Chapter 41
Forty-One
Ky
Hours later, sitting in the hospital’s waiting room, I glance over at Colt, still reeling from his mother’s words and at a complete and total loss as what to do.
His mother said…
God, she’d said.
So many awful things, but it’s the—
I hate you. And I always will.
That continues running on repeat through my mind.
Those words had struck my heart like bullets, and they weren’t even directed at me.
Just…at the man I love.
Who’s standing in the corner with his hands braced on the wall.
Not looking at anyone. Not talking to anyone.
“He looks…”
“I know,” I whisper to Damon, who’s just come in and sat in the chair next to mine, Joey dropping into the one on his other side. “I don’t…his mom, she was really, really horrible.” Even now my eyes burn, my throat gets tight. “I don’t know how he’s still standing.”
Especially after the chaos of that kitchen.
Blake’s too-skinny body so stiff, his teeth clamped together so tightly he’d bitten his tongue and blood had poured out of his mouth. His eyes unseeing, his hands clenching and unclenching, his neck at the wrong angle and…
The ambulance coming.
The silent ride to the hospital.
And now the wait.
Their parents—if that’s what you can call them—were called back a few minutes ago, so I hope that means everything is fine with Blake—or will be fine.
Except, how can it?
Sara was a wreck when I called her.
Colt is destroyed by cruel words.
And Blake’s body has been through so, so much.
I blink rapidly.
I will not cry. I will not.
Damon slides his arm around my shoulders.
“Don’t,” I whisper. “I can’t fall apart. Colt needs me to be—”
My brother removes his arm but doesn’t back off. Instead, he shifts, cupping my jaw. “He needs you to be you. Just you.”
“I don’t know if that’s enough.” My lungs hitch, a sob rising in my throat. “His mom…she was raped too and Colt’s dad, or I guess not his dad because—” I break off, bite my bottom lip, but someone I manage to tell him the rest.
That Colt was the result of an act of violence.
That his mother shared that truth with him, inflicting a wound I’m not sure will ever heal.
Ever.
My brother’s hand slips from my chin to drop into his lap, head falling forward, soft curse sliding through the air. “Fuck, what a mess.”
He’s quiet, but only for a moment.
Then his arm comes back around my shoulders. “He healed something in you, kid. Something I couldn’t. Something time couldn’t.”
My brother had known.
Of course he’d known.
“You were existing before, Ky. Doing a fucking great job of pretending to the rest of the world, and”—he leans close—“sometimes I think to yourself too.”
He’s not wrong.
Of course he’s not wrong.
“He pulled you out. Helped you become you again. If he hadn’t…” His mouth quirks. “He’d be traded.”
“The protective big brother to the end.”
A shrug, his big hand encouraging me up to my feet. “It’s my job.”
“It’s really not. But,” I add before he can protest, “I love you even more because you think it is.”
“Love you too, kid. And, Ky?”
I pause.
“Remember. Just be you. That’s all he needs.”
Bolstered, I lift my chin and walk toward Colt.
Storm is beside him, looking pensive, his eyes filled with shadows I suspect are trying to mask his own demons.
I don’t know him super well, always kept a bit of distance between us because…well, because before Colt, I was broken.
And also because my brother is married to the woman he loves.
Storm pushes off the wall, meets me halfway.
“You got him?”
I nod.
“Good.”
I start to move past him but he catches my arm. “Ky?”
I lift my brows.
“That wound’s been festering for a long time. It—” His gaze slides from mine, and I can’t miss that it’s gone to Joey and Damon, same as I don’t miss the flicker of hurt deepening the shadows in his old-soul eyes. “He’s hurting. Don’t let him push you away, huh? No matter what it takes.”
He doesn’t wait for an answer, dropping my arm, and walking out of the waiting room.
And I don’t know why…
But I just have the sense that I may not see him again.
Shaking that off, I move to Colt.
Only, the moment I lay my hand on his back, curl into his side, the doors to the waiting room burst open and suddenly his mother is there, storming over to Colt, getting in his face.
I react without thinking, putting my body between them.
Not that it seems to matter.
Donna Madden only has eyes for her eldest child.
“This is your fault. And I will never, ever forgive you.”
I press myself to Colt, and he wraps an arm around my middle, pulling me behind him, just as—
Crack!
The sound of her palm hitting Colt’s cheek is gunshot loud in the quiet room.
And suddenly everyone is moving at once.
Damon’s there, shoving Donna back.
Several security guards burst into the room, grabbing her and escorting her out.
Joey appears by my side, asking if we’re okay.
Frank follows after his shouting wife without so much as looking at the destruction she’s wreaked.
And a doctor is in front of us, quietly saying that Blake wants to see his brother.
Everyone’s moved…except Colt.
“Honey,” I say.
Still not moving, just frozen in place with a bright red mark on his cheek.
“Colt.”
Nothing.
I suck in a breath, release it.
Then I touch his chest.
“Honey, Blake needs you.”
And finally, finally he unsticks, moving toward the double doors the doctor came out of.
“Are you Kylie?” the doctor asks.
I tear my eyes from Colt’s retreating back and focus on the slender woman with the ink-black hair. “Yes, I am.”
“Blake wanted me to bring you too.”
My heart squeezes, but I nod, follow her through the doors, pausing only to glance over at Joey and Damon, both of whom give me encouraging—albeit small—smiles before I head into the hall, hurrying to catch up with Colt, my stomach twisting slightly when he doesn’t look at me, doesn’t acknowledge me, doesn’t touch me.
But I know it’s not because of something I’ve done. It’s the weight of those words that tore open a wound that never truly healed. It’s the hate in the eyes of a woman who was supposed to love him. It’s the violence of the moment and the loss of a slender thread of hope and…
It’s worry for a brother who means the world to him.
The doctor indicates a room and we push inside.
“Hey, bro,” Blake croaks, and it takes everything in me to keep my expression neutral. Because, hell, he’s so damned pale and hooked up to so many tubes—though he quickly proves his humor is intact. “It wasn’t my intention to swap places with you, but you know me, always an attention whore.”
Laughter bubbles up in my chest, but I swallow it down, follow Colt over to his side.
“Pretty girl in my room,” he says when I touch his hand, sink down into the chair next to his bed. “Better watch out, bro. May have to steal your girl—” He breaks off on a cough that sends the monitors going crazy and the nurses swarming into the room.
They push medication, make notes on his charts, call the doctor, and admonish him to take it easy.
“Can’t take it any easier than lying in bed.”
“Try. We need time for the new regimen of meds to start working.”
A nod.
She smiles at him then at us before slipping from the room.
“Well, never had a seizure before,” Blake says into the silence that follows. “That was fun.”
Colt spins and moves to the wall, rearing back and punching it in a brutal show of aggression.
I gasp and he rotates back, his knuckles bloody, dripping onto the floor.
“Honey,” I begin.
“This is not a fucking joke, Blake. This is your life and you could have died—”
Blake’s smile fades. “Newsflash, bro,” he says in a hard tone I haven’t heard from him before.
“I could have died a lot of times over the last few years. I could die tomorrow. Tonight. So if I want to fucking joke, if it’s the way I cope with the fact that this shit”—he waves a tube-laden hand around the room—“then you’re just going to have to deal. ”
Colt’s chin drops forward. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
More silence.
I squeeze Blake’s shoulder then move into the bathroom, grabbing a wad of paper towels.
But when I press them to Colt’s cut knuckles, he pulls back, avoiding my eyes.
Avoiding Blake’s eyes.
“I’ll go take care of this,” he says, heading for the door.
That’s not why he’s leaving.
I can see it in the lines of his body, in his stiff, jerky movements.
He’s not going to see a nurse about his bloodied knuckles.
He’s finally hit his limit and…he’s running.
Because the trickle of blood on his hand is nothing compared to the internal hemorrhaging that’s been inflicted on him over the last few hours.
“Bro,” Blake says.
“I’ll be back,” Colt mutters, yanking open the door.
“Honey—”
The door shuts behind him.
Damn.
Blake’s eyes come back to mine. “Ky?”
“Yeah, sweetheart?” I ask, smoothing back his hair, tamping down on the urge to run after his stubborn brother.
For a few seconds, anyway.
“I know you and Colt are new but…” He pauses, a question in his eyes, and suddenly I understand exactly why Donna’s rage in the waiting room was so acute…and so fiercely directed at Colt. “Do you think I could—?”
“Yes,” I say. “You don’t even have to ask. You want to live here, live with us”—because that’s where Colt and I are heading, even if the man I love isn’t thinking straight in this moment—“but right now—” I hitch my head to the door.
His gaze tells me he saw Colt’s panic too. “Go take care of him.” A half smile. “I’ll be here when you get back.”
I kiss his forehead. “Rest, I’ll be back soon.”
Straightening, I swipe something off the rolling table by his bed and head to the nurse’s station.
As suspected, Colt didn’t stop, but they point me in the direction of the stairwell in which he disappeared.
I sprint down the steps as fast as I dare, bursting out into the parking lot, the cold of the early morning a shock to my senses.
It steals my breath, but my eyes are working fine.
And what I see makes my heart twist.
Colt is getting into his car.
I rush across the lot, grip the scissors I stole from Blake’s table…
And I jab them into the tire.