Chapter 65
KAIDEN
Sage goes in and out of sleep, like her body is rejecting consciousness so she doesn’t have to face everything that’s happened. Beckham, Vincent, and I take shifts staying awake for the moments she stirs, teetering the line between sleep and awareness.
We do our best to answer questions from the police, but the only person who can really clue us in on what happened three weeks ago is Sage.
Forty-two hours after arriving at the hospital, on one of my shifts, she wakes up with renewed energy.
My hand is in hers, and I’m staring at the ground when her fingers squeeze mine, making me sit up straight to look at her, finding her eyes wide open.
I stand, grabbing her jaw carefully. “Sage?”
“Hey,” she says, casual as ever, and I laugh lightly.
“How do you feel?” I question as I sit back down, but pull the chair as close to her bed as I can get so I can continue to touch her.
Her chocolate eyes look around the room for a moment, studying her surroundings with curiosity. When she looks at me again, she puts a hand on her stomach. “Hungry.”
Chuckling, I grab for the remote at her bedside. “Let me call the nurse so she can get you some food.”
As I press the button to call the nurses’ station, Sage grabs my forearm. “Is he dead?”
I look at her, finding her eyes sad. She has small bruises along her cheek, like he had hit her at some point, and it makes me burn with anger. “Yes, he’s dead.”
“Good.” And that’s all she says.
Beckham and Vinny wake up when the nurse turns on the lights, her cart banging against the table as she comes into the room.
“Sage? How are you feeling?” the nurse asks as she clicks through something on the computer on her cart.
“She’s hungry,” I answer, and the nurse steps toward Sage.
“Well, I’ll get some dinner sent up here as soon as I finish my exam, okay, Sage?” The nurse looks her over, takes her temperature, and examines the bruises on her face.
I sit back, letting the nurse check her out, and Beckham taps on my shoulder to get my attention. Leaning back in my chair, I look at his worried face and lift an eyebrow. He leans into my ear to whisper, “Has anyone told her yet?”
Shaking my head, I give him a warning look, and he sits back on the couch with Vinny.
A small sliver of fear ripples through me, because I know now that she’s awake, she’s going to have to face everything that’s happened, and she’s going to have to learn everything we know, including the fact that she’s pregnant.
When we first got to the hospital, we informed the doctor what had been sent to us, and they ran a blood test to confirm Sage is almost twelve weeks pregnant.
The police ended up finding an ultrasound machine at Juliet’s house. Apparently, her mom was a nurse or something, and I guess her uncle had used it on her when she was knocked out to get a picture to send to us.
How he knew that she was pregnant, I guess we’ll never know.
Maybe after the rest of the investigation, we’ll have answers, but who knows? Now that Aaron Blackmore is dead, we may never have every question answered. We might have to just live with the mystery of some things.
How did Aaron know anything he did?
As the nurse finishes her exam, I stand up and pull her attention. “Can I speak to you in the hall?”
I walk out before she responds, and thankfully, she follows me.
“Yes?”
Before I speak, I make sure Sage’s door is closed.
“Who’s going to tell her she’s pregnant?”
The nurse looks at me for a moment, the question in her eyes that everyone here has probably had: which one of you is the father?
“The doctor will be by to speak with Sage about her condition when the time is right. Her mental state is fragile right now, and something else could send her off the deep end,” the nurse says, and I chew on my cheek in thought for a moment before I respond.
“I think it would be best if I told her.”
“I’m not sure that’s smart,” she says, her light eyes filled with worry. “Why don’t we just wait for the doctor, and see what he thinks?”
Nodding, I put my hand on the door handle for her room. “Please get her something to eat, and make sure the doctor is on his way.”
Before the nurse can answer, I open the door and walk back into the room.
Vinny and Beckham are sitting at Sage’s bedside now, and Sage is sitting up straighter in bed, some color returning to her cheeks as she talks with them.
I join them, sitting at the end of the bed and smiling at my girl.
There’s a knock to the door before any of us can speak, then a couple of police officers are pushing into the room.
“Sage? Is now a good time to ask you some questions?” one of the officers asks, and I recognize him from when they arrived at Juliet’s house a few days ago.
Sage looks at me, almost like she needs a push, so I grin at her and nod.
“Sure,” she says, swallowing roughly, adjusting her position.
Beckham, Vinny, and I don’t bother moving, instead letting the police speak to all four of us.
The door shuts behind them, and they move to stand closer to the bed. “Can you tell us the first thing you remember from the last few weeks?”
Sage chews on her lip. “I don’t really know. I think he was drugging me, so everything is super fuzzy. I… I remember him coming into the room and showing me pictures. He said that Juliet had been stalking me.”
“Did he tell you why he took you?” the officer asks, and Sage stiffens.
“He said he needed to protect me,” Sage says, and a chill runs down my spine.
“From what?”
Sage shrugs. “I don’t know, but he said he killed my parents…and Gran and Juliet too, all to protect me.”
“What else do you remember, Sage?” the officer prompts, and Sage grabs Beckham’s hand and squeezes.
“He touched me,” Sage answers, her voice a strangled whisper.
Rage reddens my vision, and I stand up. “Does she have to go through this? You saw the pictures. You already know what happened.”
“We’re just trying to get to the bottom of things,” the officer says, and I want to punch him in the face.
I grit my jaw, and Vinny puts a hand on my arm to try to calm me down, but I want to burn the whole town down after everything that’s happened to my girl. I almost wish I hadn’t killed Aaron Blackmore, so I could see him suffer behind bars for the rest of his life.
The officer looks at Sage again, tone softening. “Can you tell us what happened when your friends showed up where you were being held, Sage?”
Sage swallows roughly, looking at me. “The first thing I remember was Kaiden waking me up, but I was so tired and dizzy that I couldn’t really focus.
Then Beckham and Vinny were there, and my uncle had a gun, and after that, it’s all blurry.
I just remember trying to get my uncle’s attention off of them, so he wouldn’t hurt them. ”
The officers are silent for a moment, then one of them clears his throat and closes his notebook.
“There’s a lot of moving pieces here, Sage.
But I’ll just tell you what we know now, okay?
Looks like your uncle had some sort of obsession with you.
We found lots of different things that hint at a sick-minded individual who had been planning this for a while.
There was an immense amount of evidence that proves he was the one who killed your grandmother, and then there’s the case of his daughter, Juliet. ”
Sage wipes a tear that’s running down her cheek. “So it’s true that she was my cousin? And that she was stalking me?”
“We searched the house and found diary entries that proved she had been fixated on you for a while, Sage, even before you came to Blackmore. She was consumed by the fact that your uncle had a relationship with you and not her. We think that she was getting close to you to hurt you.”
“So, my uncle was trying to protect me?” Sage asks, and my blood boils. But I keep my mouth shut.
“In his own sick way, maybe he was, Sage, but he was desperate, and desperation always leads you in the wrong direction. He hurt a lot of people who didn’t need to be hurt—your parents, your grandmother, his own daughter and her mother, all collateral damage in an attempt to get close to you.”
“So all of their deaths are my fault,” Sage says, despondent. It isn’t a question, but a statement.
“No,” I say, pulling everyone’s attention to me. “It was your uncle’s fault. Too obsessed with the past that he couldn’t see the present.”
“I want to go home,” Sage says, voice deepening with sadness. “I just want to go, please.”
The doctor walks in almost at the exact right moment, just as I can see Sage start to break under the gaze of the officers, who are making her face everything all at once.
“I need to interrupt,” the doctor says, and the officers give Sage a smile.
“We’re done for now,” one of the cops says. “Feel better, Sage.”
It feels like her room has a revolving door as the doctor steps closer, a small smile touching his aging face as he looks at the three of us sitting with Sage on her bed. “Can we give the patient some room, gentlemen?”
Although I don’t want to, I stand up, and Beckham and Vinny follow my lead, going to the couch to sit down so the doctor has better access to Sage.
I don’t sit. I just stand at the end of the bed and watch as the doctor sits down in the chair beside her bed. “How are you feeling, Sage?”
The doctor has great bedside manner because Sage instantly warms to him. She shrugs. “I’m okay. Hungry, a little nauseous.”
“I think the nurse was going to bring up your dinner,” the doctor says, but from his tone, I know what’s coming next. “There’re a few things we need to discuss, and it’s best we do it in private.”
Sage looks at me, and I make a point to keep my face neutral.
Even though I don’t want to leave the room, I will if she’s more comfortable that way.
She glances at the couch at Beckham and Vinny, and I hope they’re also staying neutral to support her, and when she looks back at the doctor, she shakes her head.
“They can hear anything you have to say. They’re my family. ”
“Okay.” The doctor stands up and goes to the computer to click through Sage’s chart for a minute, then he turns to look at her.
“When you came in, you were incredibly dehydrated and on the verge of starvation. I’m assuming when you were being held captive, you hadn’t been getting the nutrition you need right now.
We ran a few tests, and we found out that you’re pregnant. Did you know that?”
I keep my gaze on Sage and study the feelings that pass through her based on her features.
Shock comes first—of course. Then confusion.
Then she puts a hand to her belly and looks at me, her chocolate eyes filling with tears as she starts to understand the words better.
“Pregnant?” she asks, her voice tight, like she’s trying not to panic. She looks at the doctor again, shaking her head slightly. “You’re sure?”
“About twelve weeks.” He nods. “You’re still in early stages, giving you some options.”
“No,” Sage says strongly, a smile tugging her lips wider. “I don’t need options. I’m keeping it.”
She looks up at me again, then gives Vinny and Beckham equal amounts of her attention too before a tear slides down her cheek. A smile twists my lips up when she speaks to all three of us, and I realize I’m relieved by her decision. “We’re keeping it.”