28. Silas
Silas
It’s Jack’s first night back on Canadian soil, tucked safely away in a secured VIP medical room that we had locked down completely with our own people, and I refused to budge an inch from his bedside.
The medical staff had tried gently suggesting early in the evening that I step out, that I get some rest in a hotel close by, but a single, lethal look had made them instantly reconsider.
Eli, reading the volatile situation and the tension bleeding from every pore of my body, bypassed the hospital bureaucracy entirely.
Within an hour, he had arranged for larger bed to be wheeled into the room. They had made him comfortable and now I lie here, skin to skin, his body pressed against mine in the quiet, the lights turned off, save for the warm glow of small bedside lamp that cast a soft light over my boy.
The background noise of the hospital hums like a distant ghost, but everything is narrowed down to the steady, rhythmic beep of the heart monitor. Each soft pulse is a reminder that he’s breathing.
That my boy is alive.
He survived.
The room feels peaceful as he sleeps beside me. It’s as if even the world outside has finally learned to hold its breath, realising that Jack needs every ounce of air left in the room, and that it better lower its voice around him.
Jack lies next to me, swallowed by the oversized mattress, and I keep my arm locked protectively, possessively across his hips.
I had cornered Luca before Reid had flown him back to Seattle, interrogating the doctor like a criminal just to find out where I could touch Jack without hurting him. His hips, Luca had told me.
Everywhere else on his body is a ruined, violet canvas of bruises, fractured bone and torn muscle and skin, a physical record of the slow execution his father and Ray put him through.
I watch his chest rise, then fall, and to repeat itself as a violent tremor racks my frame. I don’t think I’ve ever tasted gratitude this heavy, this terrifyingly raw.
Every single breath he takes is a stolen victory I track and worship like a starving man staring down at a feast, terrified that if I blink for even a second, the nightmare will swallow him back up.
I can’t let go of him.
I won’t let him go.
Every time I close my eyes, the image of him on that cot, locked in that cage, flashes behind my eyelids like a recurring nightmare.
It doesn’t matter that he’s here now, warm and breathing against my side; my mind keeps dragging me back to that moment, to the sight of him curled in on himself, barely conscious, barely alive.
I move closer, needing to feel the heat of his skin. I need to hear the steady intake and exhale of his breathing to feel the weight of him pressed against me, solid and real.
I need proof that he is here, over and over again through physical touch, proving that we had actually won him back from the grave.
For ninety days, I had chased ghosts, followed dead leads. I had scoured every dark corner of the web for just a whisper of my dove.
For ninety days, I had failed.
And when I finally found him, he was locked in a kennel, like the dog his uncle would call him.
My dove. My boy. My Jack.
The cage, his kennel, is now gone. The darkness is behind us, and he is safe, with me. I have him back, and I swear, I will never lose him again.
* * *
Days blur together into a quiet, fragile rhythm of healing.
While the monitors track his every beat and breath, my entire world narrows down to the space around us.
Jack is quiet most of the time, his voice still raspy and thin from the lack of water and the brutal abuse he’d endured, but he didn’t have to speak for me to know what was happening inside his head.
I’m sleeping against my boy when a hoarse scream fills the room, Jack’s body stiffens against mine as he jolts awake, his dark eyes wide and wild with phantom ghosts, staring at the sterile white ceiling as if expecting the concrete walls of the basement to close back in.
His body jolts off the bed, and I hear his heart rate increase.
I sit up beside him and slide my hand carefully around his face, brushing his hair back from his forehead, “Baby… Jack… You’re safe, dove,” I whisper to him until the frantic edge of his eyes soften and I hear him let out a long shuddering breath against my palm.
“Good boy,” I whisper against his lips, my hand tightens reassuringly around his uninjured hip. “I’m here, Dove,” I murmur over and over, pressing my lips gently to his knuckles, his temples, anywhere to ground him back in the present. “You’re with me. You’re safe.”
“Silas… I can’t…” His quiet sobs fill the room, breaking against my chest like glass.
I slide closer, throwing caution to the wind as I press my forehead to his, my eyes locking with his tear-filled gaze.
“You can, baby. You are a strong, sweet boy. You are mine, and you can do anything. You will beat this, Jack. Your body will recover, your mind will too. But baby, know this. I love you. I love you so much it hurts, and I will love you until the stars burn out in the night sky. Forever, dove. My love for you will last an eternity.”
Slowly, the haunted look disappears and is replaced with a quiet, devastating vulnerability. He leans into my touch, seeking me out as if I’d disappear.
We stay like that, for hours, me talking to him softly, about anything and everything.
I tell him about Hale, and how he stayed with Eli and CJ while I was searching for him, how Reid was the one who had been the needle in the haystack, and Jack listened, his fingers tangled in mine, relearning what safety felt like.
It was late afternoon and we were a week into our stay at the hospital, when the heavy door pushes open.
I look up, instantly alert, expecting a nurse with a chart, or a doctor wanting another test.
Instead I see Hale walk quietly into the room, Eli following behind him.
He doesn’t say a word as he takes us both in.
Eli chuckles quietly, leaning against the doorframe. “He’s been nagging at me since you got here. Wanted to come see his Jax. Thought it wouldn’t hurt for a little while.”
Hale’s expression is soft, tired and heavy, his body carrying a weight that shows everything we have survived just to get to this room.
He walks silently over to the bed, and looking at Jack, he watches us with clear, intelligent eyes that carry a quiet depth, and is too old for his ten-year-old person.
I look down at the boy I now consider a son, then back to Eli, a rare, genuine softness settling in my chest. “Thanks, Eli. I think it’s just what we need.”
Eli offers a quiet, approving nod, his eyes lingering on the three of us for a beat before he continues. “CJ and I are going to stay in the hotel next door. We’ve secured a room for Hale next to us as well, so he can come and go as he pleases. If that’s okay with you both?”
“It’s perfect,” Jack whispers, his voice thick with emotion. He carefully moves towards me, forcing me to move over, and he pulls back the blanket, patting the now empty space beside him.
Hale doesn’t hesitate. He kicks off his boots and climbs right up onto the wide bed beside us, carefully sliding under the blanket.
He places an arm gently over Jack’s chest, entirely mindful of his healing ribs, while I shift closer, resting my forehead gently against Jack’s temple.
Laying my arm softly over Jack and placing my hand on Hale’s back, I wrap us all in my hold.
“I’ll leave you three to it.” Eli laughs quietly as he leaves me with my family.
Hale moves carefully closer to Jack, who tightens his arm around Hales small frame. He looks at me, a small smile on his lips.
“I’m home.”
I smile, “Yeah, baby. You’re home.”
“Love you, Jax” Hale murmurs softly, pressing a kiss to Jack’s hair.
“Yeah, Love you too, Hale,” Jack whispers back, his voice thick with emotion, his hand reaching across his chest to rest on my forearm, and we lay there together in the quiet sanctuary of the hospital room; broken, bruised, and forever altered, but entirely unbroken as a family.
The monsters who had tried to grind him into dust are rotting in the dirt back in Seattle, Mack and Callan cleaning up our visit, and my dove is now finally, finally safe in the light.