Page 56 of I’m Fine Save Me (The Spiral Duet #1)

Chapter thirty-seven

Tegan

I t’s midnight and neither of us have been able to go to sleep. I called Morgan back and he’s been sitting on a video call on my laptop with us for the last hour. I even called Lo from my phone so she could get the update as well.

I gave them all the full story of my conversation with Wayne earlier in the day. After Lorene gave her very colorful commentary on what a pencil dicked piece of shit my sperm donor is, she told us she had a date that was waiting for her to come back to bed.

That’s right, my best friend left her latest fling in bed to come and hear my family drama.

I love the woman immensely.

Now I’m in my pajama pants, a tank top, and a loose open front sweater because I just cannot get warm with thoughts of Wayne plaguing me.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do, but we’ll get through it.

We’ll figure it out,” I promise Cooper who is freshly showered, hand bandaged, and sitting with my legs over his lap on the couch.

My laptop is set up on the coffee table so that Morgan can see us both.

He’s sitting in his recliner, dressed much like my husband.

Both of them are in low slung flannel pajama bottoms and a t-shirt. I tried to make a joke that they could both go shirtless, but none of us really had it in us to laugh.

“You should both get some sleep. We can brainstorm tomorrow after you’ve gotten some rest.” Morgan says but I shake my head.

“I know I’m not going to sleep even if we do go lie down.” I lift my chin towards Cooper. “And I know he’s going to be even less likely to sleep.”

Cooper just nods in silent agreement, but I can see the wheels in his head turning, turning, turning.

Headlights paint the living room in a harsh, drifting flash that disappears as the car parks in our driveway.

Three sets of brows furrow with my eyes shifting to Morgan for a moment and then to the door in the same direction as Cooper.

He gently moves my legs from his lap and walks over to the gun safe, cursing when he punches the code in wrong.

There’s only the light of my laptop and a small lamp in the corner of the room giving off a dim glow.

For all intents and appearances, it should look like we’re asleep with the blinds all closed. There’s no way for anyone to know we’re sitting here awake if we don’t speak. Cooper’s frustrated curse and the soft beeps of the keypad are certainly blowing that thought to hell.

“Baby, stop.” I whisper from where I sit, but then there’s a light knock on the front door.

That chill I’ve been trying to fight off grips me in its icy clutches.

We rarely get visitors, and after the day we’ve had, having one at midnight does not bode well.

I glance towards my computer to see Morgan’s concerned expression, but he keeps quiet.

Cooper’s attention turns to the door for just a moment before he’s trying the keypad again.

I softly murmur, “0-9-1-0-0-6” it’s the day we started officially dating, but he always puts in our wedding date instead.

Another knock sounds, this one more insistent than the first, but Cooper takes the time to pull one of the pistols from the safe.

He checks that it’s loaded, chambered, and clicks the safety off.

His finger rests over the trigger guard, not yet curling his finger into the loop as he approaches the door.

We don’t have a peephole or a window on our front door, it’s something that I’m deeply regretting as my heart feels like it’s pounding out of my chest.

“Who is it?” Cooper asks while resting his fingers on the deadbolt.

“Sweetheart? It’s me… I just want to apologize.” Wayne calls from the other side of the door in that familiar tone.

It’s the tone he used when my parents first got divorced. The one he used when he convinced me to hear him out. He’d begged me to listen to him explain why he’d cheated on my mom. He was just doing it because my mother didn’t love him enough.

It was the tone that had softened me to him so many times, convincing me to give him chance after chance to be a part of my life.

“Please, I didn’t know they’d actually fire you, Cooper. I’m so fucking sorry,” he says and it sounds like he’s crying.

I can see Morgan shaking his head on the screen, but my eyes focus on Cooper whose fingers are curling and flexing around the grip of the Bersa in his hand.

I’m familiar enough with the way my husband thinks to know that he’s playing it out in his head.

Every outcome of what would happen if he just opened the door and pulled the trigger.

I’m not sure I would actually be upset about Wayne’s death at this point, but I don’t think Cooper could actually live with taking someone else’s life.

“It’s late, Wayne. I’ll call you tomorrow and we can talk then.”

“Tegan, sweetheart, please . Please don’t turn me away right now. I’m sorry. You did what you could today. You had to take care of Hannah and you sent someone to check on me when you couldn’t. I shouldn’t have said what I said. I’m so sorry.”

He’s sounds so fucking sincere, but I learned that lesson today too. I won’t let him get under my skin, but I will let him think I’m hearing him out.

At least with Morgan also listening to the conversation, I’ll feel less crazy later when Wayne inevitably tries to gaslight me.

“Coop, open the door. I’ll let him say what he thinks I want to hear and then he’ll go away. Then we’ll deal with how to be rid of him tomorrow.” I tell my husband quietly.

If I can at least just get him to go home, I’ll figure out how to get a judge to actually grant a restraining order. He doesn’t have anything else to hold over me to force contact now anyway.

Coop slides the safety back on and tucks the Bersa into the end table drawer. At least even if he’s ready to kill the man, he’s smart enough to know we don’t need to give him another reason to press charges. The deadbolt slides free and Cooper opens the door.

There stands my biological father, looking so happy that we actually did as he asked. I stand from the couch to move to Cooper’s side, gently grasping his hand before I open my mouth to tell Wayne to get on with it.

Before I even say a word, his arm lunges forward and Cooper’s body jolts with a low grunt, like the wind was knocked out of him.

“What the fuck?!” I shout at Wayne who pulls back with a smile of sick satisfaction, closing the front door with the gloved hand he didn’t use to gut punch my husband.

I’m just about to open the door and go after him when Cooper falls to the floor, holding his stomach. Crimson is blooming in a wide circle staining his white t-shirt.

My throat tightens with panic and the broken voice that calls his name doesn’t sound like my own. “Cooper?”

“Tegan?” Morgan’s voice calls from the coffee table a few feet away. In the back of my mind, I know the whole exchange was out of frame for him. I have no idea how to tell him what’s happening though.

“Cooper? Baby… talk to me…” I hear myself saying while I take in the sight before me.

There’s something sticking out of his abdomen. It’s protruding from the center of that red stain that’s making my heartbeat flutter.

“Mor–Morgan…” My voice cracks when I realize it’s a blade of some sort.

Every bit of reading I’ve ever done says not to remove it.

“Call 9-1-1 and give them our address… Cooper’s been stabbed.” I have no idea how I get the words out when I feel like I’m not breathing.

I remove my sweater and ball it up around the base of the knife.

“Call 9-1-1 please!” I haven’t heard his voice again, but I can’t stop myself from begging him to hurry even if he’s not there anymore.

My hands press on my sweater while I try not to move the thing. Cooper is tense and groaning, holding his bloodied hands over mine.

I feel my heart stutter in its panicked beat as I examine the knife further and see that it isn’t a normal blade. The handle and the blade are both glistening and transparent. There’s a clear liquid dripping from the tip of the handle.

My blood runs cold as realization hits. Wayne described his fictional story to me so long ago, but it only takes that moment of seeing the dripping condensation from the handle of the knife in my husband’s belly to remember.

A horrid scene about a stab wound with no evidence of the type of knife used… Because said knife is melting under the heat of his body.

“Tegs,” Cooper pulls my terrified eyes from the slowly dripping weapon to the eyes that captured my attention when I was fifteen years old. “How bad…is it?” Every word seems to take effort through the pain I know he’s feeling.

I shake my head. “It’s fine. Morgan is calling the paramedics. I just need you to keep talking to me, okay, baby? Just keep talking to me.”

“I didn’t mean… to scare you… earlier..” he says through gritted teeth and I know I’m not helping his pain by holding my sweater on the wound.

The blade is fucking melting. My panic starts to rise when I realize that will be just as bad as removing a regular blade from a stab wound. I don’t have a way to keep him from bleeding out. I can see red lightly staining his teeth when he speaks, and I feel the tears so close to falling.

“Baby, that is so not what I’m worried about right now. You didn’t scare me… you pissed me off.”

I tell him in the steadiest voice I can muster, even with tears spilling over against my will.

“Do you know how much I hate to spackle walls?”

He smiles through his pain, and for a single heartbeat, I can pretend that we’re both okay.

He’s not bleeding.

He’s not hurt.

He’s perfectly fine and we’re telling jokes, and ribbing each other in our love language.

“I’ll take care of it…” he promises with another grimace.

“I’ll remind you every six months until it’s done.” He smiles again, but I can tell he’s fighting to stay awake. “Cooper, look at me. Don’t close your eyes… Please don’t close your eyes, baby.”

Those ice blue eyes close again and I have to fight to keep my hands in place.

Morgan won’t fail me.

He’ll send help here.

He won’t let Cooper die on me.

I can hear the sirens in the distance while I watch that knife drip, drip, drip. If the handle is dripping, I’m terrified of the part that’s in contact with his body and how fast it’s melting.

“Coop, you hear that? That’s the ambulance.”

It’s then that I realize, I had wished so many times to be free. I wanted to be free of the chaos. I wanted to be free of the bad days that just seemed to come more frequently. I had wished for quiet. I wanted a life where I felt less trapped by the vows I had made.

“Not like this,” I whisper over the sound of the sirens growing closer, the buzzing of my phone on the coffee table that I can’t answer. “I take it back…I take it all back.”

My desperate voice feels completely muffled by the call that continues to ring. The bad days weren’t that bad. His mind was mixed up, his anger misplaced, his emotions sometimes just too much for him to handle.

It wasn’t his fault.

I should have never wished for peace even on my worst day.

“Please.” Part of me knows I’m asking for something near impossible.

It’s been too long, hasn’t it? How much blood has he lost?

He won’t open his eyes, and his chest is rising slower than before.

The sirens are loud and then they are silent just before a loud banging on my front door has me inviting uniformed strangers into my home.

I don’t remember the paramedics pulling me away from my husband.

I don’t know how my mom knew to come to my house and sit with Hannah, who slept through the whole ordeal.

I don’t remember talking to Morgan or Lorene.

I don’t know how they got me into the ambulance.

All I know is that I hate the sound of a flat line alarm…