Chapter 33
Zane
By the time we’re discharged, Dax has shown up, too.
He drives us back to the ranch, waving off Hope’s apologies for what happened to his bedroom.
“He’s moving anyway,” I say, suddenly very fucking tired.
“Am I?” Dax asks. “Where to?”
“The basement.” I mumble those two words, my eyes closed. A micro nap on the drive sounds good.
I guess the adrenaline has worn off.
Now my side just hurts like a motherfucker.
There’s crime scene tape across the front porch, and an RCMP officer has been tasked with sitting there to make sure we don’t enter our own house.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
We find Luna and Bellamy at Ridge’s cabin. There’s only one bedroom, but he has a sunroom on the back, and they’ve made a blanket fort in there. Bellamy announces they’re going to sleep there all night. Ridge says he’ll take the couch, and he’s made up his bed for Hope and me.
It’s some kind of fucked up that the first time I’ll get to hold her all night in a proper bed, it won’t be my fucking own, and it’s only because I killed her nightmare.
Dinner is surreal and subdued.
Bellamy picks up on the weird vibe, but with four adults to distract her and keep her playing, it’s not until bedtime that she realizes she’s missing Froggie.
And then it’s the end of days.
Hope tries really, really hard to not meltdown right along her daughter, but it’s hard. Too hard.
Luna goes with Ridge to do the evening chores—and to give them some space—and I herd both girls into bed.
“I can take the couch,” I say gruffly, although I never want to be out of touching range of Hope again.
She just tugs on my hand, pulling me into the bed behind her.
That’s how we sleep that night, and the next two, with Hope sandwiched in between me and Bellamy in Ridge’s king-sized bed.
Jasper Lane shows up every day, taking pains to walk us through every step of the investigation. Mostly for Hope’s benefit, no doubt.
We ask for Froggie back.
The stuffed animal is neatly sliced open along his back seam, with the tracker removed. Hope stitches him back together so carefully the seam is invisible again, then runs him through the wash twice.
Bellamy is overjoyed to be reunited with her best friend.
“I’m so sorry,” Hope whispers when she catches me staring at the stuffed animal.
I pull her onto my lap, ignoring the tug of my stitches. “No regrets,” I promise her. “I’m sleeping just fine at night.”
The investigation only takes a few days.
Getting cleared feels like a technicality, but an important one so Hope and Luna can start breathing again.
And then it’s time to renovate.
Blood is a bitch to get out of wood.
But it’s worth the effort when it was spilled to protect your family.
And I really do like the new finish I put on the floors upstairs.
While we’re remodelling, I move Dax to the basement as promised, and change his room into a new room for Hope and me.
Bellamy gets to keep the room across the hall, which she’ll share with her younger sibling once they outgrow a crib in our room—and once she moves out of our bed.
In the same way I need to hold Hope all night, she needs to hold on to her daughter. That afternoon haunts her, how close she came to taking Bellamy into the house for a nap—or, if she’d stayed in the greenhouse to talk to Luna, how close Derek came to finding all three of them there.
The what-ifs spiral endlessly in her head.
Dr. Tailfeathers referred her for trauma counselling, but that healing is going to be a slow process.
I promised her patience. I meant it. Now I mean it even more. I’m hers, however she needs me.
But there’s a sadness inside her, like the joy she found when she first came to the ranch has been snuffed out.
I want to find ways to bring that joy back, piece by piece. Maybe date by date, too.