Blinding Trust (Mitchell Family #7)(33)
Author: Jennifer Foor

“Go to the bathroom and we can talk when you get back.”

Ty got up and headed down the hall. Since I’d slept for so long, it felt like morning for me. I grabbed a bottle of wine and a beer out of the refrigerator. After I had a glass, I met Ty back in the living room.

“Ugh, oh! We need alcohol for this discussion?” He seemed as worried to hear my news as I was to say it out loud.

I poured the red wine into my glass and drank half of it before answering him. “My doctor found a lump in my breast.”

He said nothing.

I couldn’t look at him. I was so afraid of what he was thinking. Ty look a long drink of his beer and shook his head like it was hard to swallow. “Van, you have to tell Colt.”

I put my hands over my face. “I can’t tell him yet. I have to know how bad it is first.”

He reached over and pulled me into his chest. “Please don’t cry. Dammit, woman! I knew it was something like this. Why do you think I got here so fast?”

I let Ty continue to comfort me. “I didn’t want everyone knowing. Right now, I don’t know how serious it is. How can I explain things when I don’t even know what to do myself?”

“When does Colt get home?” He asked.

“He won’t be home until Saturday,” I cried. I just wanted him to be holding me and doing what Ty was trying to do. I appreciated it so much, but it wasn’t his job.

“I’ll stay until Colt gets home. Miranda is fine with it. I sat her down and told her how upset you were and how you had called for her. She wanted to call you right away, but thought you’d get pissed at me for telling her that something was wrong. With Amy on the verge of popping out another little kid, she didn’t want to leave. She sends her love and said that when you’re ready to talk, you know how to find her.”

Miranda and Ty had always been there for me. Their love continued to grow, as well as the trust that they shared. No matter how much the man joked, she knew he was always just going to love her.

“I kind of figured you would tell her.”

He rubbed my shoulder and made me look up at him. “What’s the next step?”

I shrugged. “They are doing a biopsy on Thursday.”

“I’m going with you.” He was adamant.

I shook my head. “You can’t! Colt will kill you!”

“Van, here’s the way I see it. You haven’t told Colt anything. He’s busy protecting your son and you don’t want to interrupt that. I get it. The thing is, you can’t go through this alone. Maybe I was the last person on earth that you wanted to know this information, but I do know. Now, it would be impossible for me to let you go through it alone.”

This was the side of Ty that not many people got to see. His emotional side was usually camouflaged by humor. “What if I don’t want your support?”

He cocked his eyebrow and laughed at me. “Of course you do.” He reached over and grabbed both of my hands, then pulled them up to his lips and kissed them. “Everything is going to be okay, Van. Just pretend I’m Colt.”

I pulled away. “You’re nothing like him.”

“You’re right! I still have a set of balls, where Colt lost his man card years ago.”

“You just went from hero to ass**le in ten seconds flat.”

He patted my leg. “I’m going up to the guest room to get some sleep. Just as a precaution, I’m locking the door. I know it’s going to be hard for you to resist the real man sleeping a few rooms down.” He winked and got up off the couch.

“Eh, how does Miranda put up with you?”

He was halfway up the stairs. “Be nice or I will do an upper decker in all of your toilets!”

I threw my hands in the air. “Oh my God! Go home!”

“See you in the morning!” He yelled.

When I finally got up to my room, and locked my own door, I thought about having to call Colt and let him know that Ty was at the ranch. Since he hadn’t been in a good mood for weeks, I couldn’t imagine him being happy about it.

Knowing that I wasn’t going to get much sleep, since I’d already slept so long earlier, I grabbed my Kindle and started on a book that I had on my to-be-read list.

I finished the whole thing before sleep came again, and when it did, I kind of wished it hadn’t.

I had horrible nightmares of being dead and watching my kids grow up without me. I saw my daughters grow up without a mother and Colt becoming so old and lonely. I dreamed of Noah being a rockstar and getting emancipated from his father.

Each dream was worse than the one before it.

By seven in the morning, I’d had about enough of them, so I went downstairs to make some coffee. Once I had my cup, I went into the living room to relax before Ty woke up and started getting on my nerves.

A vibration caught my attention and I noticed that Ty must have left his cell phone downstairs when he went up to bed. After it buzzed so much that it got on my nerves, I grabbed it just to turn off the notification.

Seeing that the message was from Colt, made me want to know if Ty had told him he was coming. Curiosity got the best of me, as I opened up the message.

I couldn’t believe my eyes.

It had to have been some kind of joke.

There was no way my husband was around naked women and sharing the pictures with his cousin.

I couldn’t stop looking at it.

The caption…that caption said it all.

I was hurt, jealous, mad and a bunch of other things all in one. Colt was going to hear me loud and clear when he picked up the phone. While still holding the phone with the incriminating message, I ran toward my bedroom to grab my phone.

Ty stopped me in the hallway. “I was looking for that.”

I put it behind my back. “I need it for a minute.”

“Did you lose yours?”

“No! Just…I need it, okay?”

I no sooner spun around, when I felt him grabbing my arm. “Hold on! What could be so important that you have to use my phone?” He snatched it out of my hand and looked down at the opened screen. A huge grin formed on his face. “Holy shit! This is awes…err, it’s terrible. It must be just a joke. I send him naked pictures all the time. He probably Googled it.”

“You are doing that thing you do!”

He looked all innocent. “What thing?”

“The thing where you take up for each other, so us women don’t find out you really did something wrong!”

“Bullshit!”