Inbetween

Chapter 27

Finn She’s alive. That’s all that matters.

I kept thinking it over and over, but I wasn’t fooling myself. Emma had almost died again. Because of me. I closed my eyes, forcing myself to remember what she’d looked like that last day. When the darkness was ready to swallow her. I needed to see it so I could justify what I was doing to her now.

What I’d done to her seventeen years ago when I’d pushed her into a life she didn’t choose.

I stepped into the quiet hospital room and found Anaya lighting up the corner of the room, her eyes focused on Cash asleep in a chair on the other side of the bed.

“Hey,” I said, softly. “Everything okay?”

She watched Cash a few seconds longer, then gave me her attention. “He hasn’t left. Not even to go to the bathroom. Do you find that odd?”

I leaned against the wall next to her. “No. He cares about her like family. Don’t you remember what it’s like to care about someone like that?”

Her gold eyes dimmed. “Sometimes, it’s so easy to forget.”

“Why do you think I always loved her?” I watched Emma’s chest rise and fall beneath the blanket, feeling my chest swell with warmth. “She doesn’t let me forget.”

When Anaya didn’t say anything I nudged her shoulder. “Thank you for not leaving her.”

She smoothed her hands over her dress. “It’s the least I could do. She didn’t deserve to go through something like that.”

Guilt burned in my chest. No. No, she absolutely did not deserve any of this.

“Besides,” she continued, nodding to the soundless television flickering in the corner of the room.

“I got to catch up on modern television.”

“You don’t even have the sound on.”

She laughed. “That’s the only thing that made it bearable.”

I noticed Anaya’s scythe pulsing with light at her side. “I’ve got it from here if you need to go.”

She looked at Emma and a soft smile tugged at her lips. “I know you do. Regardless of what you think, Finn, she’s lucky to have you.”

Her hand settled on my shoulder and a second later she was gone, leaving me alone with the sound of beeping machines and Emma’s ragged breathing.

I sank into a chair next to the bed and rested my elbows on my knees, choosing to look at the heart monitor instead of Emma. She was too black and blue. Too broken to keep my eyes on her for more than a second. It was hard to face something so horrific when I knew I’d been the one to cause it—the one to cause everything. Leaning over the bed, I kissed her on the top of her head. It wasn’t the real kind of kiss, the kind I wanted to give her, but it would have to do.

I pushed myself up and walked over to the window to keep myself from doing something stupid.

The moon glowed between the skeletal treetops, casting a spiderweb of shadows across the sparkling white parking lot. Stars winked. Burned. Taunted me with memories of the Inbetween.

If I couldn’t protect her from this, I was useless to her.

Behind me, the door opened and a nurse crept into the room. She pushed Emma’s hair out of her face then checked her vitals, doing her job quickly and efficiently, the way I had been expected to do mine for the last seven decades. The difference between us? She was in the business of preserving life.

I was in the business of ending it. After she was gone, my gaze drifted over to Emma. She moaned in her sleep and turned her head so that the puffy line of stitches that ran the length of her slender neck were visible. So many things burned through me. Rage. Guilt. Pain. I clenched my fist and listened to the reassuring beep of the heart monitor, letting the rhythm of the life flowing through her veins soothe me.

It didn’t take long for the pull to interrupt my thoughts. The cold crept though my insides, crackled in my skull. My fingers wrapped around my scythe and it pulsed under my palm. Trying to fight it, I braced myself on the wall, not wanting to leave her. Not now. Not after what had just happened.

“Finn?” Emma mumbled, her eyelids cracking open.

Thank God. I started forward, but my scythe stopped me in my tracks before I could get to her.

“I’m here,” I whispered, hoping she could hear. “I’m right here.”

Emma moaned and settled back into sleep. I took one last lingering look at her, at what I had done, and I let go.