44. Zayden
Zayden
My throat is dry. My head hurts. Opening my eyes feels impossible, but I do it anyway. I’m not home, but the room feels as homely as a hospital room can be. There are flowers, gifts, cards, a strangely high number of stuffed bears—and someone curled up next to me.
Silence is sleeping, her arm over my stomach, head resting on my shoulder. She’s breathing steadily, and my heart lifts at the sight of her so peaceful. I should wake her, but I can’t. The moment she opens her eyes, she might hate me.
Still, I can’t hide forever, and the sooner we talk, the sooner we get through this.
So, I kiss her forehead, and she pulls in a deep breath. Blinking her eyes open, she looks up.
And bursts into tears.
I want to beg her not to cry, but my throat is too painful, so I let her press her face into my neck and sob, her tears damp on my skin. She kisses my cheek, my jaw, eventually straddling me to kiss my mouth.
“I love you, you idiot,” she mumbles. “I love you so much.”
This would be a good time to say it back, but I think I might choke if I try, so I tap my throat. She leans toward the nightstand and picks up a cup, holding a straw to my lips so I can drink. I finish it, relishing the coolness on my throat, and when she puts the empty cup back, I speak.
“You don’t hate me?”
She cups my cheek and shakes her head. “I had to make it believable in case Ryker was watching me. I had to make him think I hated you. But I don’t, I could never—” She kisses me again, resting her forehead against mine. “I’ve been hating myself, thinking I might never have been able to explain.”
My chest seizes at the words, and I almost forget how to speak. “Silence, your dad—”
“Cleo explained everything,” she says, wiping her eyes. “You had a choice in your first kill, didn’t you? But you chose my dad.”
Yes, I did. We didn’t get to know the ins and outs of why a hit was out on someone, but my supervisor told me one thing—he was abusing his kid, badly.
That was all I needed to hear.
“You saved me. You did what I couldn’t.”
“Halle-fucking-lujah!” Looking behind Silence, I grin as Xavier appears. Tucked under his arm is a huge teddy bear holding a love heart, the words “wake the fuck up” embroidered into material. “No more bears!”
“No more bears!” Silence cheers, putting her arms in the air.
I look between them. “What’s with the bears?”
Xavier comes over to me and pinches my cheek. “We said we’d buy a bear every day you were asleep. Then it became a competition of who could buy the biggest. How you feeling?”
“Alive.”
“The bare minimum. Awesome.” He leans over and kisses Silence. “You said you were going home to sleep.”
“And now I’m glad I didn’t. I’m gonna go get someone to check him over.” Another kiss for me and my brother, and she scrambles off the bed and disappears from the room.
Xavier smiles down at me. “Welcome back.”
I grunt. “What happened?”
“Massive blood infection, dehydration, blah, blah, blah. Let’s talk about me.” He hops onto the edge of the bed. “Ask me how I’m doing.”
I roll my eyes. “How are you doing?”
“Fucking great. Ryker is dead.”
“He is?”
Xavier nods. “Our girl got him.”
Something lurches in my chest. Ryker said she’d killed Grant, too. She’ll have had her reasons, and we know she definitely had just cause to kill Ryker, but I never thought she was capable of it.
“It’s weird, right?” he says. “Knowing she’s killed people.”
I nod, brow furrowed. “Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. No change. Yale and I are keeping an eye on her, and she’s agreed to start seeing my therapist next week.”
That’s a relief, at least. Maybe we could all benefit from a few sessions. “Charlie?”
He winces. “He’s in bad books with the NYPD. We know he’s gone underground for a while, but we’ve not heard from him. Mercy got let off with community service. Apparently, her almost-squeaky-clean record kept her safe. She’s back at the Agency.”
A cheer from the doorway interrupts us. Yale walks in, holding an even bigger bear.
“No more bears!” He high-fives Xavier, and I laugh, despite the fact it hurts like hell to do so.
Yale sits on my other side, placing the bear on my lap. “Welcome back, Z. How was death?”
“Painful.”
“Thought it might be.”
Things with Xavier are good, because he knew what that dinner would entail, but Yale didn’t. He was totally in the dark, watching us pull each other apart.
“Yale—”
He shakes his head. “Xavier explained everything. I was pissed for a while, but then you went all coma-like, which meant I wasn’t allowed to be angry for long. You got lucky.”
“But there are things I need to explain about Nemesis,” I say. “I was selfish. I was scared, and … it was around that time that I started to think of our family differently.”
Xavier tilts his head. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve been thinking a lot about it since the first safe house.
How we all just melded together, how it felt so fucking easy …
and I think I knew, deep down, this was how it was always going to be.
There was a moment back then, when we were all together, and it felt easy.
It felt right. When I found out you might leave, I panicked.
” I shake my head, ashamed of myself for doing what I did.
This is where our lives were always heading—to her. To all four of us staying together. It made no sense to me back then why I couldn’t just support Yale, but now I know why I did it. I explain this to them both.
“It’s fucked up, but I get it,” Yale says. “I wasn’t planning on leaving anyway. I can’t exactly be away from you two for too long.” He grins. “We’re brothers.”
Brothers. It doesn’t feel like enough of a word to describe what we are. They’re my everything—my blood, my heart, my reason.
We’re one soul existing in three bodies.
Silence returns and announces that the doctor is on his way before dancing over to Yale and kissing him. She tuts at his bear, insisting the one she has at home is bigger, and he argues it’s not even close.
As they bicker, I watch them, a small smile on my lips.
The three people I love more than anything.
Stronger than before, if that’s even possible.
Unbreakable, as long as we’re together.