Page 94 of Riot Reunion
It hits me all at once.
The cord around my throat?
Fuck!
With numb fingers, I pull at the knot at the back of my neck, frantically working to get it lose. The strands unravel. Trembling, I remove the plastic guard around the razor blade that Wren used to cut my clothes away last week…
…and I move behind Fitz, grabbing a fistful of his tangled hair…
…and I reach around…
…andslit his throat from ear to fucking ear.
Blood spurts from the yawning wound I’ve just slashed into Wesley Fitzpatrick’s neck, pulsing out of his carotid artery. It spews out of him so violently that it hits Wren’s bedroom wall six feet away. It also rains down on Wren, who, panting, rolls out from underneath Fitz, shoving the other man’s body away.
Gurgling, Fitz holds his hands to his throat, confusion tugging at his eyebrows as he looks down to his palms and finds them a slippery red.
“Fuck,” he croaks, sounding surprised.
And then he topples sideways, face-planting on Wren’s rug, and he dies.
37
PAX
“This isn’t right.”Robert sighs through his fingers, his hands covering his face.
“I’d have thought you’d be pleased,” I say coldly, eyeing him with contempt as we wait for the doctor to return.
Robert drops his hands. “How can you say that? This is a huge decision. Presley should be the one making it. She deserves the opportunity to make it for herself.”
I glower at him pointedly, and as if he realizes how hypocritical this statement makes him, he turns away, directing his focus to the floor, shame flushing his cheeks.
The bastardshouldbe ashamed. This whole time, he’s been trying to make decisions for his daughter, deciding whathethinks is best for her, trying to coerce her into doing what he wants her to do. And now she’s lying unconscious in a hospital bed, and Robert Witton has just made the decision for her that if the surgeons deem it necessary, they should perform a hysterectomy and remove any chance that she will ever be able to carry her own children, in the hope that it’s what she would want.
Idothink it’s what Chase would choose. She’d want to live. My mind has already scoured through the possibilities this choice will leave us with, should it come to fruition. We can foster. Adopt. We have options. We might decide we don’t even want kids. This situation was thrust on us out of the blue. We didn’t get a chance to talk about what we wanted our lives to look like in the future. We didn’t even get a chance tothinkabout it.
“Bet you’re regretting not letting me ask her to marry me now,” I say flatly, getting to my feet. “Icould have made the decision and told them what to do. Would have let you off the hook. Maybe if you’d let me make the decision to be there for Chase in the first place, none of this would be happening. We’d have booked in for a fucking scan, at least. Seen that there was a problem.”
“That’s not fair, Pax. Be reasonable. I only did what I thought was best for Presley. Wouldn’t you want the same for your child? Wouldn’t you want to protect their best interests at all costs?”
“I don’t know. I just lostmykid.”
His face falls. The reality of what I just said resides like a dull weight in the center of my chest. It throbs there, aching, begging for attention, but I don’t have the resources to attend to it right now. I can only think about Chase, lying on that operating table. Robert’s chosen to focus on the decision he had to make for Chase, but there’s a very real chance that she might not even survive the surgery. I’m afraid of what comes next if that happens. Iwillbe held accountable for my actions, which will likely mean prison time; once my rage is done with me, Mountain Lakes will be left in ruins.
“I’m sorry, Pax,” Robert murmurs. “I realize that I haven’t been very fair to you. I know how much you love her.”
“No, Robert. I don’t think you do.”
We sit in silence after that. The hospital rushes and flows around us, the nurses and the doctors like platelets flowing through an arterial vein, carrying much-needed supplies around a body, performing vital tasks.
The lights overhead emit an awful, penetrating hum.
The smell of cleaning products and hand sanitizer makes me want to vomit.
An hour passes.
I sit in the chair next to Robert, the back of my head resting against the wall, my eyes closed, counting in my head—it’s the only way to stave off the beginnings of the panic attack I feel building inside me. When a voice interrupts my counting at last, it doesn’t belong to Chase’s surgeon.
