always admired from a safe distance.
She laughed, the sound as raw and bright as a comet flaring out behind her. “Yeah. Who would’ve thought.” Then, softer, “Sometimes I wish you could see it. Not even the opening, just… the walls. What it looks like when it’s quiet.”
He heard the hitch in her voice and the ache behind his sternum spiked, and for a moment Tama thought he might say something reckless, something about hopping a flight and showing up when the lights were still off, just to see her in her element. But the words caught and died, tangled in the reality he’d stitched together.
He let the silence yawn between them for a beat, then forced a crooked smile she couldn’t see. “I know it’s beautiful, sweetheart," he said, and meant it.
Tama closed his eyes, visualizing the walls of her gallery, imagining the smell of wet paint and the quiet solitude she loved so much. For a second, he was right there next to her.
Then, a sharp, raspy voice broke through the glass.
"Tama?"
His eyes snapped open. Through the sliding door, his girlfriend was sitting up in bed, the blanket pooling at her waist. She rubbed her eyes, squinting toward the balcony, trying to make out his silhouette in the dark.
Panic, cold and sudden, spiked in his chest.
"I have to go," he whispered into the phone, the words tasting like ash.
Eden’s breath caught. "I know." The resignation in her voice was worse than anger. It was the sound of someone who was used to being left behind. "Goodbye, Tama," she whispered, her voice cracking on the final syllable.
The line went dead. He lowered the phone, the screen glowing briefly against his palm before fading to black. He slid the glass door open and stepped back into the room, leaving a piece of himself out in the cold.
———
The air in the gallery smelled of expensive champagne, white lilies, and the faint, stubborn tang of dried oil paint. Eden stood near the center of the brightly lit room, a crystal flute trembling slightly in her hand. She wore a backless emerald slip dress that moved like liquid when she shifted her weight, her hair pinned up in an elegant, chaotic twist that exposed the delicate line of her neck. She looked radiant, commanding, and entirely untouchable; the exact picture of the soaring success she had always dreamed of.
From the shadows near the coat check, Tama watched her.
He felt entirely out of place. The red-eye flight from Chicago had been brutal, the pressurized cabin wreaking havoc on his injured shoulder, but the exhaustion had evaporated the second he stepped off the damp pavement and through the gallery’s glass doors. He couldn’t stay away. Her voice on the phone, the quiet desperation, the wistful wish that he could see the walls, had echoed in his head until buying the ticket was the only way to silence it.
"My sweet girl," he murmured under his breath, the word slipping out instinctively as he watched her laugh at something an art critic was saying.
He stayed by the periphery, leaning his good shoulder against a blank stretch of wall and letting the wealthy patrons in their tailored suits drift past him. He wanted to give her this moment, to just watch her shine in the world she had built from scratch. She was nodding along to the older man in a tweed blazer, offering a polite, practiced smile.
But from this distance, Tama could see the tension in her jaw. He knew her tells. He recognized the slight downward tilt of her chin and the way her eyes looked past the crowd rather than at them. She was surrounded by a hundred people who wanted to know the artist, but she looked entirely alone.
Then, the critic gestured toward a painting on the far wall, and Eden turned.
Her gaze swept over the crowd, a casual, sweeping glance that suddenly snapped to a halt.
Tama didn't move. He stood next to a towering canvas of fractured blues and grays, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his dark leather jacket, his dark eyes locked intensely on hers.
For a second, the entire gallery seemed to hold its breath. The low hum of sophisticated chatter, the clinking of glasses, the soft jazz playing from hidden speakers; it all muted into a dull roar. Eden’s polite smile vanished. Her lips parted, the champagne flute tilting dangerously in her hand as her chest rose in a sharp, sudden intake of breath.
He could see the exact moment her disbelief shattered into recognition. Slowly, Tama offered a small, crooked smile, the one she used to say could get him out of any trouble in the world. He pulled his hands from his pockets and took a single step forward, walking out of the shadows and straight into the bright, unforgiving light of her new life.
"You came," she whispered, though they were still several feet apart. Her lips formed the words rather than spoke them.
He nodded, unable to trust his voice. His heart hammered against his ribs, each beat sending a fresh wave of pain through his injured shoulder. The doctor had warned him about travel, about stress, about the possibility of further damage if he didn't rest properly. But standing here, watching Eden's careful composure crack around the edges, none of that mattered.
The critic beside her cleared his throat, looking between them with obvious confusion. "Ms. Cole, shall we continue our tour?"
Eden blinked, as if suddenly remembering where she was. "Yes, of course," she replied, her voice steadier than Tama expected.
“Go, I’ll wait.” Tama said with a nod.
She turned her attention to the critic, who wasted no time launching into a monologue about the postmodern implications of her color palette, the long tail of the American Abstract, the way her brushstrokes looked like aftershocks of some private disaster. Eden nodded along, her posture impeccable, her hands folded in front of her, the champagne glass now a prop instead of a comfort. She was, Tama realized, performing the version of herself that the world had come to expect, every word and gesture a careful negotiation between what she wanted them to see and what she actually felt.
She hovered by the last of the guests, letting the final accolades bounce off her, and then, when the room was nearly hollow, cut a path straight to him. She stopped just shy of touching distance. Her eyes flicked up to meet his, and in them was the exhaustion of every year they’d spent apart, the effort it took to keep breathing in a world that insisted on moving forward, indifferent to what it left behind.
“I’m sorry,” she sighed, and the words came out a little ragged, as if she’d been holding them in for years. “Didn’t know I’d be gone that long.”
He nearly reached for her, but held his hands at his sides, afraid the smallest contact would break them both open. The silence was different now, less a chasm than a fragile bridge; it asked for something, he just didn’t know what.
She laughed then; soft, self-effacing, her hand fluttering to her bare shoulder. “God, listen to me. It’s supposed to be the best night of my life and I’m already making it weird.”
He smiled, careful not to let it get away from him. “You always did know how to clear a room. Even when we were teenagers.”
Eden’s lips twisted into a real smile, and the tension in her jaw slackened. She stepped closer, until the scent of her filled the space between them. She tilted her head, appraising him as if he were another painting on the wall.
“I can’t believe you came,” she said, and this time it wasn’t a question. It was a thank you and a challenge and a kind of invitation, all at once.
He nodded, suddenly aware of how far he’d traveled, of how nothing in his life had felt as real as this moment. His tongue fumbled for something that could come close to the size of what he felt, that could shrink the enormity of his longing into something as fragile and fleeting as a sound. “I needed to see you here,” the confession fell between them, pained but unflinching. “The way you move in this place,” he tried again, voice low and rough, “the way you’re–” He cut himself off, jaw flexing, afraid the rest would tumble out as something ugly or selfish.
Eden stared at him with that old, surgical intensity, like she wanted to carve the truth out of his skin and keep it preserved. Tama forced himself not to look away from her. He wanted her to see every piece of him, the ruined and the resilient, the parts that still bled for her even when he thought he’d forgotten how.
He didn’t know how to say it gently, so he let it come out the only way it wanted: honest, heavy, and burning through his chest. “I’m so fucking proud of you,” he admitted. “More than anything else, I wanted to see you do this. I wanted to see you be exactly who you’re supposed to be.”
Her face crumpled, just for a heartbeat, and she swayed forward as if the force of his words had broken something loose inside her. “I think,” she said, voice shaking, “I think I needed you to see it too.”
For a long moment they stood still, the lit canvases and the hush of the gallery holding them in a loose orbit. Then Tama, unable to stop himself, finally reached out. His hand hovered, hesitant, then landed lightly at her elbow, grounding her. She pressed her palm over his, cool and damp from the glass she’d been holding, and the contact was so electric he feared it might undo him completely.
They stood together in the wake of everything they hadn’t said, and Tama realized that the world, with all its sharp, indifferent momentum, had just slowed enough for the two of them to breathe the same air again. Eden leaned her head against his shoulder, and he let her, careful to keep the moment together with reverence and awe. His hands wrapped around her waist, pulling her flush against his chest. When she pulled back, there was a wet shine in her eyes and a crooked smile on her lips.
"Thank you for showing up.”
Tama’s crooked smile slowly faltered. He looked at her, taking in the emerald dress, the crystal flute, the walls covered in the beautiful, agonizing proof that she had survived him. She didn't need him to save her anymore. She just needed to know he saw her shine.
"I had to," he murmured, his voice thick. "But…"
Eden closed her eyes, and a single, silent tear slipped down her cheek, catching the harsh gallery light. "But you can't stay." It wasn't a question. The quiet invitation evaporated between them, leaving behind a cold, stark truth.
He wanted to lie. He wanted to tell her he’d tear down the life waiting for him. But he had already broken Eden once; he couldn't do it again just because he was homesick for a past they couldn't get back.
"No," Tama whispered. He brought his hand up, his knuckles gently brushing the tear from her cheek. She leaned into his palm for a fleeting, desperate second, committing the warmth to memory. "Forgive me."
"There's nothing to forgive," she lied beautifully, her voice trembling as she finally took a physical step back, out of his reach. The few inches between them immediately felt like a canyon. "I’m sure you have a flight to catch. And I have…I have this." She gestured vaguely to the gallery.
Tama let his hand drop heavily to his side. The dull throb in his injured shoulder was nothing compared to the violent fracture in his chest. "Don’t ever stop. You’ve built something incredible.” he said, taking a slow, reluctant step backward toward the exit.
"Goodbye, Tama," she said softly. She wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly looking very small in the center of her massive success, as if bracing for a sudden winter chill.
He didn't say it back. He just gave a single, tight nod, turned, and pushed through the heavy glass doors. He walked out into the cold city night, leaving her standing in the bright, unforgiving light of her perfect new life, while he disappeared back into the dark.
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So... just an FYI. I did not send this to anyone. One of my mutuals asked if I did. Looks like someone copied my blog. I can't find the other blog to report it but, if you get something like this, it's not from me!
𝐒𝐘𝐍𝐎𝐏𝐒𝐈𝐒𑁤 love runs deep, but sometimes the pain runs deeper. and sometimes....it's irreparable.
𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒𑁤 angst.
𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃𝐒𑁤 six thousand, five hundred, and some change (6k+)
𝐏𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆𑁤 roman reigns x black!oc
𝐂𝐑𝐄𝐃𝐈𝐓𑁤 graphic and dividers by me.
𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐆 𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐏𝐎𑁤 ❝mirror❞ by justin timberlake
𝐀𝐔𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐑'𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄𑁤 be sure to have read part one, never be the same and part two, say something, before reading this.
“And that’s the problem!” He shouts, either too deeply embedded into his own feelings to notice the way Solana jumps at his volume or perhaps, in this rare moment, he’s just uncaring. “That’s always been the fucking problem.” Roman punches his hand into his open fist to accompany each perfectly enunciated, sharp word, further emphasizing his frustration. “We’ve been stuck in this goddamn cycle for over twenty years now, and at this point, I don’t know how we break it.” But the frustration collapses with the slump of his shoulders and dip of his lips into a deep frown. “Or if it’s already broke us.”
Gail immediately refocuses on Solana, unsurprised to see her body language mimics that of her husband with the additive of the silent tears that stream down her face. Shoulders also slumped, mouth opening and closing as she struggles to verbalize what Gail knows must crush her to say aloud.
“Feels pretty broken to me.”
The silence is deafening.
Lita casts a quick glance between the two of them, leaned forward as she lowers her voice.
“Okay, there’s a lot—”
“I can’t do this right now,” Roman murmurs. Two set of eyes flick in his direction as he stands, turning in the opposite direction of Solana who remains seated, eyes shut, the tears continuing to fall.
“Roman—“
The last minute attempt to convince him to stay is a failed one. The door shutting behind him with a softness that contrasts everything that just occurred and remains in the small room that suddenly feels overwhelming with an influx of emotions.
“He’s done,” Solana whispers. Gail starts to move to reach and place her hand over Solana’s, but the other woman shakes her head. A one shoulder shrug and the saddest smile that’s ever graced someone’s face. “We’re done.”
“I’m getting really worried.”
Leya’s whispered confession draws the focus of her siblings. Her eyes remain down on her lap, on the intricate design of the pillow that she has hugged against her chest. It’s a sort of therapeutic technique she learned a long time ago. When she was younger and her OCD was the worst it’s ever been. Brie would instruct her to hold a pillow close to her chest, holding and squeezing it while taking deep breaths, pretending that the combination and eventual release of her breath and the tension in her body represented the “bad thoughts” being released.
It was helpful. Very helpful in some cases.
But right now, it’s not doing much.
“He’s still not back home,” Nic adds, frown deepening. His eyes flick around the room, his jaw shifting in the same way their dad's does when he's in the midst of thought, working and mulling over scenarios in real time while still maintaining verbal communication. “And he and mom are talking less and less.”
“Not even that,” Aria speaks up, looking among her brothers and sisters. Like once before, she sits only a few inches away from Leya. A symbolic seating of sorts considering they are two of the few siblings who still live at home. All for obvious reasons, whether it be them still being minors or situations like Leya where it just makes since given her having RJ. But their residing in the home also means that they've been granted a front row seat to the tension that's marred their family home over the past few weeks. “You could….you could tell they were upset with each other before, but now…now they don’t even seem angry anymore. They just seem….sad.”
It’s a shared sentiment among the older of the Reigns kids. Even Aroha, on the verge of her twelfth birthday, has pressed her siblings for questions regarding their parents obvious conflict. Both Aria and Leya have done their best to answer without answering, but Aroha isn't the baby of the family anymore with a limited ability to understand what's going on. She knows that something is very wrong, and there's only so many different ways they can dodge the obvious before she becomes aware of how dire the situation is.
Soon enough, Aubrey, Tavita, and RJ will be the only ones spared from the glaring realization that something is definitely, deeply wrong.
The kids were hoping that the joint therapy session Aria saw on her dad’s calendar when updating his phone for him would be the thing that did it. That helped their parents get through or over this hurdle that they’ve seemingly encountered.
But the evening of said session, Solana returned home alone. Roman didn't walk into the front door until they were setting the table for dinner, and Koa and Kai were feeding the pets.
And once all the younger kids were down for bed, Leya checked the camera app on her phone to see her dad climb into one of the family's many cars, start it up, and drive off.
She must have stared at the empty spot where the car once sat for a good ten minutes. At least until the image was blurred and distorted by the tears that were burning her eyes.
The displeasure of having a front row seat from the moment this all began, when her mom marched into the home carrying with her an energy that would change everything, has meant that Leya has, in many ways, been affected the most by it all. Lost in the chaos of a storm that has no visible end in sight and leaves in its wake destruction that's gradually starting to feel irreparable with each passing day of no reconciliation in sight.
For her and all of the rest of her siblings outside of the OG's 2.0, it’s been the most fucking uncomfortable thing ever. When the rough patch hit years prior, there were at least attempts to feign and maintain the role of a happy couple. Their efforts were not without the holes that the older kids were able to spot plain as day, but the fact that their parents at least tried to pretend that everything was fine, for the sake of not wanting to worry their kids, meant something.
But this isn't then.
Their parents aren’t even trying to force or fake shit. They’re just….there.
“I briefly overheard them talking last night—”
“Really?” It’s the most hopeful Leya has felt and sounded since they all arrived at Lina’s place, needing the space to speak and talk freely without Aroha or their parents overhearing. “What—what did they say?”
Koa shakes his head. His foot taps against the floor, his fingers also moving in rhythmic patterns against his knee. “I couldn’t make out all of it, but something about waiting until after Aroha’s birthday—”
“Waiting for what?”
Kai fixes his gaze on Lina. “He just said he couldn’t make it out.”
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
“Guys,” Tama’s deep voice cuts through what’s sure to be a part two from the last time they gathered together, except this time, he’s not about to let things get as far as they did before. He wasn't for it then, and he damn sure isn't for it now. Things were just bad then, but they're significantly worse now, and that's saying something. “Stop it. Now.”
“What if it’s happening this time?” Leya whispers. To herself. Maybe her siblings. She’s not sure. She just knows the sensation of her eyes burning is followed up with a wet feeling against her cheeks. “What if…what if they’re getting a divorced?”
“No way.” Nic's rebuff is quick and sharp. His voice drops an octave, deepening in the way almost all of the boys' voices do when they're irritated or uncomfortable. Again, just like their dad. “No one loves each other more than mom and dad.”
“Certainly doesn’t feel that way anymore.”
“Koa!”
“What?” He snaps, crossing his arms over his chest. “It’s been over two weeks, and things aren’t getting any better. They’re only getting worse.”
“I can’t believe he had a stroke and didn’t tell mommy,” Lina voices what she’s been wondering since her sister broke the shocking, alarming news. “They tell each other everything.”
“Not this,” Kai mutters.
Tama starts to check his younger brother once more but opts to try to keep the conversation focused and on topic. “He probably didn’t want to worry her—”
“He’s done a great job with that.”
“Sissy,” Leya sighs. Lina looks at her twin, the solemn expression on a face that’s hers but also not making her shoulders drop. “Sorry,” she murmurs. “I just—” She swallows, eyes growing watery. “This can’t be happening. Mommy and daddy are soulmates. They can’t—they can’t get divorced.” She looks around the room, a sense of helplessness that’s foreign and suffocating. “They still love each other. I know they do.”
Lina has always been the problem solver of her siblings. Tama as well, but the final say has always been run past her. It’s always been her gift in life. A gift she inherited from her father. Underneath an often rough, tough exterior is a problem solving brain that is typically the source of countless, possible solutions.
But she sits among her brothers and sisters, stunned and damned to the silence that represents failure.
She can’t solve this.
Doesn’t know how.
Her words, however, trigger something within Aria. She lifts her head, slowly, mouthing something to herself. It’s faint and low but heard and noticed by Leya who looks at her with glossy eyes.
“What is it?”
The question manages to temporarily relieve the rest of kids from the depressing realization that the life they’ve always known, loved, and appreciated might be on the path of change.
And not the good type.
Samaria licks her lips, looking around the room, her gaze settling on Tama and Lina.
“I think I have an idea.”
————
The sound of the front door slamming and the soles of her foot slapping against the wooden floor serve as blurred background noise. Everything outside of racing thoughts, most of which were intrusive in nature, have clouded up her headspace. Ever since her phone lit up as she was in the midst of vacuuming out the OG's 2.0 playroom and saw a text from her eldest son. Simple in nature. Heavy in meaning.
We need you.
Solana was out the door in under twenty minutes. The short distance from the Reigns estate and the home of her eldest two children has never felt so far away as she sped through traffic, uncaring of any laws being broken in the process.
All she could think about was the fact that it was rare for her son to send such a short, non-descriptive message. Even more, especially since he moved out, Tama has always preferred to talk over text. At least with her.
So Solana knew that something had to be very wrong, hence the urgency that guided her movements and relentless efforts to make it to her babies.
Except the minute she rounds the entryway and heads for the living room, calls for her son and daughter left unanswered, worry is swapped for something else.
Shock.
Emerging from the kitchen, most likely through the backdoor entrance off said kitchen, Solana stands across from the man she's barely spoken more than ten words to over the past several days.
Roman.
His expression, she's certain, mirrors hers. He eyes her skeptically before his mouth settles into a line and her own mouth parts once and then twice before she manages to speak.
"What—what are you doing here?"
Though the minute it comes out, she immediately both regrets and answers her own question. If Tama reached out to her because something is wrong, of course he'd reach out to his dad as well.
Roman must realize this, too, as his answer never comes, or rather it's intercepted by the sound of footsteps as she turns around to see several of her oldest children. Tama is included in said group, but the expression on his face, on all of their faces, doesn't indicate a level or urgency.
It indicates….anxiety.
Like they're nervous about something.
Roman finally breaks his silence, voicing what Solana is thinking. "What's going on?"
Lina steps forward, her siblings eyes fixed onto her as she motions with her arm to the living room. "Please. Sit." She leans to the side just enough to ensure locking eyes with her father. "Daddy, you too."
And just like that, the concern about what had happened shifts to what's about to happen. Solana, however, would like to believe that her kids wouldn't have called both herself and Roman over here for nothing. So instead of pushing back the way she wants to, she silently walks into the living room, placing her purse on the space beside her.
Roman follows suit, sitting across the way, of course.
Though she understands it and prefers it, she also hates it. As upset and angry and hurt and everything else as she is towards and with her husband, it hasn't dulled the wound in her chest that's been birthed and only grown day after day since this all went down.
"Kids." Solana turns to see Roman is focused on their children who've also joined them in the living room, lined up almost in front of the television. Lina. Leya. Tama. Aria. Nic. "I'm not gon' ask again."
As much as Solana dislikes the almost irritated tone he's taken with them, the question is valid. Though she has a feeling she's not going to like the answer any more than he will.
Tama takes a deep breath and stuffs his hands in the pockets of his dark jeans. "Look, we know….we know you guys aren't in a good place right now."
Solana shuts her eyes. Her suspicions have now turned into confirmations.
"Tam—"
"And we know that you've always told us to stay out of it," Lina cuts in, the only one in the group other than Tama, that would have the balls to interrupt Roman like that. "That your marriage is none of our business and between the two of you."
Solana licks her lips, gradually willing her eyes open. "Lin—"
"But whatever is happening between you guys right now is affecting all of us," Nic's additive does nothing more than increase that weight on Solana's chest. She's not stupid. As much as she would like to believe she and Roman have done their best to not allow their situation to impact the kids, that's just not a feasible nor realistic expectation. With the exception of Aubrey and Tavita, Solana knows her children well enough to know they inherited their father's discernment.
They can see what doesn't need to be stated.
Aria takes another deep breath as she takes over for her brother." We know something is wrong, and we love you both too much to sit back and do nothing."
Solana doesn't need to be looking at her husband to see the way his jaw shifts and moves as he works to find the right, best words. “Samaria—”
“Please,” Leya cuts in, stepping forward, lips pressed together as her parents focus on her. “For…for us.”
It’s a bit of a cruel string to pull. A manipulation tactic if not for who it was to evoke it.
The only thing that neither Solana nor Roman can ever say no to.
When it comes to their kids, it’s always a yes.
It’s why, despite them sitting on opposite sofas—Solana on the one facing the TV and Roman on the one adjacent to the TV—they're on the same page for a first time in a long time.
Aria is the one to walk over to them, breaking from her brothers and sisters. “We know that we’re obviously biased since we’re your kids. Not to mention it’s not really our place, but we thought....” She stops, looking over at someone else to take over as she grabs the remote, setting up the television, the emotion in her voice indicative of her struggle. “We thought maybe if you hear it from someone other than us, it’ll help you remember.”
Solana shifts on the sofa, hating the way she struggles to maintain her volume. Indication and reminders of her immense difficulty over the past two weeks in trying to keep it all together. “Remember what?”
Lina is the one to handle the question, the final one, as the kids start to spill out the room.
“That you’re RoSo.”
The term makes both husband and wife still. But whatever is felt from hearing something that carries so much history and weight is redirected when music starts to play. A song she recognizes almost instantly.
Aren't you somethin' to admire?
'Cause your shine is somethin' like a mirror
And I can't help but notice
You reflect in this heart of mine
The dark screen lights up, cursive black font set against a white backdrop.
RoSo
Solana’s hand drops to her stomach at the transition to Dwayne and Matteo, clearly at the Warehouse, in the midst of a workout. The music remains playing in the background at a lower volume to accommodate the sounds of the interviewees.
“Uncle Dwayne. Uncle Teo.” Tama’s voice is loud and clear, confirming he’s the one filming the two men who stand with light sheen of sweat splayed across their forehead, hands on their waist. “What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of RoSo?”
Dwayne chuckles, looking at Matteo. “You wanna go first, Fabio?”
Matteo casts a wry smile and glances at the camera. “That’s easy.” He shrugs. “Love.”
Roman’s jaw clenches.
“Fucker stole my answer,” Dwayne curses, also looking at the camera. “But like he said, love. Unlike anything I’ve ever seen, either.”
The clips switches as a smiling Afia and Bayley stand next to each other. Like the men, dressed in workout/training attire and clearly at the Warehouse but caught right before the beginning of their sparring session.
“Tias.” It’s Lina’s voice this time as she presents the same question as her brother. “What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of RoSo?”
Bayley scoffs. “Douche, but that only applies to the first half.”
Afia lightly slaps Bayley on the arm, shaking her head before taking a soft breath. Her pretty eyes flick upward, narrowing slightly in the way she does when in deep thought. “Soulmates.”
“As much as I hate to say anything remotely good about your irritating ass dad, she’s right.” Bayley feigns an over-dramatic sigh before her mouth settles into a small, genuine smile. “Soulmates for sure.”
'Cause I don't wanna lose you now
I'm lookin' right at the other half of me
The vacancy that sat in my heart
Is a space that now you hold
Another transition to another clip that reveals Cameron, Melina, and Mickie, also at the Warehouse, which instantly has Solana convinced that the kids must have asked everyone to meet them there.
That faction of Solana’s friend group only attends the Warehouse for fight nights and major matches, primarily when Roman is fighting, and even then, they’re more there for her than for the actual fights.
And just like the last two times, the same question is presented, but the timbre of Nic’s deep voice is heard instead of Lina’s much lighter, softer one. Mickie is the first to answer in the way that only Mickie would.
“Hot.”
Nic’s exasperated sigh makes Solana smile. “Aunt Mickie.”
Cameron, however, quickly jumps in with her own answer accompanied by a soft smile. “Inspiring.”
Melina casts her a sideways glance, playfully nudging her. “You make them sound like motivational speakers.”
She shrugs, pushing her braids back over her shoulder. “I mean, Solana kind of is.”
It’s hard for Solana to pinpoint exactly what part of what she’s watching affects and impacts her the most. The words. The participants. The effort her children have clearly put in to make all this happen, and in such a short period of time, it seems. Each compliment, however, seems to do something to her. Lessens just a little bit the weight she’s carried with her nonstop the past two weeks.
But she's tuned back in, resisting the desire to look over at Roman who’s also watched quietly thus far, as Mickie makes a ‘pfft’ sound. “Roman isn’t.” She rolls her eyes, lifting her hand to examine her nails. “He’s the meanest person I know.”
“Mickey,” Melina mutters, gesturing to the camera. “That’s his dad.”
“Oh my God, it’s not a secret. Literally everyone knows Roman is mean.” She throws her hands up, looking away, gasping. “Here. You.”
Confusion dwells as the footage becomes shaky before the camera refocuses on an unfamiliar face, but he wears a solid black shirt with a familiar, red insignia on the right side, just above his pectoral muscles.
Bloodline.
However, Solana’s guess would be he’s not of the…..field type. Perhaps something related to tech. Slim build, greasy hair, some strings clinging to his forehead, and the way he pushes his thick rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose as well as the overall startled expression all but confirm it.
There are numerous positions available throughout the Bloodline, and despite popular misconception, not all of them require the ability to maim and kill. There are many other roles that need fulfilling, some of which include sitting behind a desk.
This man is clearly a desk type.
“What’s your name?” Mickie asks but immediately waves away as if physically pushing her initial query to the side in place of what’s most relevant. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Isn’t Roman Reigns an asshole?”
“Mickie!”
Another smile appears on Solana’s face as the nervous expression on the man’s swiftly morphs into something of horror. His widened eyes and dilated pupils magnified 10x over.
“The—the Tribal Chief?” His eyes switch to the camera, slightly above the frame, which Solana would guess is him realizing just who is holding said camera. He gulps. “No. N—no. The—the Tribal Chief is a great man—”
“Okay, that’s enough.” A quiet laugh actually spills over when Mickie literally shoves the man away, prompting outcry from Cameron and Melina. “See, even strangers are afraid of him. Why?” She mouths she word, sound absent but lips easily readable. “Asshole.”
“Ignore her.” Solana watches Melina shake her head when Nic refocuses the camera on her, and even before she can fix her mouth to say it, Solana just knows. Can tell by the gleam in her eyes what the answer is.
“Amor.”
Love.
Additional clips interviewing closest family and friends continue to flash across the screen, but Solana feels frozen in place and time from that word. A word that so deeply encompasses so much of her life. Of her relationship.
Carved into her, metaphorically and physically. The latter of the two further emphasized when she realizes her hand is placed against her chest, fingers covering the black and red ink near her clavicle.
Her tattoo.
The one she got for Roman.
For them.
She swallows, emotion continuing to build as the lyrics burn into her soul.
Show me how to fight for now
And I'll tell you, baby, it was easy
Comin' back here to you once I figured it out
You were right here all along.
Except the emotion only extrapolates when unexpected participants fill up the flat screen TV.
Aubrey, Tavita, and RJ are sitting at the table she recognizes from being the one in their shared playroom. Naturally, all three are wiggly, but only Aubrey is smiling happily. RJ and Tavita instead carry pouts and scowls that remind her so much of….of Roman.
Roman
“Okay, guys—”
Koa’s voice is cut off by a whining, pouting Aubrey as she reaches up with her arms. Tavita and RJ present a question Solana can’t entirely make out. “Can you hold me?”
A heavy sigh makes her chuckle as she wipes at her eyes. Koa offers, in the nicest voice he can, she’s certain, a delayed acceptance. “After, Aubrey.”
Kai’s irritated voice sounds from elsewhere, most likely behind Koa, with his arms crossed and frustration written all over his face. Neither of her twin boys have ever been very good with….little kids. “Why does she always want to be held?”
“I don’t think she knows how to use her legs.”
“Leave her alone. She’s only three.” Aria snaps, and it causes the tears to spill over at a faster, heavier rate. All the kids. All of her kids partook in this, the older ones handling the filming with her younger kids partaking in the answering portion. Hence why she would guess this interviewing of the OG’s 2.0 would be the last set. “And would you two shut up? I don’t want to have to edit this out.”
“Guys.” Kai cuts in, forever the one to keep everyone focused. “Do you know what RoSo is?”
It’s a shared answer with a loud “yeah!” coming from all three.
“Who is RoSo?”
Again, another joint answer, naturally, RJ’s answer differing from that of his technical aunt and uncle.
“Mommy and daddy!”
“Grandpa and abuela!”
Solana sniffles, smiling at the kids’ enthusiastic replies, Aubrey clapping happily. And for the first time since the start of the video, Solana’s eyes drift over to the other side of the room where Roman sits on the edge of the sofa. Leaned over, his hands fisted together over his mouth, brows furrowed and and focused on the screen with the same level of intensity and intrigue that’s sat with her from the moment the video started.
It makes her heart swell.
“That’s right.” Aria giggles and gasps dramatically. “And how do you feel about RoSo?” A beat. “Do you guys love RoSo?”
That final question, however is what really evokes the biggest smile, laughs, and glee from the children with a loud, unanimous “yes!”
The timing is synced perfectly, it seems, as the final refrain begins and all of the clips fill the screen, one by one, sounds muted to allow the music to play louder and without interruption. But it’s when the post-chorus begins that Solana nearly loses it.
“Oh my God.”
Clips of herself and Roman.
From their wedding in Mexico shortly before the girls were born. Solana smiling and holding onto his arm.
Several from their vow renewal ceremonies over the year.
Her dancing playfully as he spins her around and tugs her against him, craning his head down to kiss her shoulder, her own over his forearm. Smiling.
Them in the pool, him holding her as she smiles down and kisses him. Right before he squeezes her ass under the water, prompting her to gasp and swat at his shoulder.
Of her in the kitchen cooking and him sneaking up to hug her from behind. Her hand over her chest, smile on her face and head tilted back to cradle the back of his head as he kisses her.
Roman sitting at the table talking to the kids, giving them one of his many lectures, hand gestures and all. Solana behind him, nodding and playfully mimicking his non-verbals. The amused smile on Leya’s face giving her away as Roman turns to look at her. Her expression immediately dropping, eyes widening with faux innocence. Lighthearted mockery veiled by her quickly kissing his temple and darting away.
Them on the beach, her giggling and attempting to run only for his long legs to easily allow him to catch her. Though the original audio is muted to allow for Timberlake's volalization, Solana can hear her laughter through the screen as he picks her up and spins her back around.
Hospital footage from several of the kids’ births. Roman sitting at the edge of the hospital bed, holding their baby, her peering over his shoulder.
Him holding her against him as she leaned her forehead into his chest, squeezing his arms while he swayed gently with her to ease the pain and discomfort from her contractions.
Her standing between his open legs, comb in hand as she parted his hair while saying something to the kids only to jump when his hands lifted to her waist, clearly squeezing playfully. The smile on her face as she looked down and captured a kiss before gently tugging at his beard before resuming.
Roman's head back, lips slightly parted as she was curled into him, hand on his chest. On the family's private jet, clearly on the way home from one of their vacations. Both of their eyes shut as they stole a rare moment of the peace and quiet needed for a quick nap.
So many clips.
So many stolen moments, some of which, she hadn't even realized her kids captured on video.
So many memories.
By the time, it’s finished, Solana can’t breathe. Can’t think. Can’t anything. She’s overwhelmed and filled with an abundance of unnamed entities that have her heart heavy, her stomach tight, and her hand over her chest. It’s a trick of the mind, she’s certain, but she can almost feel the thud of her heart against her shaky palm. Her eyes burn and jaw trembles. It’s only as the sight ahead of her becomes blurry and the weight travels down to her legs that she has to move.
Has to find escape, her legs carrying her out of the living room and to the back of the townhouse, through the kitchen and out the back sliding door.
Her vision remains disrupted, big gasps of breath taken to inhale as much of the fresh air as she can handle, but it’s a shaky process. Her inability to regulate her breathing fueled by the sob making its way up the back of her throat. She continues to walk, feet carrying her into the patch of grass the outlines the patio and recently uncovered pool.
The same grass that cushions her knees when she falls to the ground, one hand over stomach, the other covering her mouth as the sob finally breaks through the surface. She’s doubled over, emotions overflowing and manifesting in the way she wails loudly. Intermittent gasps and sharp intakes of breaths as crying battles with the crippling somatic sensations that feel an awful like the early stages of a panic attack.
It most likely is one, too.
It’d be the third one she’s had over the past week.
But new sensations, different yet familiar, gradually seep in and manage to de-escalate. A gentle touch, fingers grazing against her arms. A gentle tug that has her back against against something firm but soothing as the hands shift to where solid, strong arms circle her waist. Solana’s hands naturally fall on Roman’s forearms that secure and lock her to him.
It makes her stomach twist tighter and tears fall harder.
Neither stop her, however, from uttering the first real, authentic words to him since their disastrous therapy session. Any interactions and conversations since then have been forced, fake, and inauthentic.
There’s nothing inauthentic about the heartbroken words that she manages to force out in between gut wrenching crying. “I’m sor—I’m sor—”
“Sol—”
“We’ve—we’ve built a life t—together.” It’s a life she never envisioned for herself. Before Roman, Solana didn’t see herself making it to thirty. But because of him, she’d had her first set of kids by thirty. “I can’t lose—that. I can’t lose you.”
Despite the tightness in her chest and the way her eyes burn from how much she’s cried over the past few two weeks, she manages to channel enough strength to turn to look at him.
It’s like looking at herself. A different side of herself. Harder, stronger, firmer. A pillar. The other and best parts of her in so many ways.
His glossed eyes burn into her, hand lifting to palm her cheek. “Solana—”
“You’re my best friend.” She sniffles, shaking her head as his thumb brushes away her tears. “I don’t know how to do life without you, Roman, and the fact that one day, a day that's sooner rather than farther, is a reality that I will have to face terrifies me. I don’t—" Another deep, sharp intake of breath that makes her chest tighten and shoulders slump once more. "I should have told you about the pregnancy."
"Sol—"
"I hated—hated lying to you. I—I shouldn't have, but I—I thought if I could—if I could spare you from feeling that pain, then—then I was going to do that for you. All you've ever done is protect me, and I—I wanted to be the one to protect you for once. "But in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter anymore. It was selfish of her to keep such a thing from Roman. Yes, just as she stated, she wanted nothing more than to protect her husband the way he'd always protected her. Intentions, however, matter not in the face of the outcome and reality. She was wrong, and there's no way around that. Plain and simple.
She bites down on her bottom lip, realizing that this is the moment to lay it all out. Good, bad, whatever it may be, Roman is more than deserving of the truth. He always was.
"For almost twenty years, there wasn't a single day where I wasn't haunted by the —the memories of my rape or—or my mother's murder, and sometimes—sometime both." Solana manages a shaky breath, powering through it all. "I couldn't help it. Couldn't control it. But that…that I could. I—I know you don't believe me, but I hadn't thought about it in years, Roman." She lifts her eyes to his once more, having to push back the next wave of tears just beyond the horizon. "When—when we got pregnant with Nicky, when we had him, I pushed it so far to the back of my mind that it wasn't until we were arguing—"
And just like in the days following both the discovery and the loss, an immense weight on her chest and in her heart. That weighs her down and makes her desperate to reach for something. For someone. Because there wasn't a day that passed that Solana didn't want to tell Roman, didn't want to share the truth as to why they couldn't be intimate. What'd happened. What they'd lost.
But she didn't. And that is a mistake she will have to carry with her for the rest of her life. A mistake that she'll regret for the rest of her life.
Looking at him once more, seeing the emotion dancing in his eyes, a rare display and reflection of vulnerability that's never felt stronger, Solana is overcome once more.
“I love you.”
A combination and accumulation of everything that’s transpired over the past two weeks. Emotions that have deprived her of peace, stripped her of calm and layered her with the weight of loss.
Solana’s children have always been her greatest source of joy, but the fact of the matter is that she has them because of him. Because of Roman.
And as frustrated and upset as she’s been with him, that she was, the bulk of her emotions hasn’t been anger.
It’s been hurt.
A type of pain that she hasn’t experienced in years. Old wounds gradually and torturously ripped open that, prior to this, she was sure she’d healed from. A level of unhealthy codependency.
She would never ever do anything to hurt herself. Would never do that to her kids, nor does she have any desire to not be alive.
But….
There’a sick, twisted feeling that’s sat with her since that session. Since Roman more or less, and maybe she did, too, confirm that their marriage is over. A feeling she hasn't experienced since before he entered her life. Before he turned her existence into living. And just the thought of that living not including him in any sort of capacity….it's something she can't bear.
She can’t. It's why her initial approach to the deeper reason as to why she reacted so strongly to learning of his stroke was traded in for another heavy truth that needed to be addressed. Upsetting to discuss, of course, but not nearly debilitating as that truth.
"I know…" She closes her eyes, hand over his that's still on and hasn't left her face. Same with his intense stare and the presence of his body before her as they remain on the ground, unmoving and frozen in space and time. "I know you're upset with me, and—and that you don't want to see me, s—"
"Solana."
It's not like it's the first attempt he's made to speak in the midst of her verbal catharsis, but something about the pleading undertone of his deep voice penetrates through her dense wall of contrition, regret, and remorse. She blinks away the next set of tears, incapable of ignoring the wave of relief that stems from him looking at her, touching her even, in a way he hasn't in weeks. His regard and disposition towards her, as well as hers towards him, have been nothing short of frigid. But the warmth felt from his touch, seen in his face, and heard in his voice almost instantly melts away the icebergs that formed perimeters around her heart.
And perhaps maybe his.
One hand dips to her waist as Solana realizes at some point in the midst of her sentiment fueled soliloquy, he'd angled them so that her body was facing his. The press of his fingers into her skin as he gently tugged her close made something thud in her chest. A precursor for what would follow following his next statement.
His eyes narrow, gleaming with intensity and adoration she hadn't realized she'd been craving and yearning for so deeply. The absence of his affection has been a sort of torture she hadn't realized she was gradually succumbing to in the midst of their impasse. "All I see is you." Her lips part as a shaky exhale is lost in the midst of her anguish and relief at words that carry more weight than anyone outside of herself and the man in front of her could ever know or understand. "You said you can't lose me, right?" The faintest, smallest hint of a smile weighed down by reciprocated sentiment is preceded by the way he shakes his head in a small, subtle motion. "Well, that makes two of us, cause I can’t be without you, either.”
The combination of the words, the emotions, and the echoing of her own vulnerable confession, is what forces the next wave to the surface. And Solana will never deny that there's a continued theme of selfishness as she throws her body against his, allowing him to hold and cradle the back of her head as she sobs into his chest. Recognizes that there's certainly some level of relief he also feels at this devastating rough patch of theirs finding some sort of path to resolution in comparison to the alternative that was dangerously close to being the final decision. But it, if she had to guess, doesn't outweigh what weight is pulled from off her as he once again reiterates his love for her.
"Tell—tell me—" she hiccups, grasping at his shirt once more. "Tell me what to do to fix this. I'll do—I'll do anything, Roman. Just….just tell me what you need me to do." And she means it. Whatever frustration and anger still lingers towards his concealment of the stroke is heavily outweighed by her desire to heal. To fix.
Whatever it takes.
"We need to get away," he finally answers and pulls back to look down at her. She continues to hold onto his shirt, as if release means releasing him as well. Never. Roman lifts his hand to stroke the top of her head. "This weekend. Leya and Rashad can watch Aubrey and Tavita." Solana nods, her willingness to blindly accept not even allowing her to consider who would watch their youngest set of kids. But of course, Roman is already several steps ahead. He's always been the one to plan and arrange so she doesn't have to. Always done everything he can to make her life as easy as possible.
But ease doesn't exist in her world without him.
She can't imagine a world without him.
"And we'll talk," he continues. Her eyes flutter shut once more when he lies his forehead against hers, minty breath fanning her face. "Okay?"
In perhaps most settings, the promise to "talk" would ignite a massive wave of anxiety. But for Solana, it's exactly what she needs to hear. Exactly what they need to do. Should have done a long time ago. Such a simple but powerful necessity to maintain and sustain a marriage. A marriage she's not willing to give up on. She won't.
She can't.
Whatever it takes.
Nodding in acknowledgement, she can't stop herself from moving her arms around him, holding him as another round of tears accompany her heartfelt, "I love you."
Her eyes clench shut once more as he drops his hand to the small of her back, voice tight and thick. "I love you, too, Solana. I always have, and I always will."
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Catch up here: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10
Part 11
For four days, Cameron existed in a sterile vacuum. There was no television. No phone. The windows were reinforced glass that didn't open, offering a silent, mocking view of a city that was entirely out of reach. Her only company was the rhythmic, hollow hum of the HVAC system and the shadows of the armed enforcers standing on the other side of the door.
She didn't know if Tama had survived.
Then the heavy electronic lock disengaged with a sharp clack.
Cameron turned from the window. It wasn't the silent, rotating guard bringing her food. It was Loa.
He didn't look like a man in mourning. He was dressed in an impeccably tailored charcoal suit, his posture completely devoid of the deferential slouch he used to carry around his brother. He stepped into the room, the door clicking shut behind him, sealing them in.
"Four days," Loa murmured, his dark eyes scanning the pristine Penthouse and the dark circles under Cameron's eyes. He walked slowly toward the center of the room, his hands casually tucked into his pockets. "You look exhausted, Cameron. The isolation doesn't suit you."
Cameron crossed her arms over her chest, keeping her distance. "Where is Tama?"
A slow, chilling smile spread across Loa’s face. It wasn't a smile of comfort; it was the look of a predator staring at a trapped bird.
"My brother was a brilliant tactician," Loa said, his voice a smooth, dangerous drawl as he paced toward her. "I have to admit, I didn't see the decoy coming. Didn’t think you two were smart enough to figure out what was going on. The Italians hit Route 4 exactly as expected. They shredded the center SUV with armor-piercing rounds.
Cameron’s heart slammed against her ribs, a cold sweat breaking out across her skin. He knows.
"He left you entirely off the board," Loa continued, his tone darkening with a flicker of genuine irritation. "He sent his men into a slaughterhouse just to keep you breathing."
The smile vanished, replaced by a cold, hollow gravity that sucked the air out of the room. "It was a bloodbath. The Italians were wiped out. But the thing about chaos, Cameron… is that no one can control it once the fire starts."
Loa stopped mid-stride, and for a brief second Cameron thought he might hit her, he had that particular stillness, that loaded pause before violence, but instead, his hand slipped inside his suit jacket. There was a moment of deliberate, theatrical slowness as he withdrew something small and heavy, encased in a knuckled fist, and then took two precise steps toward her. He set the object on the glass-topped table beside her, making a sound that was far louder than its weight should have permitted, a blunt metallic thunk that reverberated up her feet and spine.
Cameron looked down.
The ring cast a distorted gold reflection against the glass, warped and molten at its edges. It was Tama’s ring, unmistakable, her eyes found the crest of the Tongan Syndicate, which she’d once traced absently with her thumb in a moment of idiotic tenderness. Now the signet was blackened, carbonized at one edge, smeared with a tar-like residue that she realized, with a lurch of nausea, was blood. The metal itself was warped by what must have been near-apocalyptic heat, and a fine crack worked through the crest, splitting the family insignia down the center.
She reached for it, not because she wanted to, but because her body acted on some primal script. The ring was still warm. She recoiled at the sensation, feeling as if she’d been bitten, but her traitor hand wouldn’t let go. It pressed into her palm with uncanny gravity, as if the mass of the dead were embedded within.
The room shrank. Her peripheral vision went white at the edges, then gray, and then the color drained from the world. All the air in her lungs was forced out, not by a scream but by the sudden, impossible weight on her chest. There was the ringing in her ears, metallic and high, like the shrill edge of a fire alarm, and layered beneath it the memory-ghost of Tama’s voice.
She tried to speak, but her tongue was fixed to the roof of her mouth. She wanted to hurl the ring at Loa’s face, but she couldn’t unclench her fist, not even as her nails dug so deep into her palm that she felt the skin break.
Loa stepped back, hands raised in a pantomime of respect for her grief. But the look on his face was not one of sympathy, it was fascination. Scientific, cold-blooded, like a surgeon watching a patient’s last reflexes before the cessation of life.
“An explosive triggered in the lead vehicle,” Loa said, his voice dropping to a somber register that felt completely, terrifyingly rehearsed. “There isn’t enough left of my brother to put in a coffin. Just ash. And that.”
Cameron couldn't breathe. Her legs gave way, her knees hitting the floor with a sharp crack as she grabbed the edge of the chair. She stared at the charred ring, her vision blurring.
To Loa, her collapse was the beautiful, tragic breaking of his brother's favorite toy. He stepped closer, looking down at her trembling frame.
"The family is in mourning," Loa whispered, crouching down so he was eye-level with her, his dark eyes gleaming with absolute triumph. "But a syndicate cannot survive without a King. And the new King needs to consolidate what belongs to the crown."
His hand reached for her; she tried to twist away, but his fingers caught her chin. He forced her to look at him, his thumb digging into her jaw. The pressure was just shy of pain, but it was enough to make her flinch, enough to remind her that, in this room, she had as much agency as a specimen pinned to a dissecting tray.
“You will attend the funeral,” Loa said, his voice an icepick. “The elders will expect it, and so will the rest of the family. And you will keep your composure.” He stared into her red-rimmed, glassy eyes as though he could reach behind them and flip the switch on her grief. “The world will be watching. Your performance is crucial.”
Cameron tried to wrench her chin free, but his grip tightened. For a split second, something feral flashed across his face, an old, unprocessed resentment, maybe, or just the thrill of domination. She realized then that her tears weren’t just evidence of her helplessness; they were a form of currency, and Loa was counting every one.
“Do you understand?” he asked, the words almost gentle, but when she didn’t respond immediately, his free hand closed over her fist, the one clutching the ruined ring. He pried her fingers apart with slow, deliberate force. She bit back a whimper as the ring left a burning imprint across her broken palm.
“I asked if you understand,” he repeated, and this time the grip on her chin made her teeth clack together.
She managed a nod, hating herself for it. The urge to spit at him so strong it almost drowned out the nausea. But she swallowed it. She had to.
He released her with a flick of disgust, then stood, straightening the cuffs of his suit as if nothing had transpired. He looked down at her, the dead ring glinting on the glass tabletop, a relic and a warning.
“You will be there,” Loa said, his tone final. “It’s time the family sees that transition is not the same as chaos. Your presence will reassure them. And you will never, ever forget who you serve now.”
———
The funeral was a study in monochromatic violence. Under a gray sky the Tongan Syndicate gathered to bury their Leader.
Cameron stood beside Loa, her hand resting like a dead weight on his arm. She wore the black silk wrap dress Loa had chosen for her, a mourning shroud that felt more like a brand of ownership. Behind her, the Elders sat in a semi-circle of heavy oak chairs, their faces etched like stone, watching the proceedings with eyes that had seen empires rise and fall.
The ceremony was brief and brutal. There was no body to lower into the earth, only a small, ornate urn containing the scorched remains recovered from the wreckage on Route 4. As the priest spoke of legacy and blood, Loa stood tall, his chin raised in a mimicry of the authority he hadn't yet earned.
He looked down at the charred signet ring resting atop the urn, his fingers twitching with the urge to claim it.
When the final prayer was whispered, the crowd began to disperse, leaving only the inner circle and the Elders. Loa turned toward the head of the council, a man named Viliami whose white hair contrasted sharply with the black ink spanning his throat.
"The transition is complete," Loa said, his voice carrying across the silent graveyard with a new, chilling confidence. "My brother is at peace. The Syndicate needs a steady hand to guide it through the aftermath."
Viliami didn't stand. He simply looked at Loa, then shifted his gaze to Cameron, who remained frozen in her role as the grieving captive.
"A steady hand," Viliami repeated. "Is that what you call it, Loa? When you feed your own blood to the wolves to pave a path to the throne?"
The silence that followed was deafening. Loa’s posture didn't change, but the air around him seemed to sharpen. "I don't know what you're implying, Viliami. The Italians hit that convoy. My brother died protecting this family."
"The Italians did kill Tama," Viliami countered, his voice rising in power. "But we have lived long enough to know the difference between an ambush and a choreography. We spoke to the survivors of the Italian vanguard before they were… liquidated. They were quite clear about the coordinates they received. Coordinates that came from a burner phone traced back to you."
Loa’s grip on Cameron’s arm tightened instinctively, his fingers digging into her skin.
"You chose to murder your brother," Viliami continued, finally standing. The other Elders rose in unison behind him, a wall of ancient, unforgiving authority. "The blood of a leader is sacred. To spill it for ambition is the ultimate treason."
"You have no proof," Loa hissed, his hand dropping to the holster at his hip.
"We have the truth," Viliami said. He gestured to the enforcers standing perimeter. They didn't move to protect Loa; they stepped back, their barrels lowering toward the ground in a silent vote of no confidence. "You are stripped of your rank, Loa. You will join your brother in the dirt. The Syndicate belongs to the family, not to a fratricide."
Viliami stepped forward, his eyes softening as they landed on Cameron.
"And as for the woman," the Elder said, his voice firm. "She should have never been involved.” He looked directly at Loa, a challenge in his gaze. "Release her. Now."
Loa’s face was a mask of twitching fury. His plan, his throne, his prize, all of it was evaporating in the cold afternoon sky. He looked at Cameron, his fingers flexing as if he wanted to snap her neck right there in front of the urn.
But he saw the guns. He saw the cold, dead eyes of the men he thought he commanded.
With a flick of his wrist, he shoved her away. “TAKE THE BITCH!” he roared, voice cracking. “She’s death incarnate. My brother’s blood soaks her hands, and now she’s ripped my birthright from me!”
“Do not blame the girl for your short comings.” One of the elders shouted.
Cameron reeled backward, ankle twisting as her heel sank into the sodden earth. She would have fallen if Viliami hadn’t seized her arm, yanking her behind the wall of Elders with such force her shoulder socket burned.
“You’re free,” Viliami hissed against her ear, his breath hot on her skin. “A car idles at the gates. Go now—run—before the beast breaks his chains. The Syndicate releases you, but fate rarely grants second chances.”
———
The flight as a blur of exhaustion and lingering, phantom terror. Even after Viliami put her on the private jet telling the pilot to take her anywhere she desired. Cameron’s heart hadn't stopped racing.
Logically, she knew the strategy. She had planned the strategy. But a terrifying, insidious voice in her head told what if something had gone wrong?
Then, the jet’s wheels touched down on a private airstrip nestled between lush, emerald hills and the endless, glittering expanse of the Tasman Sea. Cameron stepped off the tarmac and onto the soft, sea-swept grass. She shielded her eyes from the glaring sun and squinted into the distance.
Two figures loomed larger as they approached her.
Tama and Kiko.
For a chaotic moment, a tempest of conflicting emotions churned inside her; relief battled with disbelief, guilt tangled with hope. She took a shaky breath. The ground beneath her felt uneven, as if she had just stepped out of a nightmare directly into this bright, untethered new reality.
"Cameron!" Kiko broke away from his father, arms wide open, utterly unimpressed by the weight of the world they had just escaped. Cameron's breath hitched, a half-sob tearing from her throat as she embraced him.
"You made it!" Kiko exclaimed, burying his face in her shoulder.
"I made it," she choked out, her voice trembling.
At first, she just stood there, uncomprehending, the sun’s salt glare making phantom shapes out of the world. Then a shadow passed over her, blotting out the blue, and she heard her own name like a benediction.
Tama.
Not a photo, not a memory, not a ghost conjured by trauma or exhaustion, but Tama in the flesh, towering, solid, breathing. He wore no black, no tie, no armor. He wore shorts, of all things, and a linen shirt the color of sand, loose enough to catch the wind but tight across a chest that looked, if anything, broader and more alive than when she’d last seen him. His hair was unkempt, and his face was sunburned, creased with worry lines that had been shorn away by the sea air and sleep or just a reprieve from the world’s relentless demands. The paranoia, the simmering perpetual rage, it was gone. In its place, something open and painfully vulnerable.
He didn’t say a word. And for a moment she couldn’t move, couldn’t even breathe. Her mind was still back in that graveyard. She half-expected to see him bleed from invisible wounds. But he just looked at her, eyes as dark as the spaces between stars, and smiled.
It wasn’t the smile she remembered, the careful, weaponized one that was always aimed at someone else. This one was for her alone; shy, uncertain, almost boyish. It made her want to weep. Instead, she bit her lip so hard she tasted blood, and shook her head, unable to believe in resurrection.
A sound escaped her, something utterly feral. He reached for her and suddenly they collided, desperation overtaking all sense or decorum. She rammed her forehead against his shoulder, the impact bringing stars to her vision, and clung to him so tightly her joints ached from the strain.
Tama’s arms came around her, tentative for a second, then all at once like a dam breaking. He wrapped her up, every inch of her, an instinctive shelter against the world’s cruelty. His hands traced the line of her spine as if counting vertebrae, reassuring himself that nothing was missing, nothing broken. She felt the weight of his chin as he pressed it atop her head, the prickly brush of his beard against her scalp.
For a long time neither of them spoke. The only sound was the wind off the sea and the ragged, syncopated breathing that told her Tama was just as close to breaking as she was. There was so much to say, so much to explain and apologize for, but all of it was crowded out by the urgency of this impossible reunion.
When at last she summoned the courage to pull back, she found tears streaking her cheeks and his as well. His eyes were red, the whites rimmed with blood vessels, but when he looked at her he didn’t try to hide any of it. He was seeing her, all of her, in a way that was so raw and unfiltered it made her want to look away.
She didn’t.
Instead, she reached up and cupped his face, thumb tracing the angle of his jaw. She let her thumb rest there, a question mark. He answered it with a wry, self-deprecating smile, and a shrug.
“It’s the real me,” he said quietly, voice rough with emotion.
“That’s all I ever wanted,” she replied, and surprised them both by meaning it.
Their foreheads touched, a fragile architecture of hope . He kissed her, not with the hunger of reunion but the careful reverence of someone who knew just how easily things could break.
Tama wrapped his arms around her again, burying his face in her dark hair. He let out a long, grounding exhale, a vibration she felt all the way to her bones. He was holding her like a man who had been holding his breath for a decade and was finally allowed to exhale.
"You're late," he murmured, his voice a low, gravelly rumble against her ear, thick with a profound, staggering relief.
"I had to attend a funeral," she whispered back, a wet laugh escaping her lips as she pulled back just enough to look at him. He turned his head, pressing a lingering, reverent kiss to her palm. He looked out over the sprawling green hills and the bright blue water, and then back down at the woman who had saved his life, his son, and his soul.
He pulled her into another hug and her mind drifted back to the car ride home from the lake.
Tama drove with a steady, lethal focus, his massive hands resting easily on the wheel. He had traded the bloodstained dress shirt for a dark, fitted thermal from his go-bag. He looked rested, but his armor was sliding back into place, locking down his features as the city skyline bled into view on the horizon.
Cameron sat beside him, watching the trees blur past. She had spent the last two hours running through every variable, every weakness, and every chart she had memorized in that clinic. She wasn't just surviving the syndicate anymore; she was dismantling it.
"You can't just walk into the estate and put a bullet in him," Cameron said. Her voice was calm, cutting cleanly through the low hum of the engine.
For the first hour on the road, they’d mapped out how to destroy Loa. But as Tama spoke, his voice steady, his words precise, Cameron caught the undercurrent. Something ancient and burning lived beneath his tactical calm. She recognized it immediately; this wasn’t strategy anymore. This was vengeance, the kind that demanded blood as payment for blood.
Tama’s eyes flicked to her, his jaw tightening. "He orchestrated the hit that killed Kalina and nearly put my son in the ground. He set up the robbery at the club. I’m not giving him a trial, Cameron."
"If you kill your own brother without giving the elders proof of his treason, you’ll end up dead. You'll be a tyrant who snapped from grief," Cameron countered, turning in her seat to face him fully. "Half the men will turn on you. The Italians will sweep in and slaughter whoever is left. It'll be a bloodbath, and you'll never be able to walk away."
Tama’s grip on the steering wheel flexed. He didn't argue, because he knew she was right. "So what does the my Nurse prescribe?"
"A surgical extraction," Cameron said, her eyes flashing with a cold, terrifying brilliance that made Tama's breath catch. "Loa thinks he’s playing chess while you’re playing checkers. He thinks you're blinded, and he thinks I’m a vulnerability. So, we let him believe he's right."
She leaned slightly across the center console, invading his space, her voice dropping into a low, conspiratorial register. "We set a trap. You announce to the inner circle that you’re moving me. Tell them that you’re transferring me to another safe house. But you leave a glaring hole in the transport detail."
Tama’s expression darkened, protective instincts leaping to the fore with a violence that startled even him. He snapped his head toward her, jaw set, the lines of his face hardening into something unyielding. In that moment, the car became a crucible, steel and glass barely restraining the current of his anger. “Absolutely not,” he said, voice cutting and raw. “I am not offering you up as bait. Not to the Italians, and not to him.”
He flexed his fingers on the steering wheel, knuckles pale. Decades of hardwired vigilance rebelled at the very idea, his mind already filling in the blanks of the worst-case scenario; Cameron’s body torn apart in a crossfire, the helpless ache of her gone. The vision was vivid, uncompromising. He’d never been able to stomach the thought of his own collateral damage, least of all when it came with her name attached.
He looked at her and saw the naked calculation in her eyes, terrifying but beautiful, the way she was capable of seeing the whole board even as it threatened to consume her. But beneath her intellect, he saw the fragile boundary she was willing to cross for him, for the mission, for them. It made him want to throttle her and kiss her at once.
“You don’t get it,” he spat, the words coming out sharper than he meant. “They don’t leave witnesses, they don’t make mistakes, and if you so much as blink the wrong way they’ll hang you up in a warehouse for days before they kill you.” The memories bristled up, ugly and persistent; the smell of bleach on concrete, the way fear could turn a grown man’s voice into jelly. He had never forgiven himself for the ones he couldn’t save; he could not, would not, add her to that tally.
"I won't be in the transport," Cameron promised, resting her hand over his on the center console. The warmth of her touch grounded him. "We use a decoy. But we make sure Loa’s is the one who 'accidentally' overhears the route. If Loa is the rat, he won't be able to resist. He'll feed the route to the Italians to clear me off the board and finally break you. And when the Italians move on the transport…"
"My loyal enforcers will be waiting in the dark," Tama finished, the lethal realization dawning on his face. His mind was rapidly catching up to the genius of her strategy. "We don't just catch the Italians. We catch Loa and the men coordinating with them. The elders see the treason with their own eyes."
"Exactly," Cameron nodded. "The men turn on Loa. The Italians are decimated in the ambush. And Loa is left with absolutely nothing."
Tama stared at the road ahead, a dark, dangerous smirk slowly curving the corner of his mouth. It was a look of pure, unadulterated awe. He turned his hand over, tangling his heavy fingers with hers, holding her grip tight.
"And after the board is clear?" he asked, his voice a low, gravelly rumble. "What then, sweetheart? I take the throne back and we’re right back where we started?"
"No," Cameron said softly, but with absolute finality. "Let them have the ashes. Once the Italians are broken, the syndicate will be scrambling for power. You can…fake your death."
For a split second, the world narrowed to the space between their joined hands and the electricity firing in Tama’s chest. He stared at her, stunned, as if she had detonated a charge in the car. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had outmaneuvered him, let alone a woman who, months ago, had been nothing but a prisioner in his home. Now she sat here, plotting escape routes and revolutions with a surgeon’s precision, offering him the most impossible, beautiful out he’d ever been given: oblivion.
He tried to imagine it; his own funeral, the murmured prayers, the tears of men who’d been ordered to kill for him and had never once questioned his hunger for survival. He pictured the council of elders, their lips pursed in suspicion, but ultimately conceding to the logic of his corpse. He pictured the syndicate spiraling, the blood debts erased, his son and the woman beside him vanished off the map. It was a fantasy so wild it made his chest ache with hope.
But it was Cameron’s eyes that anchored him, steady, sentimental, already building the future from its fractured bones. She was offering him not just exile, but rebirth. It terrified him more than dying ever could.
He searched her face for any sign of hesitation. There was none to find. Instead, he saw the faintest flicker of hope, a blueprint of their freedom etched in the set of her jaw. Her hand pressed firmer into his, as if testing the boundaries of this new reality.
"I’ll attend your funeral to make it legit… Then I’ll get on a plane," Cameron continued, her thumb tracing the heavy pulse at his wrist. "We meet in New Zealand. We make sure Kiko is safe. And you let the Tongan Syndicate become a ghost story."
The silence returned to the car, but this time, it felt like freedom. Tama looked at the woman sitting beside him, a trauma nurse who had walked into a bloodbath, refused to break, and was now single-handedly charting his course out of hell. He brought her hand up to his mouth, pressing a fierce, lingering kiss to her knuckles.
"Consider it done," he swore.
Tama’s voice, when it broke the quiet, was gentle and absolute. “Let’s go home,” he said, and in those three words he summoned an entire future, unrecognizable to the one they had left behind. His thumb swept over her knuckles, a vow written in the smallest movements, and suddenly the rest of the world receded.
Cameron closed her eyes for a moment and inhaled, as if she could draw the promise into her lungs and make her body believe it. Home. A word that had never meant much to her, but now hovered ahead of them like a finishing line she’d never dreamed she could cross. For the first time in her life, the idea didn’t feel foreign or hollow. She saw instead the possibility of waking up again and again to this man who had once been her captor and was now the only person left on earth who knew her in all her sharpness.
She looked at Tama and saw the way his face softened around the edges when he watched her. A tiny, incredulous smile flickered on her lips, and she reached up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, bashful and newly shy. The city was a few miles off, but it was already blooming in the windshield, a glittering, sleepless expanse that awaited their last, impossible heist.
He squeezed her hand and glanced sidelong at her. “You’re not scared?” he asked, but it was less a question than a benediction, a last-minute offer to take it all back.
She shook her head. “Only of losing you,” she admitted, her voice so small it barely cleared the hum of the tires.
He let out a sound that was almost a laugh and turned back to the road, the mask he’d worn for years finally slipping. She thought of all the graves they’d leave behind, the real ones and the metaphoric, and wondered if anyone could ever understand what it took for a monster to turn into a man.
———
Five years later:
Cameron squished her toes in the warm, powdery sand, letting the sensation root her firmly in the present. It was mid-morning in Hahei, and the sunlight poured syrup-thick over the cove, gilding every wave, every shell, every inch of skin bared to the breeze. The tide lapped hungrily at the shore as she watched Tama jog after their daughter, Suri, who screeched with joy and left comet tails of footprints behind her. Suri’s black curls streamed in the salt air, her arms spread wide as if she could outrun the world.
In the months after the fall, after the elaborate funeral, the erased phone numbers, and the years of hiding, they’d learned how to exist like this; unremarkable, anonymous, a little bit sunburned. By now, Tama had shed the heaviness that used to armor his body; he looked almost lithe in board shorts, tanned and faintly ridiculous in mirrored sunglasses. Only the tattoos betrayed him, the lines and glyphs that mapped his history across shoulders, arms and thighs. He was a contradiction she’d never get tired of watching; especially like this, barefoot and unguarded, kneeling to let their daughter vault onto his back and shriek at imagined sharks.
Cameron leaned back in the lounge chair and let the memory of old violence dissolve in the haze. Suri did a victory lap, weaving between driftwood stumps and the dull gleam of paua shells, before doubling back and launching herself full-tilt at Tama. He caught her easily, arms closing around her in an automatic, gentle cage, and lifted her overhead as if she weighed nothing. Suri’s laughter ricocheted down the beach, louder than the surf.
“She’s gonna out run me one day, babe.” he said sitting down in the lounge chair next to her, Suri on his lap. Tama’s laughter rumbled through his chest as Suri squealed, her tiny hands gripping his shoulders. Her joy spilled into the air, bright and loud as she wriggled in his lap, her hands wrapped around his neck as she pressed a sticky, sand-encrusted kiss to his cheek. “I love you, Daddy!” she declared, loud enough for the gulls to startle up from their driftwood perches.
Tama grinned, the sound catching him somewhere deep and old. “Love you too, baby girl,” he replied, locking her in a gentle bear hug and closing his eyes, trying to memorize the exact pitch of her voice in this bright, impossible morning.
Suri pulled back, assessing him with the utter seriousness of an almost four-year-old. “Do you love Mommy too?” she asked, her voice a curious mix of mischief and interrogation.
He looked at her, at the stubborn set of her jaw and the wild curl of her hair, and then over at Cameron, who sat smiling at the two of them. Suri was the product of both of them; equal parts savage and sweetness, a perfect fusion of old scars and new hope. The question floated there, weightless and yet heavy with meaning.
“I love Mommy…” he paused, his throat tightening, the words suddenly much harder to say than he would have believed possible, “more than all the stars in the sky… and that’s a lot.” He set her down gently, brushing the sand from her calves, and watched her barrel away, giggling, toward the waterline. It was true. He loved Cameron in a way that had become central to his being, a kind of cellular rearrangement that no amount of violence or death could touch.
For a man who had grown up learning to expect little from the world and to surrender even less, the sensation caught Tama off guard. Happiness, or something perilously close to it, took him by surprise in small, accumulating moments; Suri’s laughter as she skittered over the sand, the easy sprawl of sunlight on his bare arms, the simple warmth of Cameron’s nearness. It was a feeling he never thought possible. Even now, years and oceans removed from the cold calculus of his old life, Tama sometimes woke in the dark hours before dawn and felt the distant echo of the man he used to be, the one who weighed every kindness against its cost. But the old instincts were softening, week by week, replaced by something both terrifying and tender; the urge to protect this fragile, sunlit peace at all costs.
He wondered sometimes, if he deserved it. If the blood on his hands could ever really be washed clean by the salt water and the slow, patient work of loving someone with his whole, unarmored self. It was a question he held close, never voicing it for fear of undoing the spell. Instead, he tried to find absolution in the small, stubborn rituals of their new life; the morning coffees he brewed for Cameron, the bedtime stories he spun for Suri, the daily, almost sacred practice of letting himself hope.
Every so often, when he caught Suri’s profile in a certain slant of light or heard Cameron’s voice at the edge of sleep, he had to remind himself that this was real. That he was allowed to have it. It wasn’t that he had forgotten the weight of his past, but the heaviness no longer defined every movement, every breath. In its place was a buoyancy, a sense of being lifted and carried by the people he loved and who, impossibly, loved him back. He could trace the contours of his own transformation in the effortless way he now smiled, or in how naturally Suri curled her hand into his, trusting him to hold her steady against the tide.
He turned to Cameron, the sunlight illuminating her features with a soft glow that felt sacred and surreal. She was so radiant that, for a brief moment, he forgot the weight of the past and the shadow of the world they had escaped.
“Who would have thought we’d end up in a place like this?” he said, his voice low and conspiratorial. He leaned into the moment, allowing the warmth of it to seep into his bones. Each laugh from Suri, each smile from Cameron, was a reminder of the life they’d forged.
Cameron set her gaze on the horizon, where the ocean met the sky in a seamless expanse of blue. “Not me, that’s for sure,” she replied, her tone light but laced with an undercurrent of disbelief. “Five years ago, I would have thought this was a fever dream.”
He reached across the narrow space between their chairs and splayed his broad, hand over her belly, the curve of it taut and ripe. The baby inside flinched at the sudden touch, kicking once against his palm. Tama’s touch lingered there, as if he could feel every secret cell dividing and multiplying, every ripple of the life they’d conjured together. “Two babies,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief and wonder, “and a son in college…” His voice was reverent, almost a prayer, his thumb gently tracing circles as if to calm the small hurricane growing inside her. He tilted his head, a smile half-cocked, and looked down at the soft swellof her womb. “Remember when we thought we could barely manage one?” he murmured, his tone a mix of awe and comic defeat.
Cameron rolled her eyes but didn’t resist when he pressed his ear to her belly, listening theatrically for the rush and tumble inside. She smoothed her hand through his curls, combing out the grains of sand. The sight of him like this, her reformed monster, listening for the flutter of a heartbeat still made her breath catch in her throat. She caught Suri watching them from the tide line, her mouth puckered in suspicion, arms akimbo in a perfect parody of her father’s old swagger. Suri’s gaze darted from Tama to her mother and to the belly, as if she was plotting exactly how much trouble she could cause for her soon-to-be sibling.
“Our son still being a pain in the ass?” Cameron asked, her lips quirking.
Tama snorted. “He’s twenty two, of course he is. But he’s doing good, babe. Really good. He called me just to argue about rugby stats and to tell me he was eating vegetables now. On purpose.”
She laughed, feeling the air grow lighter. “Maybe there’s hope for him yet.” He sat up and looked at her, his face suddenly open, vulnerable. “There’s hope for all of us, I think.”
Suri had run back up the beach and hurled herself onto Cameron’s lap, heedless of the baby bump threatening to unseat her. She grinned at them both, all teeth and sand and joy, and made a big show of hugging her mother tight. “I’m gonna teach the baby to swim before Daddy does,” she declared, as if it were an Olympic event she’d just qualified for.
Cameron met Tama’s eyes above their daughter’s head, and the entire world felt suspended in that single, sunstruck moment. The future, for once, was unwritten and dazzlingly bright. He squeezed Cameron’s hand, his thumb stroking the back of hers with unspoken gratitude. “You saved my life,” he said, the words so soft they nearly vanished in the crash of the surf, “I love you.”
Cameron blinked against the sudden sting in her eyes, and the baby inside her rolled, impatient and wild, ready to be born into this fierce, strange, beautiful peace. She squeezed back, her fingers locking through his, and for the first time in either of their lives, they truly believed they’d made it home.
The End.
Thank you to everyone that stuck with this story!! I love you and appreciate you more than you know!
