All I'll Ever Need

There were . . . more people than I had imagined there would be. As angry as my grandmother got when I called her to tell her about the funeral, she showed up and brought the entire family. Crying, putting on a huge show for everyone to see—she played the part of a heartbroken mother well.

“My baby was far too young to die!” she wailed onto the shoulder of my Aunt Lucy. “Just like my poor Rupert.”

Of course she brought up Grandpa’s death, too.

People gave her all the sympathy, which was perfectly fine with Matty and me. She pulled all the attention away from us and over to herself.

More power to her.

Sidney and I sat on the couch outside of the chapel with his arm wrapped around my shoulders and myself snuggled up next to his body. I didn’t understand why he was so willing to cuddle and hug me and such but not kiss me.

It didn’t make sense to me, but I didn’t really mind. Seeing Dad’s lifeless body again . . . it was hard.

Geno brought me a bottle of Mountain Dew from the vending machine and sat down next to Sid. Both looked extremely attractive in their solid black suits, I was always a fan of Sidney when he was dressed up. I wasn’t attracted to Matty, but he looked really handsome in his own black suit.

“Thanks, Geno,” I mumbled, and I took a much larger gulp than I think was healthy.

He smiled. “We take care of own.”

Hearing him say that made both Sidney and me smile, but it was a smile short lived. Somehow, I had missed it when the dramatics ended inside the chapel because sure enough, there stood my grandmother right in front of me.

She cleared her throat and gestured for me to follow her, and with great reluctance, I did. Sidney looked uncomfortable, unsure if he should let me go alone with her, but it was family. What could an old woman really do to me?

“What do you think you’re doing?” she hissed. “Bringing those two here? This is a funeral, not some media circus show!”

“They are here for me because they care about me,” I said.

She scoffed. “Right. And I’m the Queen of England.”

My eyes narrowed as I curtsied. “Oh my. I’m in the presence of royalty.”

“Your glibness does you no credit,” she sneered. “The media coverage this is getting is an embarrassment to this family! How could you do this to your father’s precious name?”

“There is nothing precious about my father’s name,” I snorted. “And I didn’t do shit. My friends came to Dad’s funeral with me. What happens after that is the media’s fault, not mine.”

“It’s yours because you brought them here, and in my state, I can only keep the media out for so long,” she said, and for a dramatic effect, she sniffled.

I rolled my eyes. “What state? When I called you the other day, the only thing you cared about was that I was calling you. You can drop the act.”

“He was my son!” she exclaimed. “I’m the only one here who even mourns him!”

“And he was my dad,” I reminded her. “You don’t know how I’ve cried over him, that horrible man you raised. He wasn’t the man who raised me, but he was my dad. I still cared about him.”

“Then how can you defile his name with your lies?” she gasped.

I scoffed. “Why am I even bothering with you? Sidney and Evgeni aren’t leaving. You want me to deal with the media? Just fucking say so, but stop pretending like you care so much. You stopped caring the moment you realized he was an embarrassment to you—stopped caring about us all.”

I didn’t wanna hear what she had to say to that, so I turned back and walked right over to Sidney, Geno, and Matty.

The funeral service didn’t really go much better. Matty and I were in the front row while Sid and Geno hung out in the back. My grandmother and aunts and uncles squeezed in on the front as well. Watching my grandmother cry while everyone around her just watched with impassive stares . . . the chapel was full, and I didn’t understand why.

We went straight from the chapel to the burial site, and I was beyond ready to get this day over with. I didn’t wanna stay and watch them put him in the ground, like I was sure my grandmother would do. I wanted to go through the brief burial service and get the hell away from there and out of the damn clothes.

I hadn’t realized it would be so hard. I thought . . . I thought all my crying was done. I thought I had come to terms with it long ago, but seeing him dead, hearing his name as the preacher said so many great things about him that I knew to be completely inaccurate . . . I could barely function. The entire ride to the cemetery, while Matty, Sid, and Geno talked and even cut up a little, I couldn’t.

Sidney noticed, and he backed off. I didn’t want him to, but once again, he put one hand on my knee and looked over at me any chance he could. Those smoldering eyes pierced into the depths of my heart, and he saw my pain.

He . . . felt my pain, and as much as I hated hurting Sidney, it made it a little better. Not because he felt it too but because someone cared enough to try and take my pain away.

That was weird for me, but I was beyond grateful.

Geno helped Matty out of the Range Rover while Sidney and I hesitated. They went on over, but I didn’t move from where I was sitting.

Sidney didn’t either.

He gave me a small whisper of a smile. “After this is over, we’re gonna go home, get changed into some more comfortable clothes, and we’re gonna have some fun tonight, alright?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think I’d be very much fun tonight.”

“If you don’t start trying to move on from this now, it’s just gonna take that much longer,” he said. “And . . . things are always fun with you. Fun and different.”

“What do you mean?”

“It doesn’t matter how stressful you’re being, I always go to bed thinking that every day isn’t the same thing anymore,” he said. “I don’t really like change. I mean, my game days . . . they used to be exactly the same, and a lot of times, my non-game days were, too. I’m a creature of habit, but . . . you change things up. I thought change would be terrifying and challenging, but with you, it’s not scary. It’s not hard. It’s the easiest thing I’ve ever done—effortless.”

More tears fell down my cheeks before he was even done, but I didn’t know what kind of tears they were. A part of me was overjoyed that Sidney was so happy with me while the other part was depressed. Not only was that part sad because of everything going on, but I couldn’t understand how I could do this to him. How could I hurt someone who was just so fucking happy and positive about everything? Dedicated, genuine, wonderful . . . the list went on and on, and I hurt him.

My eyes squeezed shut, but I didn’t need to have them open to feel what Sidney did. Both hands came to cradle my face while his thumbs rubbed ever so tenderly across my cheeks . . . and those soft lips I wanted to feel against mine pressed against my head.

I couldn’t breathe right for a minute and had to refocus on some bad so I could forget the good that made my heart hurt—but it was impossible with Sidney still rubbing circles on my cheeks.

So I just took a deep breath and unbuckled my seatbelt. “We should probably get out there. They would start without me.”

“Well, just think,” he said. “After today, you don’t have to put up with any of them again.”
Admittedly, that was a wonderful thought.

The two of us climbed out of the Range Rover and started the walk across the parking lot to Dad’s burial plot, but on the way, I noticed a crowd of people.

People who didn’t belong there.

Holy shit.

A shaky breath passed through my lips as I walked right up to my other grandmother. “M-Maw, what are you doing here?”

She gave me a tiny smile and put one hand on my cheeks, a way similar to what Sidney had done. “Child, I know we probably shouldn’t have come, but I just had to see with my own eyes. I needed to make sure that bastard was finally dead.”

I swallowed hard and looked down to my feet. “I thought . . . I thought you guys didn’t want anything to do with us.”

“We were upset, Mika,” Aunt Julie, Mom’s favorite sister, said as she let out a breath. “You are in no way to blame for what happened, and we shouldn’t have done that. We should’ve tried to make amends, but it was too hard with him still alive.”

My eyebrows pulled together. “So now that he’s dead, you suddenly decide to care about us again?”

“We’ve always cared about you,” Maw protested, and she pulled me into a much tighter hug than a woman her age should be able to do. “We love you both so much, but we couldn’t stand to see that monster that destroyed my daughter.”

“You left us alone,” I said, and some instinct inside of me pulled me back out of her arms. “We had to suffer on our own after Mom died. We had to live with him. Matty had to give up his childhood to raise us when you could have. You just left us.”

“Sweetheart, we couldn’t take you away from him,” Aunt Julie insisted. “He wouldn’t give you up.”

“You didn’t even try,” I scoffed. “Please stop. I . . . can’t process this right now. I’ve gotta watch them put him in the ground and learn how to cope with this. I hated him, but I also loved him. Same goes for Mom.”

I knew that would piss them off, but Mom was no saint to me either.

“Your mother loved you!” Aunt Julie exclaimed.

I nodded. “Yeah. She loved us so much that we weren’t enough for her. She killed herself and left us alone with him, so sorry if I don’t buy that.”

With Sidney’s hand on my shoulder, I pushed past the crowd and walked far enough away that it was safe to cry. I didn’t want them to see they hurt me, didn’t want them to realize I cared.

But it seemed to be how I was . . . I cared about people who weren’t good for me. My dad, my mom, both families . . . I cared about them all.

Why?

Sidney hugged me the moment the tears fell. “Shh. It’s okay, Mika. You can sort through that later. Right now, just remember that no matter what, I’m not gonna leave you alone. Ever.”

“We’re here for you, Mika.”

The sound of Beau Bennett’s voice was surprising, surprising enough that I was able to think about other things as I pulled back away from Sidney to look at him.

He wasn’t dressed for a funeral. As a matter of fact, he wore a t-shirt, hoodie, and dark blue jeans—but it didn’t really matter what he was wearing or why he was there.

I was just touched that he was.

“How’d you find out?” Sid asked with a hint of a smile in his voice.

“I was here putting some flowers down on a friend’s grave,” he said. “I saw Geno and Matty and put two and two together. I . . . don’t really know what to say to make it better. I couldn’t imagine losing the one parent you have left.”

“It’s probably easier than it should be,” I admitted.

He shrugged. “Doesn’t make it easy.”

And it wasn’t easy, but hard or easy didn’t really matter.

Sidney would always be there for me, forever.