Children of Redemption (Children of Vice 3)

“What? How? What happened?” I was trying to sit up, but she pushed me back, not answering.

“He’s apparently the very opposite of brain dead,” Ethan said as he entered the room. He looked different, but I didn’t know how to describe it, not that it really mattered to me now to figure it out.

“I don’t understand?” I looked to my mom.

She smiled at me, and despite how tired she was, I knew she wasn’t forcing it. “He opened his eyes for you.”

“He’s awake?” I asked, my vision blurring, but I could still see her nod. I let out a cry, all of me shaking with relief.

Lying back on the pillows, I put my good arm over my face and cried, happy, tired, overwhelmed—but mostly happy.

CORALINE

He sat outside her room, glaring at the glass doors across from him in the hall. Sighing, I took a seat beside him, but he didn’t look at me. He didn’t speak. He just sat there like a protective, pissed-off father. The lines on his face looked like they had gotten deeper.

“You’ve become an old man,” I whispered as I rested my head on his shoulders.

He exhaled before leaning into me. “Can I call you an old woman now then, too?”

“Only this once,” I muttered, taking his hand and squeezing. “Because right now I feel like one.”

He let go of my hand and wrapped his arms over my shoulders. Kissing the top of my head, he said, “She’s going to be alright.”

“Only if Wyatt is—”

“Don’t,” he muttered, letting go of me and sitting up on the edge of his chair. “What’s going on? How could they do this? I kept wondering why in the hell Wyatt sent us off, and now I realized it was to fool around with my daughter? Is he fucking mad? There are some lines you just don’t cross. I didn’t realize I had to explain to him why the hell his cousin was that goddamn line.”

“She said she started it—”

“Whose side are you on?” His head snapped back to glare at me. “Tell me you didn’t know about this?”

“Calm down. I learned about it when you did. You know I wouldn’t have kept something like that from you—”

“Then why are you so calm? You need to talk to her—”

“And say what, Declan?!” I didn’t want to fight with him. I was tired. “I can understand why you’re upset. But I can’t bring myself to care right now because she’s alive. They’re both alive. We got so lucky, Declan…when I found out…when I saw her and heard about him, I thought the world was ending. I kept thinking that we were going to have to bury them. I kept thinking she’d never wake up. And now she’s awake. And he’s awake. The only thing that has changed from last week is that they are a little broken and bruised…and they’re in love with each other.”

“They’re kids! They don’t know what love is—”

“Wow,” I said with a gasp. Maybe it was the exhaustion. Maybe it was because he didn’t realize how old and stupid he sounded right now.

“Wow, what? What!” he snapped. I was about done with his mood.

“Declan, I was two years younger than Helen when I met you!” I yelled, and he stared at me like he didn’t even realize. “I walked away from my family, my whole life, and everything I knew before you, and I hadn’t even known you a year. Why? Because I fell in love with you. If I had

a father who loved me as much as you love Helen, he would have tried to stop us, too…and who knows where we would be now.”

“Here,” he whispered, but didn’t turn to face me. “We’d still be here because no one could have stopped me. I hear you. I get what you’re saying. But…I still don’t want this for her. Call me a hypocrite, but I can’t…she’s my daughter. Mine. Everyone has tried to take her away from us, to say that she is somehow less than our child…And I…We did everything to make sure no one ever questioned who her parents were. If she’s with him…”

“It means to them, she wasn’t really our daughter all along.” I understood his pain.

“They will ridicule her, mock her, and—”

“They won’t do it to her face,” I reminded him. “And if they do, just like you protected me, he’ll protect her.”

“She can protect herself,” he muttered and pouted not at all caring that he was contradicting his own point. He just didn’t want to think of Wyatt in that role.

And this was one of the many reasons I loved him so much. Sitting up, I wrapped my arm around his.