𝐅𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 [𝟏𝟖+]✓

31

4k words enjoy....
This chapter has two POVs Hayden's (3rd person pov) and Saoirse's (1st person pov).

Don't forget to vote and comment. I live for them. This chapter should answer most of your thoughts.

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|4 years ago — July 12, 2020|

Hayden Evans stumbled through the fog of his grief, the pain of his sister's murder gnawing at his soul. She wasn't his baby sister; she was his child. She was the daughter that Hayden named and raised like his own even when they had an age difference of just ten years. He still had his first memory of her, seeing her for the first time in the crib. He had the memory of thinking her shiny golden hair, seafoam blue eyes, and her innocent smile framed by rosy cheeks was like the first bloom of spring, pure and untouched by the world, spreading warmth and joy to all who saw it. He still had the memory of promising himself to never let those delicate hands and legs be in chains. It was precisely why he named her Saoirse. Freedom.

While he made sure she had freedom at all times. He failed to realize too much freedom and the vastness of limitless choice blurred direction and purpose. He had enough wisdom to carefully take a thread from Saoirse's tender hands when she was a toddler so that she wouldn't accidentally get lacerations. But down the line, all that pulverized. How foolish should he have to be for not taking the snake from her hands when she was playing with it. Was that not what dragged her to grave? Whose fault was it that he didn't protect her? It was Hayden's fault and the truth killed Hayden on the inside.

The fact that she would be celebrating her twentieth birthday in less than ten days didn't make it any easier for him. At least not when he kept ignoring her on those days, never knowing it was hurting her until his wife gave him a piece of his mind about it.

He couldn't bring himself to mourn properly, not with the raw wound still bleeding in his heart. His wife, his home, everything familiar became unbearable reminders of his loss. He left them behind, driven by a need to escape, to drown the agony that suffocated him. For days he refused food. Alcohol became his only companion, the burning liquid a temporary balm for his torment. Each bottle he drained was another attempt to numb the relentless ache. His days and nights blurred into a haze of drunken stupor and blackouts, his body weakening, his mind fraying at the edges.

One morning, Hayden awoke with a jolt, his head pounding, his mouth dry. As his vision cleared, he realized he was in his own bedroom, the sheets familiar, the scent of his wife lingering in the air. Confusion twisted his thoughts. How did he get here? He strained to remember, but the last thing he recalled was the bottom of a whiskey bottle.

Then it hit him. Liam. Liam, must have found him, brought him back to the place he'd abandoned. The realization brought a mixture of relief and shame. He had fallen so far, yet someone still cared enough to pull him from the abyss.

Adjusting his eyes to the harsh light, he glanced around the room, shocked and enraged to find Katrina sleeping on a wingback chair in the most uncomfortable posture. He never understood why his wife felt the need to sleep in the chair when she had a lot of empty space on the bed — unless she never planned to sleep and ended up passing out.

Sitting up straight, he gazed at the saline wire before plucking it out of his hand and stalked towards Katrina's chair despite the headache slamming through him. Kneeling down beside her chair, he inspected the wound on her arm. It had been fifteen days since she was shot and eleven days since he last spoke to her.

Eleven days.

He had never gone that long without talking to her.

It's not even because she got herself shot but because of the fear gripping him.