Chapter 56
56
Tovah
S omething beeped. My head pounded in time with the incessant sound.
Where was I?
I struggled to open my eyes; they were so heavy. Finally, on the third try, I cracked them open.
“Oh my god, she’s awake!” an unfamiliar woman’s voice said. “I’ll go get the doctor.”
I heard a door open and then shut.
“Oh, honey.” My vision swam, but when it settled, my mother was in front of me.
She gripped my hand.
“You’ve been out for days,” she said. “I thought I’d lost you. Oh thank god, you’re okay.”
My last memories came back to me. Shabbat dinner at the Silvers, guns trained on me and my mother. The deal Isaac and his father made. His father threatening to kill my mother—and me confessing that I’d been the one to murder my stepfather.
Abe trying to shoot me.
Isaac fighting him for the gun.
Isaac shooting his father, knowing the bullet would go through him, too.
Isaac, falling to the ground.
Knocking the gun out of the guard’s hand and running to Isaac.
And then the gunshot, the pain, and Isaac’s eyes on mine as everything faded to black.
Isaac.
Only my mother was in the room with me.
Where was Isaac?
“Where is he?” I asked my mom. “Where’s Isaac? Is he okay? Did he make it? Is he?—”
I could barely voice my fears out loud.
She laughed again. “He’s fine. He didn’t leave the room for days, except, I hope, to use the toilet at some point. His brothers finally dragged him out of here so he could shower.” She lowered her voice in a false whisper. “He was beginning to stink.”
“Oh,” I said, settling into the bed I was lying on, relief allowing my strained muscles to relax.
“Oh,” she mimicked. “You’ve been hiding things from me. I’ll admit, I’m…concerned about your involvement with the next head of the Silver family. I don’t want you anywhere near their violence or criminal activity. But he does seem to truly care about you, and wants to protect you, and I do like that.”
“Mom, I think—” I began, before I could finish the sentence the door slammed opened. A tall man in a white doctor’s coat entered the room, Isaac right on his heels.
The man gave me the chills. Isaac did not seem concerned.
“— a second to check her over,” the doctor was saying.
“Fuck that.” Isaac moved around him, crossing with long strides toward the bed and pulling an IV stand behind him. He stopped, leaning down and pressing a hard, possessive kiss to my lips.
“Ow,” I complained.
“Shit.” He lifted his head, pressing a softer, gentler kiss to my forehead. “I just—fuck, Tovah. I thought I’d lost you. I thought you were gone. I thought?—”
“We know what you thought,” my mom said, dryly. “You haunted the halls of this hospital while she was recovering and yelled at so many doctors, I’m surprised they didn’t kick you out.”
Isaac shrugged. “It worked, didn’t it? Your daughter’s alive, and safe.” He looked at me. “And you’re going to stay alive and safe.” A look passed over his face, one I couldn’t read. It scared me a little.
“You’re okay,” he said again, kissing my forehead.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” the doctor said. “If you’ll give me some space, sir.”
Sir. Why was he calling him sir?
And then it came back to me.
If Abe Silver was dead, that meant Isaac was now in charge of the family.
The exact opposite of everything he’d ever wanted.
“Isaac,” I said urgently, tugging on his wrist. “I’m so sorry. This is all my fault, I?—”
“Quiet,” he ordered, kissing me again. “Nothing’s your fault. There’s nothing for you to be sorry for.”
“Sir,” the doctor repeated.
He moved out of the way, still hovering, as the doctor checked my vitals, looking me over.
“You’re lucky,” he said, when he was done. “Incredibly lucky. The bullet missed your heart by only a few inches and almost destroyed your lung. And then you were in surgery for days, and there could’ve been a terrible infection, or you could’ve gotten stuck in the coma I induced. It’s a miracle you pulled through. You’re going to have quite the scar, and you’ll need bedrest for weeks and physical therapy, but you’ll be okay.”
He straightened, glancing at Isaac. “Sir, I recommend no…strenuous activities for the next month. Including that kiss you greeted her with.” He smiled slightly. “But then you should be fine to…proceed as normal.”
That same strange look flitted across Isaac’s face, here, then gone.
“Marcus says you owe him a favor for this,” the man said.
“Got it, Doc,” Isaac said, and with one peculiar look at me, the doctor left.
Once he was gone, Isaac glanced at my mom. “Hana, can I have a minute alone with your daughter?”
She rose. “Of course.” Kissing my cheek, she said, “I’ll be right outside.”
Alone, Isaac, sat on the bed, holding my hand carefully. “Tovah, I don’t know where to start. I’ve fucked up, from the beginning. Didn’t trust you, treated you horribly. Put you through hell I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I said awful, horrible things to you, words I’ll always regret, because I was so?—”
I interrupted him. “You were a fucking asshole.”
“I know,” he said. “I was terrified about what it meant that I couldn’t control myself around you, and then later, what it meant to love you. I was broken at the possibility that I couldn’t keep you, so I took it out on you. It was dick behavior after dick behavior, and I’m going to do everything in my power to make it up to you. For every single horrible thing I’ve done. For the rest of my life. I promise.”
What it meant to love you.
He loved me.
He’d said it before, but I’d never been able to truly believe it. Not until now.
“The things you went through,” he swallowed, continuing. “If you hadn’t killed your stepfather, I’d kill him right now, slowly and painfully. I want to bring him back to life just to rip him apart, piece by little piece.”
My eyes were wet. My throat, still dry, stung from the tears.
“Oh, god, bashert, don’t cry,” he said. “I hate when you cry. I want to tear the world apart and rebuild it, bit by bit, into something that will never make you cry.”
“I’m okay,” I told him. “I never thought I’d have someone want to protect me like this. Who would care so much. It feels overwhelming.”
He nodded, not speaking.
“I love you, too, you know?” I said. “So much. I didn’t know it was possible to feel this way about anyone.”
“Like you suddenly have a heart when you never think you did, and that it exists outside of your chest now, and you want to wrap it in bubble wrap and put it in an indestructible glass case and surround it by barbed wire so no one can get near it or ever hurt it?” he asked, his eyes troubled.
I squeezed his hand and laughed a little. “I mean, maybe not that exact imagery, but something like that.”
“Then I feel the same way. I love you, bashert. I’m going to give you the life you deserve.”
Leaning over, he kissed me again, sweetly, gently, protectively, like I was the most wonderful, important thing in the world to him. There was a desperation in his kiss, the way his mouth moved on mine, like he was memorizing my lips and my taste.
Like this is the last time.
But why would I think that?
Finally, he pulled away.
“I’m giving you the life you deserve, Tovah. Starting with letting you go.”
“Isaac, what are you talking about?” I asked, my heart starting to beat faster in fear.
He sat up, rising off the bed. “You told me how much you wanted freedom; you wanted to live a life without looking over your shoulder. But I can’t give you that, not if you’re with me. Now that my father is dead, I’m in charge of the family. The whole business. And it’s not safe for you. It’ll never be safe for you. You almost died next to me, and I couldn’t save you. I refuse to let anything to happen to you. I refuse to be the cause of your death. And if you stay with me, if I let you love me, if we spend the rest of our lives together, you will end up dying. Someone will take you from me, and I can’t live with that. So I have to let you go.”
“What kind of White Fang bullshit is this?” I asked furiously, but behind my anger, my heart was beginning to break.
“It’s not bullshit,” he said emphatically. “If I do one good thing with my life, before I get fully entrenched in the darkness, before I become my father, it’ll be this.”
“Isaac,” I reached for his hand, but he was already backing away from the bed. “I’m sorry. I never should have told you that you were like your father. You’re nothing like him. You are nothing like that man. He was soulless, heartless, dead inside long before you killed him for me. Don’t do this.”
He closed his eyes, like it hurt to look at me. “I’m already becoming my father. It’s the sacrifice I made, to save you—and I’d do it a million times over.”
“You aren’t saving me, Isaac,” I said, devastation, anger, and shock all fighting each other as I felt myself falling off the side of a cliff. I thought we were about to have everything, and he’d ripped it all right out from under me. “You’re letting your fear control you.”
When he opened his eyes, they were as broken as I felt. Worse, the light in them looked like it was dying. Like he was becoming his father.
Never. I’d never let him.
He turned to go.
Furious, I sat up, trying to rip the IV out of my arm.
“Don’t you fucking leave, Isaac Silver. I swear to god, I will follow you and I will torment you, every second of every day, to make you pay for doing this to us.”
He whipped back around. “You think I’m not already tormented? You think anything you can do will hurt more than letting you go? It’s going to kill me, Tovah. It’s killing me now . The monster in me wants to keep you, cuffed to my wrist forever, but I’m not giving into him this time. I promised that I’d atone for everything I’ve done to hurt you, and this is me doing it. I transferred the deed to the house in your name. You and your mom can live there. I’m going to give you everything else you ever dreamed about, too.”
“But what if what I dreamed about is you?”
He shook his head, like he wanted, no, needed to reject my words. “You’ll finish up school,” he continued. “You’ll go on to be a journalist and do brilliant, incredible things with your life. And you and your mom will be free of the Silvers and all the ways we’ve hurt you over the years. That’s what I want for you. To be safe, and happy, and free . Be happy, bashert. And know that I will never, ever stop loving you.”
And with that, he left the room, ignoring the way I cried his name.
And even though I kept crying it, he didn’t come back.