Saving Ever After (Ever After #4) (30 page)

4
Months later . . .

Mia

I stood
outside the door to the ballroom more nervous than I think I had ever been. My
heart was beating out of control and I was thankful to be in a dress without
sleeves or I’m sure I would have embarrassing sweat marks as evidence of my frazzled
nerves.

All I had to
do was push through the door, but I was rooted to this spot outside. I was
dying to get to the other side, yet I was also terrified of what might be
waiting for me. So many scenarios had been playing out in my mind the past week
leading up to this moment. It could go so many different ways, and I didn’t
know what I would do if it didn’t turn out the way I hoped. I was more
intimidated than I had been facing my father six months ago. That day was the
beginning of everything changing.

Six
months earlier . . .

The car dropped us off
outside my father’s building. It really was an impressive structure, a looming,
twenty six story beacon of my father’s success, and staring up at it filled me
with dread for what I was about to do.

I wanted to jump back in
the cab that was already pulling away, and hide from this. Maybe I didn’t need
my dad’s help. Maybe I could beat this on my own, but I knew that wasn’t really
true. Sadie watched me patiently, waiting for me to accept that I couldn’t run
and hide anymore, waiting for me to be brave and take that next step. I wasn’t
brave, but I wanted to be. For her. For Chris. They believed in me. And I
wanted to be brave for me, so for now I would pretend.

I sucked in a deep
breath and then blew it out, telling myself that no matter what happened, Sadie
had my back. She strode confidently inside the building, moving through
security like she owned the place, to the elevators. I followed behind her,
slightly less confident, but still trying to pretend like I wasn’t about to
make a run for the nearest exit any second.

We rode the elevator up
to the twenty-fourth floor, where the executive offices were. The top two
floors made up the private penthouse and gym my father used. When the elevator
doors slid open, Sadie immediately stepped out. I’m pretty sure that during the
brief ride, somehow my feet had become fused the elevator floor, because no
matter how much I willed them to move, they wouldn’t. The doors were about to
close again when Sadie blocked them with her arm.

“Come on, Mia.” Her
voice was firm but encouraging and I managed to peel my feet up and move.

The receptionist on this
floor scowled at us from her post. “Can I help you? Did you girls get off on
the wrong floor?”

She was obviously new.

Sadie barely paused to
set her straight. “We’re here to see our dad.”

His office was on the
far side of the large space. Several other offices and desks occupied by
assistants were between us and there. Before we could cross the room, the receptionist,
thinking she was Cerberus or something, jumped up to block us, “I’m sorry, but
if you don’t have an appointment you can’t be up here. I don’t know who allowed
you access to this floor, but I’m going to have to ask you to go back down to
the lobby and check in. If you do indeed have an appointment, which it doesn’t
appear that you do, they’ll give you a visitor’s pass.”

Sadie raised her
eyebrows at guard dog lady, “We don’t need an appointment to see our dad.”

“If he’s not expecting
you, then I’m afraid you will have to wait until I check with security and then
his assistant,” she said condescendingly with the fakest smile ever plastered
on her pinched face. “Now if you just give me the name of your father, and then
have a seat right over there, I’m sure we can get this settled, otherwise I’ll
be forced to call security and have you escorted out of here.”

“Listen lady, we won’t
be waiting to see our father. I don’t really care if he’s in the middle of a
meeting, he’ll want to see us.”

Thankfully, before
Cerberus could get any more ideas, like calling security or attempting to show
us out on her own, Mica, my father’s personal assistant for the last eight
years stepped out of his office and spotted us.

“Sadie, Mia? What are
you guys doing here? Are you here to see your dad? Is everything alright?”

“We’re trying to, but we
were having some issues getting past security here.”

Mica properly reprimanded
Cerberus, whose real name was Chelsea, and informed her that if security saw no
need to stop us, it wasn’t her place to prevent us from being here and that Mr.
Pierce would not be pleased if she prevented his daughters from speaking to him
about something urgent in the future.

Chelsea sulked back to
her seat behind her desk and Mica led us to Dad’s office. She poked her head in
and announced that we were here. He sounded surprised, but told her to show us
in right away.

When the door closed
behind us and we were suddenly standing before him, my throat felt dry and I
was too busy freaking out to hear what he and Sadie were saying, but then they
were both looking at me expectantly.

It was time to make a
choice, I could continue to be the scared girl, too weak to face her problems
and deal, or I could not be that girl. I swallowed thickly.

“Dad,” I squeaked, “I
need your help.”

 
Present . . .

 “You’ve got
this.” Kris, who I had picked up from the airport just before coming here,
squeezed my hand reassuringly.

“I know.” I
smiled, and I did know. I was not the same girl who had stood before my father
and then fallen apart in his office. I was stronger. I knew I could handle
this, but I was still nervous. So much had changed in the last six months, but
some things hadn’t, and one of those things was waiting for me on the other
side of those heavy oak doors.

“Thank you
for flying out here,” I told him. One of the things that had changed in the
months since I left Boston was that he and I had repaired things. Once word got
around about my expulsion and overdose, he found a way to reach Sadie. This
time when he wanted to talk, I was ready to listen, and by that time I was two
weeks into my treatment and had some things I needed to say to him as well. He
ended up flying all the way out to Seattle to visit me in the treatment center.
There were a lot of apologies on both sides.

He’d had
trouble separating his feelings of friendship for me with what we’d done that
night, and by the time he sorted through it, he was afraid it was too late. I
was slamming the door in his face and he thought our friendship was blown. The
very thing we’d both been afraid of.

I’d had to
take responsibility for my part in it all, confessing most of the same things
I’d had to tell to so many people by that point. Admitting how I’d unhealthily
depended on him and our friendship, and that I’d let my feelings get all
twisted up as well. After that we slowly started fixing things and building
that friendship back up, but stronger.

“Wouldn’t
miss this, besides, who doesn’t love weddings?” He squeezed my hand again and
then winked. Technically tonight was only the rehearsal dinner, but still it
was a huge night.

It would be
my first time seeing Chris since Christmas day, when everything imploded.

“You look
awesome, Mia, and you’ve been through so much that this should be nothing. You
can face him, and he’d have to be an idiot to not see what’s right in front of
him, but even if he doesn’t, you’ll still be okay, and I’ll be upstairs if you
need me.” Kris wasn’t attending the rehearsal dinner. Only the wedding party
and immediate family were, but like most of the guests coming from out of town,
he had a room booked upstairs in the resort. He’d just flown out a day early
for moral support. He gave my hand another squeeze and then left me, still
standing at the doors to the ballroom.

Nervous
suddenly seemed like an extreme understatement. I wanted to see Chris
desperately, but didn’t know what his reaction to seeing me would be. For the
longest time after I entered treatment, all of my questions about how Chris was
doing, were met with stubborn silence. The only person who wanted me to talk
about Chris was the counselor I met with daily. She forced me to confront
everything. Within that first week she had me opening up about my life going as
far back as I could remember. She didn’t pull any punches and helped me to face
the reality of the decisions I’d been making and the reasons behind them.

She’d broken
me down to the point that everything was out in the open. I’d felt raw and
lost, and maybe that’s why I slapped her when she tried to take away one of the
few good things I was hanging on to. The moment she’d opened her mouth and
said, “Let’s talk about Chris,” I’d been on edge. Then listening to her twist
the relationship and moments between us into some fantasy I’d concocted in my
head was too much. She’d tried to get me to admit that it was an unhealthy
attachment and fixation due to my vulnerability and emotional instability. I’d
refused to accept that and had instead snapped and lashed out. That hadn’t gone
over well, and ultimately ended up hindering my progress because it convinced her
that I was even more unstable, and I became defensive.

 It took a
long time to convince her and everyone else that I wasn’t latching onto my
feelings for Chris just out of some naïve and desperate need for love. After
weeks of reliving every moment with Chris for them, trying to make them see
that he had never been the problem, they finally began to understand.

My sessions
with Jenna didn’t get any easier from there even though she no longer believed that
my addiction and my destructive behavior were entirely linked to Chris. She
helped me to see my triggers and how dangerous it was to my emotional and
mental state to make any one person my entire world.

My opinion
of myself, my worth and value had always been shaped by what I thought everyone
else saw in me, or didn’t see in me. Jenna was determined to tear down the lies
and expose the sources of those lies until I could see past them.  The sessions
were rough and I had to face a lot of truths about myself, good and bad. Through
that process, instead of trying to dissuade my feelings for Chris, Jenna helped
me develop the tools that would allow me to enter into a healthy relationship
in the future.

That was
another thing everyone wanted to talk a lot about. My future. Jenna, the rest
of the staff, Sadie, even my father, who had taken to visiting me weekly,
helped me to see that not only did I want a better future without the weight of
the past dragging me down, but that it was possible for me. We spent a lot of
time talking about what I wanted to fill it with and how I was going to build a
life from this point. We talked about goals and dreams and coping tools, my
strengths and weaknesses and the things that mattered the most to me.

The one
thing that was clearest to me was that no matter what my future held, there was
only one person I could imagine sharing it with. Not once, during any of the
times that they had tried to discount what I felt for Chris, had my feelings
wavered. If anything, I loved him more now than before. I knew myself better
than I ever had, and outside of the insecurity and self pitying that used to
color my world, I could look back and see him so much more clearly.

 Every
moment that he’d been there for me, and all the times he’d tried so hard to get
through to me, meant so much more now. The way he showed me who I really wanted
to be and allowed me to be that person was everything to me. He’d been saving
me in little ways even then, and through it he’d been telling me what neither
one of us could see then. He’d felt what I’d felt all along. It had been there
between us, pulling us to one another, but he’d been fighting it and I hadn’t
been ready for it. I hadn’t been in a place to let anyone love me or save me,
because I had to figure out how to love myself and save myself first.

I was ready
now. I wasn’t afraid of who I was or what I felt.  The only thing I feared at
the moment was that it was too late. I was scared of opening this door and
finding that Chris had let me go when I left. I’d given him so many reasons to.

There was a
very real possibility that Chris had not spent the last six months missing me
the way I had missed him. It was one that Jenna and I had talked about several
times leading up to this moment so that I would be prepared for whatever
happened.

Even though
I’d been out of treatment for almost three months, I still met with her
regularly to talk about how I was doing and to share any worries or struggles I
had. The hurt I carried went so deep, healing didn’t happen in just three
months. It was an ongoing process that I still struggled with. I had ups and
downs and good days and bad days and I still didn’t trust myself entirely,
which is why I’d listened to Jenna’s advice when she’d discouraged me from
reaching out to Chris before now. I hadn’t wanted to wait, but more than I had
missed him, I wanted to be sure that I was strong enough to face whatever the
outcome was.

I took a
deep, steadying breath and then exhaled. I could do this.