40
“You aren’t real,” I whisper.
Koa smiles at me, his eyes brighter than ever. His hand flexes around the knife pressed to Birdie’s throat.
“Hi beautiful,” he hums and my heart thuds in my chest in the most traitorous way.
He’s exactly the way I remember, every dream, every nightmare.
Dressed in well-fitting dark jeans and a muscle-hugging black t-shirt that shows off all his tattoos, all the ones I used to trace with my fingertips while he slept in our bed.
His hair is a little longer, the lines around his eyes give away his age, but they watch me with the same passionate excitement that he always carried.
“Very real,” Birdie swallows tightly, and I watch the bead of blood that trickles down her skin.
“No, you’d never put her in danger.” I shake my head in disbelief. He’d never use Birdie like this, ever. No matter how bad he got. But he used Riggs. He used you. I chew the inside of my mouth, trying to make sense of it.
“I needed a way to come in without any of you harming me,” he explains. “Rafe.”
My eyes flick to him standing with his body blocking Murphy, gun pointed past Birdie’s shoulder, at Koa’s chest.
“You’re dead.” The words are choked by his rabid emotions, his hands shake around the butt of the gun.
“I can see how you would think that.” Koa exhales, his eyes moving back to mine. It’s scary watching how his expression hardens and his gaze darkens on Rafe and the others. Then, like the clouds have parted and the sun is out, they’re golden again, soft, warm. Welcoming.
“He ambushed me at the clinic,” Birdie chokes out, but she’s not fighting his grip on her. She’s just as conflicted as the rest of us.
Why does a man we all loved so much feel like the enemy?
“The blood,” I whisper, my fingers itching to reach for Riggs, but I don’t dare.
Instead, I hold my breath, completely out of my element in this situation.
I might have driven over a man tonight and almost shot another, but that was the adrenaline.
I’m exhausted and my heart can’t take much more of this.
He needs it desperately. We got the bullet out, got him closed up, but without the blood he won’t make it through the next few hours. It’s dire, and all this time talking is— “Riggs needs blood or he’s going to die.”
The sound of his name makes him stir on the table and I press my hand to his shoulder to keep him flush against it. We don’t need him going into any more shock than his body already is, and seeing Birdie in her position will cause his heart rate to spike.
Koa shrugs.
My lip trembles. Rafe steps forward as Murphy rises from the spot he was in, working behind the computer. “He knew. He asked me to look for you. He warned me and I thought he was insane,” Murphy whispers in shock.
It’s not that he feels like the enemy. He is.
“Koa,” I choke out and his expression waivers.
He’s fighting to stay cold. As cold as the cement floor stained with his brother’s blood not ten feet in front of him.
And yet, I can see him. The Koa that I fell in love with, he’s in there.
Even if it was a game to them, even if I was a toy or a pawn. Koa loved me too, that much I can feel.
“Where is it?” I ask.
“In the car,” Birdie blurts.
There you are, I think. You let her bring the blood. Whatever man you were is in there. I know it. But like he can hear my thoughts, that softness slips back behind a shield as Koa peers down at her, disappointed. “I raised you better,” he says against the side of her head.
“You raised me exactly like this,” Birdie whispers, kicking her foot back.
She catches him in the top of the knee, surging her torso forward as she slips her hands between his arms and clears her throat of the blade just long enough to separate the two of them.
She spins on him, pulling out her gun and holds it in his face.
Koa’s smile grows, pride licking at every handsome feature.
“There’s my Birdie baby,” he chuckles.
But she doesn’t back down; she cocks her head to the side. “Murphy go get the blood, it’s in the back seat.”
Murphy moves instantly as Rafe follows his circle, watching his brother’s back in case there’s a surprise waiting outside the garage doors.
No one says a word and Murphy returns seconds later, his hair plastered to his face, his glasses covered in water, but there’s a cooler in his hands and he rushes it toward me.
His head whips briefly to Koa, as if he still can’t believe he’s standing there, but he’s not as vocal as his siblings.
His brain works through the surprise logically, quietly, mathematically.
I don’t wait for Birdie to tell me what needs to be done.
I hook the blood into the messy IV that I barely got into Riggs in the first place and start the flow.
Please work. His chest rises and falls in a choppy, barely-there sort of way, and it worries me more than Koa standing ten feet away watching my every move.
Once I know he’s taking in the fresh blood my fingers find the pulse in his limp wrist, pinching there to feel it pump weakly.
But also just to feel the warmth return to his skin.
Come on Riggs. You aren’t allowed to leave us yet.
I clench my jaw, trying not to cry as we take turns forcing answers out of a ghost.
“How?” Rafe asks between a crash of lightning and a rumble of thunder.
“Semantics,” Koa hums. The smile on his face is bright and amused with our painful confusion.
“Why?” Birdie snaps, finally asking the right question.
“Because I could,” he whispers darkly. “I wanted more. I got bored.”
“That’s it? You got bored?” Birdie growls, her rage growing by the second.
“This place could have been something, but Riggs just wanted to drag his feet, keep it in the family. I wanted to grow our family.” Koa talks about him like he’s already dead. “He strangled you all into submission with his rules and you let him. I was watching all my hard work die under his boot.”
Riggs is still asleep. His body is warmer, his pulse stronger but… he refuses to open his eyes no matter how much I beg him.
“I can’t take care of them,” I admit to him whether or not he can hear it.
“Not the way you do. You think they need a mother, but they don’t.
They never have. They need you,” I whisper.
“Not me, not Koa.” My eyes flick up to where he watches me.
I work really hard not to cry. It feels like all I’ve been doing lately is crying.
So I inhale slowly, filling my lungs, and exhale even slower.
The gum in my mouth is losing its flavor but I continue to chew it, refusing to reach for another piece if it means straying too far from Riggs.
“Please,” I beg, swallowing the nausea.
The silence seems to stretch impossibly before someone speaks again.
“You’re Malosi,” Murphy huffs, his voice almost a shock.
“My smart boy,” Koa hums with pride. “I’m a little disappointed it took you this long.”
“Power.” Jesse gives weight to the name.
“He’s a good replacement, looks just like me.
” Koa laughs without humor in his voice.
“Malosi is the name, together we grow and give meaning to it.” He sounds like a cult leader and it turns my blood cold.
My eyes run over him, drinking him in again, seeking out my Koa, but instead I find a new tattoo on his neck, straight down the center below his chin, the tip brushes the hollow of his throat. It’s the spear.
“You sent those men to kill me?” I whisper, coming from around the work bench, stepping away from Riggs’s unconscious body as my fingers subconsciously roll over my throat where his tattoo is.
“No.” Koa shakes his head, his voice softening. “No, beautiful, I came to see you.”
The lightning flashes and I see him standing at the end of my bed, watching me sleep.
“I waited so long to do it, missed you so much,” he whispers, his feet shifting on the floor, and Birdie reminds him that she has a gun with a small tut from her lips.
He chuckles again, nodding and steps back a little.
“I thought you’d miss me too but…” his hand reaches into his pocket and he flicks something to the floor. “Same old Cress.”
The crumpled foil heart falls to the floor around the mud and blood that pool in droplets there.
My eyes lock onto it. I had found it that night.
I was taking out old text books to list them for sale and it fell out of the back.
I cried for hours, then got pissed off and cried at that for so long I fell asleep. It must have been in my hand.
“I’m curious. What does that one say?” Koa snaps when I don’t move to grab it.
I walk forward and the breeze carries that familiar spicy scent to my nose as I bend over and pick it up. I unfold it, my eyes on Koa as I do.
You’re smarter than all of this.
I almost cry at the words. It's not what I was expecting and I can’t even think of a reason why he would write such a thing, but it’s exactly what I need to hear.
“So?” Koa asks.
“It says ‘you’re pretty’,” I lie and Koa’s eyes narrow at me. “It’s a little childish if you ask me, being worked up over some little gum wrapper hearts.”
Koa’s expression goes through every emotion until he controls himself, the rage of being toyed with is something he’s not expecting. I can’t say I like it very much, my heart is still screaming at me to hear him out, to listen to his excuse and to forgive him for it.
“Is it really worth killing me over?” I ask with a sour taste in my mouth. “Worth losing your family over?”
I can see the three of them watching us, trying to keep up with the words being tossed around. “You can’t be that superficial can you?” I lay the final blow and watch his anger get the best of him.
“He took you from me.”
“You took me from him first,” I snap back.
All of the warmth dies from his eyes when he realizes that I’m still out of his reach. Even now, five feet in front of me, he’s never getting me back.
“And now I’m going to take everything from him until he begs me to stop and then I’m going to leave him to wander around and wonder what would have happened if he had just followed orders,” Koa snarls.
His hand snaps out faster than Birdie can react and he catches her across the side of the face, wrestling the gun from her hand and stepping back with it pointed at her head.
“This isn’t your home anymore. You don’t have a claim to it,” I remind him.
“I never waited for permission to take what's mine Cress. You should know better than that.” He smiles wickedly, walking backward, the gun still trained on the woman he called a daughter with a vicious need for revenge coursing through his tense muscles and painted all over his face.
“It’s over, Koa,” I push, as he steps back into the rain.
“This isn’t over until I say it is, and I’m not done playing.”