to the cafeteria to get Dad a coffee and pick up a bag of clothes Vicious had left for my father. I was all alone now, pushing the half-ajar door open.
What I saw inside stopped me in my tracks.
Dad, on his knees in front of my unconscious mother, holding her hand between his rough palms. It was the first time I’d seen my dad kneel, and I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, it’d be the last, too. He took Mom’s hand and kissed the back of it. His entire back was quivering.
“I’m trying, Baby Leblanc. I really am, but I don’t know if I can do it without you. The scariest part is, I don’t know if I want to. It’s a terrible thing to say. I know. Trust me, I know that. But what is life without you? Please wake up, baby. Please. There’s an experimental thing they want to try… They told me it could give you five more years. Five more years, sweetheart. Lev will be in college. Knight will probably have a kid or two of his own with Luna. I can’t imagine us not babysitting the little monsters together.”
I wanted to launch at him and hug the shit out of him, but I also didn’t want to kill this moment. It was theirs. Moving was too dangerous. He needed to finish what he had to say.
Dad drew a breath. “Just try for me, okay? Try to get better? I’ll fight the doctors. I promise. I’ll fight everyone. I just need the smallest signal from you. Anything. Move your eyelid. Twitch your nose. Breathe on your own. Fart, for all I care! Anything, Rosie. Please. Please. Please.”
I wanted it to be like in the movies. When his pleas for a miracle actually materialized, and she woke up, and everything was okay. Hell, I half-expected it to be the case. That’s the trouble with being a Generation X kid. They teach you dreams really do come true. Cruel assholes.
Dad stared at her for long minutes, not giving up, before his shoulders sagged and his head dropped to the mattress, by her waist.
He looked up again, changing his tone from pleading to stern.
“Rose Leblanc, you can’t die on me now. We still have a lot of work to do. Knight is out of control. Lev is too sensitive and emotional to grow up without a mother. And what about Emilia? What about our friends? Vicious, Trent, and Jaime will try to drag me out of the house to meet people—maybe fix me up with someone. I’ll start drinking, I swear. I’ll ruin all the progress we’ve made together.”
Pause.
My heart broke for him. It didn’t matter that I was still furious with him for how he’d treated Lev. Or me. Or the entire universe, for that matter.
Another growl left his mouth. “Take me with you.” He whispered this time, broken and sad and resolute. “I don’t want to be here without you, Rose Leblanc.”
I swallowed, looking down at my feet. He wanted to die. I got it. If Luna’s life was in danger, I’d want to go through whatever she was going through, too.
“Ride or die,” I heard him say, and my eyes darted up in shock.
What the fuck? It was the same as Luna and me. What were the odds?
“Remember? We carved it on the tree in the forest before the kids butted into our shit and asked us to make a treehouse out of it? I never forgot, Baby Leblanc. Ride or die. There will be no one like you. Nothing like you. You’re a once in a lifetime experience, baby, and I’m the lucky bastard who got you.”
A sound between a groan and a yelp escaped me, and Dad’s head snapped to the door, meeting my gaze. I closed my eyes. I was too self-conscious of getting caught seeing them like this. I’d rather catch them porking every day of the week for the rest of my life than witness this. It had gutted me like a fish.
“Knight.”
I didn’t know how much time passed before I realized he was hugging me. Or how much time passed before I hugged him back on the threshold of that room, between life and death, hanging by the thread, not here nor there.
I buried my face in his shoulder and tried hard not to cry. I still couldn’t cry.
“This is the end, isn’t it? You need to tell me,” I said.