Page 75 of Between Brothers

Chapter 32

Hayley

I didn’t know what to do.

For myself or for him… The look of raw pain in his eyes in the hospital corridor told me everything I needed to know and I just folded like his paper creations, only instead of something beautiful, I was left as nothing more than a crumpled sobbing mess on the hospital floor.

I looked up when Dragon took my hands and helped me to my feet. Blue was gone… just like that… gone. Just like Cell?God, please don’t let it be just like Cell… don’t let me lose them both.

“I know, ‘salright, chica. We got you.” I stood shaking and nauseous and took the comfort provided to me by the surrounding club members, dying inside like I’d lost an important part of me… and I had. We both had, except I felt like, in that instant, I’d lost them both…

“I don’t know what to do…” I said mournfully, and Dragon hugged me tight.

“Ain’t gotta do nothing, honey, that’s what we’re for.”

I wanted to believe him, and it turned out that he was right… I didn’t have to do anything like plan the funeral, or cook for anyone, or handle any of that stuff. I just had to show up, which I did, and hope against hope that Blue…

I didn’t see Blue. He didn’t come to me. He didn’t call or answer the phone. He didn’t answer my texts either.

I knew he was hurting, and I was hurting, too but I needed to tell him. I’d needed to tell them both, but I couldn’t. Not now… but one day stretched into two, then two into four and then it was the wake and I was at the club with all of these people and all I wanted to do was die myself, but I couldn’t.

Not with the life growing inside of me.

“Have you seen him?” I asked numbly.

Melody was sitting on one side of me, and Dani took a seat on the other… She put a hand on my back and rubbed useless circles, her face full of sympathy as I stared at Duracell’s prone form in his casket.

He looked like he was asleep, and I hated that, because it was all wrong because even in sleep he was tense and his face held that wicked edge of danger and he didn’t look like that lying there… he looked gone… because he was and I would never see him again. I would never feel him again, and I would never tell him that he had a fifty-fifty chance that he was going to be a father and that killed me more than anything.

No one knew. Not even my dad… I wouldn’t tell anyone until I could tell Blue or Cell and I’d never had the chance… I’d only taken the test and found out two days before...

I’m going to be a single parent. He’s abandoned you…my mind whispered and I faltered, the tears pouring from my eyes, body shaking with the sobs I tried so hard to suppress but couldn’t.

Melody and Dani both hugged me and tried to console me but I needed Blue…

“Nobody’s heard from him, but it’s Blue… his whole world revolved around Cell, until you,” Dani said kindly.

Everett came near with her brand new baby boy in her arms, standing near and delivering the message…

“He’s here, he just walked in.”

I looked up hopeful, but the look on her face, it wasn’t a good one. If anything it was downright tempestuous. I stood up and looked past her at Blue… but he wasn’t my Blue.

His hair was unkempt and he wore the same clothes that he’d had on in the hospital four days earlier. His eyes were red rimmed but whether it was from a lack of sleep or drugs I couldn’t tell and it did look like he was on something…

I felt my shoulders drop and I shook my head.

I couldn’t… I couldn’t tell him, not when he was like this. I wouldn’t tell him. Not if this was how it was going to be.

I pressed my hands to my stomach and made a hard decision right then and there. I would do this alone. I couldn’t and wouldn’t expose a baby, my baby to Blue. Not when he was like this… drunk, strung out… I loved him, I loved him with everything that I was and I didn’t want to lose him, but the way he looked at me, seeing me without even really seeing me told me that this was a lost cause… at least for now.

“Hayley?” he asked, his voice dreamlike and far away.

I closed my eyes, took a moment and just breathed.

“Melody,” I said, voice hollow,“do you think Archer could take me home?”

“Yeah, honey… two seconds.”

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