Page 7 of Bliss: Part 2
Odin was next. He gripped his brother’s shoulder, eyes meeting mine. “You have no idea how fucking thankful we are.”
“You don’t owe me shit,” I told him. “Just let me know how she’s doing.”
“We will. I promise.”
The others then came. Boys, four of them. Some with tears in their eyes. Some too shocked to speak. They thanked me one by one, and I let them. I didn’t know how they were related. I just knew that they were either Odin’s or Owen’s. But it didn’t really matter how they were related to Bliss. You could see it in the way they carried themselves that they were family. One unit. Bound by love and fear and relief.
The doctor came out to tell us that she was stable and probably awake soon. “You can visit her now.”
I stepped back and let them go.
That was their moment. Not mine.
My part was done.
I didn’t want a reward. Didn’t want my name in the papers or any shit like that.
I just wanted Bliss to be okay. To know she made it. To see her family’s faces and feel safe again.
That was enough for me.
Thirty-Three
Dash
I couldn’t stop crying.
God knows I’d tried to hold it together for hours now, but every time I looked at her lying there, I fell apart all over again.
Bliss was hooked up to too many machines for someone so small. One of them beeped steadily, pumping medicine through a thin line in her arm, and another tracked her heartbeat, a sound that had quickly become the only thing chaining me to sanity. As long as I heard it, I could believe she was still fighting.
The room was quiet except for that machine, our muffled sobs, and the occasional creak of someone shifting in a chair. I was sitting next to her bed, holding her cold hand in both of mine.
She hadn’t woken up yet. Not since they found her. And we didn’t know when she would.
There was a dull ache behind my eyes. I had been crying too much and sleeping too little. Three days of searching and hoping and imagining the worst had left me raw. And now that we had her back, there wasn’t even relief. Just more fear. More uncertainty.
The doctors hadn’t told us much. Only that they were still running toxicology and trauma tests. They suspected drugs. Someone had given her something, likely more than one kind. And there were bruises. A lot of them. On her arms, her ribs, her neck.
They didn’t come out and say it, but we weren’t stupid. We knew what they were looking for. We knew what they feared had happened.
I couldn’t even let myself go there. If I did, I’d destroy something. I’d break this whole damn hospital apart with my bare hands. If I knew who had done this to her, what sick bastard had taken her, drugged her, hurt her, I wouldn’t care about the law or consequences or what kind of man I was supposed to be.
I’d end him. Simple as that.
But right now, I couldn’t do anything except hold her hand and hope to God she came back to us. That when she opened her eyes, the light would still be there. Her spark. Her joy.
She’d been the heart of this family. Not just Owen’s little girl. She wasourgirl. She brought everyone together. Her laugh lit up a room, and the way she loved people—how deeply, how fully—it made you want to be better. We couldn’t lose her. Not now. Not after everything.
My dad came up next to me and wrapped an arm around my shoulder. I didn’t even flinch away this time. I was too far gone.
“You’re alright, son,” he said quietly. His voice was rough from lack of sleep. “She’s going to be okay.”
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. I just let out a shaky breath and leaned into him slightly, my eyes still glued to Bliss. Her chest rose and fell so slowly under the hospital blanket that I kept panicking between each breath. Was she still breathing? Had she stopped?
“What if she’s not?” I finally whispered. “What if she wakes up and she’s not the same? What if whoever did this took more than just time from her? What if they took…everything?”
Dad didn’t have an answer for that. No one did.
