Chapter 53: : Chapter 53

I open my eyes.

It’s surrounding me. Here, in this unfamiliar space, somehow keeping me grounded. Warming me from head to toe in a peculiar comfort.

It’s something I’ve learned to accept and let in over the past few months. Changing me in every way.

My lashes flutter open, and the pain in my head is almost unbearable. That is until I see .

His hair is a mess, tossed about crazily. White-blond strands, shooting out in all directions on my lap. His arm is draped across my thighs and the other is clutching something in my lap, but I can’t seem to get my eyes to focus on anything.

I feel exhausted. I’m not sure how I ended up with him clutching onto me in a hospital bed like I might evaporate if any part of his body isn’t sealed against mine.

We always seem to find each other, damned in our own right, abandoned, lost to our own personal hell. Maybe our lives weren’t meant to intertwine, but something bigger brought us together. Or maybe we’re just a couple of the lucky ones who find comradery in the chaos. Lucky as fuck.

I lift my hand to touch him, feeling the pull of tape and a needle in my hand, making me flinch. Yep, definitely alive. A reminder of the dinner flashes before my eyes and my heart sinks. Where’s Nic? How is she? Is that how I ended up here? Did I try to kill myself? No, I’d never. When I cut, I’m careful. I don’t feel pain in my legs as if I tried. I never wanted to die, only ease the guilt that never leaves me. I could never leave a world with him in it.

I ignore the reminder of the pain and reach for him, anyway. As soon as my hand touches his soft hair, a sigh escapes me. I thread my fingers through it, how I do, holding the back of his head while rubbing my thumb along the softness. He brings a peace to my tortured soul I’ve never known. I know whatever is happening is going to be okay now, because he’s here with me, along with that feeling of his unrelenting love that’s kept me grounded. He brought me back, that much I know.

I don’t even try to focus my eyes. They feel heavy again, so I close them.

I feel the weight of his head moving on my lap.

“Her hand!” he shrieks, his voice laced with shock. My hand drops to my lap as he notices where it was on the back of his head. “She touched me!”

I don’t know who he’s talking to, but his excitement is adorable. He hasn’t even realized I’m listening to him. I can hear him, but I can’t see him.

It takes everything in me to open my eyelids as I squint to adjust to the light seeping through the opened window. Attempting to clear the blur, I blink a few times until things finally come into focus.

He turns to face me, and my stomach drops at the sight. I feel myself suck in a breath in complete horror.

We sit there, just staring at each other, both of our faces mirroring the shock. We speak at the same time.

“What happened to you?!”

“You don’t remember me?!”

My brows lower as I try to register what he’s talking about.

“Han, it’s me…Kai,” he breathes, the panic in his eyes confusing me when he leans back warily, as if suddenly afraid he’s invading my space.

“You’re a little too intense to forget, Big Bird.” I croak out, my throat still hoarse and somewhat painful for some reason.

That makes his eyes widen, and a huge open-mouthed smile takes over his face. Before he or I can say anything more, he captures my lips in his mouth, cupping the sides of my face, his hair dropping to my forehead.

I close my eyes, sighing as the sensation of his lips on mine ignites a fire in the pit of my belly again. A feeling I felt the first time he kissed me on the hood of his car that night outside the club. A feeling I’d never felt before him, one that initially shocked the fuck outta me.

He pulls back, his look of happiness gone, a new look of concern coating his icy blue eyes.

“I thought…I worried…” he stutters, shaking his head and looking from my eyes to my mouth and back.

His panicked eyes gloss over me before he lets out a deep breath, as if finally able to. As if he’d already begun settling into despair. I cup his bloodied, swollen face, holding his forehead to mine as we stare into each other. Me, staring lovingly, him, staring in complete wonder, as if we just got a second chance at life.

“It’s my fault. The stuff you had…it was laced,” he stutters, anxiety racking through him. “I knew it was bad, and I was attempting to stop them from producing, but then you took it, thinking it was normal when you needed the numb. And I put you here, in a coma. I put you here, and I can’t ever forgive myself–”

“Kai…no. My problems are my own.” I interrupt, letting the reality sink in.

“You couldn’t have known…”

He breaks down into his hands on my lap; the guilt weighing heavily. He’s drowning himself in the shame of it all. But I don’t blame him for anything. This was on me, and it’s up to me to deal with my coping mechanisms and finally fix things. For me, for Nic, for him.

I pull his heavy head, back up to mine, sealing our foreheads again.

“I’m sorry for ever making you feel like you’d lost me,” I whisper against his lips, echoing his words from a different time.

He screws his eyes tightly, running his hands over my hair as tears build and fall down his cheeks.

I love seeing him cry for one reason alone. He wears his emotions on his sleeve. It’s my favorite trait of his, his inability to hide the way he feels. If men crying is a trait?

“What happened to your face?” I ask, gently touching his swollen eye.

“Nothing,” he replies simply, brushing it off.

“Liar,” I retort.

“Indeed,” he says, sniffing as a smirk pulls at the corner of his mouth.

“Painful?” I ask, worry setting in.

The corners of his eyes pinch together as if contemplating the answer. “Worthwhile.”

We’re right back in our one-worded conversations again. A weird little thing we do but never talk about.

“I love you,” I say with an exacerbated sigh. “I’ve loved you for so long, Kai. Centuries of love enclosed in a few short months.”

He tightens his jaw at the sentiment before his lips finally part and a breath of relief leaves him.

His lips press against mine again softly, sweet love in every kiss before pulling back slightly to say something between us.

“We really need to brush your teeth, baby.” He kisses me again like it truly doesn’t affect him, but he needed me to know.

The harsh statement hits me before I break out into laughter.

He sits up with pure joy in his eyes, helping to sit me up better.

It’s then that I see Chauncy. My stomach drops for the second time today.

“What?!” I reach for him in my lap, holding the old squirrel up before me. “How did you…where did you–”

“Norbert wasn’t lying,” he interrupts me with a simple grin. “He told me if I brought the band together, I’d bring you back. And I did, Han. I brought you back.”

“You did, Kai. You brought me back. I felt you here, and somehow you found him,” I cry out, clutching him to my chest. “My Chauncy.”

“Chauncy?” He tips his head to the side. “Not even surprised.”

I’d been searching for him ever since Bran dispersed the Mariachi band out of hate the night after he found out about Sera and I. Guess stealing your ex’s new fling out from under him can set his anger into overdrive. He knew how much that little animal band meant to me after I stupidly told him they held such significance. What he didn’t know is everything the man in front of me does. Kai knows my secrets and loves me even more because of them.

I never thought I could be lovable after what I’d been through. I never wanted a love that could take hold of my being, make me incapable of living without it, like I’d seen. I fought to fend it away, to deny it until I couldn’t anymore. Until it seeped into my veins, into my blood, into my bones, settling itself deep within my being like a cancer I couldn’t live without. I’d succumb to it, die from it in order to be reborn again with him.

Kai never let up. He wouldn’t allow for a superficial love. He wanted my dark like no one did. He craved it, begged for it, knowing it was those pieces of me that made me whole. It was those pieces I didn’t want anyone to touch for fear of scarring them with my sharp edges. But he touched them. He grabbed hold of everything I feared he would. He bled with me as I cut into him with my past. Broke alongside me, so we could mend ourselves together in a new form, stronger than before.

I don’t know what I did to deserve a man like him in my life, but I’m so grateful he found me, sunk his claws into me, and never let go.

“I just want to be good for you, Johanna,” he whispers, resting his temple near mine as we both gaze at Chauncy. “I love you with everything.”

I get goosebumps on my arms. Every time he calls me Johanna, it just feels more real. He’s my family now. The family that finds you.

“You are good for me,” I reply, turning my face to him. “No one could ever be better.”

He kisses my lips again, like the time without me has been as awful as his face makes it look.

“How do you feel?” He asks, his hand running down the side of my cheek.

“Confused, mostly,” I admit. I lean into his hand. “But I know I’ll be alright.”

He stares at me for a moment until it sinks in. I’ll be alright now, I know that. Because he’s here with me. He kisses my forehead softly.

“I’m clean now,” he whispers after pulling back from the kiss, searching my eyes with a subtle nervousness. “I’m making changes. For us.”

I look back and forth between his eyes, reading into his look.

“That’s why you were sick,” I say, finally understanding. “Kai, you were detoxing? Why didn’t you tell me?” I cup the side of his face, feeling awful, knowing he was silently trying to struggle with it.

“It was just something that happened. I didn’t plan it.” He shakes his head lightly. “Plus, I worried if I made it a real thing and voiced it, I wouldn’t stick to it.”

He shrugs his shoulders lightly, as if it’s not a big deal. But, it’s a big deal. And even if I’ve been a user for years, I know how hard it can be to give it up cold turkey, especially around other users.

People use for many different reasons. To feel good, for fun, to numb…to forget. Everyone has their reason, but Kai’s always seemed veiled as a good time. What may have started out as fun and recreational became a crutch for him when he felt he wasn’t better than the toxicities around him. I saw it in the short time I’ve known him. Drugs became the only thing he knew. Dealing, the only thing he was good at. He refused to invest in himself because he never felt worth it or saw a real reason to. He’s the kind of guy that lived for today, not for tomorrow.

The knowledge of that upset me.

It wasn’t until he started showing me how obsessive he could be that I finally understood it. He had an addictive personality and latched onto things he knew could hurt him because then he would never be disappointed. He knew what to expect. But I wanted him to love himself the way he loved me. I desperately ached for him to love the man I knew was worth loving. I wanted him addicted to who he was and who he could be.

It appears over time, he’d done just that.

I shake my head as we stare at one another. “I’m so in awe of your strength.”

“Says the girl who just woke up from a coma.” He chuckles, still cupping my face as his eyes well with tears. “So much has happened. There’s so much to digest.”

I wondered about that. What happened since Cole found out the truth of how our mother died? What happened since I took that trip to the cove to find my release from the endless wound? What happened to him as he went out in search of the last piece of a past I’d actively tried to forget but never could?

Would I finally be able to work through my trauma and mend that relationship with my sister? Could she ever forgive me for knowing the secrets I held so deep? Would Kai and I be able to depend on each other without the toxicities that numbed us? This was a new beginning of sorts. A start to a new discovery of dealing with the things that hurt us, coping in healthy ways, and finally working through our problems together.

I couldn’t have made it without the man that tore my walls down with his excessive love and overbearing personality. He was always just what I needed. Full of the life that I was afraid of. But there was time for all of that now. We had time, and we needed to embrace it.

“I’m not afraid of death anymore,” I admit, grabbing his hands and pulling them to my chest. His forehead wrinkles as he listens intently. “I don’t feel the need to alter time like I once did. I don’t want to bend it, speed it up, or slow it down…I just want to live it. With you.”

His eyes drop to our intertwined hands and back to my eyes with those crystal blues that see through me.

He swallows, silently absorbing my words. The man of so many words, humbled by the promise of growth between us. He nods his head with a determined grin, as if knowing we’ll make peace with our pasts and finally be able to do just that.

Live.