Page 17 of All Ghosts Aren’t Dead (The Forgotten #1)

“Hey, don’t go full Daddy Death Glare on me, but your angel baby is bleeding. Bishop is prepping for stitches.”

The door to the infirmary creaked open. My nostrils flared against the familiar scent—copper-sweet edge of blood, tangled with antiseptic and latex. It was a scent I’d grown up with, carried on my clothes and on my skin for years.

But this was his .

And I couldn’t breathe through it.

Blue sat on the edge of the cot, hunched slightly, legs swinging in that uncertain, too-small way he moved when he wasn’t sure if he was in trouble. His left hand rested in his lap. His right hand was… dripping .

Blood ran down the inside of his wrist in thin, elegant rivulets, tracing the veins, catching briefly at his fingertips before falling. It fell to the linoleum floor in a soundless rhythm, keeping time with the panic climbing up my throat.

Plop.

Plop.

Plop.

There was a smear near his elbow, and another streak along the hem of his sweatshirt. The crimson had started to dry at the edges, darkening to a rust color where it met the cotton. I watched it stain him.

Something primal shifted in my chest.

The sight of his blood shouldn’t have made me want . It shouldn’t have made me ache to touch him everywhere just to be sure he was still whole.

Get a fucking grip.

It wasn’t a life-threatening injury. I knew that. I could fucking see it. The cut was clean and shallow, but fuck if logic had any place in my brain anymore. Not when his blood had touched the floor.

Not when it had dared leave him.

I crossed the room in seconds.

“Get out,” I ordered.

Bishop looked up from where he was prepping stitches, eyebrows raised. “He’s fine,” he said. “Just needs a few?—”

“Get. The fuck. Out.”

Bishop gave a low whistle and backed up toward the door.

“Don’t stab me, boss,” he muttered. “I’m going.”

“Go faster,” I snapped.

The door shut behind him. The second it did, the silence changed. It wasn’t sterile anymore—it was sacred .

Blue looked up slowly, his eyes fighting through the haze. He blinked at me. “Daddy.”

Christ.

He owned me.

I dropped onto the stool in front of him and took his bleeding hand into mine. The blood clung to him in thin coats, sticky at the edges, already drying in places. I wanted to gather it all up—scoop it from his skin and press it back beneath the surface where it belonged.

“You’re here.”

“Of course I’m fucking here. You’re bleeding .”

Blue tilted his head slightly. “Are you… mad? I don’t want you to be mad.”

“I’m not mad, baby.”

I was wrecked .

“I’ll clean it.” I reached for the gauze. “Sit still.”

He obeyed with a small nod, his legs still swinging gently above the floor. I pressed the gauze against the wound.

My thumb curled under his palm. “Tell me what happened.”

“It was just an accident. Miller didn’t see my hand—he meant to clip the blade low. Bay said it happens all the time. It doesn’t even hurt that much.”

Blue’s eyes searched mine, a faint line of confusion creasing his brow.

People bled here.

It was part of the job. He knew that. Everyone knew that. Bishop had said so more than once, chuckling over dislocated fingers and half-split brows like they were trophies.

So why was I looking at him like this, like the goddamn world had ended?

“You’re acting like I’m dying,” Blue whispered.

“You bled.” My voice came out rougher than I intended. “You shouldn’t have.”

“But I’m okay. Aren’t I?”

He didn’t say it with fear. Just… surprise. Like, he couldn’t understand why this cut mattered more than the others.

I was overreacting.

I’d lost the fucking thread of what mattered and what didn’t the second I smelled his blood in the air.

“Hold still.” I swallowed the knot in my throat and reached for the antiseptic. “This is going to sting.”

He didn’t flinch when I dabbed the wound. Just watched me, eyes round and impossibly calm.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said, apologetic. “I thought… I mean, getting hurt is kind of the point, right? That’s what everyone says. If we’re not bleeding, we’re not learning.”

Something in me cracked.

Is that what he thought?

That pain was just a tax to be paid for survival? That injury was a rite of passage, and he needed to earn his place here in drops of red?

“That’s not what I want for you,” I said. “You don’t have to bleed to prove you belong.”

His gaze dropped to where my fingers held his wrist. “But I do belong… right?”

“You belong to me.”

His breath hitched, and he looked up again, cheeks flushed and lips parted in that innocent way that made me feel unworthy and completely owned.

“Promise?”

“I promise, Blue baby.”

He smiled then, soft and sleepy, like the pain was already a memory.

“I didn’t like seeing you hurt,” I admitted, barely louder than the breath I let out.

I reached for the suture kit. The metal tray scraped softly as I dragged it closer, every sound too sharp in the hush between us. I popped the latches open with practiced ease, though my hands didn’t feel steady.

I laid out the tools one by one, aligning them with surgical precision—forceps, needle driver, sterile gauze. The needle was thin and curved, glinting under the light. It was the kind meant for skin, not flesh, and it made me feel like I was handling something too fine for the world we lived in.

“I—I’ve been hurt worse,” Blue said after a moment. “Back there, with them … the hurt wasn’t mine. It was something they did to me. Something I had to take.”

He looked down at his hand again, watching the blood that hadn’t yet dried. “But this? This was my choice, and Amir said choices are good. I got hurt because I was fighting and I… I was learning. So I don’t mind it. Not really. I chose this, and that… that means something, doesn’t it?”

It hit me like a fist to the ribs.

This boy—this gentle, brutal thing—had spent so long being punished that the simple act of throwing a punch, even if it ended in pain, felt like freedom .

It was more than I could bear.

I pressed two fingers gently around the wound to steady the skin. His pulse fluttered beneath my touch.

The needle pierced his skin with soft resistance, parting the edges with a soundless sort of protest. My hands knew the motion, the angle, and the pressure. I could suture in the dark, half-asleep, on the back of a moving truck.

“It shouldn’t have to mean something.” I pulled the suture through in one clean arc, watching the dark thread tighten against his skin. “It shouldn’t have to be a trade.”

He tilted his head, confusion pinching the corners of his mouth. “What do you mean?”

“You shouldn’t have to bleed to feel alive, Blue.”

“I know,” he said. “But I do. It reminds me that it’s mine now. My pain. Not theirs.”

My pain. My choice.

He was rewriting the rules in real time. Taking the language the cult had carved into him and turning it into a weapon of his own.

I loved him for it.

Christ, I loved him.

“Daddy, you’re the one who brought me here, and I like it.” He exhaled. “I like the fight and the control. It’s not like before. This time it’s me choosing it.”

I swallowed hard, forcing myself to keep the stitches even.

“Bishop says I’ll probably be really good at hurting bad people.” His voice had a hush to it now, like he wasn’t sure if it was a secret or not. “I’ve never really been good at anything before, but I… I want to be good at that. Hurting people like the ones who hurt me.”

The needle in my fingers stopped cold.

“I’m not scared of it,” he pressed. “Hurting them, I mean. It feels like something I’m supposed to do. Like maybe if I do it enough, the bad stuff they put in me will bleed out, too.”

I couldn’t breathe.

I looked at his hands, small against mine, and saw the edge of something harrowing coiled beneath the surface.

They’d tried to destroy him, and now he wanted to become the weapon.

“Baby…” I began, but the words didn’t come.

“I want to be the one who gets to hurt them back,” Blue said simply. “For me. For you. For boys like us.”

I dropped the needle and caught his face in both hands before I could stop myself.

“You listen to me.” My voice shook. “You don’t have to earn your right to exist by spilling blood. You don’t have to prove to me or to anyone that you’re worth the air you breathe.”

His eyes filled with something wet. “But I want to, Daddy. It’s fun.”

Christ.

Blue grinned, all teeth and tenderness. “You should get used to it, Daddy. I’m gonna be really good at it.”

Of course he fucking was.

A laugh caught in my throat—raw, too close to a sob. I pressed my forehead to his for a second, breathing him in like it could steady me. He smelled like sugar and sweat and the phantom trace of my sheets.

“How do you know how to do this?” he asked softly, glancing down at the half-finished stitches. “You’re very good at it, Daddy. Your hands don’t shake.”

I sat back a little and picked up the needle again with a steadiness I didn’t feel. “My father was a surgeon.”

Blue blinked at me. “The mafia let you have a dad?”

“They gave me one.”

The thread glided clean through his skin. I tied it off at the edge, watching the line seal.

“I was eleven,” I said. “My birth parents left me locked in the trunk of their Buick—no food, no water.”

Blue’s breath caught, but he didn’t interrupt.

“A cop found me. He thought I was dead, but brought me to the hospital anyway. My father was on call that night. Ernest Lynch—head of surgery, mafia-affiliated, brilliant, and terrifying. He saw something in me worth saving.”

His lips parted. “He kept you?”

“He refused to let me go.” I glanced up at him. “The mafia made it happen. Legal or not. They tied it up in red tape, forged signatures, and buried it under a dozen fake names. They gave me a home.”

Silence stretched between us.

“They killed them, didn’t they?” Blue finally asked. “Your real parents.”

I didn’t look away. “Yes.”

“Good,” he whispered. “I’m glad you had someone.”

I nodded. “Ernest taught me everything—how to clean wounds, how to stitch skin that didn’t want to close, and how to stay calm under pressure. He thought giving me a skill would keep me from turning savage.”

Blue tilted his head, thoughtful. “Did it?”

“Not always.” I tied the last knot, pressing the gauze down again. “But it taught me control. Enough to keep from burning the world down.”

His fingers curled around my wrist, grounding me.

“Now you teach us,” he said softly. “You teach boys like me.”

“Boys like us ,” I corrected, throat tight.

I bent to press a kiss to the inside of his wrist just above the fresh line of thread where his pulse fluttered.

“Was The Forgotten your idea?”

I shook my head. “Ben’s. His money. His vision.”

“But you…?”

“I was there from the start. Ben came to me when I was twenty and still fighting all the time. I couldn’t be touched without wanting to throw a punch—couldn’t sleep, couldn’t feel. I was either numb or nuclear, no in-between.”

Blue didn’t flinch, just listened, like it mattered.

“I think Ben saw a use for that kind of rage. He said if I didn’t find a way to channel it, it’d eat me alive, and then he offered me a job. I told him to fuck off.”

Blue’s mouth twitched. “You always say that when you mean yes.”

I huffed, barely a laugh. “Part of me thought I owed the mafia for what they gave me. But mostly…” I glanced at the stitched line on his skin. “Mostly, I just didn’t want anyone else growing up feeling the way I did. I wanted to catch the boys before the world ruined them for good.”

“This job helped you?”

“Yeah, baby, it did—saved me, actually.”

It gave me structure when I was spiraling, discipline when I wanted chaos. It forced me to be better than the violence I was raised in.

More so, it gave me him.

Blue watched me with soft, unblinking eyes, like I was a puzzle he already knew how to solve, but wanted me to say the pieces out loud.

“Is that why you don’t like touch?” he asked. “Because of them?”

I reached for a fresh strip of gauze and began wrapping his wound with slow, careful hands. The cut was clean, the stitches held, but I still moved like he might shatter if I tugged too hard.

“My birth parents…” I swallowed, jaw clenching against the taste of the memory. “They didn’t just hurt me, Blue. They made sure I couldn’t trust anything that felt kind. I associated hands with pain and control. Somehow, I’d always done something wrong, even when I was just existing.”

He didn’t speak, just let the silence hold space for what I’d said.

“I started to hate it,” I went on, eyes locked on the gauze. “Even gentle touch made my stomach turn. It felt like drowning, like my body didn’t know how to separate affection from punishment.”

Blue tilted his head, a line forming between his brows. “But I touch you, Daddy.”

His voice held a pinch of worry, like maybe he was asking for confirmation that he hadn’t hurt me by loving me the way he did.

My hands paused, pressing the final fold of gauze into place.

“You do,” I said. “I want you to.”

“But… doesn’t it make you sick?”

“That’s the thing, baby. It should, but it doesn’t. Not with you.”

He sat up a little straighter.

“I don’t understand,” he whispered.

“Neither do I,” I admitted. “But it’s real. You touch me, and I don’t flinch. You kiss me, and my skin doesn’t crawl. It settles.”

I reached for his hand again, just to feel the warmth of him.

“You’re the only one who’s ever made me feel like I’m not sick, and like maybe I never was.”

He smiled at that and leaned forward until our foreheads touched again.

“Maybe we’re just healing each other,” he murmured.

Fuck.

I kissed him.

His mouth opened under mine with a quiet gasp, and he pressed closer like it was instinct.

Cupping the back of his neck, my fingers slid into the strands of his hair and pulled him in harder. He slid off the cot, legs wrapping around my waist, locking behind me like he knew exactly where he belonged.

Arms around my neck, his chest rose and fell against mine. He made this tiny sound—half whimper, half breath—and it nearly broke me.

Christ.

He arched into the kiss, mouth hungry and unsure. I guided it, tasting every inch of him, claiming the corners of his mouth like they owed me something.

I stumbled forward, pressing him into the wall, pinning his body there with mine. His fingers tightened at the nape of my neck, breath catching.

“Daddy…” he whispered, voice all sugar and ache. “I like this. I like this so much .”

My mouth moved to his throat, tongue tracing the edge of his jaw, lips grazing that soft hollow spot beneath his ear.

“You sure?”

My thumb dragged across the place where his heart beat.

“I want you to touch me,” he begged. “All of me. I want to feel like yours.”

My restraint snapped clean down the middle.