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“No, I’m fine.”
“You look positively exhausted.” I grab her wrist and clench my jaw. “And your pulse has weakened.”
She pulls her hand from mine subtly but with enough force to have my entire body tensing. “Our son has been shot and he’s refusing to wake up. My whole life is in proper chaos right now, so my pulse is the last thing on my mind.”
“It’s the first thing on mine.” I wrap my hand around her waist and slam her to my side. “And what did I say about pulling away from me, sweetheart, hmm?”
Her worn-out face creases. “Aiden…”
“What the fuck did I say?”
She releases a long sigh. “That we can be mad at each other while you touch me.”
“That’s right. So don’t attempt that stunt again or we’re going to have a problem.”
“We already do have a problem.” Her voice becomes brittle and she trembles in my arms as she stares through the window again. “What are we going to do if he doesn’t wake up?”
“He’s Creighton, sweetheart. The same Creighton who crawled out of that gas-infested house because he refused the ending his monster of a birth mother chose for him. He’s the boy who accepted us wholeheartedly and called us Mum and Dad within the first month of coming to live with us. He chose us as a family, and we’ll have to believe that he’ll keep choosing us.”
A tear rolls down my wife’s cheek and I want to massacre that fucking tear to pieces. I want to stab the pain that’s haunting her and choke it to fucking death.
“But what if he doesn’t? What if he…went back to asking questions about who he is and where he came from and why he had to crawl out as a little boy? What if he stopped asking those questions out loud and started to answer them privately? Maybe…maybe that’s why he got shot.”
Her heartbeat quickens against mine, and I want to shake the fuck out of her for it. The doctor said that it’s recommended to not expose her to extremely stressful or emotional situations.
Which is why she works less now and spends most of her time talking to our kids and having girl time with her friends—that I absolutely loathe, by the way, because that means less time for me.
Or more like she talks with one demon spawn—Eli. It’s a known fact that Creighton would rather sleep than indulge in small talk. We’ve always respected his nature and his constant need for space.
But what we’ve been afraid of all along seems to have become a reality. It’s been some time since I suspected that his need for space is actually him withdrawing into himself to plot self-annihilation.
Still, I force myself to keep calm and stroke her waist in a soothing rhythm. “Breathe, Elsa, and while you’re at it, purge those cancerous thoughts from your head.”
“But—”
“Now.”
She goes still at my harsh command, then she glares at me. Good. Glaring means she’s distracted and won’t allow that poison to consume her. Little by little, her pulse returns to normal and she releases a long breath.
“You and your orders are too much,” she mutters under her breath.
“You letting dark thoughts consume you is the actual definition of too much.” I soften my voice. “Go rest, even for a few hours, then come back.”
“I don’t want to leave him. What if something happens when I’m not here?”
“I’ll be here. So will all the kids that alternate visitation time.”
“Still…”
“Elsa. Don’t make me throw you over my shoulder and personally drag your tight little arse to the hotel. You know I’m fully capable of that.”
She lets out a resigned breath. Though it doesn’t really matter whether we do it the nice way or the rough way. My wife knows full well that I would act on my every promise.
“I’ll take you back, Mum.” Eli appears from around the corner like a shadow, probably having eavesdropped on the whole conversation.
He has that loathsome habit that I tried to get him to drop when he was a kid, then soon gave up when he escalated. Eli understood early on that information is power, so he made it his mission to get his hands on any valuable tidbits.
That includes his own parents.
