Omens (The Triad 3)

SCARLET

I woke up when Elliot walked back into the small room and knelt beside me. He had a few clean clothes and what looked like a bedpan of water. I cringed at it, and he just rolled his eyes.

“It was this or make you take a shower and put on a hospital gown since your clothes are ruined. It’s clean.”

I sat up and watched him wet one of the cloths, and then he began to meticulously wipe my hands and arms, giving special attention to where it stuck in the skin of my knuckles and under my nails.

“Any news on Seb?” I asked him, my voice cracking as tears threatened to spill again.

“Nothing yet. Tristan is working on it.” He paused and looked up at me, his dark brown eyes narrowing on my red-rimmed ones. “You’re an ugly crier. You know that?” His mouth tipped up in the corner, and a laugh burst out of me.

His smile cracked open further at my laugh, and he went back to cleaning Seb’s blood from my skin. My laughter faded, and we sat in a comfortable silence. I’d felt a special bond with Elliot ever since we worked all of our shit out. We had a lot more in common than I thought either of us had wanted to admit.

Once the water was completely red, he moved to the little bathroom attached to the waiting room and dumped it before refilling it with warm water and coming back to the couch. I swayed under the exhaustion that was crashing through my body like a fucking wrecking ball.

“You’re dropping from the hike in adrenaline. You need to sleep,” he said, his voice vibrating through his body and into mine.

“I can’t be expected to lay here and sleep while Seb is fighting for his life.”

“You can. And you need to. You staying awake, torturing your body like that, isn’t going to help him recover.”

“But I don’t want to miss anything.” I swallowed against the lump in my throat as he began to wipe at my face. The cloth came away dirty with blood and makeup. God, I must’ve looked an absolute terror to anyone in the emergency room.

“We wouldn’t let you miss anything,” he told me, his voice calm and gentle as he pushed my hair out of my face, tucking it behind my ears. “Either me or Tristan would immediately wake you up, Scar.” I stared into his eyes for a beat before leaning forward and letting my forehead rest on his.

“When did you become so kind?” I teased.

“I’ve always been kind,” he laughed. “You just tend to bring out the worst in me.”

“Or the best, depending on how you’re looking at it.” I winked at him, and he laughed softly, moving forward to give me a kiss. It was soft and quick, just given to reassure me that everything was going to be okay. But I wasn’t sure I could believe him at that moment.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Tristan said as he walked into the waiting room and closed the door behind him. Elliot kissed my forehead and then carried all of the cleaning stuff to the bathroom.

“Any news?” he asked Tristan as he made his way past him.

“He’s in surgery now,” Tristan said, sitting on the sofa next to me and pulling me into his body. “We’ll be notified the second he’s out, I’ve made sure of it.”

“And Finn?” I asked hesitantly. He had been hit before Seb, so he surely had lost more blood… I was afraid to ask.

“In surgery as well. Kenna is being moved and sedated so that she can get some sleep. She was hysterical after you left in the ambulance,” Tristan answered with a worried look on his face. He was probably terrified to tell me he had willingly had my best friend tranquilized. But I knew Kenna. I knew how high-strung she could be, and if I couldn’t be with her, I’d rather her be knocked out and safe until I could be.

“That means you sleep too,” Elliot called out from the bathroom. I scoffed and rolled my eyes.

“He’s right,” Tristan agreed, pushing me to lie down further until my head was resting on his lap. I rolled over so that I could bury my face in the scent of him. “You need to sleep so that you can be there for him when he gets out of surgery. You know he would much rather see your pretty face than Elliot’s.”

I laughed and closed my eyes, breathing him in and trying to get comfortable. I heard Elliot walk out of the bathroom, and I swiveled my head to look at him as he searched through the closet on the opposite wall.

“Here,” he finally said, coming out of the closet carrying a soft fleece blanket. “They always keep clean blankets in here for the kids.” He laid the soft blue fleece over my body, taking the time to pull my boots off before tucking the blanket over my feet. “Get some sleep. I’m going for a walk. I’ll get us some food and shit.”

I turned back and looked at Tristan as the door closed behind Elliot, and he looked down at me with a soft smile.

“He spent a lot of time here as a kid,” he told me, playing with my hair as my eyes began to drift shut again. “We both did.”

“Tell me about it.” I yawned and tried to shut down the knot that hadn’t stopped twisting and turning in my gut for the past couple of hours.

“You want to hear about all the times Elliot and I had to spend the night in this emergency room because our shitty parents couldn’t stop getting shot? Or how his dad beat us so many times that we ended up being the ones in the rooms?” There was humor in his voice, but I knew he didn’t actually find it funny. He just didn’t know how else to cope.

For all the shitty things my family did when I was growing up, I was never beaten to the point of needing a doctor. Sure, I had been slapped around when I had pushed my luck too far with my father, but he never took it any further.

“I’m sorry, Tristan,” I whispered, pulling the blanket higher up over my shoulders. The soft fabric rubbed across my now clean face and gave me an odd sense of comfort.

“It’s okay. It’s the past. And no matter how much I hated it then, it made me who I am today. That shit prepared me for all the fucked-up things I would end up seeing, that’s for fucking sure.”

“I will never expose my kids to that side of things,” I said, feeling him still beneath me.