Chapter 36 Violet #2
She looked so disappointed, my heart shattered into a million pieces. How awful had this girl’s life been that she would want to stay here with strangers, ones she’d watched do violent things no person should ever see another doing?
Except I knew how horrible it was. I knew she had probably endured beatings and sexual assault. Knew she had probably been starved and withheld basic life necessities by parents who were sick and cruel.
I moved to pull back the covers and knelt beside the bed as I tucked her in. Her hair was still a matted mess. That was going to take scissors and was a job for another day. But her skin smelled clean and fresh, the dirt and grime streaks washed away from her tiny body.
She was so young. But her eyes held the horrors she’d been subjected to, and the fear this safe place was going to be taken away from her.
Maybe it was the pregnancy hormones.
Maybe it was just that I’d once been this little girl. Neglected and scared and just wishing someone would care enough about me to give me even a tiny scrap of what I needed. At least I’d had DCFS checking in on us from time to time.
But these two kids looked as if they’d been left to rot away in that house, with no intervention.
Had no one known they were there? I couldn’t remember family or friends ever coming to the house when I’d lived there.
If either of my foster parents had people other than each other in their lives, I never saw them.
They were often out, drinking at the bar, but their friends had never come to our place.
Hadn’t the neighbors seen the kids in the yard and made a call? Hadn’t anyone cared they were being kept like prisoners?
Something Travis had said echoed in my head. That he’d been locked in a box underneath the house.
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask the kids if they knew about this box, but I didn’t want either of them to ever have to think about that horrible house ever again.
So I just tucked them both in, murmuring that they were safe here, and we would be just in the other room, all night, if they needed us.
Whip picked up two stuffed animals. One a dragon with blue-and-green scales. The other a princess with a felt crown. He smiled down at them fondly and then tucked them beneath the arms of the quiet children. “My kids liked these two the best. Maybe you will too.”
“Thank you,” Ari and Will said in almost perfect unison.
Whip’s eyes were soft, and his fingers hovered over both kids, like he wanted to rub their backs or stroke their hair but knew they didn’t have that level of trust with any of us.
At least not yet.
I stepped out of the way, and Whip closed the door.
I stared up at him, the two of us there in the hallway, stealing a moment alone. “Are you okay?” I asked him.
He shook his head. Then nodded. “I don’t know. I feel like I shouldn’t be and yet…” He glanced back at the closed bedroom door. “I am. Tucking those kids into bed felt as normal and natural as when I’d done it with my kids. The clothes are going to be too big. My two were taller…”
I took his fingers, threading them through mine. “It doesn’t matter. They’re clean. And we can get them new things.”
He stared down at me. “You’re talking like they’re already ours.”
I dared to say the words I knew were in my heart. “Aren’t they?”
Whip blew out a long breath and leaned in, pressing his lips to my forehead. “I don’t want you to get hurt. If we find their family, or if DCFS…”
“DCFS can go to hell,” I seethed. “Those kids are not going into the system.”
He held me tighter, wrapping his arms around me. “I know. I know. Shh. It’s okay. We’ll work it out.”
I didn’t sleep a wink that night. I lay in Whip’s bed, his warm body beside me but neither of our breaths falling into that slow, relaxed state of deep sleep.
I just kept listening for the kids to call out.
I was convinced they were having nightmares with me covered in blood and wielding a knife at the center of them.
I got up at least a dozen times and poked my head into their room, but each time was the same, both of them completely dead to the world, snuggled up and cozy, their expressions gentle and soft in the dim glow of the night-light.
X and Levi slept in the living room, X sprawled out on the couch, one arm dangling down to the floor. Levi in a recliner. They opened their eyes every time I tiptoed around them, and their fingertips reached for me each time I passed by.
By the time the sun rose, the kids seemed to be the only ones well-rested. Whatever hesitations they’d had the night before had disappeared, and they played together noisily, dragging X into every game and using Levi as target practice for a Nerf gun war.
I was pretty sure it was X who caught Levi with a dart right between his eyebrows, but X swore blindly it was Ari with a hella accurate aim.
Trigger, Ace, and Torch came to the door midmorning, and Whip, Levi, and I stepped outside to talk to them while X moderated the Nerf gun war that raged inside.
Trig folded his arms across his broad chest. “We just wanted to check in and make sure you were all okay.”
Whip put his arm around my shoulders. “We are. Thanks for last night.”
Trig nodded. “Don’t mention it.”
Will’s happy shout of surprise as X or Ari caught him echoed out from inside.
Trig turned toward the sound then back to us. “We went through the entire house. Found these.” He pulled some folded papers from the back pocket of his jeans and handed them to me.
I unfolded them gingerly and stared down at them. “The kids’ birth certificates.”
“They really were the biological kids of those two assholes in that house. Gray’s friend got back to him, and he asked us to let you know that they’ve had no record of foster kids living in that house in the last decade. They removed their license.”
My fingers shook as I gripped the paper. “And yet they did nothing about the two biological children the two of them had. Unbelievable.”
“So, what do we do now?” Levi asked. “There’s two kids in there who witnessed Violet kill a man last night.”
And yet this morning Ari had woken up and shyly walked up to me and hugged my legs. It hadn’t lasted long, but it was clear to me that her watching me kill Travis hadn’t made her fear me.
It had made her love me.
It was a trauma bond, no doubt. I’d killed a man who’d hurt her.
Taken her out of a house where she and her brother had been neglected.
Forming a real relationship with her would be hard and filled with ups and downs, but in my mind, I had already decided what we were doing with those two kids inside that house.
“We keep them,” Whip and I said in almost perfect unison.
A smile spread across his lips that was so contagious I could feel it on mine as well.
We both looked to Levi.
My heart pounded; I was scared he was going to say no.
That pregnancy test I’d taken felt like a fever dream, but it was wrapped up in tissues in my purse.
We had written each other ridiculous letters for over a year, letters where we’d confessed every hope and dream we had for the future.
We’d talked about kids being a part of it.
But neither of us had considered a ready-made family falling in our laps.
Or finding out I was pregnant the very same day.
I needed him to respond well. Needed him to tell me it would all be okay because I was spiraling on the inside. Sure of what I wanted, no doubt, but terrified he or X wouldn’t want what Whip and I so clearly did.
The front door swung open, and Will barreled out of it, Nerf gun in hand, bellowing out a war cry. Ari and X followed a moment later, Nerf darts shooting in every direction, the three of them chasing each other around the yard.
A slow smile spread across Levi’s face as he caught a dart to the shoulder and clutched it dramatically. “I’m shot! I’m going down!”
His knees hit the dirt, and the kids ran over, laughing hysterically, attacking him with more rounds until he lifted his hands zombie-style to tickle their bellies.
He winked at me when they ran off laughing and he rolled to his feet to chase them. His lips landed on my cheek, just below my ear as he said, “Of course they’re ours.”
X spun around. “What? Who? Who’s ours? Are we keeping them? Do Harold and Reginald have a big brother and sister?”
He said it so loudly the kids both stopped and stared at me too.
My gaze caught X’s. A moment of silence passed between us, where words didn’t need to be said, because the connection between us was already there.
I needed him to confirm it before I said anything to the kids. There were four of us in this relationship. We all needed to agree.
But God, my heart so wanted him to say yes.
I’d never seen a more genuine smile on his face. He stormed across the yard, picked me up, and spun me in a circle. “Hell. Fucking. Yes.”
Giddy joy spread through me.
He set me down, checking I was steady before he held his arms out to Whip. “Your turn for a spin!”
Whip opened his mouth, no doubt to threaten X with deadly violence, but X held up one finger. “Uh! No threatening to kill me in front of our children!”
The kids stared between the four of us with huge eyes. But it was Ari, actually the older twin by minutes according to her birth certificate, who asked the question I knew they were both thinking.
“We’re your kids now?”
Oh God. I didn’t know what to say. It couldn’t be that easy.
I doubted we could just adopt them legally.
We would need to somehow get paperwork that would be good enough to pass if their guardianship was ever questioned.
But we knew many men who had…questionable skills…
and I would have bet money at least one of them would know how to get that done.
We would need to learn how to be parents. We’d need to work out where we could all live. Not only were we committing to these kids, to give them the stable home they’d never had, but we were committing to each other.
To a real, permanent bond.
One I knew was already there, cemented in the tiny baby growing in my belly that linked us all, no matter who had fathered it.
X nodded. Levi and Whip did too.
I stared down at Will and Ari. “Would you like that? To stay here with us and for us to take care of you? For us to be your parents?”
Will cocked his head to one side. “What do I call you though?”
Whip laughed. “Whatever you want. Whip. Or Wyatt.”
Ari’s voice was quiet. “But if you’re going to be our parents, shouldn’t we call you Dad?”
My heart stopped at the expression on Whip’s face.
But he very quietly got to his knees, so he and Ari were the same height. “If the day ever comes when you want to call me Dad, then I will be honored.”
That was too much for my hormones and for my heart. A tear slipped down my face.
Ari turned away, not committing to calling Whip Dad but not saying she wouldn’t either.
That was more than enough for right now. What they called us didn’t matter. They would find what suited them best, and we would let them call us whatever they wanted.
All that mattered was in that moment, the six of us, or seven if you counted the baby I hadn’t told anyone about, became a family.