Chapter 16 A SISTER’S KEEPER
The long hot shower had helped immensely.
Not enough to make me feel completely myself again, but enough to wash away the lingering traces of dark magic that seemed to have coated my skin during the ritual.
I’d stood under the spray until the water ran cold, watching until the last remnants of my poisoned veins faded away completely, as though they were being rinsed out of me piece by piece and carried down the drain.
There was a kind of catharsis in watching it go. In knowing that whatever had tried to claim my life had been drawn out and discarded. That my body was mine again, however battered and bruised it may be.
When the water couldn’t do anything more for me, I stepped out of the shower and dressed myself, pulling on a pair of worn-in jeans and a cozy, oversized sweater. By the time I was finished, I felt marginally more like myself and was finally ready to leave my room and go off in search of the guys.
At least that was my intention.
Instead, I found myself paused in front of my sister’s door. My hand hovered over the wood for a moment before I knocked twice and pushed it open without waiting for an answer.
Tessa was still in bed, her head propped up against the headboard and her knees drawn to her chest. Her eyes were red and strained, the kind of red that I knew from experience came from crying for hours.
From the look of her face and the dozens of tissues scattered across her comforter, she’d been at it for a while.
My heart squeezed painfully in my chest.
She glanced up at me as soon as I entered, blinking past the tears as if to hide them from me. I knew she was trying to be strong, or at least put on a convincing front of it.
But of course, I could see right through it, even if I hadn’t seen all the evidence first.
“You look better,” she said, her voice raspier than usual.
“You don’t,” I said honestly, closing the door behind me.
She huffed out something that might have been a laugh. “Yeah, well. Not all of us got a shot of the magical soul-binding cure.”
I crossed the room slowly, giving her time to tell me to leave if that’s what she wanted.
When she didn’t kick me out, I climbed onto the bed and sat across from her, leaving enough space between us that she wouldn’t feel cornered.
I tucked one leg under me and waited. Tessa had never been good at starting conversations she didn’t want to have so I knew I had to be the one to do it.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, the question coming out far more hurt than I’d rehearsed in my head.
She didn’t pretend not to know what I was talking about.
“I barely even told myself,” she answered, her gaze dropping to her hands.
She picked at the edge of her thumbnail, worrying the skin there until it turned white.
“Besides, I think you had enough to worry about with everything that was going on with you.” She shook her head.
“It just never felt like the right time.”
“Tessa—”
“I know, okay?” Her voice cracked on the last word. “I know I should have made time and said something. But I just…” She trailed off, her throat working as she tried to find the right words. “I couldn’t. Every time I tried to think about it, to really face it, I just…couldn’t.”
I watched her for a long moment, taking in the way her shoulders were hunched.
The way she was holding herself together by the sheer force of her will alone.
My sister, who’d always been the strong one, the fearless one, looked small and lost in a way I’d never seen before.
It reminded me of the way she’d looked when Dad died.
Like she was trying to hold all the broken pieces of herself together with nothing but her bare hands.
“How far along are you?” I asked gently.
“Almost three months.” She pulled her knees tighter to her chest. “I found out a few weeks ago. Took the test in a gas station bathroom somewhere between here and Temple when I was digging through the grimoires looking for anything that might help you with your Nephilim abilities.”
My heart ached at the thought of her going through that alone.
Of standing in some grimy bathroom under buzzing fluorescent lights while staring at two pink lines that would forever change everything.
I hated that I hadn’t been there with her for it.
That she didn’t feel like it was something she could share with me.
“Have you seen a doctor yet?”
She shook her head. “How am I supposed to do that? Walk into a clinic and explain I’m carrying a baby that isn’t exactly human and hope they don’t send me off for a psych eval?” A bitter laugh escaped her. “I’m sure that would go over great.”
The Order had always handled pregnancies for Descendants.
For obvious reasons. Human doctors weren’t equipped to deal with the complications that came with supernatural bloodlines, and keeping everything in-house meant keeping everything quiet.
But we’d obviously burned that bridge when we walked away from them.
Or rather, when they started trying to kill me and left us with no other choice.
Which meant we’d be on our own in this.
“We’ll figure it out,” I said, even though I had no idea how. “We always do.”
“Do we?” She looked at me then, lifting her eyes to mine and holding them, and I saw the fear there.
Bare and unguarded and bone-tired. “Because from where I’m sitting, it feels like we’re barely holding it together as is.
Like if one more thing goes wrong, the whole house of flimsy cards is going to come crashing down on us. ”
I couldn’t really argue with that because she was right. We’d been running on borrowed time and stolen luck for months now. It seemed only logical to assume that, eventually, both would run out.
“Are you…” I hesitated, unsure how to phrase it. “Are you keeping it?”
Her hand drifted to her stomach before she seemed to realize it was moving, cradling the small swell there as though her body had already decided something her mind hadn't worked up the courage to say out loud.
“I don’t know,” she whispered brokenly. “I don’t know anything anymore.” Tears filled her eyes, but she furiously blinked them back. “I’m scared, Jemma. I’m so fucking scared and I don’t know what to do.”
I reached for her hand and took it in mine, her fingers instantly tightening around mine. “You don’t have to know right now. You don’t have to have all the answers, Tess.”
“But I need some of them,” she said, her voice breaking. “I need to know if I can do this. If I even want to.” She stopped, her breath hitching. “If I’m strong enough.”
“You’re the strongest person I know,” I reminded her.
“Then why do I feel like I’m already falling apart completely?
” A tear slipped down her cheek, but she didn’t bother wiping it away.
“I can’t stop thinking about everything that could go wrong.
About all the ways I can screw this up. I don’t know how to be someone’s mother, Jemma.
I don’t know the first thing about taking care of a baby. ”
“I don’t think anyone does, Tess. Not until they’re actually doing it.”
She quirked her brow at me. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“Kind of.” I squeezed her hand and smiled. “It just means you don’t have to figure it all out right now, and you don’t have to have all the answers. You can learn as you go. You just have to decide if you want to try first.”
She was quiet for a long moment, her gaze dropping to where our hands were joined. I could see her working through it. Weighing options. Calculating odds. Because that was my sister. Always three steps ahead, already planning for the worst-case scenario.
She met my eyes again. “What if I make the wrong decision?”
“You mean giving it up and then regretting it?”
“Or keeping it and finding out too late that I’m not cut out for it.
That I can’t give the baby what they need.
” She looked up at me, her eyes searching mine for reassurance, or maybe for permission to be honest about how lost she really felt.
“I keep thinking about what kind of life I could give them. What kind of mother I’d be.
And I just…” She let out a ragged breath.
“I don’t have a good enough answer for any of it. ”
“You don’t have to. We can figure it out together.”
“It just feels like everything is moving faster than I can hold together.”
“That’s usually what happens when you’re trying to process life-changing things,” I reminded her as I scootched in closer to her.
“You’re allowed to be scared, and you’re allowed to not have all the answers yet.
Whatever you decide, I’m here, Tess. You won’t be doing this alone.
Not while I’m still breathing and have a say in it. ”
A tear-filled smile escaped her. “You sound like Dominic.”
“God, I hope not. I mean, I love the guy, but one Dominic in the world is already more than enough for the general population to handle.”
That got a real laugh out of her, even if it was weak and shaky.
She wiped at her eyes with the heel of her hand, her breathing finally starting to even out a little.
The tension in her shoulders eased too. It wasn’t gone by any stretch of the imagination, but it looked a lot less crushing.
Like she was finally able to set down something after carrying it on her own for far too long.
There was something else I needed to ask her though, even if it meant pushing a little on a bruise she clearly wasn’t ready to look at.
“Who’s the father?” I asked before I could lose the nerve.
Her expression shuttered immediately. It was like watching a door slam shut in my face. One second she was open, albeit vulnerable, and the next, she was locked down tighter than Fort Knox. “He’s no one.”
“Tess—”
“I mean it, Jemma. He doesn’t matter. He’s not going to be part of this.”