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And I hate myself for it.
thirty-eight
Cash
She’s so small in the hospital bed, hooked up to all the tubes. Oxygen pumps into her lungs, fluid in her veins. She’d had hypothermia and the doctors had done something called blood rewarming, which had fucking terrified me. But there’s a flush to her cheeks now when she’d been pale as death a little over twenty-four hours before. I have yet to see those kitten green eyes open for me, or hear her voice, but I know she’ll give me both. I can’t accept any other outcome.
I won’t.
When I’d gotten to the factory yard and saw the fresh pile of earth, I’d known where she was. Fear likenothing I’ve ever felt moved me, brought me to my knees, had me digging into the earth like an animal even though I’d never been more afraid of what I might see. She’d felt like death in my arms—a result of what I now know to be the mashup of drugs the Doctor said came back positive in her tox screen. She’d been given a cocktail that had made her temporarily paralyzed, but mentally aware.
The bitch had aimed to bury her alive, leaving her entirely coherent without the ability to move a muscle for the whole thing.
The rage I feel at that even now—it’s all encompassing.
The only thing that keeps me calm even now is the sight of her. Her small hand in mine. The rise and fall of her chest with every breath. The feel of her pulse strong and steady under my palm—the patterns of it on the monitor.
I’m in love with this woman. More than in love. I don’t think I can live without her. I don’t think I can breathe without her. Fuck, IknowI can’t breathe without her.
The whole time I’d unburied her with my bare hands, my brothers at my side, I’d been starved of air. Desperate to breatheher.
I let my head hang between my shoulders as I hold one of her hands between mine. She feels so small andfrail right now, but she’s no longer ice cold to the touch. I’m not sure I’ll ever forget about how her skin had felt when I’d finally pulled her from that shallow grave. I swear, death had been so close I’d felt the reaper breathe his frozen breaths down the back of my neck. Hovering. Ready to snatch her in his greedy claws away from me.
I’ll be haunted by that moment forever. That day.
I’ll never be free of it as long as I live.
Just thinking about it sparks fear and anger in equal measure. I want to rage and maim. Lyrics drift in and out of my mind, each one assaulting me with vicious violence. I’m not ready for song, but this is how I process.
Only, I’m not ready to process this. The near loss of her.
The door opens and closes, and I lift my head to a man I’ve never met but know instantly is her father. If it weren’t for the similarities to the bone structure of their faces, I’d know by the agonized relief I see fill the whole of him as he moves quickly to her opposite side. It’s the side closest to the door, and when his roughly calloused hand—a work man’s hand—lifts to caress her forehead and then her hair, I know he’s feeling a lot of what I’m feeling in a wholly different way.
For me, she’s the love of my life. My reason for breathing. The melody that keeps my heart beating.
For him, she’s his baby. It’s his right as a father, as her father, to leave this place first. I know it doesn’t always happen like that, but it’s still his right. No parent should ever have to see the world without their child in it.
“She’s stable?” The words are a wobbly whisper that have the power of a swollen fist bludgeoning my heart.
“Doc says she is,” my own voice croaks.
We stay like that in silence for a long time. Him moving his hand over her hair, me holding her hand. Neither of us able to walk away.
“You—” his voice cracks. Splinters. His eyes connect with mine and he clears the web of grief and fear and anger and hope from his throat. “The police say you found her. That if it weren’t for you—she wouldn’t—”
I can’t let him say it. “I found her.”
“How?” His eyes are glassy, but there’s a tick of anger I don’t miss in his jaw.
“I put a tracking app on her phone after—after she was poisoned.” He pulls his lips in, rolling them on release. “I shouldn’t have. It was an invasion of her privacy but after that—I couldn’t sleep. I worried about something happening to her all the time. I drank too much one night and I did it while she was sleeping. She didn’t know and honestly—I forgot about it. I would have gotten to her sooner—”
He cuts me off. “You keep that app, son.” His eyes are fierce. They aren’t the same stunning green as Wrenlee’s. Instead, they’re more of a faded sea-glass green. A green that’s been scratched away by sea salt and dimmed by sun.
I swallow hard and nod.
We’re silent again until he says low, “How did this happen? A random poisoning and now this?”
“I don’t know.” I shake my head. “The kid that did it is in prison—the poisoning, I mean. This, though—this was because of me.”
