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What nerve I must have to be here.
A muscle beneath his jaw pulses. “Is that right?”
Yes.Tears shoot to the back of my eyes, but I fight them off, my throat bobbing under the effort to not sob. “I know you’re a private family, but—”
“You know that, do you?” he bites out.
Oh. God.Don’t cry, Kaya.“Please,” I whisper but he turns his back on me and walks away. I panic. My efforts splinter and tears spit from my eyes. “Fuck you! I just want to know if he’s alive!” I scream.
He halts mid-step, but he doesn’t turn around.
Fuck.
Inwardly, I tremble, but hold my ground with fists at my sides. “I just want to know that he’s alive,” I say, trying to sound softer, pretending the ‘fuck you’was a phantom and didn’t break through my lips. “Anything, please give me anything.” My breath hitches and holds. I relax my hands and take one step towards him. “Please, Max.”
“You care about my brother?”
“Yes,” I breathe the words through pain, taking another step towards his stiff back. “So, so much.”
“Does he care about you?”
I nod to his back, the nodding is for me because I need to feel it. It’s true. He does. “Yes. He does.”
He begins to stride away, taking all my hopes with him.
As I turn to my mum, I hear, “You coming?” Without a second thought, I jog to catch up with him. When I reach his side, he adds, “Watch that bullshit language around my wife and daughter.”
This might be the first time my mouth doesn’t object to being told what to do by a man. “Of course.” I forgot that he has a daughter. He’s the last man on earth I imagine with one, but then, what do I really know about Max Butcher besides what the media shows me?
Ahead of us now, down the long hospital corridor, Max’s wife Cassidy; a blonde girl I don’t know; and a half-asleep child sit opposite an open hospital room.
I wipe at my eyes, smearing the defiant tears as we approach them. Hospitals change people. Everyone in a hospital looks smaller and more vulnerable…
Hospitals shrink people.
“Who is that?” the blonde woman asks, brazenly staring at me with suspicion, her aura holds power, and though she appears younger than me, it fits her well. My eyes drop to the diamond-studded butterfly pendant around her neck. She’s wealthy, too. The gems are real.
“I don’t know her,” Cassidy whispers.
The little girl with Max’s grey eyes and golden hair styled like a firecracker on her crown joins the scrutiny. “I’ll name her,” she says sleepily. “She looks like a Blaire.”
Too close to them, to the door that may have Xander inside—not ready to face that—I slow down, dropping behind Max to talk to my mum.
To stall.
To think.
I don’t know if it’s sensible having her here for this. We may be bonding right now, but she doesn’t know Xander, or me, really.
In the middle of the corridor, I stop and face her as Max meets the girls still eyeing me questioningly.
My hands get sweaty, so I press them to my chest, my fingers nudging my necklace.
I stare at my mother, seeing her hand in the same position at her chest, and I— I can’t believe I never noticed that her nervous quirk became mine. It’s the same. Not a pearl-clutching gesture, but a hand-twitching one.
We play with our chains as we talk quietly. “I think I should do this alone,” I say. “I think… It’ll be weird taking my mum in with me or something. I don’t know.”
“I wish you’d worn something warmer.”
