The Last Snow: A Mother's Love

Tyler Burgess’ POV
January 29th

“How many fucking shades of black are there?” Angelo groaned, looking at the wall of paint sample cards in front of us.

“Too damn many.” I replied.

The two of us were on a mission today to get the last of the paint for the main house. We had get paint for the master bathroom, Bella’s room, the library, and the little indoor green room/ atrium that we had.

“This is bullshit, look at this. Black Satin, Black Magic, Caviar, and Midnight Dream are the same damn color.” Angelo growled, showing me the four paint cards side by side.

“Is one cheaper than the other?” I wondered.

“Nope, all the same price.” He sighed.

“Fuck it, let’s just go with Midnight Dream since it’s the first one we saw.” I grumbled, picking up a rather large can of it and setting it down into the cart.

We already had picked out the white for the atrium, the light grey for the library, the light purple for Bella’s, and this last pick of paint for the master bathroom completed our shopping adventure for the day.

As we were checking out I got a quick text from Kuza letting me know that all of the bands who had been in Colorado November to December would be heading back here tomorrow morning.

Apparently we hadn’t considered the fact that it took us a whole month just to write the contract and rules, so they would only need a month at the old house to learn the rules and familiarize themselves with every little piece of our contract.

That was actually great news, it was probably best to have everyone together for the last final push as we only had about 4 more weeks before Danny and Chris were going to head to where Bella was and start the tedious process of getting her out here to the new complex.

“So, are you excited?” Angelo asked me, as we both got into the car.

“For what?” I said.

He laughed.

“Getting Bella back. You know, the one thing we’ve literally been training for in the last three months.” He chuckled.

“It’ll be nice to know she’ll be around for good.” I admitted.

“Amen to that.” Angelo whispered, stepping on the gas and driving us back to our place.

About three hours later we arrived back at the house, and brought all of the paint in.

Most of the bands were on the lower 2 levels right now working, but we did run into Blessthefall on our way to the master bathroom.

“Did you guys find everything alright?” Jared asked.

“The hundreds of shades of black threw us, but we braved the storm.” Angelo joked with him.

They gave us the nod of approval, and continued to work on whatever furniture pieces they were working on setting up.

There was so many parts and pieces scattered, it could have been 5 seperate pieces for all I knew.

Thankfully when we reached the bathroom, everything was covered on the floor and ready for us to start painting.

Angelo and I poured some of the paint into individual paint trays, and got to work.

It was a huge room, so we were going to be here for a little bit.

We got about two hours into painting, and then Jack and Alex popped into the room.

“Hey, we’ve got a delivery for you.” Jack said, dropping off two large shopping bags.

“Lush?” I chuckled.

“Bella will have enough bath bombs to keep her calm and happy for 6 months.” Alex joked.

“If you think I won’t be using those as well, you’re nuts.” I replied.

“What do you mean, I thought you loved her?” Jack wondered.

“Oh, I do. It doesn’t mean that she doesn't stress me the fuck out though.” I admitted.

They had their laughs about that, and then went on their way to drop off the rest of the stuff that they had just been shopping for.

I sorted through the two bags, and got them in their designated cupboard, to the right of the sink. It actually was pretty aesthetically pleasing as the doors were glass and displayed all of the bright colors of the bath bombs inside.

“Alright, the first layer looks good for now. I’d say around 8 tonight we should be good to start getting the second one up.” Angelo said.

“Sounds great. What are you going to do for the rest of the day?” I wondered.

“I’m not so sure. I might help Chris and Craig set up their office. If not, I’ll probably try and get that divider wall up in the basement. What about you?” He asked.

“I’m probably just going to work on Bella’s room. I’ll leave the painting for another day, but I’ve been wanting to start decorating it.” I told him.

“Nice! Alright, I’ll see you back here at 8, then. Bring coffee.” He laughed, heading out.

“Oh, I will.” I replied, making my way out of the room.

I left the main building, and started down the path to the building where all of bedrooms were.

My first stop was up to my room on the third floor to grab the few bags of things that were going to go in Bella’s room. I had the majority of larger items already upstairs, so I wouldn’t have to attempt to haul them upstairs twice.

As I got up to the third floor, I saw that Bring Me The Horizon who had a room next to me was getting ready to leave.

“What fun adventure do you guys have planned?” I asked Jordan.

“We’re in charge of shopping for the back deck. So a grill, a fire ring, and hopefully some furniture.” He explained.

“Oh, fun.” I joked.

“Actually it is compared to what Lee gets to do. He drew the short straw and will be digging the hole for the fire pit today.” He laughed.

“Oh shit. That sucks.” I hissed.

“Yeah. Well I’ve got to get everyone going or we’ll never get shit done. I’ll see you later.” He said, disappearing back into their room.

I finished grabbing my stuff, and hiked up the last part of the stairs, and walked into Bella’s bedroom, which was directly above mine.

Right as you walked into her room, about 15 feet in front of the door was a queen bed. Her bed was already completely set up with sheets and a quilt, and her pillows were already covered in that light purple color she loved so much. She did favor black more than that color, but if we painted her room completely black, besides from the window it would appear as a pit of doom.

Not exactly what we were looking for, so this light purple worked for us.

We would be painting the walls at a later date, I could only handle one room a day.

I pulled out the box that contained the painting that would be on the wall right behind her bed.

It was four individual boards, but when side by side it created a picture of what I could only guess were japanese cherry blossoms, I wasn’t a flower expert by any means to say the least.

I got those drilled up and hanging in about 30 minutes, and then I stared down my next task.

The chandelier.

I was not looking forward to this one at all.

Unboxing it was the easiest part, the rest was looking to be a bitch.

In order to reach the ceiling I had to stand up on her bed, which wasn’t exactly a help when considering my stability.

Far Too Much Time Later -

“Fuck!” I screamed as it dropped from my hands and onto the bed.

Thankfully it didn’t break as the bed was soft enough to catch it’s fall.

“Ok, what in the hell are you doing?” Ronnie asked, pushing the bedroom door open.

“Attempting to get this piece of shit to hang.” I growled, beyond frustrated.

“Easy, Burgess.” He laughed, coming into the room and taking the chandelier from off the bed.

“You know we can all hear you two floors down, right?” Ronnie informed me.

“Honestly, that wasn’t even on my mind.” I groaned.

He jumped up onto the bed as well, and pushed the chord through the hook that was drilled into the ceiling.

“Ok, you drill and I’ll hold it.” He said.

I followed his advice, and within no time it was up.

“Do you think we can leave it up just like that, or do you want the chord to get draped down the wall and to an outlet?” I wondered.

“Keep it like that, no offense but your little angel has been known to take something as simple as a chord and manage to fuck us over.” Ronnie replied.

I couldn’t help but let out a laugh.

I remembered quite well the day that Bella filled up enough outlets to spark a fuse, and our power went down for a good two hours.

“Come on, you’ve got to give her creativity points.” I laughed.

He rolled his eyes, and shook his head.

“All kidding aside Tyler, you know we’re about 4 to 5 weeks away from bringing her back. You can’t honestly tell me that you’re not worried that things could possibly go wrong.” He said.

I sighed.

“I do worry that things could go bad. I try not to think about it that much, but I know how she’s been in the past. I’d like to think with all of this work we’ve done for the past three months that it will be perfect, but I know both sides will have to adjust to make this work.” I admitted.

“Ok, I get your worries as they echo mine, but tell me this. What in the hell makes you think this will work perfectly?” Ronnie asked me.

“Bella knows that Kylie and Gaia know what’s going to happen in 4 to 5 weeks. She was able to figure that out on her own. She could have run away 3 months ago when she found that out, yet she didn’t. I think she’s just tired of running.” I explained.

“Are you serious? She knows that we’re planning to get her?” He asked.

“Yup, and for about 3 months now.” I told him.

“Well fuck me, I’ll give her a few brownie points back for that.” He chuckled.

“Just give her a chance when she gets back, you’ll find that she’s very brownie point worthy.” I said.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll see as time goes on.” He groaned.

“Thank you, and thanks for helping with that damn chandelier.” I thanked him.

“Of course. I’ve got to go back and finish helping Derek with some things.” He said.

“Speaking of Derek….are Christian and Zakk going to come and help?” I wondered.

“No. I didn’t think it would be a good idea to add more people to the pot, before we got Bella adjusted to everyone else. Especially Christian, he can be a bigger pill to swallow for some people.” He joked.

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.” I told him.

“I’m full of good ideas.” He laughed.

“Alright, I’ll let you go back. Thanks again.” I said.

“See you later.” He called, heading back to his room.

As soon as he left I shut the door once again.

The one thing I hadn’t told any of them was that I was leaving tiny little trinkets all around the house. Things that were special to Bella, and things that I knew would make her happy, one more step to keeping the peace.

I may or may not have forged some of the guys’ names on some of those said items so she wouldn’t just only be happy with me.

I had about 20 of these little things already hidden, and one more to go.

I slipped the picture of Bianca out of my back pocket and snuck it in her pillowcase.

She’d hopefully find it pretty easily.

The next 4 hours were spent putting up a valence on her window, building two small bed tables and getting those in place as well as the white dresser that was to the left of her bed when you were facing it.

8 pm came in a flash, and I quickly ran to the kitchen to get myself a cup of coffee before meeting Angelo back in the master bathroom.

“Hey, how was your day?” Angelo asked, as we started to get ourselves ready to start painting once more

“It wasn’t the best, yet wasn’t the worst.” I admitted.

“Was it the chandelier?” He wondered, with a laugh.

“No, not quite.” I chuckled, not surprised that Ronnie had spread that story.

“What was it?” He pushed me.

“I guess it just hit me how fast this all was going down.” I sighed, leaning against the sink.

“Yeah, the time flew by.” He agreed.

“T minus 34 days.” I whispered.

Notes

The winter has been pretty long and has taken its toll on everyone......the last snow is just around the corner.