Her eyes close when I pull back, and she’s struggling to keep her emotions in check. My little girl has always prided herself in the ability to hide her emotions, but not from me. I’m her mother, she’ll never be able to hide anything from me.
“Are you going to tell me what I’ve missed or do I have to wait for Arlo?”
Aria’s eyes open, and a solemn look overtakes her features. Instantly, the gut-feeling of something terrible overwhelms me, and she doesn’t need to say it outright. I must’ve missed a lot.
“Well,” Aria clears her throat. “Blair’s gone.”
“Gone as in she left, or gone as in dead? Please be more specific here.”
“She left.”
A sigh of relief slips me. “Why?”
“See,” Aria chuckles, yet the sound is devoid of any humor. It’s dark, and it sends chills down my body to even think of what must’ve brought Blair to the point of upping and leaving. “That… is a long story.”
“We’ve got time, don’t we?”
Aria looks at me, dead in the eyes, and rips the bandaid right off, with no warning.
“Dad is dead.”
A small laugh slips me.
Then another one.
And a third one when I see that Aria isn’t laughing with me. She’s looking at me through her dull, almost dead eyes, and it’s all the proof I need. My heart absolutely shatters as soon as the realization dawns on me, my eyes swelling with tears. I manage to swallow them back, ignoring the ringing sensation in my ears.
“No, he isn’t.”
“Mom,” Aria whispers, taking my hand in hers. The tears fall down my face freely, and I’m in a state of shock. I can’t move, I can’t think — I can’tbreathe. Hudson can’t be dead. He can’t be. The love of my life couldn’t have died while I was in a fucking coma, right?
Right?
“No,” I defend, gasping for straws. “I would’ve felt it, Aria. Hudson isn’t dead.”
“Mom… please.”
“No,” I yell out, vision getting blurry. The heart monitor I’m connected to starts beeping, and I’m struggling to breathe. My lungs are collapsing, and my throat is closing up. All I can do is gasp for air, unable to get it inside of my body.
“Fuck,” Aria hisses, jumping to her feet. “Hold on, I’m going to grab the doctor.”
I barely register the words that leave her mouth, because my entire body is shutting down. Within minutes, there are nurses and doctors all around me, trying to reach me with their voices. Yet, I shut it all out.
This hurts.
My heart physically hurts.
It’s like someone has ripped it out of my chest, squeezed it, and tossed it into the trash can. My entire body aches for him, missing him, refusing to come to terms with the fact that my husband is gone.
That I was just here asleep while he was dying. Alone.
Hudson is fucking dead, and isn’t coming back.
Yet, I don’t quite believe it.
Hudson would never leave our children just like that. He would never leave me. The man I fell in love with and married would’ve fought back, and found his way back to me. That’s why I’m struggling to believe all of this. When I’m finally knocked out from all the medicine they’ve given me, all I do is dream of him. The first time I told him I loved him, the first time we managed to come up with a plan without trying to bite each other’s heads off, and more importantly, when we started our own little family. I’m not sure how long the medicine keeps me under. When I wake up, it’s pitch black outside, and I’m still in a state of haze. My eyes slowly peel open, and I glance around. There’s no nurses, no doctors, and no Aria.
But something catches my attention.
