Chapter 24 Eliana #2
His fist unclenches slowly. Through my fingertips on his wrist, I can feel every tendon ease. The leaky radiator breathing evens out into something closer to normal.
“That’s... nice,” he admits. He sounds younger suddenly. “Nobody ever says stuff like that to me. They just say, ‘I’m so sorry this happened to you’ or ‘It must be hard to be brave,’ like I ever had a choice in the matter.”
“Fuck that noise,” I snort. “Bravery isn’t about having a choice. It’s about what you do when you don’t have one.”
He’s quiet for a moment. Then he says, “Bash used to say something like that.”
“Yeah, well.” I squeeze his hand. “Broken clocks, blind squirrels, and all that.”
Again, he goes quiet. “He really hurt you, didn’t he? My brother, I mean.”
“Yeah,” I confess. “He really did.”
“Do you still love him?”
My hand drifts to my stomach without conscious thought. Sage must notice, because he says, “I wasn’t gonna say anything at first, because I wasn’t sure. But you’re… you’re pregnant, aren’t you?”
I gulp and nod. “Yeah.”
“And it’s Bastian’s?”
I nod again, not trusting my voice this time.
“So that means it’s my… nephew? Niece?”
That, for some reason, makes me laugh. It’s a teary, snotty laugh, but a little giggle, but a little laugh in the midst of all this madness doesn’t strike me as such a bad thing, even if it comes with a few boogers attached. “I’m not sure yet. But yes, you’re gonna be an uncle.”
“I’m gonna be an uncle,” he breathes, like that promotion and change of title hadn’t occurred to him just yet. “Holy shit— er, I mean, holy crap. Is it bad to curse around the baby? Can it hear?”
“Not quite yet,” I say with another chuckle. “I’m only a little over eight weeks along, and according to the textbooks, they can’t hear until twenty-three or twenty-four weeks. Yasmin’s been on my case about cleaning up my language, but I guess we’ve got time until it matters.”
“Holy shit then,” decides Sage. “Does he know? Does he know about the baby?”
“Yeah. He knows.”
“And he’s still being a controlling dickhead who wants to exile us all off to God-knows-where?”
“That’s the one.”
Sage growls low in his chest. “Typical. Absolutely fucking typical.” He sighs again. “He’s scared, isn’t he? That’s why he’s being like this.”
“If you ask me, I’d say he’s pissing-his-pants terrified. But, y’know—in a very Bastian kind of way.” I rub at my sore knees and stretch my legs out in front of me. “For what it’s worth, I’m scared, too.”
“I thought you said you were mad?”
I smack my own knee like I’m a used car salesman whacking the hood of the worst Camry that’s ever been sold.
“Buddy, this bad boy can fit so many feelings inside of it. It’d blow your mind if you knew how many emotions I go through on a daily basis.
Mad, sad, scared, all of it. I’m the Baskin Robbins of feelings. Truly an endless supply.”
He exhales through his nose, which I think is about as close as I’m getting to a laugh out of him tonight. But I’ll take it. Anything is better than that angry, labored breathing from a few minutes ago, like he was going to have a coronary if he didn’t calm down.
“I don’t know how I’m ever gonna forgive him for leaving me,” he whispers.
I’m not quite sure if he’s talking to me or himself, so I stay quiet and give him room to explore what’s going on inside of him.
“He just made so many promises after the accident, and it didn’t take him long to break every single one of them. That’s a hard thing to just forget.”
“Forget?” I say. “No, no, no. You can’t forget.
Forgetting means you’re letting go of all the things that’ve shaped you.
And people like you and me, we can’t do that.
We’re held together with Scotch tape and stupid dreams, so if we just start forgetting, the whole operation will fall to pieces.
If you ask me, forgetting is off the table.
” I hesitate. “But forgiving… Well, maybe there’s a way to make that work. ”
“That feels even more impossible.”
“Some days, yeah,” I agree. “But the way I see it, forgiving isn’t about absolving him.
Bastian knows he’s done a lot of things wrong.
He’s done a lot of things right, too, though.
He came for you tonight, Sage. You should’ve seen him.
There isn’t one risk in the world that he’d have said was too dangerous if it meant getting you out of there.
He rappelled between buildings on a freaking power line, for Christ’s sake. ”
I can almost hear the sound of his eyes bulging out of their sockets. “Get the fuck outta here. He did not.”
“He absolutely did. I saw it with my own— Well, I heard it. Yasmin saw it, though. She’ll attest to it. It was like watching Batman go to work.”
“That’s the dumbest thing he’s ever done,” Sage asserts. But I know damn well that he’s smiling from ear to ear.
You never really lose that, it seems—that love and awe for your big brother.
Just hearing that in his voice makes me long for the sibling I never had.
Because one daredevil stunt is enough to remind Sage that Bastian really is larger than life in so many ways.
Sage is sixteen and as sullen and crotchety as everyone else in his demographic, but that brotherly love transcends all bad moods. That awe is eternal.
I’m glad they have each other.
“So what do we do?” Sage asks after a long moment. “About Bastian, I mean. Well, actually, about all of this.”
I chew on my lower lip as I consider. There have been so many changes in the last few days and weeks that I’ve conditioned myself to stop looking ahead. It’s just one thing at a time, and then the next, and then the next.
Now, though, we’re at a crossroads, and the path ahead is murkier than ever.
“Honestly? I have no idea. But I think we start by not letting him steamroll us into whatever half-baked plan he’s cooking up. He doesn’t get to make all the decisions just because he’s the one with the hero complex.”
“He’s gonna hate that.”
“Oh, I’m counting on it.” I pat his knee.
“But here’s the thing about your brother: He’s spent so long trying to protect everyone that he’s forgotten how to let people protect him back.
Or even just stand beside him. He is so damn stubbornly certain that if love equals control, then so long as he can just manage every variable, nothing bad will ever happen again. ”
“That’s pretty fucking sad when you put it like that.”
“It is,” I agree. “It’s also exhausting for the rest of us. So when he gets back, we’re going to have a conversation. A real one. Not him barking orders and us falling in line.”
“You think he’ll listen?”
“Probably not at first. But I can be very persuasive when I want to be.”
Sage’s hand turns under mine, his fingers gripping back with sudden intensity. When he speaks again, his voice has changed. Gone is the wounded teenager. In his place is someone harder. Colder. Certain. “That’s not enough.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“I mean convincing Bastian to listen isn’t enough. We need to convince him to end this.” His grip tightens. “Aleksei. We need to make him disappear. I can’t play this violent version of Hide & Go Seek forever.”
My stomach drops. “Sage—”
“I’m sixteen years old,” he says. “And I’ve already lost my legs because one brother made a mistake behind the wheel. I’m not losing my entire future because another brother decided the whole world belongs to him.”
I feel a cold trickle of fear sliding down my spine. “Sweetheart, I know you’ve been through so much, but—”
“No. No. I’m not spending the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, Eliana.
Waiting for the next kidnapping, the next threat, the next time someone I love gets hurt because Aleksei wants to prove a point?
No—fuck that.” He exhales, sharp and final.
“Rescuing isn’t enough. As long as Aleksei breathes, none of us are safe. ”
I’m silent for a long, long time while I turn those words over in my head again and again.
Sage is right on so many fronts. We can’t squirrel ourselves away in hidey-holes ‘til kingdom come. Aleksei’s actions so far have shown that he is willing to go to some very extreme lengths to get what he wants.
Short of killing him or locking him up for the rest of his days and throwing away the key, there’s no telling what it would take to actually ensure our safety from his long, bloody reach.
But to fight back… God, that’s terrifying.
It’s a broody teenager, a pregnant blind woman, her angry best friend, her golden retriever of a chef boyfriend, and a tortured man who’s supposed to be dead, going up against an insane mob boss with infinite resources at his disposal.
To fight back is dumb. Really, truly dumb.
It’s also the only choice I can possibly live with.
I let out a long, defeated sigh. “He’s really, really gonna hate this.”
Sage grins. “I’m counting on it.”
When Bastian and Zeke get home, they find Sage, Yasmin, and me seated on the couch with our hands folded in our laps.
“Uh-oh,” says Zeke. “Why does this feel like an intervention?”
Sage pats the couch next to him. “Take a seat, guys. We have some things to discuss.”