All of Me

2. Chapter Two – You Say

2

Chapter Two – You Say

Tiger gaped at him. “What?”

Apollo nodded. “And, believe it or not… it was planned. Tigs… Nell and I… we’re getting married. Soon.”

Tiger was devastated. “Why did you keep this all from me? Did you think I wouldn’t support you?”

“I know you would have, I know. Except… sometimes, you still think of me as a fourteen-year-old, and just sometimes you can be a bit…”

“What?” Tiger felt hurt, shockingly so. They had always been so close and now what? Apollo didn’t need her anymore?

“Smothering. No, that’s not right. Overprotective. Especially with my girlfriends.”

“If you’re talking about Liz, that’s because she was an evil demon from hell.”

Apollo grinned then. “In that case, you are correct, but sometimes, just you being who you are, Tiger Rose, can be intimidating for them. Not that Nell will be, but I didn’t know that at the start of us. So, I kept it from you.” He suddenly pulled the car over into a parking lot and switched off the ignition. He turned to look at her. “Don’t get me wrong, Tigs. I adore you, I love you, and you are the best thing in the world. But you paid for everything, you gave me everything, and now I need to… God, I don’t know. This needs to be mine, you get me?”

“I get it.” But she didn’t. She looked away, out of the window, blinking back tears. Apollo felt overshadowed by her? God damn it. She’d tried not to let that happen and besides… “Listen, you didn’t get into Harvard because of me, Pol, you did that on your own.”

He smiled kindly at her. “With your money, Tigs. I’m sure the fact I had the funding in place helped immeasurably with the offer of a place.”

Alright, he had her there. But Tiger sighed. “Do I at least get to meet her?”

“After our vacation. When we come back to Seattle. She’s spending the week with her folks in New Orleans while we’re away; she didn’t want to crash our vacay.”

“That’s thoughtful.” Tiger shook her head. “Pregnant?”

Apollo nodded and she could see the joy in his eyes. “Honestly, Tigs, I never knew I wanted kids until I met Nell. She’s the one, you know?”

But Tiger didn’t know, and her heart ripped open with loneliness. She had known, of course, this day would come, when their little family unit would be invaded by someone else…

…invaded. What the hell is wrong with you, woman? Invaded. Tiger pulled herself together and smiled at her brother. “I’m delighted for you, Pol. Really.”

He shot her a sideways look and a grin. “Nice try, sis.”

“I mean it.”

He patted her hand. “Thank you. Now, let’s talk vacay.”

They spent the night in the city. In the morning, Tiger padded into the kitchen to see Apollo watching the television news intently. He turned to her with troubled eyes. “Did you hear?” He nodded at the screen. “India Blue is in the hospital.”

Tiger’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, no…”

Massimo Verdi, one of Tiger’s friends in the business, had been seeing India Blue for a while, and Tiger had been on a double date with them a few months back. She’d like India very much. “What happened?”

“She was abducted. They found her this morning with serious stab wounds.”

“Jesus.”

Tiger sat down and watched alongside Apollo as the report showed a very distressed Massimo arriving at the hospital along accompanied by a very tall, handsome man who looked stressed out, dark circles under his navy-blue eyes.

“Who’s that?”

“I think it must be Lazlo Schuler, India’s kind-of brother. It’s complicated.” Tiger had never met India’s family, but she’d heard of Lazlo. He was India’s manager and a brilliant one at that. But he looked devastated now, and Tiger’s heart went out to him. “Poor things. I must send flowers to Massimo before we leave.”

In the car on the way to the Olympic Mountains, Tiger couldn’t stop thinking about Massimo and India. She knew part of her problem with never allowing anyone to love her was exactly this: the fear of the pain of loss. When their parents had died, it had been such an overwhelming, all-encompassing shock. An ordinary Saturday. Her mom and dad going to Walmart to pick up the weekly groceries. A logging truck with an exhausted driver turning onto the road, not seeing their small Volvo car traveling along the same stretch. It had been all over in a second, the police told them, their parents barely even realized what had been happening.

The pain was unimaginable, and when the then-eighteen-year-old Tiger had to identify the remains—because ‘remains’ were all that was left of her Mom and Dad—it seared the experience into her psyche. No. She had Apollo and that’s all she needed.

One person to worry about constantly. One person to be scared of losing.

One to be overprotective of. Damn it. Look at Massimo and India. He was close to losing India in the worst way possible, and yet he showed up, he was there, he loved her regardless.

Her brother was right. It wasn’t healthy, it wasn’t sustainable, and now he had proved it. There would be a new life, her niece, that she would worry over.

And the woman her brother loved. Tiger trusted Apollo enough now to know that if he had made this commitment, then Nell was the one. A good person. A great person.

“You’re right, Pol,” she said softly as she drove and he turned to her.

“What?”

She smiled at him. “It is time.”

“For?”

Tiger’s grin widened and she nodded. “It is time for me to trust to love.”

“Finally.”

And they both laughed.