Page 98 of Vow of Vengeance
Violet came in at some point when Marissa and I had been talking and asked if we needed anything. When Marissa started to break down and I couldn't seem to console her, Violet perched on the edge of the bed and comforted her. Somehow, that turned into Marissa falling asleep with her head tucked against Violet's chest; after a while of that, Violet fell asleep too. When Wes and Declan came in to check on us, Wes took that chair and he hasn't left since.
Maybe it's all the body heat, or how peaceful it feels to be together, or just how exhausting the last few weeks have been for everyone. I was the last to fall asleep and the first to wake.
"I see he still sleeps like the dead." Wes chuckles. "He'd do this a lot when we were in school together. He'd stay awake for days, fueled by caffeine and obsession."
"Obsession?" I muse.
"Yeah." Wes laughs. "Tell me you haven't noticed he gets consumed by things..."
I have noticed, actually. Because he became obsessed with me. Once he was aware of my existence, he inserted himself into every facet of my being. Of course, he'd claimed it was to break me, to destroy me as vengeance for my attempt to smear his name. It's probably insane to have fallen for him, given everything that has happened between us. And yet, he's never made me feel in danger. He's never made me feel unworthy. He's never abandoned me.
From the start, even when Declan had me tied to a bed, demanding I give in to him, he never actually hurt me. That's more than I can say of the man I knew since I was a child... the man who groomed me to be his victim, the man who took my mother from me, the man who gave me to his friends for money, the man who let me believe he was dead while he lived inside our attic, watched me mourn him as my life fell apart around me. Imight have been able to forgive him for any of that if they had been isolated incidents.
My mother was a mark and technically, Tony had been driving that day. I can excuse that he was afraid to be killed for real if anyone found out he was still alive, so he hid from me on the other side of a wall. I can even rationalize that maybe he gave my body away to friends because our finances had gotten so tight and he didn't know how else to get us out of the chokehold. I know none of it would make what he did okay, but I could forgive him because he's dead—really dead, this time— and there's no point holding onto anger for a dead person.
But what I can't forgive him for, what I can't rationalize no matter how hard I try to, is that he would have our baby killed.
The ultrasound before we left the hospital showed me that I was nine weeks pregnant... exactly half of what I was when I lost the last baby.
I watched Declan's brow furrow when he tried to work through the math, not realizing that pregnancies started at four weeks. Once the sonographer explained that tidbit, he grinned, clearly proud of himself as he realized what it meant-- that he'd knocked me up in Costa Rica, exactly when he'd said he would. I didn't notice any symptoms because it's early, because I've been so consumed by everything going on around outside me that I haven't had a lot of time to focus on what's going oninsideme.
I'm nine weeks pregnant with my stalker's baby, and I don't think I know how to wrap my head around the reality yet.
"I've noticed..." I say, realizing that Wes is still watching me. "He's a mad man."
"We're all mad here." Wes shrugs, unbothered. "You're mad for staying with him, you know?"
My heart squeezes at the declaration, and I think I forget to breathe a moment. "What?"
"Declan's fucked up because he's got mommy issues. He idolized his father, who died fighting another man's war, and his mother dealt with it by taking whatever she could get. For some people, when they're lonely enough, hate can feel like love." He's quiet as he considers something, and his eyes drift to his wife thoughtfully before he grins. "And love can feel like hate."
"You think Declan hates me?" I frown, looking down at the man asleep on me. Like this, he looks angelic, peaceful... not at all like a man who stood outside my window and tied me to a bed.
"No." Wes laughs. "I think he fell in love with his mother."
I frown, uncomfortable with the suggestion that I am anything like his mother. He hasn't spoken poorly about her, but I don't really like the comparison.
"It's not a bad thing." Wes assures me. "Maybe you can fix him. I broke him pretty bad."
I want to ask him to elaborate, to explain who he is and what he really did that got Declan wrapped up in this dark world.
But then I remember Marissa telling me that Wes helped her. Not only did Declan and Wes save her, Wes supported her through it after she shot Khan, when the police came, he held her through her trauma. It's still early; chances are, the horror of what our supposed friend did to her will last the rest of her lifetime. If Wes' former college roommate and his wife can keep her from spiraling into the same sort of depression I was in after that night my life changed, then I don't care who he is or what he did to Declan. Declan's certainly not icing him out over it, and while that could change once the shock of the last few days has faded, I'm not going to hold anything over his head.
"We're all broken." I say, echoing his earlier sentiment about us all being mad.
We're both right. Madness exists in all of us... it's the glue that bleeds in between the cracks when we're broken, healing the fractures to allow us to move forward.
A memory I'd forgotten pushes its way to the surface of my mind as I recall the vase where my mother always put the wildflowers I'd bring her. It was a pretty thing, porcelain white with a blue floral design. She loved it, even though we had a clear glass vase that wasn't broken, that looked like it was meant to. I finally gathered the courage one day, to ask why it looked like that, with gold cracks webbing through the design at imperfect intervals.
It looked like something that had been shattered and put back together, precisely because ithadbeen shattered and put back together.
"Kintsugi." She smiled at me. "It's a form of art."
I didn't bother telling her it was weird art; I'd already seen firsthand how strange some people's interpretation of art could be. She'd taken me to a few fancy buildings in my lifetime. Though I never knew what we were doing there, I often found myself staring at the canvases on the walls, painted with odd brush strokes, lines that weren't quite straight and circles that weren't round and no visible message. My mom thought a lot of random stuff was art, so I'd have been willing to take that as the answer, but she smiled as she explained it further.
"There's beauty in broken things, don't you think, Soren?"
I frowned at her, wondering how something broken could be beautiful. I was opening my mouth to tell her as much when she answered for me.
