“No what?”
She cringes a bit. “Chloe asked if we could—well, never mind. I don’t feel like repeating her salty language.”
A dull laugh thumps through my chest. “Sorry, Chloe. As happy as I am that you’re housing Skyla at the moment, I don’t think I could take things that far. Especially knowing you’re lurking in there somewhere.”
She makes a face. “Chloe says it’s nothing the two of you haven’t done before.” She holds up a finger. “I’ve got this, Logan.” She averts her eyes. “Down, Chloe. I’ll be out soon enough and you can go barhopping or standing on a corner, or whatever it is you do to find men.” Her mouth falls open. “She says she’s going after Liam.”
Both Skyla and I groan.
“I hope she’s kidding.”
“She says she’s not.” Skyla lops her head to the side. “And if that doesn’t work, she’s going after Barron.” A laugh gurgles from her. “Emma had better watch her back.” She presses her nose to mine. “Logan, I’m so glad you believe me. Oh, and one more thing”— she bites down over her lower lip in the exact adorable way Skyla has done ever since I met her—“Gage knows. I had lunch with him and he figured it out.”
“Makes sense.” I shake my head. “I let him know you were acting strangely, and he said to talk to Chloe. He said she’s been acting strangely lately, too.”
“Gage said that?” She narrows her gaze with suspicion. “It’s almost as if he wanted to bring us back together.” She glances past me, her gaze traveling out the window at the bruised Paragon sky. “I want to romanticize that he might be lonely—that he might regret his position in life. But then I remember how he heartlessly smothered me with his so-called affection, and I want him dead, too. If he was willing to do that to me, who knows what he’s capable of doing to our children. Gage is off the chain like never before. He’s a hellhound running loose with his tail on fire, and he wants everyone to pay for the pain he’s in. He’s lethal to any and everyone. The entire world is in peril.”
I cast a glance out the window at the ever-darkening sky.
“He’s going down, Skyla. Ezrina is finalizing the serum we need to hide the markers, and she’s going to nail it to the wall soon enough. Gage Oliver’s days are numbered.”
Jaxson pipes up from the next room, and I quickly bring him back to the bed with us.
“Give him to me.” She takes the squirming prince, and I give her the bottle in case she needs it. “My perfect son. Mommy loves you so much. I’m sorry about this. I’m so sorry about everything.” Skyla raises those dark Chloe-eyes my way. “We’re getting the boys and bringing them home.” She tips her head back in a fit or momentary frustration. “Shoot. I forgot about Rory. We can’t let her know that I’m here. I need to catch her off guard. She’s just as wily and dangerous as Gage.”
“So it’s business as usual?”
“Asunusualis more like it. I’ll stay here.” She blinks back. “Chloe just freaked out. She thinks I should stay at Brody’s place or Rory might be tipped off.”
“Maybe just spend the night there. Michelle and Lexy spend all of their time here. No one will bat a lash if you visit.” I pull her in as she cradles Jaxson in her arms. “Now how are we going to get rid of that wicked sister of yours?”
“I don’t know. But I’m guessing Candace Messenger is the door we need to walk through.”
“I’m guessing you’re right.”
“And you’re the key, Logan. I asked her to put me back in my body. She didn’t do it for me. But she’ll do it for you. She’ll do anything for you, Logan.”
Skyla is right. Candace will do anything for me. She gave me a new body and landed me in another decade entirely so I could be with Skyla. She gifted me a Treble so that my life could go on seamlessly after Chloe killed me. She then restored my life—she reunited me with Skyla once again. And now Skyla is badly displaced and she needs to be restored. Candace may not do it for Skyla. But she will do it for me.
I’ll make sure of it.
And then I’ll make sure Gage pays.
5
Wesley
It’s been nothing but restless nights since the moment my world fractured. I didn’t think I could breathe without Laken by my side. For certain I knew I couldn’t sleep. But that much-needed rest does come. It arrives in fractions in the night, in snippets during a stolen hour in the afternoon, and sometimes in the middle of a nice, hot shower I’ll have the sudden urge to doze off and drown by proxy.
Last night was no different. I finally went to bed at three-thirty in the morning, the perfect hour I find to pass out into a coma if but for a few minutes. I woke up drugged at sixty-thirty, squinted at my phone in the event Laken sent a text—of which she has sent two since the incident, both regarding something she needed for our son, Wes.
But there’s no text from Laken today, so I closed my eyes and tried to drift back to that still blackness that I pray will devour me. I’ve had a headache for days. My head feels heavy, sitting like a bowling ball over my shoulders, ready to roll right off if I make one wrong move. I close my eyes and beg my body to drift back to sleep. And then the release comes. My body takes on that weightless feeling I long for, and my thoughts scatter in twelve different directions like birds in flight, as sleep pulls me under with its promise of erasing all memory of the planet for one blissful moment in time.
The door bursts open to my room, and the pitter-patter of little feet runs this way, forcing me out of any hope that sleep could have given me.
“Daddy!” Tobie climbs onto the bed and lands over me with a thump.
“Oof,” I exaggerate my injuries just to hear her laugh and she does. Tobie giggles easy and light like a babbling brook descending straight from the throne of God.
