As my eyes slid shut, of their own exhausted accord, I heard Sarah say, “I got him. Go back to sleep.”
Footsteps made their way down the stairs, but a hand was still holding mine. “Sarah, why are you still here?”
She didn’t answer. Nor did she leave my side.
After a quiet moment, and my breath calming, she quietly asked, “I’m not saying the name but… is he who hurt you?”
These foster kids had all been betrayed by family members or caregivers. I couldn’t let anyone think that about Styx. I just couldn’t bear it. So, even though I was never to speak of him and create any links to me, I rolled to face Sarah.
She was on her knees right next to the bed, still holding my hand.
My other hand lay on hers, and I finally cried. I broke. Tears finally burst free of my impacted soul. In a sob, I whispered, “He saved my life.” My whole family, who loved me so dearly they gave their all for me, felt so close I couldn’t stop crying. “He saved my life, Sarah.”
Crying herself, she lay her head in front of mine, nodding.
“Don’t say his name,” I begged, raw as she would ever see me.
She kept nodding and whispering back, “I won’t Johnny. I won’t.”
1 ? “Something In The Heavens” — Lewis Capaldi
Chapter 10
Shifting Gazes
Illusion or imagination…?
“I swear to fuck, Gage, if you ate all the Pop-Tarts, I’m going to kick your ass!”
I groaned as I rolled over in bed, tugging the pillow over my head to drown out Gage and Ethan. It had been two weeks since I buried my Noma, and this was the third time I’d woken to those two arguing over goddamn Pop-Tarts.
It wasn’t like Harmony didn’t cook. Food was never in shortage around here. They just liked to mess with one another, and Gage never passed up the opportunity to fuck with Ethan, probably because he could always get a rise out of him. Ethan, it seemed, had a short fuse.
Someone stomped up the stairs, and I wondered who would poke their head into my room. I remained still, hoping I could fake sleeping until Gage and Ethan had sorted their shit.
“I know you’re not asleep,” Caleb announced. “No one can sleep with the ruckus downstairs.”
Since I obviously wasn’t going to get any additional rest, I chucked my pillow at Caleb.
He caught it with a chuckle. “Not a morning person, Johnny?”
Yes, Caleb was on the quieter side, but I was learning that wasn’t the case when only one or two people were in the room. It seemed to be in a crowd, he shut down.
“Not when I’m woken up before I’m ready,” I deadpanned, scowling as I shoved my blanket aside and dropped my feet onto the rug beside my bed. I scrubbed a hand over my face, still sleeping far too restlessly to gain the rest my body needed. And the nightmares… they never fully faded.
Caleb snorted. “Welcome to foster house hell.”
Yeah, I was beginning to understand the reference. “Is breakfast ready yet?”
“Pancakes and bacon. If you get down there fast enough, there might be some left.”
He wasn’t lying. Bacon went fast in this house. It wasn’t just the boys who enjoyed it. Sarah was a bacon fiend. She could eat more than me or Finn, and that was saying something.
I shoved to my feet and grabbed a shirt from the pile of clean laundry I had yet to fold. As I shrugged it on, I slid my feet into a pair of Nikes that Noma had bought me earlier in the year. Already, they were getting snug. As she so eloquently pointed out on numerous occasions, my young body wasn’t finished growing yet.
The thought of shopping without her pulsed an ache in my chest. A raw, visceral pain in my sternum that had remained since watching Noma’s casket lower into the ground. And that was how the nightmares had returned. Gunshots. Dad roaring my name… I guess losing Noma reminded me of my fear of how no one around me knew of the dangers possibly still hunting for me.
“Come on,” Caleb urged as I shook the dismal thoughts and refused to indulge them.
