“Stop,” Polly said gently.
I met her eyes.
They were hard and soft at the same time. “The first thing we do when something so horrible we can’t comprehend happens is try to find someone to blame,” she said. “I don’t know why, it’s human nature. It’s also human nature to figure out a way to blame ourselves for other people’s actions. Good people that do that. People that want to believe the best in others who have done the worst to them. But I’m telling you right now, that your son being taken is not on you. Not even a little bit. I know me saying that isn’t going to mean shit until he’s here, but it’s the truth. You don’t have to believe it right now, but I just want you to hear it anyway.”
She squeezed my hand. Took a breath.
“I promise that this horror will stop being this bad,” she said. “I can’t promise it will ever be truly over, because when people like us, those deep feeling good people, experience something that punctures to our bones, the horror kind of stays. Even when it’s covered in joy and happiness in love, it’s always there. Like a root we’re unable to pull out. I’m not going to lie to you and say you’ll forget this time. It will haunt you forever. But I can promise you that flowers grow and bloom even over the most rotten of roots.”
I blinked rapidly at her. The poetry of her words. The pain in them. It was that pain I held onto. It was incredibly selfish of me, to be happy to see some of her hurt exposed so I didn’t feel so alone in mine, but it was a life raft. And I was clutching it.
Because I’d drown otherwise.
So I held onto this kind woman’s hands and the evidence of her suffering and pain.
I snapped up the second I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. I wanted to run to the door and thrust it open but my legs were frozen in place. Terror stuck me to the spot. Fear that it would be someone opening that door with news I would not survive.
So I stayed, frozen, listening to those footsteps, straining to hear smaller ones, the sound of a familiar voice.
I couldn’t hear over the dull roar in my ears.
Then the handle turned.
I held my breath.
“Momma!” my little boy screamed, grinning with a beam that speared into my soul. “Captain America came to get me.”
My vision blurred and I struggled to stay up with the weight of my relief. My utter joy. Nathan was here, standing in front of me, wearing strange pressed and beige clothes but he was clean. Safe.
He was frickin’ smiling.
I’d been so certain I wouldn’t be able to handle the bad news I didn’t consider that the good news—the best news that could ever exist—would hit me just as heavily.
Nathan’s small hand was engulfed in a much larger one, clinging to it.
I followed the hand, the muscled arm upward to dead eyes.
Not dead, no, something else.
The aggressive, violent man who I’d been so sure ate puppies for protein was holding my son’s hand.
It was jarring.
For about half a second.
Because there was only one thing important to me at this moment.
It was the little human being grinning at me like there was no reason in the world to be unhappy.
He ran at me at the same time I sank to my knees.
Nathan’s little body hit mine, and I wrapped my arms around him, inhaling strongly.
“I missed you, sugarbear,” he said into my chest.
“I missed you too, honeybun,” I choked into his hair, willing myself to keep the promise I’d made to not break down in tears.
I inhaled deeply, pressing my face to his head.
“Are you smelling my hair?” his little voice asked, muffled from how tightly I was holding him. I couldn’t physically loosen my grip. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to loosen my grip again.
“Only because it smells so good,” I replied, my voice still thick and choked with unshed tears.
There was a pause. “Well, Mommy, I’m sorry to say that you don’t smell good. Did you forget to shower again?”
There was a choked giggle from behind me.
When I’d thought—in this very room, mere hours ago—that I’d never smile again, my little boy made me smile.
Keltan had kept his promise.
I had my son back.
Chapter Four
Lance
He should’ve left them.
The second the tiny hand released his, he should’ve walked out of the room. Then he should’ve kept walking, out of the office, down to the parking lot and onto his bike. Then he should’ve driven. A long fucking way away from here. To the ocean. Where he could smell the salt and nothing else.
But he didn’t.
He just stood there, watched Elena sink to her knees as she lost the ability to keep herself upright. Watched as the kid ran full force into his mom.