Chapter 36
THIRTY-SIX
LENNON
August looks like roadkill by the time the nurse, Nora, brings him back to my room. Tall, handsome, swoony roadkill, but still. There are dark circles under his eyes like he hasn’t slept a minute since the crash two days ago.
“Lennon!” He rushes over to my hospital bed and reaches for my hand, immediately withdrawing when he sees the IV port in my hand.
I weakly lift my other hand. Because dammit, I know there’s nothing more healing in the universe than August’s touch.
Everyone looks at August and sees danger.
They see the tattoos, the size of him, and the diagnosis his family has weaponized since he was a teenager.
They look at Jake and see polo shirts and a white picket fence.
But I have been loved by both brothers.
The dangerous one asks before he touches me.
The respectable one poisoned me slowly enough that I blamed my own body.
“Don’t overexert yourself!” August immediately exclaims at my effort, taking the hand I’m trying to lift in his and squeezing it between his two large, warm ones.
A single moment in his presence and I already feel cherished.
“Are you okay?” he asks urgently, then shakes his head. “God, that’s stupid. Of course you’re not okay. You were poisoned.” He drops his forehead down to mine. “That motherfucker almost killed you. I couldn’t have—” His voice breaks. “I don’t know what I would do without you.”
Warm tears slide down my cheeks.
All that foolishness I told myself about this not being the real thing because it was all happening so fast, when all along, he’s—
“I’m so sorry,” I start to blubber, because that’s all I can seem to do ever since I got to the hospital, so exhausted even breathing feels like a chore sometimes. And all I can do is cry, even when it exhausts me more.
They had a psych in here yesterday who assured me it’s a very natural, and even healthy response to all the stress I’ve had to endure, both in mind and in body.
I hate it. I’m not a crier. I put my head down and do what needs doing.
But I can’t do anything except lie here in this bed while the big blue pills they keep feeding me flush the poison from my system.
I feel useless and so, so foolish.
It was just the last thing on earth I would have ever considered—that my own husband was poisoning me.
It was only as I was talking everything over with the detectives about each bad spell I could remember that I started to see the underlying pattern.
The spells did seem to come on whenever I was getting a little independent.
Making new friends outside church or starting the business where I might have had separate wealth from Jake, or that time I was considering going back to school.
Or the two times I got pregnant.
I was crushed with grief all over again when it hit me yesterday that he—
“He killed my babies.” The words come out guttural as another wave of grief washes over me.
“What!” August gasps.
“I was p-p-pregnant. Twice, and he—” My words break off in a pained whine. “And then I’d have one of my spells and lose the baby. And it was like it was my fault. Because of my migraines. When really—”
I clench August’s hand tighter as I watch the horror wash across his face.
“Oh my God,” he whispers. “Lennon.”
He leans over to hug me and I cling to him, sobs wracking my body.
“Why would he do that? Why?” I cry, clinging to his neck.
He climbs into the narrow bed with me, careful of my IV, and I’m so, so grateful for the pressure of his body against mine when I feel like I’m about to lose it and fly apart from the grief.
“I don’t know,” he whispers over and over. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
I turn into his chest and sob and sob and sob.