Deep Waters

Chapter Sixty-One

I don't like to think back on that night.

Then again, sometimes I can't help it. Sometimes I'm sitting in a dark room with a gun in my limp hands, surrounded by flames. I feel the heat and the burn of the fire. I feel the weight on my shoulders of being the reason I'm surrounded by dead bodies. I feel an ache in my heart and the weight of Kason in my arms. I can't breathe.

On those nights, I wake up gasping for a breath, choking and sputtering through crocodile tears. And it's Gavin who is there to hold me together.

This last month had been crazy and last as long as a whole other lifetime. Most of it I had spent recovering, which I absolutely hated. After that, I had to gather all my things, say goodbye to Jayden's parents, and move back to Ohio, where Gavin and I took it easy in the house we still had there. We had managed to avoid and push back a lot of things that needed to be done, like interviews, court things, funeral arrangements, and filling out police reports. I hadn't even seen much of my friends this past month. I had been grieving and dealing with all the nonsense that filled my head.

The day I woke up after that night, though, was one I could never forget. My life had completely changed.

I remember hearing loud beeps and feeling my own breathing before I even thought about opening my eyes. I remember my skin feeling tight and numb in more places than it wasn't. After many minutes of me laying there, stuck in my thoughts, not even wanting to wake up, I finally took a look around the room. Gavin was sitting beside my white, uncomfortable bed, in a chair looking more uncomfortable than I felt. He had one leg folded horizontally over his other knee, using his shin as a table for the clipboard of papers in his hand. His hair was a grease ball, looking like he hadn't washed it in a week, and his clothes were worn and wrinkled, but his shoulders were relaxed. I could tell that the stress from our last couple of years of life had been lifted from him.

I opened my mouth wide and inhaled, feeling my tongue to be dry as sand and my throat raw as sandpaper. "It's over?" I croaked in a whisper. My brother jumped up at the sound of my voice. I wasn't sure if he had understood me because I couldn't understand myself.

The clipboard dropped to the floor from his lap as he stood and the biggest grin I had ever seen from him reached his eyes and more. In an instant he was right beside me, kneeling over me. He grabbed my left hand with an IV in it and placed a long kiss on the back of it. "Yeah Del," he answered, making me applaud his ability to understand my dry voice. "It's over."

Before I even knew it, tears started filling my eyes and falling down my cheeks. It was over. We didn't have to deal with Charles anymore. I watched tears form in Gavin's eyes as well and for a long time, we just sat there in each other's presence. We both made it. Gavin and I both survived this long battle. We won.

"Here," he released my hand and reached over for a glass sitting on a table beside my hospital bed. For the next few minutes, he helped me take a few sips of water. I tried reaching up to help myself, but my skin felt tight and weak, so I allowed my brother's help.

I'll never forget that hour and a half when Gavin and I sat alone in that hospital room. That time alone with him was exactly what I needed. I didn't want to be surrounded by multiple doctors I didn't know. I wanted my brother to explain everything I couldn't witness and to answer all my questions.

It was in that time frame when he explained my physical state. I was covered in burns. Most of them were second-degree, but along the right side of my body, I had a few decent-sized third-degree burns. The biggest and most concerning ones were on my right thigh and my right forearm. They had done a skin graft surgery on those two but were waiting to see how the rest started healing before they decided to do the same for anymore.