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Epilogue
Ibend my neck and kiss Bean’s soft head as she sleeps against my chest. I have her wrapped up close against me in a stretchy baby carrier. I can’t bear to be away from her. I just want her with me.On me.All the time.
When I’m not touching her, her absence leaves a physical ache, a longing in the pit of my stomach that claws at my heart. My body craves her touch, if only to make sure she’s okay. She’s here. She’s mine.
And I wonder every minute of every day, does she feel that same ache, the same longing?
He died that night in the home slated for Jack. A home behind a security fence. A home that should’ve been safe.
I know she’s just a tiny baby, but I wonder if she somehow knows he’s gone?
I watched the only two men I’ve ever been intimate with fight it out; the prize: to live.
Two men; my baby’s biological father, and my baby’s father in all the other ways that matter.
One of them, I loved. The other, not even a little bit.
A knock at the door has me silently looking up as Lindsi enters with her children. Livi on her hip, and Benny tugging at her pants.
I’m told Benny’s having nightmares about what happened that night. About watching his mom being hurt. About his Dad hurting him. About scary police shouting and dragging his mom out in handcuffs.
Then more nightmares from the time he and Liv were removed from her care, when he was questioned by authorities, when they callously asked him a million cruel questions about his mom and dad.
Lindsi was arrested at the same time Aiden dragged me from the house. She was detained for almost forty-eight hours and left with no knowledge of her children’s whereabouts or wellbeing.
The police rushed in, found her standing over Ben and Jim with a gun held in her shaking hands, and without stopping for details, they slammed her against walls and took her children into protective services.
Protocol or not, they were cruel.
The police refused to release his body for burial until today. Until they had all the answers they wanted.
“Hey.” Aiden leans against the wall like a security detail and draws Lindsi’s gaze from me.
She smiles shakily. Her entire body shakes. Just like mine. I haven’t stopped shaking since we were torn from Jack’s foyer and a dead body was stretchered past us like it were the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.
“Hey.”
“Bubs?” Jim’s whispered word has my heart tripping in my chest. He takes my hand in his and squeezes. “You okay?”
His warmth radiates up my arm and into my cold chest. I need him. I need his strength, though it should be me supporting him.
I turn to my left and study his long body laid out in the hospital bed. He’s pale, so fucking pale, but he’s alive. The bed is too small for him, the gown hardly detracts from his power, but the machines and monitors lend an air of terror to a scene I know will work out okay.
Despite the heavy blankets and striped gown smothering him, bandages still peek out and remind me of how perilously close everything came to crashing down.
Jim was shot the same night Ben was.
Ben shot Jim in the shoulder, and had it been two scant finger widths lower, or two to the left, he wouldn’t have lived. The bullet would’ve scoured straight though his heart and Bean wouldn’t have a father anymore.
He’s been in the hospital for eight days so far. The first was spent in surgery, the next few in intensive care, but now he’s stabilized. Now he’s allowed to stay in a regular room until they deem him well enough to go home.
Bean wasn’t allowed in the ICU, so I had to trade out time between my daughter and my husband, and when I was with one, his brothers were with the other.
We became a human chain of visitors and babysitters until he was moved a few days ago. But now he’s in a regular room, and short of being at home, this is the best case for us as a family unit. No more swapping and trading time. We can all be together again.
He’s still in pain, but he’ll live. He’ll live a long, happy life, and Ben will never hurt anyone again.
Ben shot Jim…
