Stain (Stain #1)(66)

“Where the f*ck are you going?” Willkie yells after me.

“Something’s come up. I gotta handle this,” I reply back from the middle of the parking lot.

“What about Dro?”

“It’s my girl,” I say, without hesitation. It’s always going to be Aylee first now. “I gotta go. Keep me posted.”

I drive like I’m on something. My truck is shit when it comes to speed, but I break every traffic law to get to the other side of town in half the time it would normally take me. I turn on her street and my blood runs cold at the sight of the ambulance, fire truck, and police cruisers stationed in front of her house. I park about a block away, almost exactly where I dropped her off earlier, and gun down the street like an Olympic sprinter.

There’s a crowd of her neighbors gathered, and I shove and shoulder through them to make it to the other side just in time to see them hoist her in the back of the ambulance and slam the doors shut.

“She’s always been such a sweet girl, I can’t believe what happened to her.”

“Anyone know what happened?”

“Someone said she got beat up pretty badly.”

“Yeah, I just overheard her dad give a statement to the police. Apparently she has a boyfriend who’s been abusing her. He said he walked in on the guy raping her.”

“God, that’s terrible! Can you imagine seeing that happening to your daughter?”

“I know…it’s awful. Poor girl.”

Beat up. Rape. Beat up. Rape. Rape. Rape. I only pick out those words and they play on a loop inside my head, feeding the flames of white-hot rage thrashing inside of me. I know without a doubt I’m going to castrate her old man. That’s a promise I intend to keep to myself. But first I need to see her. I have to know she’ll be okay. I have to touch her. I follow behind the ambulance and it’s not until I get to the ER’s front desk that I realize they’re not going to let me see her. I have no familial connection to her. Hours and hours pass. I lurk in the halls, dodging her old man. Her foster mother eventually shows up with a little girl that looks exactly like her. Teary-eyed, they all wait on news from the doctor.

I come and go, but I never leave the hospital parking lot.

Let her be okay. Let her be okay. Goddamn it, let her be okay.

“If you’re listening up there, I don’t believe in this shit. But she’s too damn important to leave it all up to fate. So I’m asking. If you’re up there, don’t let her die. You gave her to me. You put her in my life, you can’t just take her away now. Don’t f*cking take her away from me. I need her too damn much.” I rear my fist back and slam it into the steering wheel. Nobody is listening, and I feel like a f*cking idiot for thinking so.

The driver’s seat of my truck becomes my mattress, but I don’t sleep. I have my eyes closed, my arms folded across my chest, and I’m planning. Plotting. My mind races. It’s around five a.m. that I head back inside again. Her family is gone. Taking my chances with a new set of nurses, I luck out when one of them gives me the okay to head to her room.

“Five minutes.”

That’s all she gives me. But it’s five minutes more than I’ve gotten since they brought her here. I plan on taking advantage of every second.

My emotions nosedive when I see her. So damn small on that hospital bed. Fragile, broken, wires and tubes coming out of her body. All I want to do is pull her free and hold her to me. But I know if I do I’ll only hurt her more. It’s a physical ache seeing her like this. I feel the wound deep inside my chest. I walk to her side and blink fast, breathe faster, and swallow around the lump forming in my throat. She’s all banged up. Covered in so many bruises. My hand shakes so f*cking badly when I reach for hers.

“Hey…” This is one of my worst fears. Failing to protect her like I said I would. If I’d kept her with me…followed my instinct, and told her to stay rather than do what was right and drop her off, that coward wouldn’t have done this. But then it hits me how stupid that logic is. If he hadn’t done it today, he would’ve done it another day, another time, or whenever the hell he felt like it. Abusers aren’t dictated by time.

“Open your beautiful eyes and look at me, Aylee.” I lean down to gently kiss both her swollen eyes, and that physical ache, that wound, rips further open, stretching wide to show the raw meat of torment I feel for her. Nothing and no one has ever broken through the wall of anger and numbness inside of me.

I can’t even remember the last time I cried for myself or anyone else. I don’t remember crying when my mother blew her head off and even before that while suffering the f*cker’s abuse. I am not the one who cried. Noah cried. I raged. But my anger bows in the face of Aylee’s injuries. Anger I know. I can handle it. I can use it. I don’t know what to do with this sadness. It makes me feel weak, powerless, and f*cking I hate it. “Aylee?” I whisper her name like it’s my own little prayer, my forehead pressing to hers, and I interlock our fingers and grip her tight because…she’s my lifeline. “You need to wake up and give me purpose again. I didn’t know I was missing something until you came and filled me with you. You’re curled up inside of me now. I’m no good at this shit, Aylee. But I need you to know I’m living for you now. So I need you to wake up and give me a future. Because you’re it.” My eyes slam shut but it’s not enough to keep my tears from falling. I grit my teeth against the sorrow, fight it like it’s an enemy. But it wins. Forehead to forehead, nose to nose, lips to lips, I let the tears come. I feel no shame. With her, there’s no shame. I breathe her in. Breathe for her. Breathe for me. Because there’s no me without her. “I love you.” I breathe it against her lips. “I love you so damn much, Aylee.” When I feel the smallest twitch of her fingers trying to squeeze mine, I know she hears me. Keeping our fingers interlocking tightly, I bring hers to my lips and press a kiss to her knuckles.