Page 212 of Severed Heart

“Is Ezekiel—”

“He’s fine, too. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” I whisper. “It’s not that serious,” I relay and then shake my head. “Actually, yeah, it is.”

“I am here, Soldier. Please tell me,” she utters.

Her expression remains guarded, and it’s then I wonder if we’ll ever experience real joy in full again without Dom. If either of us will be capable of forgetting, for just a few seconds, about the matching hole now and forever punched into our gaping hearts. Wanting more than anything to blink myself out, if only for a day, instead, I exhale a loaded breath.

“Please, Soldier, tell me what’s wrong.”

“I’m sad. I’m really sad right now,gutted,” I admit honestly. “And I need my best friend. I need you, and I mean Ireally needyou. I need both your permission and help. I-I,fuck.”

“I’m here, I’m here, Soldier,” she assures, covering me in her voice, her caress. I glance back toward the closed bedroom door, knowing Zach is probably feeling more ill at ease in his skin than he ever has as he sits in our living room—isolated. Probably wondering why the hell he’s been passed off by Russell and thinking he did something wrong to end up here. Pushing all apprehension aside in my ask because of that fact alone. For the way he must be feeling, the words begin to pour from my lips. Ten minutes later, Delphine is fully dressed and pulling on her robe.

Clearing her eyes one last time, she glances back at me before opening our bedroom door and stalking down the hall toward the lost boy rattling with fear on our couch.

Chapter Fifty-Seven

TYLER

FALL 2015

BLINK.

Zach laughs maniacally at Delphine’s stunned expression where they sit at our small kitchenette as he animatedly takes a good portion of her flank down in an air raid. Shaking her head, she catches my gaze over his shoulder, eyes narrowing on me where I’m propped, arms crossed at the threshold. “You asshole, you warned him!”

“Knowledge is power, baby, and he’s on my side,” I quip around the boulder in my throat. Hearing me, Zach turns in his chair, his brown eyes shining with mischief, far more life in the smile he’s flashing me than last week and the week before. His color and overall well-being have improved dramatically in the short time he’s been with us due to our collective efforts to get him to a healthier mental space and weight.

Along with healthy sugars, we’ve been feeding him lots of proteins in combination with the vegetables Delphine grew and harvested this summer. Still about a month or so before the first real frost, Delphine took part in the Jenningses’ annual canning day last weekend with Mom and Aunt Rhonda. Thanks to the hellfire-filled grenades we’ve been forced to take cover from, she hasn’t moved forward in making wedding plans since I ringed her finger, but it’s evident Delphine is already a Jennings through and through.

Since Zach’s been here, he’s been equally inducted into the family fold and regarded as one of our own. Even by Mom, who, despite knowing who he is, or maybe especially because of it, started working with Zach right away, as did Delphine—here in our place of healing. A safe haven we both decided we wanted and needed to share with him the night I brought him home.

Though Zach never really got an explanation for our invitation and ask to stay with us—if it becomes permanent, and it looks that way—I plan on coming clean at some point. For now, I take pride that we’ve started slow. Using our mutual love of baseball, I’ve eased into his company by way of playing catch with him in the orchard like I did with Dad when I was a kid. Recently, he’s started participating in the Jenningses’ Sunday baseball games at the orchard after church. Church that Zach and Delphine regularly attend now because she’s crazy about Pastor Ron, who she claims is ‘so very wise.’ A Sunday ritual I miss consistently to run club errands while they’re occupied to get shit done so I can get right back to them.

I’ve been on two more missions to retaliate on Miami, both ordered by my general, and I hated every single minute because home is where I want to be. But as I stare at the two of them, bantering and talking, the need to escape right now is threatening to take over. It’s the ease and peace in which the two of them interact now—in contrast to the white-hot pain currently raging inside me—that has me making a quick excuse.

“I think I’ll toss something on the grill,” I manage in the perfect tone. “You guys want chicken or burgers?”

“Burgers,” both demand in unison as I feign a smile I don’t feel and don’t know if I ever will again, having just ended a call with Delphine’s oncologist. Despite targeted radiation and the most potent imaginable chemo, her cancer has leapt from her ureters and kidneys to her lymph nodes, putting her at stage IV-B.

Terminal.

Mere weeks into her fight and grueling treatment, her oncologist recommended we stop all efforts, as one would suggest I might need an umbrella today in case of rain. Knowing if he had been in front of me, I would have fucking killed him; instead, I told him I would be seeking a second opinion.

In turn, he relayed that he understood and was sorry to be the bearer of bad news. What he didn’t realize is that he just passed out two death sentences. And by the look of growing adoration on Zach’s rapidly plumping face as he engages her across the table, he might have added another.

As I soak her in myself, I realize her quality of life today, right now, might be the best it will ever get again. That she’s dying, in real time, before my eyes.

Blink out, Jennings. Blink out. Right fucking now!

My chest seizes again when she stokes the emotion I’m desperately trying to camouflage with the silver love she’s showering me with over Zach’s shoulder. Utterly unaware of what that look is doing to me.

But as she continues to peer back at me with so much unguarded affection, a suspicion spikes that maybe the love she’s fusing into me right now is for comfort she thinks I might need. Deep down, a large part of me believes she was certain she was leaving me when she accepted my marriage proposal and after, starting the unforgiving treatment for my sake alone.

That her intuition is just as fucking damning as her nephew’s was, who knew too that his time on earth would be cut short. That she already knew that in a matter of months, this life we have, this heaven we made together, will be stolen—robbed from us. A priceless fortune gained by and meant for others.

Unbearable pain starts to unfurl through every one of my veins as I cement my mask in place. Hellfire burning inside my skin as the woman I’d move heaven and earth for sits with a boy who looks a lot like me. Nurturing and bringing forth his inner soldier the same way she did mine. Saving him while becoming his refuge from his father’s cruelty and mistakes—just like she did for me.

Which is what I asked her for the night that I brought him home and pled with her to save him the same way.