by Chloe Walsh
I couldn’t calm down.
I couldn’t.
Every instinct inside of me was screaming danger.
My stomach was laced with dread.
I could hardly breathe.
With my hand pressed to the small swell of my stomach, I continued to pace, unable to stop.
"I'm sure everything's fine," Teagan added, her eyes following my every move.
"Then why do I have the most horrendous pain in my heart?" Stopping dead in my tracks, I turned to face her, pressed my hand to my chest, and whispered, "I can feel it, Teegs. Something terrible has happened."
"It's the pregnancy hormones," she assured me. "They make a woman go crazy."
The words were no sooner out of her mouth when the headlights of a car shone through the bay window.
Relief washed over me like a tidal wave.
"See," Teagan said with a smile as she slowly pulled herself up from the couch. "I told you they'd come back."
With relief flooding my heart, I rushed into the hallway with a huge smile on my face.
The smile faltered the moment my eyes landed on Noah standing in the doorway, covered in blood, and holding a screaming Ryder in his arms.
"Noah?" Teagan ran over to where her husband was shaking violently. "Noah, what's going on?" Taking the baby out his arms, she asked, "What are you doing with Ryder?"
"His mother's…fuck," he strangled out. "They killed her, Thorn…Right in front of him. I…I had uh…" He shook his head and exhaled a ragged breath. "She told me…bring him home…Jordan."
"Where is he?" I demanded. "Where is Hunter?"
"Hope," he began to say, but his voice broke off when a huge sob tore out of his chest.
No.
No.
No.
"Don’t say it," I choked out, backing away from him with my hands held up. "Don’t you dare fucking say it, Noah!"
"I'm so fucking sorry, Hope, I couldn’t stop it," he cried as tears poured down his face. "I tried…I fucking tried to stop them–"
"Stop it!" I screamed, feeling like the ground was crumbling beneath my feet. "Don’t say it."
"He's dead, Hope," Noah strangled out, chest heaving. "I'm so fucking sorry…there was nothing I could do."
I couldn’t breathe.
He was gone.
No.
No.
Fucking no!
"You're lying to me," I snarled, trembling violently. "You're a fucking liar!"
"He's dead, Hope! Lucky is dead!" Noah roared hoarsely. "I was held down and forced to watch those bastards riddle his body with bullets! David…Gonzalez betrayed him… I watched him bleed out on the fucking ground–" His voice broke off as a huge gut-wrenching growl ripped through him. "I watched him die!"
Pain like nothing I had ever experienced ripped through my heart, slicing it open.
Clutching my chest, I tried to draw in a breath, but I couldn’t.
I couldn’t breathe.
"I need you to come over," I could hear Teagan telling someone. "It's Lucky. He's…oh god, he's gone."
Gasping for air, I stumbled backwards, landing on the stairs.
How was this happening?
Was this really happening?
Hunter wasn’t dead.
He couldn’t be.
I felt like I was floating out of my body.
Watching this from somewhere above.
"Where is he?" I demanded, shaking so violently I couldn’t control my body. "Where is he, Noah?"
"Hope…" Noah whispered. He moved towards me but I batted him away.
I didn’t want his touch.
I didn’t want anything from him.
I wanted Hunter.
"Where did you leave him?" I screamed, delirious with grief. "Where did you leave his body?"
"Hope, please…don’t do this."
That was Teagan.
She was talking to me.
Trying to reason with me.
I didn’t want any of it.
"Stay away from me," I snarled, warning her off. "Don’t fucking come near me."
"There was nothing I could do," Noah continued to say over and over. "He was dead, and I had a fucking baby dropped in my arms. I couldn’t…There was nothing I could do for him. I’m sorry…I’m so fucking sorry–"
"You left him there," I accused. Staggering to my feet, I ran at him. "You left him there alone?" Slapping at his chest as hard as I could, I screamed, "How could you leave him there? How could you do that to him?"
"I'm sorry," Noah whispered, over and over. "I'm so sorry, sweetheart."
My head snapped up at his words. "Don’t," I warned shakily, "ever call me sweetheart." Tears streamed down my face as I cried, "He calls me sweetheart."
He tried to wrap his arms around me, but I shoved him away.
I didn’t want his touch.
I didn’t want any of them.
Frantic, I looked to the door and lunged for it.
"Hope!" Noah roared after me, but I didn’t stop.
Scrambling down the steps of his house, I ran to his car and threw open the door.
Diving into the driver's seat, I slammed the locks down and turned the key that Noah had left in the ignition.
The car roared to life.
"Get out of the car, Hope," Noah demanded, banging on the driver's side window. "Just come inside…please!"
Ignoring him, I threw the car into gear and tore off recklessly, my only coherent thought was to find him.
Bring him home.
****
"Messina. I told you to not come back here," a man with a thick Spanish accent said from the other side of Noah's tinted out car window. "Boy's dead. It's done."
Boy's dead.
It's done.
Boy's dead.
His name is Hunter.
Hunter is dead.
Unlocking the car, I pushed the door open and climbed out. My entire body was shaking from head to toe, but my voice didn’t waver when I asked, "Are you Gonzalez?"
The man stared hard at me for a long moment before nodding stiffly.
"Do you know who I am?" I asked, tone flat and cold. "I'm the woman carrying his child inside of me," I continued, not waiting for his response. I didn't need it. I just needed him to hear me. "A child who will never know his father because you betrayed him –" my voice broke off as my tears threatened to choke me, but I forced myself to say what I had come here to say, "Take me to him. I want to see him."
"Coming here was a mistake, Damita." The man looked at me with a pained expression. "Believe me when I say, you do not want to see."
"I want to see him," I repeated, voice hoarse. "I want to take him home."
"Aye, aye," he muttered, rubbing his jaw. "Then you will be scraping his bones out of the ashes."
A harsh sob racked through my body; a direct result of his words.
Of his actions.
"You should know," Gonzalez added. "The debt is paid."
With tears blinding me, I looked up at his face in confusion. "The debt?"
"Between your family and your grandfather," Gonzalez replied. "The boy's life was the price of revenge." He inclined his head towards the fire and said, "It is over now. You will not come to any harm."
Pain.
Pain.
Pain.
"This is our code, Damita." Gonzalez gestured towards a bonfire where several men were standing around, all staring into the flames. "Our way of life."
With my head held up, I half-walked, half-staggered towards the flames.
In the haze of my grief, I could smell it; the stench of death all around me.
The stench of burning flesh.
My eyes landed on the fire and my head shriveled up and died right along with him.
I could see the clothes.
The blond hair singeing.
The smell of him being erased from this earth.
Dropping to my knees, I placed my hands on the ground, and screamed.
No
one touched me.
Not one word was spoken.
The men that had been standing around the fire all vanished from sight.
And I was left alone in my grief.
To mourn the other half of my soul.
As my lover perished in the flames.
I remained right there on the blood-soaked ground, keeping vigil over his burning body, wondering how I was ever going to get back up again.
When the flames eventually turned to embers and then to ash on the ground, and the sun began to rise in the sky above me, I exhaled a ragged breath.
Removing my sweater, I laid it out flat on the ground beside me before reaching into the ashes.
With trembling hands, I began to scoop them up, placing them carefully on the fabric.
"Hope," a familiar voice choked out before coming to kneel beside me.
I wasn’t surprised to see him beside me.
I'd known he was here.
Keeping watch over me.
Over Hunter.
"Don’t do this," Noah begged, covering my hands with his. "Please…he wouldn’t want you to do this."
"I need to bring him home, Noah," I whispered, tears streaming down my face, as my body shook violently. "I have to do this." Sniffling, I reached for another handful of ashes. "He deserves better than this…"
"I know," he whispered. Taking my hands, he placed them on my lap, and said, "I'll do it."
And he did.
Numb to the bone, I watched Noah gather his ashes and wrap them safely in my sweater. "I'll take care of him, Hope," he promised. "I'll make sure he gets the sendoff he deserves."
Climbing to my feet, I glanced at the bundled piece of fabric in my uncle's hands, and felt the last strip of life peel from my bones.
And then I turned around and walked away, ignoring Noah's protests; saying it wasn’t safe to be alone.
I didn’t care about David Henderson anymore.
He couldn’t hurt me.
Not when he already killed me.
Not when I was already dead on the inside.
****
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Hope
Noah organized the funeral.
They played two of his favorite songs at the ceremony.
Ben Howard's Oats in the Water and Hozier's Take me to Church.
At least, that's what I had read in one of the countless messages I'd received from Teagan.
I didn’t go.
Noah brought him home to South Peak Road in a golden urn.
Again, that's what I had been told.
I hadn't been there since that night.
I hadn't left the apartment.
I didn’t want to.
Noah was waiting until I was ready before we scattered his ashes.
I would never be ready.
Never.
My family called every day.
I didn’t answer the phone.
They knocked on my door.
I kept it locked.
I wanted to be alone.
I never thought about losing him.
In my eyes, he had been invincible.
I never thought it could ever happen and now that it had, I had no clue of how to cope.
How to manage the pain.
It was indescribable.
Empty.
Numb.
Cold.
Dead inside.
It was the only way I could describe how I was feeling.
Loving him and losing him was too much for me.
Making me feel this way, it was fucking punishment for my bad choices.
For the terrible things I had done.
For the pain I had caused the people around me.
If I could take it all back I would, just so he could live.
So he could be on this earth.
I didn’t know how I was going to last a lifetime without him in it.
It killed me to even think about it.
Locking myself away was the only way I could cope.
Knowing I had a part of him growing inside of me was the only reason I was still breathing.
Having his child growing inside me gave me the will to keep on going, to put one foot in front of the other.
To keep breathing.
****
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Hope
"Come home, Angel," my father pleaded down the phone. "It's not good for you being there on your own like this."
I shook my head.
I wasn’t leaving.
I couldn’t.
This was all I had left of him.
I couldn’t let it go.
I couldn’t walk away.
I needed to stay right here, frozen in time, where his smell was still present.
Where his words were in my mind, his hands still roamed over my flesh.
Where I could feel him, and taste him, and hear him.
Where he still lived on.
Screw broken and bent, I was shattered and gutted.
Every breath I took caused the pieces of my heart to splinter and spear me.
The pain was festering inside of me, poisoned hatred and resentment tormenting my every waking hour
Broken hearted, I lay in bed, feeling like death, looking like it, too.
I felt as though I'd been bled dry.
It was because of him.
Because I had lost him.
Because I was sorry I couldn’t save him.
****
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Hope
As the days turned into weeks, I found myself detaching from everything I had once held dear.
Family held no meaning for me any longer.
Not without the center point of mine.
At night, I cried myself to sleep, and in my dreams, he visited me, keeping me safe in my subconscious, giving me the strength I would need to open my eyes and face another day on this earth without him in it.
Fragile and broken, that's how I described myself now.
The lyrics of my favorite songs held my deepest secrets now, and in playing those songs aloud, I confessed my sins to the world.
Like a priest with a collar and duty, the music would never betray me.
In the playlists of my heart, I allowed my pain to bleed freely, exposing myself for the true imperfect human I was.
With every chord and word and note that filled my ears, my soul was cleansed.
I played Fleurie's Hurts Like Hell on repeat for weeks, drowning in the lyrics.
I allowed myself to smother in my pain, feeling her words on a deeper level as I floated further into my depression.
I didn’t want to talk about him because they couldn’t possibly understand.
None of them.
I was alone in my grief. Just as it should be. I would never move on from him.
And this?
Having my soul spliced in half was my penance for the pain I had caused him.
He had died loving me.
And I would live on loving only him.
The child growing in my womb was the only thing keeping me here now.
The only thing that meant anything to me.
I would go on.
I would see this through.
I would put one foot in front of the other.
And I would do it for our child.
For the life we had created together.
I was carrying his legacy inside me, and this time, I would not fail him.
Our child would grow up knowing what an incredible, selfless, wonderful man his father was.
I would make sure of it.
****
Chapter Sixty
Hope
When I woke this morning, my eyes were full of tears.
Even in my sleep I was crying.
The pain was crippling me.
Sitting on the pew in St. Michael's Church, I sank to my knees and prayed.
I prayed and prayed for god to swoop down and save me from the pain in my heart.
I begged him for mercy.
And then I willed him to give me the strength I needed to survive this.
Because without some divine intervention, I knew I wouldn’t make it.
Footsteps clicked against the marble floor, but I didn't move a muscle.
Not when I already knew who was there.
I knew he had followed me here today.
He'd been following me for weeks.
I felt a small gust of cold air brush against me when he sat down, but I didn’t turn around.
Motionless, I remained on my knees, fingers entwined and clutching my grandma's rosary beads. "God forgive me," I chanted over and over, begging for forgiveness for all the pain and suffering I had put him through. For not appreciating what I had when he was alive. "Please, Lord, forgive my sins."
"God's already forgiven you, Angel," my father whispered, covering my hands with his. "Now it's time for you to do the same."
"Do you think it's possible for a human being to die of a broken heart?" Tears clouded my vision as I turned to my father and confessed, "Because it feels like I'm dying."
"I know, sweetheart," Dad whispered, pulling me into his arm. "If I could take this pain from you, I would."
"Don’t," I sobbed, clinging onto my father's shoulders for dear life. "That's what he used to call me." A pained sob tore from my throat. "Used to."
My father sat beside me, holding my body in his arms like he had from the day he brought me into the world, dying with me, suffering with me, taking my pain and making it his own.
"I love you so much," he continued to whisper. "My daughter. My baby girl. My only little girl. If anything happened to you, I wouldn’t survive. And your baby will know. She will know who her father was, and the sacrifices he made to keep her safe. To keep her mother safe. And I am so proud of you," he whispered. "Of your choices. Of seeing the good beneath the bad. You did good, baby."
"It wasn’t good enough."
"It was for him," Dad soothed. "He died knowing you loved him. Can you imagine what peace that gave him? You gave that to him, Hope Carter. You gave him your heart and a child. He may not be around to watch his child grow up, but I promise, you gave that man peace in his final minutes."