by Elena Monroe
In my sleepless night, I texted Grace asking her twenty-one questions about how she knew she was pregnant, what doctor she goes to, how she felt in the beginning… I wasn’t doing myself any favors in concealing anything.
Finally giving in to my questions, she asked me a question I didn’t expect: Do you wanna handle this privately or…? Khaos has a guy on call.
Grace is my best friend without any doubt, but I didn’t expect her to keep shocking me when she sent me a text to be ready in twenty minutes. It was basically dawn; what doctor is available this early? I didn’t want to question it. Bowen would be asleep until at least mid-morning the way he had been for days now.
The entire car ride back to my house, I looked down at the sheet of paper that said I was positively, without a doubt, pregnant.
Grace was talking, yet all her words sounded like they were coming from miles away so tuning her out wasn’t hard.
I was lost in how I was going to get Bowen’s attention long enough to deliver the news and get him sober enough to remember when Grace finally snapped her fingers in front of my face. “You in there? Your man is passed out next to the door…”
Looking up, I saw Bowen sitting on the cement of the landing, pressed against the door with his back pressed against the lip that held the door in place. I could see the keys hanging from the lock and the bottle preciously held against his chest.
This wasn’t the first time, but it was the first time someone else was witnessing it.
Grace had a scowl on her lips, ready to kill him or at least berate him until he wanted to die. “This bad? Guess we’ve moved on from the showstopper side of Bowen...”
“Normal, lately. He’s going through a lot. I kind of spilled the beans about his mom being groomed and other stuff too from Denmark…” I hadn’t filled Grace in about everything quite yet, I wasn’t ready.
Thanking her for all the connections, the drive, the support, and for being my friend, I squeezed her to my chest and exited the car. Walking to the front door, I carefully stepped over Bowen, twisting the key already jammed in the lock and carefully closed it behind me.
There was no chance I was going to wake him up or drag him inside by myself. Part of me was convinced he deserved it, to sleep outside until he realized that’s how far from grace he fell.
I knew Grace wasn’t going to keep that nugget of truth to herself, unlike my marriage, those two shared everything and it was only a matter of time before Khaos showed up to pull Bowen up by whatever morality he had left.
BOWEN
Eve was on her way to healing while I was on my way to the package store for more alcohol to pour into my wounds. I had been one sip short of blackout drunk for weeks. At least it seemed like weeks when I strung together how many times I yanked a blanket over my eyes.
One sip is a lot when you’re trying to navigate your house in the dark and be considerate of another person. One is sip is what stood between me and the demons taking over.
Healing was always just out of my grasp when your hand is more interested in being wrapped around a bottle. I spent a lot of my youth avoiding letting any pain break me. I trained myself to never be broken.
Guess everything catches up to you eventually. All the years I spent simply numb came back tenfold.
I couldn’t remember going or even coming back anymore. The only time I left the safety of my own house was for more of what was keeping me this way... All I remembered was opening a bottle in the package store and threatening the owner to say shit to me about it.
I came to sprawled against my door, keys jangling from the lock and when I reached out to examine my space, I found a bottle still in my grip.
This wouldn’t be the first time I didn’t make it inside my house and if I was being honest? It probably wouldn’t be my last.
My whole life was a reason to get wasted and stay hidden under the feeling of booze.
Eve’s trauma that I almost added to by not being there.
Elias’s dead body... still in my backyard.
My mom being sold off to the highest bidder—my dad.
Being Famine for the Clave especially after all I know now.
Braeden’s deathiversary.
None of us were normal and the world was hell-bent on making sure a happy ending was just as painful as the rest, blended in so nicely you’d overlook it because you didn’t deserve shit but what you had.
I didn’t bother getting up from the comfortable spot when I must have passed out again. The second time I came to I heard doors slamming before my eyes peeled open. Great, Eve called in the fucking cavalry.
What were they supposed to do that I hadn’t already done to feel better myself?
I didn’t need their support; I needed a while to be piss-poor drunk and then resume life like normal. Until numb felt normal and these new fucking feelings felt like the stranger.
The guys closed in on me, speaking amongst themselves in whispers like I wouldn’t hear them. Being this drunk still didn’t affect my hearing—only my patience. Ignoring me and chastising me for simply being myself, I felt Khaos and Grimm manhandle me, hands closed around my muscles until they ached, ripping me from the position I fell asleep in.
Vic reached over the white picket fence that mocked me on a daily basis, hitting the latch like he knew how. Pushing it open, he held it open for the guys who I let carry me like dead weight when I stopped utilizing my legs.
I stopped trying to help them help me a long time ago, why start now?
Still clutching the bottle, I pushed it up to my lips when I saw Elias rotting in a lawn chair and caught a whiff of urine. Looking down at my jeans, I realized it wasn’t Elias, but me. Somehow I managed to piss myself while I was too busy being drunk to remember to pee.
I wanted him to rot. Maybe not literally in my backyard but sometimes life takes a literal meaning to your desires.
Without any warning, I felt my balance truly slip right out from under me when I tried to catch myself from going over the pool’s edge. With a splash, I fell into the deep end, submerged under the water. Letting go of the bottle, I watched it sink further than I was.
For one split second, I debated staying here, right here, and joining my twin wherever we were destined to end up. Two halves of one whole couldn’t possibly be separated by two judgements.
We didn’t match but we were balanced.
Hell, maybe he was an angel in death so I could be a demon in life.
I knew Braeden wouldn’t want me following in his footsteps, no matter how much I was already. I was killing myself just more slowly, with poison that took much longer.
The only thing he left behind was that note under my pillow outlining all the ways his act of suicide was supposed to save me. He was older by seven minutes and always rubbing in what he thought he knew best because of it.
He died so he wouldn’t marry Eve, knowing how much I loved her, and the bonus of escaping his own personal hell made it just as appealing. It landed him somewhere between selfish and selfless, whatever that is.
As soon as my hands reached the edge, I hoisted myself up, heaving on the inability to breath underwater while still being drunk.
A fake baptism doesn’t cure alcoholism; it only saves souls.
Khaos was kneeling closest with a worried look on his face. “I told you guys he could drown. Fucking idiots.”
It sounded like he liked me and I overlooked it the way I always did. I didn’t want to be liked, loved, or even lusted for. I wanted to live and die until shit got complicated.
Helping me up, I twisted to my back and rolled over on the lush fake grass to go with my unearned house, and marriage that I had been awful at participating in. Standing over me like a tower, I looked up to the machine in all his shiny glory. “Stop acting like Death when you’re Famine.” Vic’s voice broke, that’s never happened.
I should have been death, it’s all I’m good for… killing beautiful things.
Empty! I’m fucking empty and t
his is what it looks like. E.M.P.T.Y—see? I can even spell. Now get off my property.”
His normally masked face shattered into a million little pieces as the back of his hand swiped away the moisture at his eyes while looking away at what he didn’t allow to be happening.
“We all know this is a hard time, Bo. It’s hard for me too, he was my best friend,” Grimm spoke out of turn and it made me feel like a wild savage who saw no limits in sight.
Death wanted to finally speak to me about my brother.
I’d feel honored if it wasn’t fifteen years too fucking late.
Pointing my finger in his direction, I shouted my words, “Hard for you? Fuck, I’m so sorry you find mourning your friend’s death hard. He was my brother, my twin, a part of me. He supposed to be the fourth before he went hurling off a cliff because getting raped every summer was too fucking much. So glad you noticed before we had to mourn him at all. And guess who took his fucking place?” I waited for it to sink in, twisting my finger back at myself. “And guess who still turned the other cheek? Well, fuck, that’d be you guys.”
All their faces fell from heroic to stoic in a few sentences.
We weren’t made of hero shit.
Fuck, we weren’t even villains because redemption was just skewed perception and if you saw redemption than welcome to the fucked club.
Vic stood there, hands on his hips, head hanging in disappointment like I shouldn’t have gone in for the kill the way I did.
“We all wanted to save him, Bowen. He was one of us but he’s gone and saving you is more important.” Khaos sat in the grass with his legs folded under him like a kid just taking it in and waiting on someone to shout goose. “This guy seems pretty gone too.”
The smell of a decomposing body is pungent with a splash of cheap cologne that seems too unholy to be the final sleep.
“Is there a reason you all are still here?” I pushed the words into the air, feeling cemented down by my wet clothes and now lighter soul.
Grimm had already left my eyesight as I darted around as much as I could horizontally. Vic kicked off his converse and yanked up his pants so when he sat on the edge his pants stayed dry. “I went to wire the last payment to Eve’s parents and I noticed the account had been defaulted to Elias. I did some digging… he had every asset moved to his name the night before her mom and stepdad died. After I dug him an entire grave, I realized the fucker killed them.”
And I killed him.
It was the least I could do as a shitty husband.
Looking over his shoulder, he watched Grimm drop down garbage bags, gloves, and whatever was in the bucket that hit the ground with a dense thud. We all followed suit watching Grimm glove up like this was a normal day.
“I’m not doing this shit alone. Fucker doesn’t even like me.” Grimm stood there waiting for them to join him while I continued to lay here being unhelpful.
Tossing Khaos a roll of garbage bags into his chest, I already heard him protest with gagging in between every other word. Finally forming whole sentences, he protested some more even with a foot stomp. “I was gonna throw up fifty-feet away. I can’t do this. Can’t we call someone?”
Vic was already tying a rubber apron around his waist. For someone who only killed when it counted, similar to me, it meant this was about something bigger than my drunk brain could comprehend. “Don’t get this on my pants. Start with the head, it’s easier.”
Grimm threw a clean glove that landed next to my head. “Might want to go inside and grovel while we handle this.”
Grovel.
More like beg for eternal forgiveness and sacrifice parts of my soul to make up for the shit I’ve caused and keep causing because I’d rather not be sober enough to feel how much responsibility I did have in all the damage my life has equaled up to.
I’m a husband now to a woman who’s been through just as much and managed to find a way to forgive me. She deserves better than me, so much better than making herself a fallen angel just to be with a demon.
Curling up, I got to my feet, still uneasy and buzzed; I tried to get motivated to apologize to Eve for being the flaming pile of shit I am.
We had this beautiful moment, and all my self-sabotage did was whisper hateful nothings in my ears until I felt undeserving.
She forgave me, but I couldn’t forgive myself.
Forgiving yourself means relinquishing control and the last time I did that I was left with scars.
Vic’s hand landed on my shoulder, giving it a squeeze like he understood even when I knew he didn’t. All the guys know what I do, trafficking of people like their high-priced goods. He doesn’t know what happens in the in-between: how we get them, how we sell them, how we condition them, how we keep an exclusive island for those testing out the product in the privacy of being above the law.
He doesn’t know what it’s like to be on both ends the way I do.
He doesn’t know that Eve got caught up in some kind of elite scam that broke girls and replaced the broken parts with more agreeable ones.
He doesn’t know her mom and stepdad were at the center of that scam the way I did even without the particulars Eve wouldn’t give me.
He didn’t know Elias was a Romeo and could have easily been overlooked by all of us as simply corrupted Clave members.
Shuffling inside, I made my way to Eve who was sitting on the couch with a book in her hands— Donte’s Inferno, as her pet snake perched on the arm of the couch like a guard dog. The same book with Braeden’s note used as a bookmark on my favorite passage. “Don’t worry, I didn’t touch your bookmark,” she said without looking up.
A heavy sense of dread and guilt made me swallow the painful burning around my eyes that I knew was something I rarely let happen—tears.
Dropping my body on the soft surface, I let my head rest in her lap, keeping my eyes focused on everything around us instead of her. If I made eye contact, I would see the pain, the longing, the healing I wasn’t capable of, and that alone would drive me to cry in her presence. “We should talk.” My voice rattled in a way that had my jaw so tense I wanted to break it just to melt it away along with the blurred vision taking over my sight.
“Isn’t that my line, Bowey?” She picked on me from behind her still-open book, knowing me all too well.
The silence grew to such great heights it was casting a shadow on me when I rolled off the couch and buried my face between her legs. It was easier for me if I didn’t have to see her reactions tug at the organ in my chest while my eyes leaked my guilt down my cheeks. “I’m so sorry, Eve. I’m so fucking sorry. I fuck things up because I’m not good enough and I can’t forgive myself for that. I hate myself for not keeping my promise to you, but I can’t forgive myself. I just can’t… I’m sorry.”
Her delicate hands smoothed down my wet hair, letting my face hide in her depths. “You have to forgive yourself, Bowey. We couldn’t save each other but we survived it all for each other. Aren’t you still surviving? Who are you surviving for?”
Eve was right. I am surviving and baiting off death just enough to call it that.
I could have just ended shit before I got here, but I didn’t.
Who was I surviving for if it wasn’t her?
“You. Always you, beautiful. You’re the reason I’m still existing.” I hadn’t ever spoken truer words in my life. She held my life in her hands, and I was finally giving her permission to break or burst my heart.
Her delicate hands dropped to mine, pressing them to her stomach just below the shirt I knew as mine. If she couldn’t have me participate in this marriage, she was going to wrap herself in me, drown in my scent, and pretend I wasn’t a distant memory.
“You have to stop surviving and start living, Bowey. Maybe for the little one in here.” Looking up at her, I let her see my tear-stained face and my gray eyes fogged up with emotions.
I was a mess, but I was her mess.
And now I belonged to the life we created too.
I mean
t to clarify her fertility when I couldn’t bother to wear a condom.
Lifting my head, I focused all my attention on her stomach even though she wasn’t showing at all. “Eve,” I swallowed the mix of emotions sitting in my throat. “You’re pregnant? I thought you couldn’t… I…” I couldn’t find better words through the sudden feelings of pride, reservation, and fear.
If there was a crutch for sobriety, it was that confession and the absolution in her voice when she told me she’s pregnant.
“My body has gotten more comfortable working right again now that I’m here with you. I’ve been sneaking food more and purging less. I only stopped eating because of him which caused my infertility.”
I was soaking wet, burying myself in her and trying to let the baptism do its fucking job of rebirthing me into this less fucked up world. “You don’t have to sneak or keep things from me, Eve. This is your home... No refunds.”
“No refunds,” her voice whispered when I pushed her shirt up and pressed my wet lips to her stomach, greeting the life we created.
Pure, innocent, and untouched by evil.
My voice cracked through thick tears burning down my cheeks, “I’m Bowen, your dad, hi.” Pressing my lips to her skin again, I swore I could feel the strength to stay sober flourishing inside of me. It threatened to lose all this if I didn’t at least try. “Forgive myself? Do you think that’s all it will take?”
Nodding softly, she played with my wet hair trying to stick to my forehead and focused on my hands still touching her stomach. “I’m scared too, it’s okay to be scared. I’m a lot like Severus Snake here… looks scary and tough but everything inside me is soft and fragile like flowers. I only ever feel strong when I think of you. We need you, more than you can give right now. You need to live again, Bowey.”