Page 25 of Like Grim Death: Part One
It would have started a goddamn war. I have never seen someone hold onto another human being as hard as Lucifer holds Sid.He will never let her go.He’d kill me before he ever touched her.Metaphorically speaking, anyway.
And Ella… I don’t want to think about what it would do to her if Rain was…mine.
I push the button on the panel to close the garage door, flip down the brake on the stroller, and unbuckle Rain, gentle and slow so he stays his cute ass asleep. His presence soothes something wicked inside of me, banishing thoughts of RC and Shadow Villa and cults from my mind. He’s a balm. An exorcist, and he doesn’t even know it.
But even in the midst of doing all this baby shit, calling Tomas, of thinking of Sid and Lucifer and what could have been, there’s a loud, single thought reverberating in my skull about Ella that has nothing to do with Rain’s parentage.
Something is wrong with Ella.
It’s the way she looked over her shoulder last night, like she thought someone was following her, but then said nothing to me about it. It’s her workouts at the crack of dawn or in the middle of the night, highly unusual for a girl whose favorite sport is baking.
It’s that fucking text from Atlas at two in the morning. It’s the fact I deleted it from her phone only to find there was no message thread between them.
And maybe too, my paranoia over Ella has a little something to do with the private meeting I had with Elijah shortly after Rain was born.
What if each of us has a secret?
But thinking of Rain, I try to focus. Babies are breakable, despite what Sid likes to tell me.
I cradle Rain against my chest, one hand on the blankets—I wrap them around his bum—and another under his head. Using my elbow, I push down on the handle of the door in the garage and it unlocks after I peer up at the invisible camera I know is planted just over the door. Facial recognition, I wonder what would happen if Lucifer took my fucking face off the very short list of people who can unlock this door.But that’ll never happen.
I enter the hallway that connects to the house. It’s dark, inside and out, but soft lights flick on automatically after I close the door and walk in, ensuring I don’t fucking trip.
And if I dropped Rain… My stomach squeezes and I hug his tiny body closer. He has this smell, and I can’t describe it, but it’s clean and pure and makes me wonder if I ever smelled this innocent.
I bite back my laughter, refusing to think of Malachi or Brooklin or Sid and all the ways our innocence never was.
Instead, when I get to the steps that lead up to the main level of the house, I pause, closing my eyes tight in the darkness. I bring my nose to Rain’s head of dark hair and inhale.
The newborn scent makes me feel dizzy, and for a second, I think of Ella giving birth to my baby.Ourbaby.
My chest feels tight. I don’t know if she’d want kids. I don’t know what’s going on inside her head most days and bringing a baby into the middle of our chaos seems selfish.
I open my eyes and try to let it go. She’s young. We have time. I’m going to figure out what the fuck is wrong with her, and we can go from there.
I’ve been trying to play peacemaker between Lucifer and the 6, helping out with Rain whenever I can, taking on more work from Dominus to ease the burden on Lucifer, trying (and failing) to talk to Sid and help her cope with being a new mom in a fucked-up world like ours. Attempting to figure out how to open up to Brooklin, which I fucking suck at because she won’t talk to me. Regardless, I want to erase the shit between us. How she thinks I let her get banished from our home, finding her way to Jeremiah fucking Rain.
I’ve beenbusy,and truthfully, sometimes, I’m glad Ella is distracted with other things like her workouts and her baking. It’s one less person I have to take care of.
But after last night, her odd behavior is eating at me.
Sighing, I walk quietly up the stairs, knowing Sid and Luce need their sleep. I offered to keep Rain overnight, but Ella glared at me, and Sid insisted eleven was late enough.
They didn’t even go out.
They had dinner delivered, and Luce texted me at seven to say they were going to bed. I know he probably fucked Sid good before they actually slept because they can’t seem to keep their hands off of each other even when they’re fighting, but now, the house is silent.
Which means Lucifer isn’t up.
He’s not using.
He’s clean.
I settle Rain in his black crib in the too-big room close to his parents. I pull all the blankets away from him and toss them on the change table adjacent to the crib. The nursery is in shades of black and gray and purple, and there’s a fucking Unsainted skull with the smoke and the U painted on the opposite wall from the crib.
I check the stripe on Rain’s diaper and do a mental cheer when I see it’s yellow and not blue. Clean.I love you, but I want to fuck my girl, pal.Words I will never speak out loud to him. Not until he’s… way older.
Stay innocent, baby boy.
