Page 127 of It Must Be Fate

Blink.

“If you want to die too, I can make it happen.”

Blink.

“NO!” My scream sounds louder than what I’m capable of right now. I realize it’s because Ivy’s voice joined mine, horror at Rhodes’s offer bleeding into her tone just like it did mine.

Peter waves the gun, urging Rhodes to follow him down the stairs.

“I’m sorry, Mum. I’m so sorry,” Rhodes whispers as he walks past me.

I see he’s not crying.

He’s scared and determined and the combination destroys me.

“Please…”

Rhodes is at the bottom of the stairs when he turns around. His eyes are glassy now.

“Dad will save you. I know he will.” He starts crying. “Please don’t die.”

Blink.

This time, my eyes don’t reopen. Before I go, my last thoughts are whether I’ll ever wake up again and, if I do, whether my son and my best friend’s daughter will both be dead.

Darkness takes me and I lose consciousness

A single tear slips down my cheek.

***

Chapter Thirty

Bellamy

When I next open my eyes, I’m lying in a hospital room surrounded by my friends, their husbands and mine conspicuously absent. At first, I have no immediate memory of what happened. I wake and smile when I see my loved ones. That smile wipes off in the flutter of a heartbeat when I see the somber expressions on their faces.

And everything comes screaming back to me.

The abject horror. The gut-wrenching fear.

The heart-rending realization that my son was taken.

Tears flood my eyes. Six squeezes my hand in both of hers, an equally stricken look splashed across her features. She tries for me, a tremulous smile painting itself across her lips, but she can’t manage to hold it up and it disappears as quickly as it materialized.

“Tell me it was a bad dream.”

Her mouth opens and closes, words failing her. Her lips flatten into a tight line and her eyes water.

I look at Nera. “Please, Ner.”

She shakes her head. “I wish I could. More than anything, I wish I could.”

The tears spill over when I see Thayer huddled in the corner, her legs pulled into her body and her arms wrapped around herself.

“Thayer…” My mouth is suddenly as dry as my cheeks are wet. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so, sorry. I—”

She stands and comes to the bed, flinging her arms around my body. I feel her tears fall onto the skin at the base of my neck.

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