Chapter 16 -Gage
The four of us are watching a baseball game on TV.
Normally, we would be cheering, shit-talking, groaning over bad plays - but it doesn’t feel right to make such noise in this grief-soaked house.
It’s been just over a month since the accident and we've moved in to stay with Luna. My grandfather encouraged me to leave the farm to live here with them all. Things have been more peaceful there for the last few years since I cut my dad off completely and Gramps banned him from coming out to the farm. Last I heard, he’s living with some woman near Lethbridge.
All of us are haunted by grief but day by day, it gets a little easier to take a breath.
For all of us except Luna, that is. She seems to disappear into her pain a little bit more every day.
At first, I thought she might be getting better, adjusting, but now I’m more worried about her than ever.
Last week she screamed at Julian when he tried to comfort her and just a few days ago, Torrin brought her home, passed out drunk, after she went out to a bar without telling any of us.
I look over at my friends and see how each one of them is suffering.
Julian’s jaw is clenched so hard I worry for his perfect, rich-boy teeth.
Reid keeps scrubbing at his arms and twitching as he writes in his journal.
Torrin keeps rubbing between his eyes as he tracks the play on the screen.
There’s a suffocating tension in the air.
It feels like we’re in a holding pattern right now, just waiting for the next shoe to drop, and there’s nothing any of us can do to make this better.
Time is the only thing that will help and I’m not sure even that will help Luna at this point.
Reid’s head jerks up and swings to look behind me just before I feel cold fingers brush across my neck from behind.
I force a smile when I see Luna looking down at me from behind the couch, even though I want to frown at the state she’s in.
Dark purple bruises line her eyes from lack of sleep and stand out even more from how pale her skin has become.
Her lips quiver into a soft smile, but her eyes are empty and glazed as they lift from mine and look to each of the others.
She moves slowly behind each of us and runs her hand over each of our shoulders as she passes.
When she gets to the end of the couch, she looks over her shoulder at us with a faint smile.
“Thank you for being here for me.”
And then she floats from the room like a ghost.
My hands form fists at how helpless I feel to help her through this.
I know the others feel exactly the same way but we all turn our gazes back to the game to try and blunt the anger, pain, and helplessness we all feel.
I fight the urge to go to Luna, lift her in my arms, and hold her until she heals.
Tell her how I’ll give her all the love she will ever need to fill the hole inside her right now.
I know that won’t help but I wish it would. I wish I could.
Reid drops his journal and pen and scrubs up and down his arms and then shoots to his feet.
“What? What’s wrong?” Jules asks him.
Reid shakes his head. “I don’t know. This day feels wrong. My skin, it feels too tight. It just feels wrong.”
His eyes are darting from place to place like he’s searching for something he’s lost, and then his head jerks to the left toward the hallway that leads to some of the bedrooms. A low whine escapes from his throat.
“Luna…” his haunted eyes dart from each one of us.
“Something’s not right with her. Luna!” He calls, and then scrambles to get out from behind the coffee table.
We all jump to our feet and follow him to her door, waiting as he knocks on it and calls her name.
Jules pushes him aside when there’s no answer and grips the doorknob, cursing when it doesn’t turn in his hand.
“Fuck! It’s locked.”
A cold shiver races down my spine and then there’s a muffled crash from behind the door that has me shoving him aside and slamming my shoulder into the door.
Two more hits and it pops open. I hit the light switch in the dark room but Luna’s nowhere in sight.
Torrin dashes past me to the door to her bathroom and knocks on it.
“Luna? Love? Are you alright?”
We all exchange worried looks when there’s only silence to be had. My heart starts racing as dread slides along my skin. My voice tears as I roar, “Open it! Open the door!”
Torrin swings the bathroom door open, and there’s a beat of frozen, terror-filled silence when we all see Luna slumped on the floor, half leaning against the tub.
He rushes into the room, drops to his knees and scoops her up, but her head only rolls limply over his arm as he begs her to wake up.
My eyes are frantic as they scan the small room, looking for what could have hurt her and zero in on the empty orange pill bottle.
I lunge for it and lift it to my eyes as everything inside of me dies, along with her.
“Call an ambulance!” Torrin screams as tears roll down his face and he presses his hand flat against her chest, right over her heart.
Jules shoulders me against the counter as he grips my wrist tightly to see the bottle. His icy blue eyes fill with rage as he tosses my arm away and spins to Torrin and a limp Luna on the floor.
“It’ll take too long. Give her to me!” he snarls and rips her from Tor’s arms and rolls her so she’s face down.
He holds her around the middle with one arm and pries her jaw with the other hand to get her mouth open and then viciously slams two of his fingers into her mouth and down her throat.
Her limp body comes to life as it convulses against the intrusion and vomit pours out as Jules yanks his fingers out of the way.
He studies the pool of bile on the floor and I see half-dissolved pills in the mess before he rams his fingers back down her throat and forces more vomit out of her.
Reid lets out such a sob of anguish behind me that all three of us look to him and see him on his knees with his forehead pressed to the floor as his body jerks with the force of his pain.
“Pl-please, don’t leave me,” he begs to the floor.
I’ve seen many versions of Julian Stillwell before. He has one of the biggest personalities I’ve ever known, not all for the good. But I’ve never seen this version of him. Those eyes of his are empty, blank, like everything that makes him… him - is gone and he’s just running on autopilot.
“Go start the car. We can get her there faster than an ambulance.” He tells me with no inflection in his tone.
I take one more look at Luna as he forces those fingers into her mouth for a third time and turn away, the plastic of the empty pill bottle cracks in my tight fist. I shove the bottle into my pocket and bend down and yank Reid to his feet and drag him from the doorway, pulling him with me out of her room.
I do a quick detour to the living room and snag all four of our cell phones from the coffee table and force them into his hands, barking at him, “Call Gigi and Kara. Get them to meet us at the hospital!”
Giving him something else to focus on has some of the emotion clearing from his eyes, so I push him towards the garage door and move to the kitchen.
I yank the junk drawer right out of the cabinet and it crashes to the floor, spilling all the contents everywhere.
Don’t care. It makes it faster to spot the keys to the Escalade in the mess.
We need a vehicle big enough to fit all of us as there’s no way we’ll be separating from each other right now.
By the time I get the garage door open and the car started, Jules and Torrin come flying through the house door behind us with Luna cradled in Torrin’s arms. They slide into the back seat, and as soon as the doors slam, I hit the gas.
My gaze fights to stay on the road and not the rearview mirror to look at her.
The drive feels like the longest of my life.
There’s a constant chant running through my head as the kilometers disappear under the tires.
Don’t die, don’t die. I love you, I love you. Don’t die, don’t die.