Chapter 74 Home, At Last
POV Noah:
“Thank you, and I wish you twice as much.” Maya says, and that’s my cue to start pushing the wheelchair. I want to leave this place as soon as possible, but Maya’s voice makes me stop the moment she calls Scarlett. I turn the chair to face her. “Tell them,” she asks. “Tell them. It’s the right thing to do.”
Scarlett spends a few seconds looking at Maya and shifts her gaze to her ex-boyfriends. A smile that curls at the corner of her lips makes me want to know what she’s thinking.
“No, it isn’t. It took me a while to understand, but now I do.” Scarlett looked at me, then at my brothers. “I’m home. For the first time in my life, I’m where I truly want to be. I found my home, Maya, and I wouldn’t change a thing to keep that from happening. What’s done is done. Now I understand that the one who needed closure was me. I see how happy you are—my choice was the right one to make. It was because of it that we’re where we are. For that reason, I wouldn’t change anything, and I don’t believe you would either. Or would you?”
“No,” Maya answered with a smile on her lips, even with her face wet with tears. “I wouldn’t change a fucking thing.”
(...)
POV Scarlett:
I’m feeling good, compared to what I felt when I said goodbye to the Hawthornes for the first time. I feel like all that weight of guilt has been lifted from my shoulders. They’re fine, they’re happy, and that’s what truly matters to me. I considered talking to Asher and telling the truth, but after seeing how happy they are with Maya, what difference would it make if I told him? None. It wouldn’t make any difference at all. Now the only part of my life left to resolve is the one where I’m a daughter.
In front of my old house, I cry silently, knowing I did everything I could have done as a daughter. I can’t carry my father’s mistakes for the rest of my life. He made the choice to leave. After Damian and Ethan talked to me, telling me my father’s decision, I made mine: I will accept his will, and if one day he wants to look for me, I’ll be willing to listen—because despite everything I suffered, he is and will continue to be my father. Looking at the last place where we were happy as a family, I keep in my heart the memory of how loved I was by my parents. Regardless of my mistakes and my choices, if I am who I am, it’s thanks to them.
I take one last look at the old façade, seeing the new residents busy with their tasks, not even noticing me. I smile, knowing that at last everything that needed a period put to it has been done, even though I know my story with my father will always have a comma. I look back, and the four men who never gave up on me for a single moment are waiting for me, respecting my moment, letting me say goodbye—giving me something I was never given.
Choice. I smile at them, knowing my heart belongs to them. I love them, and there’s nothing left to stop our happiness. It’s time for us to go back to our home and final—
“SCARLETT!” I startle at the voice shouting my name from far away. I look in that direction and my heartbeat speeds up when I see four men and a pregnant woman mounted on horses.
“Those are…”
“Can she be riding with that belly?” Noah’s question is the same one I’m asking in my head. What is Maya doing? That woman is crazy.
“Better for us to leave,” I ask, not knowing for sure what they want with me, and I don’t want to stay to find out. “Could one of you help me?”
“Scarlett, wait!” Hearing the desperation in Asher’s voice tells me Maya told everything I had told her—and she promised she wouldn’t tell.
I breathe calmly, trying to control the anxiety that stirs inside me. When I gave up on telling Asher, I knew that in some way I had taken from his shoulders the guilt that would consume him if he knew the truth. Still, from the look on his face as he rides toward me, it’s clear that guilt has invaded him—and what surprises me is seeing the same expression stamped on his brothers’ faces.
Asher is the first to jump off the horse and run to me. I swallow down the emotion flooding me, clasp my hands together, trying to control the urge to throw myself into his arms and apologize for leaving without telling him the truth. Asher drops to my feet and pulls me into his arms. I can’t hold back the tears that fall from my eyes. This is the hug I waited for, for so long.
“Why, Scarlett? Why didn’t you tell us? We would have found a way. It didn’t have to be like it was…” I pull away from Asher; his eyes are confused as he looks at me. Behind him, I notice Maya quickly wiping her face.
“Asher, I did what I should have done, and I don’t regret it.” His brothers come closer, and in their eyes there’s no longer the judgment from before.
“Everything is as it should be.”
“We could have helped you.”
“You could have, yes, but what I found by leaving is something none of you could have given me.” My eyes settle on Maya. “Just as if I had stayed, you wouldn’t have found in Maya what I never could have given you.”
“We weren’t fair to you,” Logan says, stepping closer.
“And I wasn’t honest with you, and that’s okay.”
“Our words were cruel,” Cole says. “I shouldn’t have spoken to you that way, and I’m sorry for it.”
“I’m sorry. Dylan.”
“I’m sorry. Logan.”
“I’m sorry. Asher.”
My eyes fill with tears. Hearing those words after everything I went through eases an old pain I didn’t expect to need healing until this moment. A smile blooms on my lips; a lightness fills my chest; the calm of the wind brushing my face makes my heart fill with peace.