“You need to get some rest,” I mouthed, and Evan’s mouth pursed in reluctance before he relented and settled back against his pillows.
I stayed with him the longest while, running my fingers through his hair as he just lay there, staring at me.
Giving me his own kind of encouragement.
This time, it was my son breathing belief into me.
Time passed before I finally splayed my hand across the steady thrum in his chest.
“My heart,” I whispered.
He reached out and splayed his little hand over mine.
My heart, he mouthed.
And mine, it moaned, missing the piece that had blossomed and bloomed. The piece I’d freely given.
Finally, when Evan had been asleep for a long while, I moved back out into the living room and sank to the edge of the couch, my phone in my hands.
Zero pretension.
Zero pride.
I typed out a message and pressed send.
Me: I need you.
But when I crawled into bed to find a restless, tossing sleep, I’d gotten no response. And when the sun finally struck through the window, sending stakes of glittering light into my room, it still remained unanswered.
And I feared that piece I’d freely given was gone.
Hope shattered.
Maybe it was true what they said. Only fools held out faith.
For the first time in my life, I wondered if that fool was me.
28
Kale
Tender hands ran down my bare chest, and giggling lips pressed to my jaw. “Kale,” she whispered.
“Melody,” I murmured back, rolling on top of her, pressing her to my bed. “Melody.”
I stared down at her. Smiling at her trusting face, wondering how it was possible to feel this way.
Her sweet, sweet face.
It pinched in horror.
In pain.
Everything shifted, my room gone, cement under my feet.
“Kale,” she begged from where she stood at her car across the lot, the sun blazing down on her from above. She dropped to her knees on the cold, pitted pavement and clutched her chest. “I need you.”
Fear took me whole. Frantically, I ran across the lot and dropped to my knees at her side.
Her eyes rolled back. “Melody!” I shouted.
I searched for her pulse. For her breath.
Screams echoed through the air.
My shouts for help.
“I won’t let this happen. I promise, I won’t let this happen.”
I pressed my hands to her chest and began to pump.
Compression after compression.
Teeth grinding together, I worked over her, begging, “Don’t leave me. I won’t let you leave me.”
I fought and the sun spun out of the sky.
Darkness.
The world canted and tipped from its axis.
Everything shook.
Evan’s face.
His little, broken body beneath my hands.
That fucking flat line.
A scream. A plea. Hope on her knees. “I need you. I need you . . .”
A roar ripping from my lungs jolted me upright in bed.
Searching for nonexistent air, I gasped and panted, pretty sure the life was being squeezed out of me.
My eyes darted around the shadowy darkness of my bedroom as the images faded.
My skin drenched in sweat, and my heart beating like a motherfucking drum.
My shoulders dropped when I realized I was alone. That it was just another dream.
Which should have been a comfort, but the awareness of it just sent grief swooping down, shackling me in its chains.
“Fuck,” I gritted.
Hand fumbling through the dark, I reached over to flick on the lamp on my nightstand. The muted light broke through the night, and I pushed to sit up at the edge of my bed. The movement sent a wave of nausea crashing over me, sucking me down, taking me under.
Lost in the deepest, darkest sea where voices pleaded and moaned and begged.
I need you.
I need you.
I need you.
I knew I was losing it. Coming unglued. Standing at the edge of a cliff and getting ready to fall over the side into that abyss of nothingness.
Where I’d drown in dreams and torment and screams.
I’d never known a loss like the one I was prisoner to right then.
Losing them.
Hope and Evan.
But at least I’d gotten out before I could cause them more damage or pain. Because God knew, that was all I knew how to inflict. That didn’t mean I didn’t fight myself every second of every day not to go back to them. To ask for a fucked-up sort of forgiveness that I would never deserve.
If Hope knew what I’d done, the way I’d failed, she’d never look at me the same.
Hell, I knew it’d haunt her the same way that fucking text that had come in just after midnight nine days ago haunted me.
I need you.
I’d nearly succumbed. Broken down and crawling back on my hands and knees like a beggar, groveling, trying to find any excuse in my mind that would make it okay to be with them.
But I sucked it up. Refused the urges and the need and the sorrow.
Because I was staying away for them.
I need you.
Drawn, my eyes peeled open, and my already choppy breaths turned ragged.