Page 71 of Cutter's Hope

He sighed, “There’s scarring. Even if she got pregnant again she’d never be able to carry a baby to term… Those bastards really hurt your sister, I’m sorry.”

I just wished I’d killed more of them. I didn’t say that though. I wasn’t about to admit to murder out loud, even if he was cool with back alley dealings like this.

“What happens now?” I asked.

“I wait here for the clinic people to come back from lunch and they let me run your sisters labs, Cutter has some kind of deal with them. We just wanted her to have as much privacy as possible. Far as anyone knows she’s Faith Andrews.”

“That’s right,” I agreed. My stepfucker’s name had never suited either of my sisters. Of course he’d never treated either of them like he’d treated me, and my mom and the girls never knew about that. I scrubbed my face with my hands.

“It’ll be a day or two for some of the tests, Cutter’s fronting a lot of money to get her tests to the front of the line. Should know everything by the end of next week. I’ll be here a day or two with Hayden and Reave. Cutter’s putting us up at a local B&B, away from your sister, but I’ll be on hand in case she needs another IV or methadone becomes imperative…” I kind of lost him after that. Tuned him out, while my brain wrapped around and around that name…

Hayden.

So that’s who she was. I faked my way through the rest of the conversation and totally whooped my own ass on the inside for having to make him repeat himself on some things. I mean fuck I was supposed to be here for my sister,focusedon my sister… But I couldn’t help it. I had never in my life wanted anything more for myself than I wanted to try and forge something with Cutter.

I was so incredibly angry with myself. For allowing myself to be fooled into thinking that he could love me so easily, or that he would want only me… Gah… past insecurities, current events… they swamped me, rolled me under and drowned me. I was suffocating, I was sick of it and so when I parted ways with the doctor at the clinic I did probably one of the worst things I could do, but fuck. I’d earned it. I went straight for the boulevard and for one of the nearest open bars.

Time to fight fire with fire. My sorrows wanted to drown me, well I was going to drown them right back.

34

Cutter…

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t know…” Li’l Bit turned and looked at me and looked totally freaked out. It was about the thousandth time she’d said it and it wasn’t freaking helping the situation.

“Not your fault, Li’l Bit… this whole thing has been a lot of flying by the seat of our pants since she hit town and we haven’t exactly had enough downtime to set the rules,” I said in a bid to make her feel better.

Hope had been and gone from the clinic and she wouldn’t answer her phone for me. At first it’d rung and then gone to voice mail, so she was hitting the ‘ignore’ function on me. I tried to have one of the boys call her which ended in Atlas calling me back calling me all kinds of names for him getting told to fuck off.

It’d be funny if it didn’t feel like I was dying on the inside. Despite the calm exterior I was going out of my mind. Thoughts racing, one careening through my head right after the other before getting caught in the track and looping around and around and around and fuck this… Just breathe. My PTSD was having a fucking field day, anxiety riding at an all-time high letting its freak flag fly and all those thoughts in my head funneled right on down to the unthinkable…

I’d lost Hope.

Reaver held Li’l Bit in his lap and turned her face in his direction, eyes sparkling, he whispered something to her and kissed her and she smiled and nodded. Worlds away from the broken and sorrowful angel she’d left as months ago. Finding out your dead husband was alive after six months of grieving him being gone, spiraling down further every day… well, it wasn’t exactly something you bounced back from overnight.

Li’l Bit had left here with her man, my friend, and it looks like she was worlds better in a matter of just a few months. She pretty much oozed vitality. Put on weight and got her color back. Her sparkle and her fire… and while I was glad, I didn’t really feel a damn thing for her. There was no more jealousy, there was no more envy… I looked at them now and I was genuinelyhappyfor my friends and terrified at the same time that my shot at what they had, had just been blown clean out of the sparkling coastal waters in which we sat.

“You know how I know you’re in love? Like finally met the real deal?” Reaver asked me.

“How?” I muttered, not really giving a shit what was going to come out of his mouth.

“You got the same look on your ugly mug I did when I thought I’d lost my Doll forever. Fuck man, this your first fight?”

“No,” I said thinking back to our brawl in the sand.

“I think it is,” Li’l Bit was smiling and she winked at me.

“Jesus Christ, you think you two are in love and you got it all figured the fuck out for the rest of us?” I asked.

Reaver and Li’l Bit exchanged a look.

“What?” I demanded.

It was Hayden who answered, “She’s your air to breathe, your water to drink, your nourishment,” she said and fixed those bright green eyes on me. I leaned back.

“Yeah, yeah I guess she is. It’s like I’m missing an arm over here or something, not knowing where she is, knowing she’s hurting…”

Li’l Bit smiled beatifically, “That was how Ashton explained it to me, about her and Trig. I didn’t really know what she meant until Reaver,” she looked her man in the eyes and just that act alone put a smile on her face, made her fucking glow from the inside out. He leaned forward and kissed her, holding her face to his, deepening the kiss by slipping his tongue past her lips and the thought that I might never do the same with Hope… fuck man. It left me gutted.

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