Stay With Me ✔

33.

I had spent over an hour sitting on the stairs talking to my mom on the phone, explaining everything I knew about the Matthews' family to her - and I mean everything. My original plan was to slowly let my mom meet Ever and fall in love with the little girl the way that I had, and then I would start to hint at their home life and make my mom suggest that we foster Ever - but that's all out the window now. This needs to happen and it needs to happen now. 

So I told her secrets that weren't mine and hoped for the best. 

I sat in the stairwell with my phone pressed to my ear for over an hour, telling my mom about Rave and Ever's parents, how they go weeks without electric or water sometimes, how Rave works himself to death to provide for them, how their dad is in a gang and is abusive. I told her the truth about the night she treated Ever in the ER and I told her the truth about what had happened tonight. 

When I was done, she was quiet for so long that I had to check my phone to see if I had accidentally ended the call. After a moment, I could hear her sniffling and a few seconds later, she told me the words I had been crossing my fingers for her to say.

I made my way down the hallway and towards room 201, the door is closed and I pause, wondering if I should knock or just walk in. I decide against knocking and push the door open, closing in quietly behind me before I round the corner and see Rave lying in the bed with Ever tucked under his arm, Andy is nowhere to be seen.

They both have their eyes closed as I take a seat in the empty chair next to the bed. My eyes wonder over Rave's face, he has a few stitches above his eye and there's some obvious swelling and bruising, but it's not as bad as I had imagined. His left shoulder is bandaged, covering the spot where the bullet was removed just hours ago and I can't stop staring at it, imagining the events that lead up to this in my head over and over again. 

I have to keep telling myself to not think about the what if's that are clouding my mind. What if the bullet had hit him somewhere more fatal? What if it had been Ever? What if no one called 911? 

When I tear my eyes away from the bandage and look back at his face, his green eyes are open and staring back at me. There's a smile tugging at his lips as he stretches out his hand to hold mine. "Hey, Princess."

Even with everything that has happened in the past few hours, all the tears and fear, that smile of his chases away every dark cloud and sad thought. I return the smile, though I'm sure he can tell it's forced, as I hold his hand in mine and notice the dried blood on his busted knuckles. He raises our joined hands to my face to wipe the stray tears falling from my eyes, wincing at the movement of his injured shoulder. "Don't cry, Ky. I'm fine." 

"You're not fine, Rave. If you were fine you wouldn't be here." I lower our hands back to the bed and lean in closer as I keep my voice low so that I don't wake Ever. 

He doesn't say anything in reply, and I know it's because he knows that I'm right. He may be alive, but that doesn't mean that anything is fine. In fact, we're far from fine right now. "What happened? Ever said your dad told them you stole from him..."

He looks down to where our hands are clasped together at his side. "I didn't know he would be there and I definitely didn't know that anyone else would be there. I heard them shouting before they even got through the door and I tried to get Ever out, but they were blocking the exit. They were accusing him of stealing, said he stole their shit and money...I wouldn't be surprised if he did." He shakes his head in disgust and keeps his eyes on our hands, avoiding eye contact with me.

"You never told me that your dad was in a gang." 

At that, his eyes snap towards me, "How do you know?"