Page 38 of Healed

This room was rich with Rachel—her clothes still hung in the closet, her skincare products still on the table.

It felt like yet another betrayal to my family.

They chose this life, Gabby. They chose war. You cannot blame anyone else except the people responsible.

And whilst I knew that was true, I still couldn’t help but shoulder the guilt.

What sort of person did it make me? To want to be friends with Rachel? To want to be a part of the camaraderie I could see here? To want the man I still loved, despite what he had done?

Somewhere in the middle of the night, it had dawned on me that I’d been left to cry on my own for hours. And rather than being upset by that, I’d cried even harder out of sheer relief.

No one was on a schedule to keep an eye on me. Shadows of Nico’s guards were not creeping under my door. There were no locks keeping me in. Nobody came to check if I was still here or whether I had run.

I was being left to make choices. For the first time in a long time, every decision was my own.

I’d cried tears of pure happiness. And then cried some more, feeling selfish for being happy when my happiness had come with such sacrifices.

Suffice to say, when I woke, I wasn’t in the best of moods. My eyes felt like sandpaper and were bloodshot to boot. My throat felt like razor blades, and I had a pounding headache that made me feel borderline feral.

Judging by the noises I could hear downstairs, it sounded like everyone else’s day was well underway, and it was the last thing I wanted to deal with. A quick glance at the clock told me it was well past lunchtime, and it wouldn’t be long before the rest of the club entered their clubhouse, and I would be thrown into the lion’s den. I couldn’t think of anything worse, yet I was aware I couldn’t hide in this room for the rest of my life—I’d just escaped that existence. I wasn’t about to force myself to relive it in a new location.

So with my feet feeling like concrete bricks, something I had to reluctantly force to move, I quickly hopped in a shower, brushed my teeth, and made my way downstairs.

“New,” a babbling voice said to me, stopping me in my tracks. I looked down to see the most beautiful blonde-haired toddler, with bright green eyes and a dimple in either of his cheeks. “New,” he repeated.

“Yo, Axe-man,” Dante called from the kitchen. “Come get your toast.”

“New,” the toddler called back, still staring at me with that unnerving, unblinking way.

I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t do anything. Because when I looked down at this child, my heart was trapped in a vice-grip.

Was this what our baby would have looked like? Would he have inherited his father’s blonde hair? Would he have my brown eyes? Or would his father’s blue genetics have won?

I’d never know.

“Axe-man!” Dante called again, a bit more firmly this time.

“New,” he said for the third time, but this time he accompanied it by raising his hands and showing me a toy car clutched tightly in his chubby fist.

Funnily enough, that’s what broke me.

I sank down to my knees, gasping in delight. “Wow!” I breathed, tentatively touching the toy, whilst at the same time letting him know I wasn’t going to be taking it from him. “This is amazing. Is this yours?”

“Mine,” he grinned back. “Mine car.”

“You must be a very special boy to have such a wonderful car like that. Did—”

“Who gave the kid a car again?” Vienna boomed from behind me, almost making me fall over with fright.

I’d just about steadied myself when I saw him pick Axel up, flip him upside down, and then held him by his hips, bringing their faces close together.

“Where’s your bike, Axolotl?”

Axel squealed with delight and clutched Vienna’s face, giving him a gummy smile complete with drool. And then he proceeded to spit all over Vienna’s face in what I assume was an attempt to kiss him.

“Ahh, we’ve engaged in war, have we?” Vienna grinned, flipping Axel over his shoulder.

Axel shrieked, looking absolutely manic as Vienna spun him around, bits of drool flying from his mouth as he giggled and babbled his delight.