Sitting on the steps in Charlton’s gardens, Maia took a deep, shaky breath. She had known that the two of them would need to have a serious talk about everything that was going on without their usual intimacy. And one of the biggest topics they both knew they would need to discuss was her condition. “I was born with a damaged heart and spent a lot of my early childhood struggling to live, we didn’t have the money to get me fixed. It was always just me and my unemployed dad. But then he found a job as a driver and I got fostered by that family who did manage to help me. I spent most childhood like any normal child. And then a while ago I found out I was getting sicker. My life was terrible at that time, two heartbreaks, constant fighting with Reagan, trying to help Lila with her condition and now the news of my heart. I remember waking up one day in the hospital, turns out I’d been unconscious for days. They told me they’d done an operation, one that mended everything that was wrong with me. I was physically better, much better than I had been before, but mentally I was not.”
“I became depressed, looked myself in my room, stopped taking the medicine for a few days - I believed I was going to die, I even told you once I was because that’s what I really believed. I loved with everything I had in me and then when my heart broke and I became ill, I thought maybe I wasn’t meant for this - I wasn’t meant to have good things. That was until you came into my life, you literally just appeared out of nowhere. But you saved me Bryson - I know you thought there was nothing wrong with me and I know you think you didn’t save me yet you did. You gave me happiness I’d never had before, you made me feel things I’ve never felt. You saved me and you’re continuing to save me.”
