Page 120 of Thin Lives

Bitch.

Cunt.

You deserve this.

I should have done this months ago.

My fucking son—mine, Emma.

Mine.

The baby wasn’t his.

Cross would never be his.

But it was the last thing she heard before her world went dark.

Emma wasn’t entirely sure when the awareness began to seep into her consciousness, but she knew it didn’t come all at once. It started with a tingling in her fingertips, and then light behind her eyes. Yet, even with those sensations prickling at the blackness of her mind, she still couldn’t seem to wake up.

She wanted to, though.

Mostly for the murmurs she could hear whispering around her. The ragged breaths, catching every so often, and the apologies slipping from his lips.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

I’m so sorry, Emmy.

This shouldn’t have happened.

Not again.

I’m sorry, baby.

More than anything, Emma wanted to reach out through the haze of darkness and the invisible weight keeping her down, and grab onto him. She wanted to pull him close, tell him it was okay, and that she would be okay.

She could hear it in his voice.

The guilt.

His blame.

This wasn’t his fault—he’d promised to fix things, and she knew he would.

He hadn’t done this.

“I’m so sorry,” she heard him say again as the blackness slipped back into her mind.

She was pretty sure she managed to tell him, “It’s okay, Cal.”

It wasn’t—but it would be.

Emma winced as Calisto ran the pads of his fingers over her bruised cheekbone. She couldn’t seem to get the taste of her blood out of her damn mouth. It didn’t matter all that much, anyway. She ignored the sting of her split lip, and the throbbing behind her eyes. The ache in her ribs would go away eventually.

What she really wanted to fix the most, what she hated seeing more than anything else, was the guilt and the wetness filling Calisto’s gaze as he looked her over.

He’d gotten her awake, though she had been mostly confused at first. The pain had come in swift and harsh, reminding her of every single little detail that had alluded her for those first few blissful seconds of awareness.

Her son was gone.