Chapter 20 Aurora
AURORA
Soft, warm lights. Comfy armchairs.
Babies. Ten of them.
Breathing. Sleeping.
Alone.
My heart has grown a life of its own. It shot up my chest and is currently lodged in my throat.
Since Everett’s home disappeared from view, I’ve been choking on all these emotions that threaten to ruin me.
And no one gives a fuck.
Cormac didn’t care that he had to hold me up by my arm as we walked through the hospital halls. He did what was expected of him. He brought me here, where everything is worse. The worst.
Every breath is a struggle. No matter how many times I shift in the armchair designated for me, I remain uncomfortable.
Gina, the nurse with the buzz-cut hair and kind green eyes, sits in the armchair to my right. Patient. Kind. As soft as the lights in the room are.
She hasn’t probed or asked about my red-rimmed eyes. My trembling voice. My pale face.
Everett must be paying her generously to ignore my pain.
Bastard.
Gina, on the other hand, doesn’t.
Her voice is tender. Her instructions on how to hold a baby have sounded more like suggestions than orders. She’s kept the same even tone as she demonstrated how to cuddle them and explained what it means to offer warmth.
When she said I could sing to them, it felt like an invitation.
I cleared my throat to try to hum, at least, and failed.
I can’t get over my anxiety.
Can’t.
I’d run the hell out of here, except Cormac blocks the exit.
I’m a prisoner in this room. Plagued by my worst nightmares.
The Clarkes’ private pediatrician said I couldn’t have been more than a month old when they found me on their doorstep.
The oldest baby here is twenty-three days old.
Those heartless people took me in when I looked like that. Small, fragile, and helpless.
I bet they hated me back then just as much.
I bet my mom loved me. She had to.
Her actions showed just how much she did. Breaking through my adoptive parents’ gates and leaving me with a couple who had the means to give me a better life—that’s love.
She couldn’t know that the manicured lawns and gorgeous home were hiding monsters behind them.
She did what she thought was best.
I wish she were here. I wish I wouldn’t struggle to breathe.
“There, why don’t you hold him?” Affection shines in Gina’s eyes. I’m grateful she hasn’t mentioned his name to me. I begged for her to take it slow, and she’s listening. “I promise he won’t bite.”
“No.” I laugh, a watery and weird sound even to my ears. “He won’t. I’ll hold him, I promise. Next time.”
A man clears his throat behind me.
Cormac.
Screw him and his orders.
“We’ll go slow,” Gina urges gently, hugging the baby boy to her pink scrubs. Hope and pleading filter into her voice. She knows neither of us has a choice in the matter. “Five minutes, and I’ll take him back from you. As simple as that.”
When I first walked in here, I refused to get too close to the babies. The emotional toll was overwhelming. Getting attached was going to destroy me altogether.
However, I must admit they are adorable. And, as I mentioned, it’s not as if I have a choice.
I muster the strength to open my arms and scoot closer to her. My breath shudders. The lump in my throat has grown to the size of a football.
I should send a prayer to the heavens that Everett chokes on his lunch later today.
I don’t.
Resenting him is impossible. He’s wounded and spiteful. A warm piece of my heart worries that whatever might’ve happened to him was a tragedy.
That if our suffering were to be compared, he’d win this miserable contest.
That doesn’t make my anxiety any less painful. The tears in my eyes are ever-present.
I have to do this.
Have to watch the baby boy since, any second now, Gina will place the adorable little thing in my arms.
He’s nestled into her chest, swaddled in a white cloth. His lips are rosy and pouty. His patch of hair is almost black.
Then he flutters his eyes open.
Blue. They’re as blue as the sky on a spring day.
As blue as the girl’s eyes in the photo in Everett’s library room.
A blue that resembles mine. Not quite, but…
The dread from earlier slams into me. Flattening my lungs. Stealing my breath.
I don’t get why it hits me with such intensity, but it does.
The girl. Everett. The family photos.
Maybe she wasn’t his close friend. Maybe she was his sister.
And maybe, maybe, I was too quick to dismiss the thought that she was my mother.
So, if Everett’s sister were my mother…
If I have feelings for him…
If he fucked me…
Oh God.
Oh my God.
I think I’m going to be sick.
“Nurse Gina.” Another nurse walks past Cormac into the room.
The two women chat while I’m being buried alive under a thousand metaphorical bricks.
A new scenario unfolds as I wait for her to return.
Though he didn’t look at the girl like he was in love, and neither did she, they could’ve been high school sweethearts.
They wouldn’t be the first teenagers to have unprotected sex. Or his condom could’ve broken.
They were so young.
As responsible as Everett is, he might’ve freaked out. So could have the girl.
They could’ve put me in the hands of the only married couple they trusted with this secret.
The girl, my maybe mom, was devastated by the whole ordeal and ran off.
Then, what if—what if the Clarkes wouldn’t let him see me when he came to his senses?
Winston and Molly are evil enough to tell him I never wanted to meet my biological parents. They might’ve said I was the reason he wasn’t allowed near me in the Royalty meetings.
Or it could’ve been my mom who asked for me, and they wouldn’t let her see me. She could’ve been consumed by grief. Might’ve run off from all that grief, then died of a broken heart.
That could’ve happened.
Then again… Is that how Everett avenges her? By fucking me? His child?
No way. No. Way.
This has to be my panic speaking.
Right? Right?
“Mrs. Alder.”
A hushed voice less than two feet away.
Gina is back. She’s talking to me. Me, Mrs. Alder.
Of course I’m her. Everett’s wife.
My face goes numb as a twisted question bubbles up.
In another life, could I have been Miss Alder?
“I’m back now.” Gina smiles. “Five minutes, what do you say? After that, I’ll pretend to teach you some more about newborns.”
I stare at her, my eyes bulging.
I’m supposed to hold a baby for the first time when I’m in this state?
Incest. Betrayal.
Lies. So many of them.
What the fuck.
Breathe. Just take a second and breathe. You can’t be sure that any of this is real.
Cormac clears his throat a second time.
Between deep breaths and a near panic attack, I open up my arms. I accept the baby into them, extremely careful of his head.
I’m doing everything in my power to steel the shivers, pushing all the disturbing thoughts to the back of my mind. I lock them there while looking after the precious baby.
Okay. Okay. I’ve got this.
My goodness, he feels even smaller in my embrace. Fragile. Lonely.
Desperate for warmth.
My heart aches for how he won’t ever know that while I was supposed to offer him exactly that, he’s the one who’s been warming me from the inside.
Little by little, this baby sneaks into my heart, soothing it.
Air floods into my lungs. Light filters into my soul.
The baby’s trusting eyes give me some of my sanity back.
There’s something in his gaze, even though he can’t actually see me. The innocence, I think, that settles my nerves more than anything else could.
I’m able to think clearly. To reconsider my fucked-up theory.
Especially the incest part.
I…I think I’m wrong. Pretty sure I am.
Everett isn’t completely unhinged. He wouldn’t have held a grudge over something a kid did or said. He wouldn’t have hated me for a message that Molly and Winston had passed on to him that could’ve been a lie.
He’s mean and ruthless. Sadistic and kinky.
But he wouldn’t have married his own kid for revenge.
Definitely not. In fact, I’ve never been this sure of anything in my life.
Okay, so what’s next?
“You’re doing great.” Gina pats my shoulder.
“Thanks.”
The baby keeps staring up blankly. He’s in my arms, still. Safe. I split my attention between him and my husband. On the secrets everyone might’ve been withholding from me.
I have to figure out who that girl was. Why he hates me and my family.
Not just because knowledge is power. Sure, it could give me leverage over him.
My priorities have changed over time though.
Learning about my biological family is my priority. Even more so now, when my mom’s identity could be within reach. When my husband could be my dad.
A sob catches in my throat. The baby’s eyes drift shut. He lets out a cute huff and dozes off completely.
I still don’t want to know his name. I refuse to get attached.
I have other things to figure out instead of navigating through my feelings.
A couple of minutes tick by before I finally have an idea.
Everett’s clever. Sneaky, even. I don’t have a chance in hell of catching him off guard.
He’ll never blurt a single secret to me, especially after the she slip-up.
Someone else might.
“He loves you already.” The optimism in Gina’s voice is contagious. Despite myself, I shoot her a smile.
“He’s sleeping.”
“Same thing.” She chuckles. “The five minutes we agreed on are over. So…”
“I’ll tell you what.” When I sneak a glance at Cormac, I find him texting. His shoulders are relaxed.
“Yes?” Gina’s expression is open. Hopeful.
It warms me to my core to know these babies have her looking after them.
“This isn’t as bad”—as terrifying, as numbing, as debilitating—“as I was afraid it would be. Maybe I could give another one of them some love after a quick bathroom break?”
Her lips curve up higher as she opens her arms to take the baby boy back. “Absolutely, Mrs. Alder.”
“Just Aurora.”
The giant rings on my finger don’t change who I am. To whom I truly belong to—myself.
Everett doesn’t really want me, anyway.
Sigh. “I’ll be back in a sec, promise.”
“Take all the time you need.” She nestles the baby to her chest, where he sleeps undisturbed.