Page 14 of Please Save Me

“Are y’all of faith? I can come by to pray—”

“We don’t pray.” I stopped him.

I expected that to offend the man. His clerical collar suggested that faith was important to him. But instead of leaving me alone, the man’s smile somehow widened, causing a chill to run down my spine.

“Everyone prays. Let me ask you something, son.” His cheery voice took on a strange, unfitting edge that caused my skin to prickle. “Has there ever been a moment in your life where you’ve been so desperate for God to save you that you would have given anything just for him to hear your plea?”My throat felt thick as I swallowed, and a weakness spread to my arms. There was nothing wrong with what the man said, but something in how he said it left me unnerved, and it didn’t feel like I should answer him.

I managed to speak despite how dry my mouth felt. “Can I ask what your name is?”

The man folded his hands behind his back and nodded once. “When youneedto know my name, you will.”

Chapter 4

Cameron

The dark of night gave way to a saffron sky. Drops of dew gave the grass a reflective quality. The whole thing would have been beautiful if not for the fact that I was so tired I was dizzy. I hadn’t slept a wink since Sebastian left with Mason.

There was too much to worry about. Was Rosie here? Were they safe? Was Mason okay? I had been texting Sebastian every time I thought about Mason, hoping for an update. But, he remained radio silent. I knew I could have easily texted her, but I didn’t want to stress her out more than she already was.

Instead, I tried to be productive with my worries. I cleared out the room that was going to be the nursery and assembled the crib. Once that was done, I washed all of Rosie’s clothes with the special detergent Lucian insisted she would need–something about babies having sensitive skin. Recently, I’d been asking him for advice a lot. After all, he was the expert when it came to how to care for a newborn.

At the ripe age of twenty-two, he had two of them, and while I had helped care for the twins after they moved to Hartwood, he pretty much cared for them on his own for the first six months. Sophia footed the bills and let him stay home,but seeing as she didn’t want or make the kids, she wasn’t much help. Lucian let me know that his sister, Leona, had changed more diapers than Sophia.

After I finished what I could with the nursery, I baked a tray of brownies.

Mason had been wanting chocolate, and while I couldn’t go see her, Luce and Soph were coming back today. I could send the treats with one of them.

I pressed a finger to the crackled top of the sweets. Warm chocolate from the chunks I had folded into the batter stuck to my fingers, but it didn’t hurt. With that in mind, I grabbed a knife from a nearby drawer and cut the brownies intoverygenerous squares.

I wished I could send some ice cream to her, too. It’d go well with these. I gritted my teeth as a sudden wave of anger washed over me. Mason was in the hospital withmybaby, and I couldn’t even see her.

Out of everyone in this house, I should be the one holding her hand. Instead, I was stuck at home and worried sick.

And I was making all this worse by letting Dale continue to steal moments of my life. For years, I had been content with sacrificing making memories if it meant keeping my family safe. I thought that’d be enough. I guessed that was the difference between surviving and living.

When you’re surviving, you’re on this earth and safe. The world exists in shades of beige, and you take comfort in the lack of excitement. If nothing exciting happened, that meant nothing bad happened. I had been fine with that being my life for years.

But I was sick of just surviving. I wanted to live. I wanted memories with my family and not to constantly worry that one wrong step was going to ruin my life. My white-knuckled grip on the knife started to shake. I wasn’t a violent man. Hell, I wasn’t even an angry one. But I wanted to hurt Dale. And while I thought the knowledge I could do that would be comforting, now that the adrenaline from last night ran dry, the fact that I thought I could kill someone scared me.

Maybe that was just the exhaustion talking.

With a heavy sigh, I headed to the half-empty coffee pot and blindly grabbed yet another mug from the cupboards. The cup I picked was one Lucian got mewhen we first started dating. It had a crab smoking a cigarette on the white ceramic. He said it reminded him of me, and to this day, I don’t think I understood his sense of humor.

I grabbed the blue plastic handle of the carafe and poured myself what felt like my tenth cup of coffee. The machine did a good job of keeping the leftover coffee warm, but as I brought the mug to my lips and the incredibly bitter substance filled my mouth, I realized it did a shitty job of not burning it.

I went to the fridge, grabbed one of Sophia’s many overly sweet creamers, and added a generous amount to my cup, hoping to make my drink more palatable.

I took another sip before adding a little more.

Just as I finished making my coffee not taste like sludge, I was greeted by the feeling of my phone vibrating in my pocket. My heart beat a little faster when I lifted the device to see Sebastian’s name.

My first thought was that Rosie was here, which would be as exciting as it was scary. Once she was born, it would officially mean she was safe. But, I had done a lot of reading about premature babies, and the idea of my daughter being so…fragileterrified me.

I took a deep breath to collect myself before I answered his call.

“Is this Cameron?” Sebastian already sounded disinterested in the call.

“Who else would it be?” I tried to laugh.

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