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“I love you, Hudson. I love you so much,” I cry, shaking from head to toe with the force of my grief. "You once told me that you were terrified of loving me because the fear of losing me was fucking suffocating. I thought I knew what you meant at the time, but being here now, watching a machine breathe for you--" I stutter out, the sobs clogging my throat.
The pain is nearly unbearable, but I need to press on. I need him to fight and come back to me so I can tell him for real how much he means to me. After a few deep breaths, I calm down enough to choke out more words.
I take his hand in mine, resting my forehead against them and squeezing my eyes closed tightly. "I get it now, more than I ever did. It feels like all the oxygen just disappeared and I'm scrambling to figure out how to breathe again. You can't leave me, Hudson. You need to come back to us. Rhys and Adam need you, the babies need you, I need you. It's not your time to go, Big Guy. You need to come back to us. Show me how to breathe again, Hudson. I love you so much and every minute you're in here, I suffocate a little more. Please, come back. Don’t let us end this way."
My tears soak the bed, waves and waves of sobs pouring out of me. The weight of sheer grief and agony hold me under until all that's left is dry, silent screams. There’s only one thing left to say and I pray to every god I can think of, that one day I get to say it to him and have him know I mean it.
“I forgive you, Hudson. I will always and forever be yours, you just need to keep fighting so you can wake up.”
Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Alayna
Sinceweweresupposedto move last weekend, Adam and Rhys have been working tirelessly to get the new house ready for everyone to go home to. Between the babies’ birth and Hudson’s car accident, it never happened. Thankfully the babies will be coming home this weekend since they’ve made leaps and bounds in their growth.
Hudson, not so much. His swelling went down, but the doctors still don’t know if he’ll regain all of his brain function again. The waiting is becoming unbearable. One of us is almost always at the hospital, just waiting for his beautiful blue eyes to open once again.
I was finally discharged on Tuesday after an extra long stay in the hospital due to a breast infection and concerns for postpartum depression. The infection is feeling better, but there will be no breastfeeding in my future. With the stress and the infection, I can’t produce enough for one twin let alone two. They’re thriving on formula and that’s all that matters to me.
Dr. Balanger, in the light of everything going on, decided to start me back on my anti-depressants from before. My therapist even came to see me in the hospital, using her weight to push for a longer stay for me in light of Hudson being here.
Being home has been worse in a way I didn’t anticipate. For wanting to move so badly before everything happened with Hudson, I can’t seem to find any joy now. If he dies, the new house won’t have a single reminder of him in it and I don’t know if I can stomach that.
Looking around the empty living room of the house I met my men in, I play with the moon pendant that’s back around my neck since we left the hospital. Adam and Rhys are at the new house with the moving truck, while I stand uselessly here, lost in memories of the past.
The memories are so fresh, the good ones and the bad. So much happened the moment I decided to come here. My life is unrecognizable from where I started and while I know it’s for the better, it makes me wonder what would have happened if I never went to find Declan.
Closing my eyes shut tightly, I replay that day I met the guys in my mind.
“You’re just in time for the visitation tonight and the funeral tomorrow,” Hudson tells me, so much pain and sympathy in his big blue eyes.
“No,” I whisper. “No.”
The one word repeats in my head over and over again. They’re wrong. They have to be wrong.
“I’m afraid so.” Rhys pauses to look at his friends, all of them silently communicating around me. “He killed himself.”
That can’t be true, no. I can’t wrap my head around what they’re saying. Declan can’t be gone. I came back for him. I came to be with him and get the happy life we both deserved. He wouldn’t kill himself. He always promised me that he would never do that. It was supposed to be my turn to save him, I was supposed to save both of us. This wasn’t meant to happen. I don’t want to believe it, but the sadness and grief I see written all over the three guys in front of me, tells me that they aren’t playing me.
I drop to my knees, too weak to hold myself up any longer as my own grief consumes me. A broken wail tears through me, the sound so loud and piercing, it doesn’t even feel like me.
Fuck! I had to take so fucking long to come to him. He needed me and I wasn’t fucking there. Of course I can’t save anyone, I can’t even save my-fucking-self. I’m still tortured every night in my nightmares because I’m a fucked up person pretending to be okay. I’m not okay, just like Declan wasn’t okay and I wasn’t even here for him. My chest hurts as I think about the pain he must have been in to feel he needed to end it. I want to rip out my heart as it shatters inside of me at the thought of Declan feeling like he had nothing left to live for. At least nothing that helped him deal with his demons that haunted him.
I vaguely feel someone touching me, but my body is so numb. The hopelessness of it all overwhelming me and dragging me deeper and deeper into a the spiraling void of despair and suicide.
“It’s okay, Alayna.” Hudson whispers to me, trying to drag me back from the dark abyss my mind has spiralled into. “It’s going to be okay.”
“No!” I scream at him, lashing out in my heartache. “Don’t you understand that it’s never going to be okay? He saved me so many times and I failed him when he needed me to be the one to save him.”
“You can’t put his decision on yourself. We were here and we couldn’t save him either. He thought about finding you, but he was so messed up. He didn’t want to screw you up even more with his demons.” Looking up in surprise to see Hudson beside me comforting me while rubbing my back. His tone is soft and soothing, but it barely scratches the surface of the agony tearing me apart. “You aren’t to blame for someone else’s choices. We can’t save people who don’t want to be saved and he didn’t want to be saved.”
The pain and heartache from that day is so familiar in this moment. First it was Declan and now it’s Hudson. Will this time end differently? God, I fucking hope so.
Hudson pulled me out of that spiral of grief. With him the one fighting now, who’s going to pull me back this time? Rhys and Adam will, but they’re also on the brink of losing another brother. It’s not fair that I need to keep leaning on them.
“You ready, Lay?” Juliette asks from behind me, coming up to place a hand on my shoulder. “Ashe is at the bar waiting for us.”
