Chapter Thirty-Two Pax
Chapter Thirty-Two
Pax
Aria was wrapped in the blanket from the van as I carried her into Dani’s house. She was still limp. Still unconscious. But her chest lifted and fell with each breath. Breaths I inhaled like they sustained my own life as I held her close.
Even though it was dampened, I could sense Aria’s aura all around me.
Coconut and the most extreme sort of goodness.
Pure and right.
This woman who was so powerful. So strong. Clinging to life. A life I tried to cling to with the surety of my arms.
Timothy had already scoped out the inside of Dani’s house, ensuring it was clear. That, for the moment, it was safe and we could rest.
“Take her into my bedroom,” Dani instructed. “Timothy and I are going to sleep on the couch.”
I didn’t argue. I just carried Aria down the short hall to the door at the end. The faint light from the bathroom illuminated the space as I laid her down in the middle of the bed. I touched her forehead, her cheek, her chest, while Dani clung to her hand.
“She’s going to be okay,” she murmured, the promise made to me. To us.
Silence washed over us for a beat before Dani looked up at me from across the bed. “This is insane, Pax. I can’t—”
She clipped off like she couldn’t give it voice, her brow twisting with the magnitude of what had happened tonight. Everything we thought we’d known had been smashed to shit. The feeble ground we’d stood on fractured, a cavern opening up in the middle of the fragile truth we had been hanging on to.
“She’s strong enough,” I rumbled like my own plea. She had to be. There had to be a way to end this. To stop the atrocity of what was happening and keep her safe.
Dani opened her mouth but clamped off whatever she was going to say when Jill appeared in the doorway. She hovered at the threshold, unsure of what to do, a medical bag hanging from one hand.
“Come in,” I grunted as I gathered Aria’s hand and pressed it against the pulse of my heart, begging hers to follow it.
“I’ll let you two have some privacy,” Dani said, excusing herself and quietly creeping across the room and back down the hall while Jill came to stand in the same spot where Dani had been.
She set the bag onto the floor beside her before she straightened. The two of us drifted in a long silence before Jill murmured, “She’s amazing.”
She reached out and stroked her fingers down the side of Aria’s face.
“I knew in that facility that there was something about her. Something that didn’t fit into the mold they were trying to force her into. Something that was radiant, though it was dulled by the lies she had to tell to protect herself.”
“She was so grateful to you. She knew what you were sacrificing to set her free.”
Tears blurred Jill’s brown eyes as she looked down at Aria, who was motionless in the middle of the bed.
“I think I knew it the first time I saw her. I had this sense that wouldn’t let me go.
A sense that things weren’t what they seemed.
That we were missing something important.
I could feel it . . . a depth to her that didn’t exist in anyone else. Then I saw you . . .”
She lifted her gaze to mine. “I saw you, and I knew.”
Air huffed from her mouth on a soggy chuckle, and she sniffled.
“Of course, I didn’t want to believe it.
I mean, God, it’s terrifying. Terrifying to think of those scars littered all over her body and how she sustained them.
Terrifying to think of what you’ve seen and what you all endure.
Terrifying to think that any of this is real. ”
“I wish it wasn’t,” I admitted.
She shifted a fraction as she processed what she’d witnessed both while Aria had been in the facility and tonight. The magnet that had refused to let her go in the time between.
“When it was clear that janitor had been after her, I knew what I had to do.” Her head bounced slightly.
A reaffirmation.
A bolstering that the choice she had made had been the right one.
“And after that?” She rolled her bottom lip between her teeth. “It was like that single act had tied me to her in some way. As if a tether between us had formed.”
“You saved her.” The words were gravel. “Twice.”
Silence stretched between us for a moment before she spoke, her voice broken when she asked, “What does it mean for me?”
I blew out some of the strain on a long exhalation.
“Only thing I know is, you were meant to be a part of her life. A piece of this. How or why?” I shrugged, though it wasn’t casual.
It was heavy. Weighted with all the questions of this life.
“I don’t understand it any more than I’ve ever understood why we were chosen.
How it is possible. But I know it’s important. That it matters.”
“Can you stop . . .” Her entire face pinched before she forced out, “Can you stop whatever is happening? This merging of two worlds?”
Stop the end.
She didn’t need to say it aloud for me to hear it. For me to feel it.
Because it was out there, the awareness of what we were coming up to.
The end of this life as we knew it.
Maybe the end of humankind altogether.
“I don’t know.” Despondency filled the words. “Not without her.”
“She’s going to be okay. I can feel it. Like you said, there was a reason I was drawn here. I have to believe it made an impact. Changed a path the way it changed mine. A wrong that was righted.”
“Thank you for listening to it. I don’t know what would have happened if . . .” It died on my tongue, the trauma of it too much to bear.
It’d been close.
Too close.
Since the day I’d come to her in the flesh, Aria had said over and over again that she didn’t know how much time we had. Had urged that we couldn’t waste a moment of it. While I’d refused to give her end any consideration.
But it’d been right there, dragging her into the nether. One second from stealing her away from me.
“What will you do now?” I asked.
Jill shifted on her feet. Sadness flooded the movement when her shoulder came up to touch her ear. “I’m not sure. My nursing days are over.”
“But it doesn’t seem your saving days are.”
Tenderness weaved through her demeanor, and the words were soggy when she answered, “Maybe they aren’t.”
Then she cleared her throat, picked up the bag from the floor, and placed it on the bed. She pulled out the stethoscope and the blood pressure cuff. She checked them both while I waited, antsy for even a bit of good news.
I breathed out some of the angst I was holding when she delivered it.
“She’s stable, and her heartbeat sounds even stronger than the last time I checked. I’m going to give her a shot with an antibiotic to keep her from getting an infection.”
She pulled a syringe from the bag, uncapped it, then filled it from a small vial. She pulled the blanket down far enough so she could tug the hem of Aria’s sleep pants down to her hip and gave her the shot. Then she set an orange prescription bottle on the dresser.
“If she wakes up in pain, give her two of these. She can have two every four hours. I’ll come check on her tomorrow, but you . . .” Her eyes were intense. “Stay close to her. She needs to rest, but I think she needs you more.”
My nod was tight. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Good.”
Then she packed her things and headed for the door, pausing for a moment to look back at us.
Emotion brimmed in the space. The tether that tied her to Aria stretching taut.
Then she turned and disappeared down the hall.
A minute later, Dani came in with Aria’s duffel. “We should clean her up.”
I gave a tight nod, and Dani helped me undress Aria, ridding her of the soiled, tattered fabric.
Dani balled all of it up and stuffed it into a plastic bag, which she tied off to be discarded.
Then she moved into the en suite bathroom and returned with two warm washcloths. Together, we carefully cleaned up the blood that had dried all the way across Aria’s stomach and sides and down her legs, avoiding the large bandage where Jill had already cleaned her.
Then we re-dressed her in only a T-shirt, keeping her as still as we could, no words said as we worked together in a quiet, fluid understanding.
Aria moaned from the depths of her sleep. It might have been incoherent, dull and distant, but I thought it might have been the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard.
Dani stayed with Aria while I showered. I had to wash off the blood I was covered in.
Red-tinged water pooled at my feet, swirling as if it were trying to suck me down with it before it disappeared down the drain.
While I fought the dread that bound and festered.
The fear of what was coming.
A sense that buzzed at my spirit’s periphery.
The truth that it was coming, and it was coming fast.
I stepped out of the shower, dried off with the towel Dani had left for me, pulled on a fresh pair of underwear and a pair of jeans, then walked back out into the bedroom.
Dani was on the bed on her side, curled around Aria.
When she noticed me there, she pressed her lips to Aria’s temple and whispered her belief to her friend. Her sister. Their bond so great that I could feel it filling the room.
“You can do this, Aria. You are so strong. I’ve witnessed it my whole life. Have felt how special you are. But this? What happened tonight? You are extraordinary. You hold the answer, and you cannot let them win.”
Without saying anything else, she climbed down from the bed, walked out of the room, and quietly snapped the door shut behind her.
Then I crawled into the bed and curled myself around Aria the way Dani had done.
Breathed my faith into her.
My hope.
My need.
Praying the connection would keep her anchored.
That she’d know where she belonged.
With me.