And then my phone rang.

I ignored it.

I also ignored the pleas of my mother.

My phone rang again.

And again.

And all the while, my mother sobbed in her bed.

She had no right to sob.

No fucking right.

My phone rang again.

Shit.

I snatched it out of my bag and answered it without even checking who it was. “Hello,” I snapped.

A pause. And then, “Sophia, are you okay?”

Griff.

A sense of calm washed over me at his voice.

“No, not really,” I answered him honestly, still clutching my stomach and praying the nausea away.

“Where are you?”

“At the hospital.” My thoughts scrambled to make sense. I couldn’t make sense.

“Which hospital, sweetheart?”

“The Royal Brisbane.”

“Which ward?”

“I can’t remember. The one for heart attacks.”

Don’t make me answer any more questions.

I can’t do it.

“I’ll be there soon.”

And then he hung up, and I doubled over in pain.

Emotional pain hurt so much more than physical pain sometimes.

“Sophia.” My mother’s voice shifted through my consciousness. “Please don’t shut me out. I made a huge mistake all those years ago, and I want to try and make it right now.”

I spun around and glared at her. “You can’t make this right. Not now. Not ever. I spent the last twenty years waiting for you to come back. And all that time I thought that if my own mother didn’t want me, how could anyone else want me? Do you know what that does to a child? To a person?” I glared at her harder. “It fucks them up,” I spat. “And, I’m done being fucked up. I’ve moved on and so should you.”

As I turned to leave, her last words floated through the air. “I won’t give up, baby. I love you and I’ll show you that I mean it.”

Her words were worthless to me. I stalked down the hospital corridor to the lift, oblivious to everyone around me. The lift took forever to come – well, it felt like forever – and I travelled down to the ground floor in silence, alone with my thoughts. When the elevator doors opened, I stepped outside and into Griff’s arms.

And I collapsed into him in a mess of tears and sobs and hurt.

He held me and let me cry it out, his hand running gently over my hair. When my tears dried up, I wrapped my arms around his waist, and clung to him.

His body and soul were my refuge.

Eventually, I lifted my face to look at him. His concerned eyes met mine, and he said, “I’m going to take you home now. Yeah?”

I nodded.

“We’ll take your car and I’ll come back and get my bike later.”

I nodded again, and he led me towards the car park.

And then he took me home and continued to be the amazing man I was fast learning he was.

* * *

I tried to swallow, but my throat was so dry that as much as I swallowed, nothing helped. Blinking awake, I found myself secured in Griff’s hold, up against his body again. This time on my bed.

I shifted and his hold loosened enough for me to move to a sitting position. Swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, I moved off it to go in search of water. I made it to the kitchen, filled a glass and drank every last drop. Turning, I found Griff standing behind me, worry on his face.

“Sorry,” I apologised as I placed the glass on the counter.

“There’s no need to apologise.”

“God, what time is it?”

“Just after ten. You slept for hours which you must have needed.”

“Thank you for coming to get me earlier…I don’t think I could have gotten myself home.”

He moved closer to me. “Do you want to talk about it, sweetheart?”

It was the last thing I wanted to talk about but the one thing I knew I had to talk about. I looked up into his face, and the care I saw there gave me the strength to bare my soul. “I haven’t seen my mother for twenty years, and she turned up two days ago, sick in hospital and wanted to see me. God knows what I thought would happen, but I went to see her after work today and it was the worst thing I could have done.”

He took hold of my hand and led me to the couch. Sitting, he positioned me on his lap, his arm around me. “Start at the beginning,” he said.

“The beginning?”

“Why haven’t you seen her for twenty years?”

Shit.

Thinking about this was hard work. I wasn’t sure if it was good for a person’s soul to dredge the past up like this or not. But I wanted him to know me, and this was a huge part of me. “When I was nine, my father had a horse riding accident and ended up on life support. He was in a coma for months and my mother walked away from us. I came home from school one day and she was gone. Her sister took me in for a few months, but she didn’t want another kid to take responsibility for, and eventually I ended up in the foster care system. I think my aunt thought my mum would come back, or my dad would wake up, but Mum didn’t, and Dad passed away.”

His jaw clenched. “You never saw her again?”

“No, not once. And I never knew she had another daughter until six months ago when Magan searched for me. Mum had walked away from her, too. When she was five. She’s also now in the foster care system.”

“Fuck,” he swore, and I completely agreed.

I shifted so one arm was around him, and I tangled my fingers in his hair at the nape of his neck. “I don’t think I can ever bring myself to understand her actions. Maybe I went to her today hoping it would help, but it didn’t. It just dredged all the shitty feelings of not being worthy up. And hate…It brought up all the hate I feel towards her, and I don’t want to feel hate, but I do.” My voice cracked on that last sentence. I lived my life totally against the feeling of hate, but as much as I tried, I couldn’t stop that feeling from bubbling up when I thought of my mother.