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I shift to the side, curling my body around my son as much as I can. He lets out this little squeak, and my heart seizes inside my chest for a second, sure that she’s going to grab him out of my arms and run off. I back up until my back hits the wall, tilting Hunter away from her and giving her plenty of space to walk down the hallway and out of our lives.
I shouldn’t have worried though, she walks by both of us without so much as a word, let alone an affectionate touch or a last-ditch effort to snatch him away from me.
I make myself watch her from my front porch until long after I can’t see her tail lights. I sear these images into my brain so if the day comes that she wants back in our lives, I always remember that she left us so easily.
1
SILAS
“Silas, they’ve breached the compound. Get home, son.”
Ma’s words seem to echo around the car. Each word, each syllable, pinging off of me. Bouncing off of Bane, and rebounding off of Nova. Just ricocheting around like pinballs in that old arcade game Hunter’s been asking me to buy ever since him and Evangeline talked about two weeks ago.
Hunter.
I suck in a breath like I’m doing eighty up a mountainside and the air is thinning by the second.
I thought I knew what anxiety was. That I’d spent too many moments in my lifetime with it, too many days submerged in its thick, syrupy exhaustion. But all of that was nothing compared to what’s flooding my veins and short-circuiting my brain right now.
My father was never going to win any parenting awards, and it sure as fuck didn’t feel like he ever put his kids first. But maybe he did the best he could with the tools he had. He was a fucking outlaw in every sense of the word.
I didn’t quite understand it until now—I didn’t understand him. Until I’m slipping through the quicksand of terror over my boy’s safety. And the cool clarity hovers above the anxiety like mist on the lake.
There is nothing I won’t do for Hunter.
No piece of my soul I won’t corrupt to save his.
Maybe my father and I aren’t all that different after all.
How many days did he wake up and think: Is today the day? Is today the last day I get to see my sons?
How many days should a man wake up and think that before he does something about it? How long can a heart last under that kind of stress?
This kind of all-consuming emotion is so much more potent than anxiety. It’s weaponized terror wrapping its barbed wire talons around my throat, squeezing tighter and tighter and tighter.
The silence crackles, and I swear fragments of Ma’s words float around the air like microscopic particles. It’s only been a minute since Ma’s voice filled the car, telling us to come home, but it might as well have been an eternity.
The sharp prickling sensation of goosebumps erupts across my skin, followed by shivers that cascade down my spine. My knuckles turn white as I clench the steering wheel, weaving through the sparse traffic on the highway. Thank fuck for small miracles.
“Call Ma again,” I tell Nova, meeting his gaze in the rearview mirror.
He holds his phone up to his ear, his eyes narrowed with worry. When I meet his gaze again, he’s already shaking his head.
“I’ll keep trying,” Nova says.
The sense of urgency in the air is palpable, thick enough to choke on. My muscles tense reflexively, the adrenaline and flight or fight instinct riding me hard.
Nature’s fucked-up game of survival. I thought we were the predators today. But I’d been wrong.
So fucking wrong. And fucking naive to assume they were playing by the rules. And all I can do now is pray that the damage done is survivable.
Bane’s phone rings, slicing through the mounting tension like a hot knife on butter.
“Who is it? Ma? Evangeline?” Nova asks, leaning forward between the seats.
I keep my focus on the road ahead, refusing to take my eyes off of it as I pass the slowest fucking driver on the planet. I press the gas pedal down harder, pushing the limits of the car and completely disregarding the speed limit.
“Hello?” Bane answers, pressing the speakerphone button immediately.
