“About the night my dad broke in?” I ask warily.
She shakes her head. “No, about the first time we had sex.”
My body ignites with desire and need as I remember that night and the other nights we’ve spent together since.
“Hey, don’t give me that look; otherwise I might start kissing you and we know where that leads.” She points her finger at the open door. “And as much as I want things to lead in that direction, both of our parents are downstairs.” She grins. “However, if you want, I can totally get some alone time later.”
Just thinking about being alone with her causes my pulse to throb. “I definitely want that.”
“Good.” She leans in and brushes her lips against mine. “Now, do you want to read my song?”
I steal another kiss. “Of course.”
Grinning from ear to ear, she flips open her notebook and sets it on my lap, pointing at which page to read.
Our bodies wind
Creating the perfect song
As your lips fuse to mine.
I could do this all night long.
Lie here
Tangled up with you.
So closely
No one will know
Where you start
And where I end.
My heart is pounding
With every stolen kiss
My mind is racing
Longing for a wish
That we could stay like this.
Always.
So closely
No one will know
Where you start
And where I end.
This moment with you,
God it’s branded in my mind.
I want to keep it forever
Trap it inside
So it’ll always be mine.
Forever.
So closely
No one will know
Where you start
And where I end.
“I want to sing it one day during a concert,” she announces after I’m done reading it. “I won’t do it, though, unless you promise to sing it with me.”
I think she might be secretly asking a question without actually having to say it aloud. But I can’t promise her I’ll go on the tour yet. Not until I find out what’s going to happen with Sadie. As of now, I have no clue what kind of condition she’s in, and she doesn’t even have a place to live. And I need to be here for her while all that is out.
“Maybe one day we can sing it,” I say, shutting the notebook.
“Okay. Just as long as it definitely happens.” She tries not to frown. “Tonight we’re playing at my dad’s club with a guy that Sage wants to be our new guitarist. You should come so you can see how bad we suck. Maybe you can give him a few pointers.”
I can’t contain my laughter.
“Hey, I’m not trying to be funny.” She playfully pinches my side.
“I know you’re not.” My laughter dies down. “It’s just the first time I’ve seen you be so pessimistic about something.”
“Music is my life, and so is the band,” she tells me. “And this guy makes us look like amateurs. We’re going to be booed off the stage.”
“I’m sure that won’t happen.”
“At least promise you’ll be there tonight in case it does, so I can have a shoulder to cry on.”
“Okay, I’ll be there.” I don’t believe for a second that they’ll be booed off stage, but if she needs me to be there then I will.
“Now kiss me, before you have to leave,” Lyric demands, leaning in.
We steal a few more kisses before Lila shouts up the stairs that it’s time to go.
“See you tonight,” I tell Lyric as I collect my stuff and climb off the bed.
She nods, her lips swollen from my kisses. “Text me if you need anything. Even if it’s just to talk.”
I promise her I will, then I meet Lila and Ethan downstairs and we head out to the car.
On the way to the hospital, Lila asks me at least ten times how I’m doing. Like always, I tell her that I’m okay, but this time, I actually am. Yeah, I still have nightmares sometimes and there are moments when I cry, mostly when I think about my brother’s death and Sadie in the hospital. Even my mother’s death gets to me. But for the first time in my life, I actually feel free from the past now that it’s behind bars. There are tons of charges against the people who tortured my siblings and me; charges ranging from murder to kidnapping. Detective Rannali assures me they have a solid case, which should keep my father and his followers there for a very long time.
“Ayden, we wanted to talk to you about something before we go in,” Lila says to me after she parks the car in the hospital parking lot.
It’s midday and the sun shines through the windows, heating up the car the moment she turns off the engine.
“What’s up?” I ask, confused by how nervous she seems.
She trades a look with Ethan, and he twists around in the passenger seat to look at me,
“It’s about your sister,” he says to me. “And her coming to stay with us after she’s released from the hospital.”
“Detective Rannali was the one who suggested it,” Lila explains, unbuckling her seatbelt. “But Ethan and I had already talked about it . . . I know she’s seventeen and is almost a legal adult, but with everything she’s been through . . .” She smashes her lips together, fighting back the tears. “We just thought it’d be nice if she had a place to call home.”
Even though I try to fight them back, a few tears manage to escape my eyes. I want to say so much to them. Thank them for everything, for giving me a home, for not giving up on me when things got hard. For giving me a family. But I’m so choked up, I can only manage a nod as I scoot forward and wrap an arm around her.
She gasps in shock, because I normally don’t hug.
“Thank you.” I suck back the tears. “And I mean that. Thank you for everything.”
“You don’t need to thank us for anything,” she says. “You’re our son, and we’ll always be here for you.”
We hug for a second longer before I move away. I clear my throat a few times and reach for the door to get out of the car.
As we walk into the hospital and toward Sadie’s room, I go over in my head what I’ll say to her if she’s awake. It’ll be the first time I’ve talked to her in almost five years and for some of those years, she was locked up in a house with people who tortured her. I worry there won’t be any of that spunky, lively, carefree sister that I grew up with, and I won’t have a damn clue what to say to her.
“Oh my goodness, she’s awake,” Lila says after she peers into Sadie’s room. She steps back and turns to me. “We’ll let you go in first and talk to her, okay? So we don’t overwhelm her.”
Nodding, I take a breath and step inside.
Sadie is sitting in the bed when I enter, staring out the window with a strange look on her face, like she’s deeply contemplating something. She must hear me walk in, because she turns her head and looks over her shoulder at me.
We both freeze and just stare at each other.
She looks different, yet the same; her brown hair is still long and her face is covered with freckles. But there’s a cast on her arm and a scar on her cheek, remnants that she’s not the same Sadie I knew five years ago. That she’s been beaten and tortured and God knows what else.
After a second or two goes by, I open my mouth to ask her if she knows who I am, but then she’s already running to me.
“Oh my God, I thought I was never going to see you again,” she cries as she wraps her good arm around me.
I start crying again, and it’s ridiculously embarrassing. I seriously need to get a grip on myself. But the fact that she’s here and alive, it’s so fucking overwhelming I can’t stop the tears from flowing.
She trembles as she hugs me, and I can sense that fear inside her, the fear of being touched. But she must be stronger than I was, because she keeps holding onto me.
“I’m
so sorry,” I say through my tears.
She shuffles back, giving me a quizzical look. “Sorry for what?”
“For not finding you.” I wipe tears from my cheeks with the sleeve of my shirt. “I tried. I tried so fucking much, but no matter what I did, it all led to a dead end.”
Her eyes pool with tears. “You didn’t find me because they didn’t want you to find me. There was nothing you could’ve done. As long as our . . .” Anger and fear flash in her eyes and her hands tremble as she balls them into fists. “As long as he wanted me there, I was always going to be there.”
“How long . . .” I breathe in and out, trying to keep myself from crying again. “How long were you there?”
She turns her back to me, wrapping her arms around herself. “Ayden, I don’t want to talk about this.” She climbs back onto the bed with her feet dangling over the edge. “I’ve spent too much of my life surrounded by this shit, and now that I’ve finally gotten out, everyone just wants me to sit around and talk about what happened. I don’t want to. All I want to do is forget about everything.”
“I get what you’re saying.” I pull a chair up and sit down. “I forgot about what happened to us for a while and thought it was easier that way.”
“You forgot?” she asks, her eyes widening. “Really?”
I nod. “Up until a few weeks ago, I couldn’t remember any of the time we were in that house together.”
“You’re lucky then,” she mutters, her shoulders slumping.
“I’m not so sure about that,” I mumble. When she gives me a confounded look, I add, “I couldn’t remember because I was repressing everything, but it wasn’t healthy.”
“So you’re saying you’re happier now that you can remember?” she asks, confused.
“I still can’t remember everything now, but what I did remember helped them track the people down.” I slant forward in the chair and rest my arms on my knees. “I’ve learned over the past couple of years that running away from your feelings only allows them to grow and feed off you, and eventually they’ll nearly kill you if you don’t learn to deal with them.”
“You sound just like I remember,” she says softly, almost smiling. “You always had a poetic way of saying things.”
“I did?”
She nods. “You did. It was always fun listening to you talk when you got really passionate about something.”
“I’m glad there were fun times . . . Sometimes when I look back at the past, all I can see is darkness.”
“There were a few good times I can remember . . .” She trails off as she scoots back in the bed and rests against a pillow.
“Are you tired?” I ask, getting ready to stand up and leave. “Maybe I should let you sleep.”
She shakes her head and motions for me to sit down. “I don’t want to be alone. But I don’t want to talk about the past right now. I know you say it’s not healthy, but I just can’t yet, okay?”
If that’s what she wants, then that’s what I’ll give her. “What do you want to talk about then?”
“You.” A trace of a smile rises on her face, but pain and fear haunts her eyes. “I want to hear all about your happy new life.”
“How do you know it’s been happy?” I wonder curiously.
“Because I can see it in your eyes,” she says with a shrug.
“It hasn’t always been that way, though.”
“Then start from where it does get happy.”
I rack my mind for the moment in my life where things turned around for me, where happiness felt within reach. “Well, I was adopted by this really amazing family,” I say with a smile as I remember the day the Gregorys brought me home.
“Oh yeah?” She rotates on her side, cradling her casted arm. “Are they the ones who keep peeking through the doorway?”
I glance over my shoulder right as Lila walks by, trying to look casual as can be. I chuckle under my breath, turning back to Sadie. “That’s Lila . . . My mom, I guess.” It’s strange to say that to Sadie, to call someone else other than our real mother my mom.
“She seems worried about you,” she says. “She’s walked past the room about a thousand times.”
“That’s just how she is.” I pause, debating whether to tell her what Lila and Ethan told me in the car. “They want you to come live with us.”
Her brows shoot up. “What? They can’t . . . There’s no way they’d want . . .” Her eyes water up again.
My heart aches at her self-doubt, the feeling of unworthiness of having something good.
“I think you should live with them,” I tell her. “They’re really nice people who’ll help you get through this.”
“Did they . . . Did they help you?”
“They did,” I say. “And so did Lyric.”
Her forehead creases. “Who’s Lyric?”
How do I even begin to explain who Lyric is? The girl I’m in love with? No, she’s more than that. Way, way more.
Not knowing how else to explain it to her, I start from the beginning, telling her about my journey with the Gregorys and how I fell in love with my best friend.
“So . . . you’re in love?” Sadie asks after I’m finished.
I nod, fiddling with the leather band Lyric gave me. “I am.”
She blinks, trying to hold the tears back, but they pour out of her eyes. “I’m so happy for you. I really, really am. I was so worried that maybe we both ended up broken and ruined but . . . Seeing you like this . . .”
I scoot forward in the chair and place an unsteady hand over hers. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
“No, it’s fine. I’m glad you did . . . And I’m glad you fell in love.” She sniffles. “It gives me hope that maybe I’m not completely broken . . . That if you can make it, maybe . . . Maybe I can too.”
It takes all I have in me not to break down and sob. “Sadie, you’re going to make it. I swear to God you will. And I’ll be there for you.”
She cries for another minute or two before she pulls it together. “I don’t want to cry anymore. Please, Ayden, tell me something that won’t make me cry . . . Tell me more about your family . . . And Lyric . . . And this band and the tour . . . It all sounds so great.” She sniffles as she dries her tears with the back of her hand. “I can’t believe you ended up being musically talented. I remember when you tried learning how to play the flute. You sucked.”
“Hey, I was eight,” I protest. “And the only lessons I had were from Mr. Grangering. You remember him?”
“That grumpy old man that had a lot of cats,” she says, nodding. “I didn’t know he gave you lessons.”
“The lessons really weren’t that great since he got the harmonica confused with the flute. You should’ve seen him try to play it.”
She laughs softly, but then her expression instantly plummets as terror flashes through her eyes. “I’ve always wanted to learn how to play the guitar . . . I thought about it a lot while I was . . . But I didn’t think I’d ever be able to . . . Get the chance to.”
“I can teach you,” I offer.
“That would be amazing.” She tries to smile but instantly frowns.
“Lyric can teach you how to play too,” I offer, trying to keep the conversation going so she’ll stay distracted from her thoughts. “She’s actually just as good as me. Maybe even better.”
“I want to hear her sing,” she says. “When you were talking about it, all this excitement was in your eyes and I want to feel that excitement too.”
“I’m sure there’ll be plenty of chances for you to hear her.”
“Maybe when you’re on this tour thingy, I can go watch one of your concerts.” Self-doubt seizes her expression as she grips onto the blanket for dear life. “W-well, just as long as I can stand backstage. I-I don’t think I can stand being out in a crowd.”
I completely understand where she’s coming from. I remember the first concert I went to and how terrifying it was being in the crowd. Thankfully, Lyric was th
ere with me and calmed me down.
“I’m not sure I’m going on the tour . . . I’m still deciding,” I offer her a reassuring smile. “But you can definitely watch me play sometime.”
“It’s not because of me, is it?” she asks worriedly.
Not wanting to make her feel guilty over anything, I choose my next words carefully. “No, there’s just some other stuff I need to do right now.”
She shakes her head. “Ayden, please don’t stop living your life because of me. I’m so jealous of what you have, and I’d die if I knew I ruined stuff for you.”
“You’re not ruining—”
She cuts me off, clutching onto my hand in desperation. “Promise me you won’t. Promise me you won’t change your life because I’m here now. I don’t want you to do that.”
“But I want to be there for you,” I say, choking up. “I don’t want you to go through this alone.”
“I’m not telling you not to be there for me. I-I’m just telling you to live your life. We were given a second chance, so promise me you’ll do everything you want to do. That you’ll be happy.”
“I’ll promise to if you promise to.”
“I’ll try,” she whispers. “I’m not going to let them break me.”
She’s stronger than I expected, but I can still see pain hidden under the strength, the internal battle trying to consume her. And I need to be there for her, to make sure it never completely takes hold.
I spend the next hour telling Sadie about my life, because she doesn’t want to discuss anything else. Then Lila and Ethan come in and introduce themselves. Sadie seems skittish around them and acts even more erratic when a nurse comes in to do a check up on her and to tell us visiting hours are over.
“Remember what you promised,” Sadie says to me as I’m walking out of the room.
I turn around and nod. “Just as long as you remember too.”
She smashes her quivering lips together and nods before inching away from the nurse.
I hate leaving her alone, but she has to stay at the hospital for a few more days until she’s made a full recovery.
Lila, Ethan, and I leave the hospital in silence. By the time we get to the car, it’s late and the stars and moon are shining in the sky. Even though I might not make it in time, I ask Lila to drive me to Infinite Bliss so I can try to catch my band perform with their new guitarist.
Unraveling You Series: The Complete Set Page 53
