“Not if you end up dead on the way,” Jeremy says in a deadpan voice.
Ava continues glaring at me, but it’s Cecily who glares at my brother. “I suggest you take her and go.”
“And I suggest you shut the fuck up,” he says with chill-inducing calm.
Cecily meets his harsh eyes for one more beat, then drags Ava away. “Let’s go.”
“Don’t ever show your face around us again,” Ava whisper-yells. “Murderer.”
And then they disappear, leaving me with a choked sob and a pain so deep, I just want to…end it all.
30
AIDEN
“Sweetheart?”
Elsa doesn’t hear me. Her gaze is glued to our youngest son's unmoving body through the window.
He’s been hooked to those machines for two days now, and there’s still no sign of him coming back to life.
To us.
A fact that’s been stressing Elsa and slowly robbing her of the light that I’ve always loved about her.
The same light that Creighton put there the moment he came into our lives.
Now, he’s slowly but surely sucking it away.
“Elsa,” I call again, more firmly this time.
My wife finally slides her attention from the window to me. Her beautiful long hair has lost its shine in the span of forty-eight hours, her face is pale, and dark circles dim her usually electric-blue eyes.
They’re lifeless now, like the rest of her.
I’ll commit murder before I let anything rob away my wife’s life source.
At this very moment, that happens to be Creighton.
“You should go back to the hotel and rest.” It’s surprising how calm and collected I sound, considering the circumstances.
“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—”