Page 18 of Everlasting

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, T. Really? Blown by angels? Now, I know I wouldn’t dream of you saying some shit like that.” I actually started to panic a tiny bit because maybe I was well and truly dead.

“You’re not hopping off the ride of life just yet, little sis. Calm down. I need you to keep the faith, Ever. He’s going to come home to you.”

“You know he’s still alive?”

Toby tipped his head up and down. “He’s been through some shit. I’m not going to lie about that, but he’s still alive and if I can find a way, I’ll bring him back to you, I swear.”

“Do you think that will be anytime soon?”

“Actually, things are looking promising, and maybe I won’t have to because someone else is going to step in to intercede. It’s hard to tell from where I am because people’s true intentions are sometimes lost, but I saw some things that give me hope. It won’t be much longer.”

“Okay,” I told him before I turned to look at my brother again. “I miss you too, you know?”

“I know, how could you not? I’m the most incredible person you ever met.”

“Seriously, Toby?” I laughed though because even as a ghost in my dream, he was a cocky bastard. I wondered what Gretchen would think, and then I felt a little sick at the thought. She had actually lost her man, but she was happy again with Kane. Would that happen with me if Deck never came back home? “Do you miss her?” I blurted out.

“Miss who?” His answering question was quiet, and it seemed he already knew who I was talking about.

“Gretchen.”

Toby smiled at me, and it made him look so serene and peaceful. “I’ve watched. I missed her so much and it hurt in the worst way to see her destroying herself in the beginning. But then I saw that spark come alive again, and even though she was a little different from the woman I knew and loved, she became the perfect person for him.”

“Does it hurt seeing them?”

He shook his head. “You would think so, but no. It just makes me happy that she’s cared for that way.”

“Do you think that will happen with me?”

“No,” he told me very adamantly.

“No?”

He shook his head again. “You’re not going to live the same fate, Ever. He’s coming home to you. I promise.”

There was a wailing cry off in the distance. “Looks like my nephew is demanding his mommy’s attention,” Toby commented.

I turned to look over my shoulder, toward the sound I was hearing as it grew louder. “Yeah, I better go. I love you,” I called out, but when I turned back, Toby was gone already and the light from the hospital room was creeping into my conscious mind.

“Sorry,” I heard my mom tell me as my eyes opened and I began to focus on her. Without another word, I just held my arms out to take my son.

“He’s probably hungry.”

“I think he just needed you,” she told me before kissing his sweet little head and handing my boy over to me. I didn’t dare call him by name, even in my thoughts. My brother said Deck would be home soon. I was going to hope it would be soon enough to help me name our son.

Chapter 15

Another Baby

Deck

Time slipped away from me as I worked on my body and battled the strange dreams that plagued me at night. Sometimes in those dreams, the sweetest woman in the world and two little girls made my heart ache and leap all at once. I missed them. They were a piece of me that I knew I was without. They had to be. My dreams of them didn’t feel like the normal sort. They were like memories playing, only they were reminiscent of silent movies where I couldn’t quite catch the sounds. Every now and then, a peel of laughter or squeal of delight from one of the children would bleed through, only to go silent again when I tried to tune into it. I would wake up with my heart hammering and angry because I couldn’t hold onto them once I was awake.

The other dreams were more nightmarish in nature. I could never see the woman’s face, but she taunted me with needles and naked flesh. I knew that those too must have been memories of some sort because it had been explained to me when I was brought here that detox was necessary due to the condition I had been found in. From those nightmares, I always woke up a little less than myself. They tore me down in a way I wished wasn’t possible. They left me craving the substance that used to be shot into my veins, keeping me in a blissful oblivion. They also left me fearful that it might happen again.

The battle I waged between my two nighttime worlds was astronomical, and somewhere in the middle of it all was the life I couldn’t quite remember. My brain was supposedly all healed, so was my body. That didn’t mean that everything pieced back together all at once. The nurse who came, for a while after Durbin failed to return, once told me that I would probably remember if I ever encountered a trigger from my old life. That didn’t seem to be happening any time soon.

The man who had come to tell me that I would be going home soon also failed to come back from a meeting. He wasn’t as gone from my life as Durbin had become though. There were minions who would stop in to check on my progress. No doubt, they reported back to him. None of them would answer my questions about going home though.

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