Relief slams into me so hard my knees almost give out.
“There’s my girl.” I rest my forehead against hers, and she collapses into me, sobbing like her entire world just exploded.
I scoop her up in my arms and carry her back to bed. She clings to me, fingers twisting in my shirt as though I’m the only thing real enough to keep her safe.
I hold her for hours, her cries eventually turning into tiny hiccups.
She stays curled up against me long after the tears fade. Her iron-clad grip remains, as if letting go will mean falling helplessly back into her nightmare.
“What did you see?” I ask quietly.
“She was dead. My mom. I tried to help her. I called 9-1-1. They didn’t believe me. And then he came for me—The Octopus. He shot at me.” She sucks in a shaky breath. “It was so real, Chase.”
“You’re safe, baby,” I whisper. “They’re not here.”
My phone vibrates on the nightstand. I reach for it carefully, keeping my other arm around her.
Brax.
My pulse spikes as I answer. “Hey.”
He talks and I listen. My stomach drops, my jaw tightening.
“Okay,” I say, then hang up the phone.
Every muscle in my body goes still.
Erin lifts her head. “What did he say?” Her voice is quiet, almost like she’s expecting the worst.
“He found your mom.”
A beat passes.
I can’t soften the truth. I can’t change it. But she needs to know.
“She’s dead.”
There was a time,back when I was small, that I believed if you wished for what you wanted hard enough, it would come true. My one wish was always the same—that my mom could be like the other moms. The ones who hugged their kids at school pickup, who asked about spelling tests, or shared a wild and unexpected idea like having ice cream for dinner.
But she never did.
Not even once.
Instead, she drank and yelled. Every time she turned her cold eyes on me, I wondered why she didn’t just leave if she was so miserable with her life.
With me.
Now, I’ll never know.
Because she’s gone.
Dead.
My dad was shot right in front of me by the woman who gave birth to me. And now my mother, found in an alleyway unresponsive, is lying in a morgue with a bullet in her heart.
People talk about poetic justice as if it can be wrapped up with a neat little bow. But sitting here, holding the weight of both of my parents’ deaths, there’s not a damn poetic thing about it.
It just hurts.
