“IT HURTS,” SHE CRIED. “IT hurts everywhere.”
I pulled her against me in the bathtub, cradling her in my arms as she shivered. “I know.”
Her body didn’t stop shaking while I bathed her, regardless of how warm the water was. At that moment, she was like a child, completely helpless and dependent on me for guidance and care.
That reality lanced through my heart and poured acid into old wounds. I wanted to shake her for being so reckless. I wanted to do the same to Luna when she’d told me what she allowed Gypsy to take. But there wasn’t any use in letting my anger control the situation. It was done, and now all we could do was weather the storm.
I removed Gypsy from the bath and set her on the counter while I toweled her off and brushed her hair. It was difficult to dress her when her limbs were so heavy, and she was tired, but I managed to get her into one of my soft cotton tee shirts before I tucked her into bed. It didn’t last long. Before I could even get myself dressed, she was crawling across the tile floor in the bedroom, clinging to the surface like it was her savior.
“Noooo,” she whined when I tried to pick her up again. “It’s so hot. So hot.”
Her body couldn’t regulate temperature, but I had to trust that she knew what she needed while the plant eliminated itself from her system. Accepting this, I laid down beside her on the cool tile, waiting out the worst of her tremors as fresh tears slid down her cheeks.
“Please don’t tell our secret,” she begged.
Her cognitive state of mind had improved, and that was a good sign, even if she wasn’t capable of recognizing it. I knew the moment she’d told me about Birdie, she regretted it. But she couldn’t know that I’d already suspected it from the beginning. From everything I’d uncovered so far, it was evident that Birdie was prone to mental breaks, particularly concerning her rage. Gypsy had been protecting her little sister for her entire life, and even in the depths of her worst pain, she still tried.
My fingers traced the lines of her arm as I whispered into the darkness. “I won’t tell.”
I shouldn’t have said it. It was the one thing that would guarantee Gypsy would stay here and fulfill her obligations. I needed her to stay. But even worse, I was beginning to understand that I wanted it more.
Her hand slid across the tile and reached for me, falling just short as she rolled onto her side and her gaze came to rest on my face. “I always heard the devil was beautiful.”
I smiled into the shadows, reaching out to find her fingers. She wrapped her pinky beneath mine, and we laid in the stillness, staring at each other on the cold tile floor for hours. When the sun came up, Gypsy’s breathing grew even, and her body settled into a state of exhaustion so deep, I knew the worst had passed.
I carried her back to bed, and she was too far gone to feel restless or scared anymore. But it didn’t stop me from wrapping my arm around her and pulling her against me anyway.
“Hi.”
Gypsy’s meek voice drew my attention to the doorway of my home office, where she was currently standing. The hem of my tee shirt brushed against her thighs, highlighting the sun-kissed skin of her mile-long legs. After the scare last night, I wanted more than anything to wrap those legs around my face and punish her with my tongue, but that wasn’t what she needed right now.
“Good afternoon,” I greeted her.
She wrung her hands together. “I bet you’re really mad at me, huh?”
I set aside the document I’d been reading and gave her my full attention. “You put yourself at risk last night. You specifically went against my rule, and you acted with no thought or regard to me, yourself, or even your sister. So, am I mad, Gypsy? No. I’m disappointed in you.”
She bowed her head and curled her toes into the carpet. “That sounds like something a parent would say.”
“That’s because it is,” I murmured.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen.” She looked up at me with soft eyes. “I honestly… things got out of control. Luna told me it was a medicinal tea. She didn’t say that was going to happen. And when she drank it, she was fine, so I thought I would be too.”
“Luna was fine because she drinks it often. Her body is acclimated to it, but yours isn’t. Taking something like that without knowing what it is, you could have…” I choked down the words I didn’t want to say. “Things could have ended much differently. You were lucky.”
Gypsy’s shoulders hunched forward. “Well, it doesn’t matter. Obviously, I’m never going to see her again.”
I found that difficult to believe. As mad as Gypsy was, she felt a connection to Luna because of their heritage. I had a feeling she would see her again, and I could only hope she’d learned her lesson, but regardless, I wasn’t about to let her forget it anytime soon.
“Are you hungry?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Not yet. My stomach still hurts a little.”
“Then I assume you are ready for your punishment?”
I expected a fight from her, but she just nodded. “I knew it was coming, so yeah.”
“You can go sit in the corner and think about your actions,” I told her.
“Seriously?” She arched a brow at me. “Like I’m five?”
“Until you can learn to act like a mature adult, you’ll be treated accordingly.”
She padded across the floor and sat down in the corner, crossing her legs and leaning back against the wall. “This might be weird to say, but I bet you’d make a good dad.”
I turned away from her and tried to focus on Emmanuel’s case files, but the truth was, I couldn’t. I stared at them for two minutes before she spoke again.
“Why do you hate kids anyway?”
My foot beat a furious rhythm against the soft floor beneath my desk. “I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.” She snorted. “Case in point, your work barbecue? You were really rude to that little boy who came up to show you his toy gun. You didn’t even acknowledge him. And then at the shelter, I saw you do the same thing. It’s like you can’t even stand to look at them.”
My head fell forward with a breath that collapsed my chest, and I closed my eyes. She was right, and if I was going to teach Gypsy anything about life, then I had to be honest with her too.
“That’s because I can’t,” I admitted.
I met her eyes, and she almost looked afraid to ask, but in the end, Gypsy was always brave. “Why?”
My throat was painfully tight as I forced the words out. “I don’t hate children, but it’s difficult for me to interact with them. It reminds me of what I lost when I was a father.”
“Was?” Gypsy whispered.
“Yes.” A sour taste filled my mouth as I acknowledged the truth. “My son Dawson was three when he died.”
Silence stretched between us, and I appreciated that Gypsy gave that to me. The conversation was far from over but taking it in manageable steps made it easier. I knew she had a soft spot in her heart for children, so this would be difficult for her too.
“Will you tell me about him?” she asked in a muted voice.
I leaned back in my chair and stared up at the ceiling, allowing my eyes to fall shut as a blurry image of his face came to mind. I often struggled between episodes of wishing to remember him vividly and trying to block it out altogether. Either way, it didn’t help. There would only ever be pain when I thought of him.
“It’s difficult to tell you all the things I would like to because he was taken from me when he was very small.” I pinched the bridge of my nose and choked down the acid burning my throat. “But he loved pancakes. And puppies. He was very good with animals, and I always thought we would choose a dog together when he was a little older.”
I didn’t know what else to say about him. It was difficult for me to remember much about that time in my life, and I never talked about him anymore. I never shared anything about him because it made it feel like maybe I had imagined it all if I didn’t. But I knew Gypsy wouldn’t be able to leave it alone, and she didn’t.
“What happened to him, Lucian?”
Her question was only fair, given what I knew about her. But it wasn’t easy to divulge the most difficult part of my life. The chapter where I’d turned from a boy to a man, forever blackening my soul. I didn’t know if I’d make it through all of it, but I told her anyway.
“I was young when he was born,” I began. “I hadn’t really given much thought to having children at that age. My father had a construction business, and I wanted to work my way up to taking over when he retired. That was all I thought about at the time. Women were on my radar, of course, but I didn’t want a relationship. I dated casually, and I was always upfront about my intentions. I was careful, and I wore protection.”
“There was a girl I went out with a couple of times who’d been chasing me for a while. She told me she was okay with the situation, but after a while, I could tell she wanted more. I tried to break it off with her, but she told me she was pregnant. She’d been sabotaging the condoms.”
“She sounds like a gem,” Gypsy chimed in.
“She was far from it,” I answered. “And it didn’t become obvious to me how unstable she was until I was too deep in it. But regardless of the circumstances, I was having a child, and I wanted to do the right thing. I stepped up and tried to make it work with her for the baby’s sake. I was there through every milestone of the pregnancy, and for a while, I was deluded enough to think that everything was going to be okay. But after Dawson was born, her moods only worsened. She wanted all my attention to the point that it became detrimental to the baby. If I interrupted a conversation with her to feed him or change his diaper, she’d fly into a rage. She was jealous of her own son, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t win. I got her into therapy and got her started on medication, but nothing worked. She started drinking and sleeping most of the day. I couldn’t trust her to take care of Dawson while I worked, so my mother cared for him during the day. But when she started getting violent, I knew something had to change.
“I tried to break it off with her. I offered to let her keep the apartment, and I would pay the rent. She could focus on getting herself help, and I would take care of Dawson full time in the interim. She was heartbroken, but it had nothing to do with Dawson. She kept telling me I couldn’t leave her. That’s the only thing she cared about. Eventually, she got the point that it was really over, and she calmed down. I thought everything was fine. She went into the bathroom, and I fed Dawson and put him down for bed. But the next thing I knew, the cops were banging on the front door. When I let them in, they arrested me on battery charges, and I couldn’t understand what was happening until I saw her come out of the bathroom with a bloody face.”
“Oh my God,” Gypsy murmured. “She beat herself?”
“She smashed her face into the mirror and told the police I did it. I was charged and booked into the county jail that night, and it didn’t matter what I told them. They didn’t believe me.”
Gypsy curled into herself, glaring at the floor as she considered the circumstances. “That’s so awful. They had to figure out she was lying at some point, right?”
A dry laugh ejected from my throat. “It only got worse from there. My parents bailed me out, but she’d been granted a restraining order against me which included my son. I wasn’t allowed to see him or contact her. I abided by the rules because I knew it was the only way to get Dawson back eventually. I had faith in the system. I had faith that somewhere along the line, somebody would figure it out. But they didn’t. And when she started using a phone she’d registered in my name to send herself threatening texts, it only compounded the problem. Stalking charges were added, and I was brought back to jail. This time, my parents didn’t bail me out. They didn’t know what to believe, I guess.”
“But you were their son,” Gypsy said. “How could they not believe you?”
“It happens more often than you’d think,” I assured her. “Things can get so skewed in a courtroom that people find themselves questioning things they never thought possible. But regardless, it wouldn’t have mattered what my parents believed. The court-appointed attorney didn’t believe me either, and it was evident in court. He did his job with the least amount of effort required on his part, and that was it. The judge handed down my sentence, and I was convicted on both charges with a two-year sentence.”
“What a load of bullshit,” Gypsy snarled.
“I didn’t care about the sentence. My whole life had been ripped apart, and the only thing that mattered to me was Dawson. She took him away to punish me because I wouldn’t stay with her. I was worried for his safety and well-being, and nobody would listen to me. I requested welfare checks. I did everything I could, but they left him in her care.”
Gypsy shook her head in disgust. “Just another kid falling through the system.”
“They failed him.” I pinched my eyes shut. “I failed him.”
“What happened to him?” Gypsy pressed.
“I was a few months away from my release when the warden pulled me into his office and sat me down. He told me that Dawson was gone. He’d been gone for two weeks, and I didn’t even know it. Nessie had been getting violent with him. Hitting him. Kicking him. I don’t know the extent of it. He had internal bleeding and died from the injuries because she never took him to the hospital. He was three years old.”
The numbness I’d always felt whenever I spoke those words seeped into every crevice of my soul, and I couldn’t think of anything else to add. That was the end. That had always been the end for me. The day Dawson died, I stopped living too.
I didn’t know what Gypsy would think. I was almost relieved she hadn’t said anything at all. But when I opened my eyes and they fell on her, there were fresh tears on her cheeks. Those tears were for Dawson, and maybe a little for me too. I couldn’t recall ever sharing the grief with anyone, and it was a comfort to have a companion in my darkness, even if only for a little while.