Indigo Sky

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

In a hospital somewhere on the other side of town, I sat at a table in a quiet room with Officer Payton. He had the good grace to buy me a shitty cup of coffee from the vending machine and slid the cup across the table before folding his hands. He barely smiled, his eyes holding a deep sympathy as I tried to control the shaking in my hands long enough to take a sip of coffee without spilling it all over the damn table. But it was futile, and I gave up to run my stupid, trembling hands through my hair.

“How’s Kate?”

“She’s your girlfriend?”

I began to nod, then hesitated. “We got into a fight last night, and we haven’t gotten the chance to talk since …”

He nodded solemnly. “I don’t have any way to sugarcoat all this. She has a few broken bones, a lot of bruises. She needs some stitches on her face. Nothing she won’t heal from. But … she went through quite an ordeal,” he said, regret in his voice. “Beaten, sexually assaulted … the fucker did quite a number on her.”

That was when it finally hit me. After everything we had gone through … after everything we had seen, heard, done …

That was the moment when I hung my head and began to cry.

“Oh God,” I whispered, the words pushing through my tight, emotion-filled throat. “God, Kate …”

“I’m sorry,” Officer Payton said.

Something touched me, and I jumped back until I realized he’d reached across the table to lay a hand over my arm.

After a few minutes, I ground the palm of my hand against my eye and wiped the tears away. Officer Payton handed me a napkin, and I barely thanked him as I crumpled it in my hand and dabbed it at my eye.

God, I was so angry . So bitter. So fucking pissed that I had been too late. That I hadn’t done enough. That I had failed . And it wasn’t just her. It was her father. It was Angela, Nate—fuck, even Donny. I had even failed him because the guy had needed help, hadn’t he? And I hadn’t given him the chance to get any before I bashed his skull in. It was all on me. For being too slow, for being too late, for being—

“Hey.” Officer Payton’s brusque voice broke through the chaotic cacophony of insults passing through my exhausted brain. “Listen to me, okay?”

I lifted my narrowed gaze to his.

“Whatever’s going on in your head, stop it,” he demanded. “None of this—nothing that happened tonight—is your fault.”

Except that I could think of moment after moment that could’ve gone differently had I just acted differently. If I had just broken into the trunk of Kate’s car at the shop, if I’d just stormed that living room instead of waiting …

If I’d just stayed with her instead of making her go to that goddamn shop alone.

How was I ever supposed to live with this guilt constantly prodding at my weary mind?

“It’ll get easier,” Officer Payton said gently, as if reading my mind. “I promise, it’ll get easier.”

But that was the thing, wasn’t it? I wasn’t sure I wanted it to get easier. I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to be okay in a world where poor Angela ceased to exist. How could I ever be okay after what had happened to Kate and Nate?

Oh God, Nate.

“Where’s Nate?” I asked Officer Payton.

“He’s in surgery,” he answered. “And that brings me to my next question … how was he involved in all of this?”

I huffed a laugh, my lips barely twitching into a half smile as my mind began to slip toward the past. “How much time do you have?”

***

I didn’t know how long I sat in that room, telling Officer Payton every memory, every detail of my life with Nathan Manning up until the showdown at Kate’s father’s house. I told him things I probably shouldn’t have, things I had thought I’d forgotten, things I wished I hadn’t remembered. Things that were—let’s face it—all too incriminating to be said to an officer of the law. I mean, by the time I was finished, he had every reason to arrest both of us, but he didn’t so much as whip out the cuffs.

“You guys have been through some shit,” he said, nodding gently.

I wiped my eye. I couldn’t remember when I’d begun to cry again. “Yeah, we have.”

“But you kept coming back to each other,” he said.

I laughed despite my resolve not to. “Who the fuck knows why?” I grumbled.

“Because some friendships defy what makes sense, Revan,” he replied. “Some exist only to maintain some sort of balance between right and wrong. The world itself can’t exist without black and white, and sometimes, if you pay attention, that line down the middle starts to blur, and each side blends into the next. They sort of adopt each other … and I think you’d agree.”

Officer Payton left me with a pat on the shoulder and the promise that everything would eventually be all right. Believing him felt a lot better than dwelling in a murky ocean of sorrow and regret, so that was what I chose to do, no matter how difficult it was.

My parents were on their way. They had been upset that they weren’t called sooner, considering the circumstances. But I couldn’t help that they hadn’t been the first people on my mind, and it wasn’t until Officer Payton and I walked to another room and he let me borrow his phone to make a call that I dialed Mom’s number.

When they walked through the automatic doors into the waiting room, I stood to greet them like it was any other day. They rushed toward me. Mom threw herself into my arms, and Dad laid a hand against my shoulder.

“We almost lost you, buddy,” he whispered, his voice hoarse.

But that wasn't true, was it?

"I'm fine, Dad," I grumbled, wishing Mom wouldn't hold me so tight for so long.

"Roy's son …" He blew out a heavy sigh and shook his head. "He was always a little … you know …"

"Troubled," Mom muttered against my shoulder, her fingertips digging into my back.

"But who could've expected this?" Dad wiped one hand over his mouth, his other hand squeezing my shoulder. "I just … I can't believe we almost lost you. Once was enough, but twice ?"

"I'm fine ," I pressed, finally wrenching my body from both of them.

"Oh, but, honey, how can you be?" Mom asked, distraught.

I dropped back into the chair Officer Payton had left me in earlier. "But I am ."

They took the seats on either side of me. Mom grabbed my hand while Dad was a stone-faced statue. That was always his tell. He avoided the things that made him upset—I knew this after years of him being unable to look me in the eye.

"Sweetie," Mom began, stroking the top of my hand with her thumb, "you—"

"Will you please stop ?!" I asked, not intending to shout.

A nurse walking by jumped and glanced in our direction, and I sank deeper into the chair.

"Stop," I repeated. "Just … stop , okay? I am fine. I wasn't hurt. I didn't fucking die ."

Dad grunted, "That doesn't mean you're fine, Revan."

"Oh, yeah? How about Angela, Kate's dad's nurse? She was shot in the fucking head. She died. How can I even claim to be anything but okay when she's fucking dead ?"

"Rev—"

"How about Kate? Huh? She went through twelve hours of fucking hell. Beaten and …” My lips pressed shut, unable to relay the other horrors she’d lived through. “Should I bitch about how I'm not okay after she went through that ?"

Mom hung her head, her hand still against mine. "Oh, sweetheart …"

"And Nate? What about him? He might fucking die. He's been in surgery for … for … I don't even know how long, and I—” The word caught inside my throat, and I swallowed against something thick and uncomfortable that was trying to smother the fuck out of me.

I thought it was my broken heart.

"I should've done something," I whispered through that choking lump. "I should've stopped it before it started."

Dad shook his head, a grumble scraping through his throat. "Revan, listen to me, all right?"

"I know," I said. "I know. Stop feeling guilty. Stop beating myself up. It doesn't help anything. I know . But I can't stop. I should've done something . I was too slow. I was too … I was too scared ."

"Nothing I say is going to stop you from feeling how you do," Dad said with a sigh. "And you have a right to feel all of it—I'm not gonna take that from you. But I think, for every one of those things you're beating yourself up over, you can add something that you did do. You found Kate. You stopped Donny from hurting anyone else. You did that, Revan, and that is far more than someone else in that position would've done."

I pursed my lips and fought the fresh bout of tears that threatened to fall. I cleared my throat and opened my mouth to speak when a doctor came into the waiting room.

"Are you the parents of Nathan Manning?"

"He's our son," Mom confirmed without a moment of hesitation, jumping to her feet.

"Is he okay?" I hurried to get in before the doctor could speak.

"My name is Dr. Schuster. I was one of the surgeons who worked to repair Nathan's injuries," he began, rubbing his hands against his scrubs nervously, like this type of conversation never got easier.

"Is Nate alive ?" I asked impatiently.

He hesitated for a moment, his eyes meeting mine, and then he reluctantly nodded. "For now, yes. He's stable."

My chest deflated with a relieved sigh. "Oh, fuck, thank God."

"The next twenty-four hours will be critical in determining if he'll pull through. He lost a lot of blood."

Mom nodded, blinking back tears. "Can we see him?"

"He isn't awake," Dr. Schuster warned us. "But, of course, you can see him."

***

Three hours after Nate left the operating room, alarm bells rang from his spot in the intensive care unit, and his heart monitor flatlined.

Mom shrieked, Dad called Nate's name, and I jumped up from my spot beside him and ran for the nurses' station.

One minute thirty-two seconds later, they brought him back.

Forty minutes after he gave us all a heart attack, he opened his eyes, pulled his oxygen mask off, and looked at me.

"You look like shit," he rasped.

"I should get you a mirror," I grumbled.

He began to laugh, then winced and arched his back.

"Easy, honey," Mom said, taking his hand.

Dad announced abruptly that he was going to tell the nurses that he was awake, and I had the feeling he needed to shed a few grateful tears in the hallway.

Nate settled back into the bed, a look of painful distress on his face. "Fuck. I feel like I died."

"You did," I muttered. "Just a little while ago."

"Shit, really?"

"Yeah," I grumbled, shaking my head with disbelief. A little less than an hour ago, I’d thought I'd never talk to him again, and there I was, doing just that.

He began to chuckle again, then stopped himself with a cough and a groan. "Fuck, that hurts. What did I tell ya, Rev? Only the good die young. They took one look at me up there and said, Oh, fuck no, throw that one back ."

I shook my head. How he could laugh right now, I had no idea. Or maybe that was just how he coped.

"How's Kate?"

A sigh pushed from my lungs. "I don't know. I haven't seen her."

Nate looked at me through narrowed eyes, bruised from when I’d punched him in the nose. Fuck, how was that only a day ago? Or was it two? Somehow, time had stopped passing normally.

"The hell is wrong with you?"

I huffed out a laugh. "She just went through hell. And we’d gotten into a fight—"

"I'm not listening to anymore of this crap," he said as Dad came through the curtain, Dr. Schuster in tow. "We didn't go through this shit for you to pussy out on me now."

"Nathan," Mom scolded, the way she did whenever he said something she didn't like. She smiled apologetically at the doctor. "Come on. You need your rest, and I'm sure the doctor would like to speak—"

"Go find her," Nate warned me, and I shook my head with a dismissive wave of my hand. "No. Do it now."

"Fine," I grumbled and shoved out of my chair. “I’ll be back.”

I thought to make another joke, to tell him not to die while I was gone. But the thought got stuck in my brain as my eye teared up, and my throat tightened, and I realized there was no such thing as lightening the mood in this situation. Maybe one day, but … not today.

So, I simply left and hoped he’d still be there when I got back.

***

Her room was two floors above the ICU Nate was in. I walked down the hall tentatively, eyeing every door with uncertainty, until I spotted Crystal and Ivy standing outside an open door.

Kate must’ve had the cops call the club. Her found family.

I stopped some distance away to watch them hug and shake their heads. They whispered something and glanced back at the open door, as if they weren’t sure if they should go back inside or leave. Then, Ivy walked in the other direction down the hall, and Crystal turned to see me standing there, her face crumpling with instant sadness.

“Oh God,” she whispered.

She held her arms out, and I went to her to gather her in a tight, soothing embrace.

“I left her there. I just dropped her off at the shop and left,” she whispered against my shoulder, and I realized she was crying. “Oh God, Rev, why did I leave ?”

“You didn’t know,” I said, my chin moving against the top of her head. “You couldn’t have known.”

“I just wish I had stayed .”

I could’ve told her that wishing was a waste of her time, that beating herself up wasn’t going to change a damn thing. But how could I feed her that bullshit when I couldn’t stomach it myself?

So, I just held her for a moment longer, then took a step back.

Her tearful gaze sought mine as she asked, “Can I see him?”

I didn’t need to ask who she was referring to. I only nodded. “Of course you can. You don’t need my permission.”

She offered a weak smile, then glanced over her shoulder into Kate’s room as she quietly said, “You don’t need mine either.”

I gave her the instructions to Nate’s bedside, and then she was on her way. I was alone in the hallway, staring into Kate’s room.

I couldn’t see Kate from where I stood. A curtain had been pulled to conceal her hospital bed. But I could see Wendy, sitting in the corner of the room with her head nestled against a wadded-up sweatshirt, her eyes closed. She might’ve been sleeping or just catching a moment of rest during a time when there was none—I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t see Saul, but I heard him, snoring gently from somewhere close to Kate’s side.

At least she has them , I thought and meant it.

“I know you’re there,” a quiet, weak voice said from inside the room.

Logic told me it was Kate. I knew it was. But I didn’t want it to be. Kate wasn’t supposed to sound like that. Kate was strong, bold, lively. This voice belonged to someone who was anything but, and the rage it incited in me was maddening.

I stood frozen, my fists clenched at my sides. She didn’t deserve to see me like this. She didn’t deserve me at all.

“Rev? Please,” she begged, her voice splintering like a flimsy twig.

I pushed out a breath, emptied my lungs, and forced one foot to move in front of the other until I was standing at the foot of her bed in the darkened hospital room. Then, I turned to look at her despite feeling like I didn’t have the right to. Not after everything.

She looked so small, lying in that bed. Frail. I couldn’t quite make out the damage done to her face—the light was so dim—but I could imagine, and I swayed on my feet, finding it difficult to stand upright.

My heart ached; my mouth fell open. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, not at all sounding like me, but something broken. Shattered.

She sniffled. “Revan, no, you—"

“God, Kate, I’m so fucking sorry.” I laid a hand over my face—to both catch my unabashed tears and block my view of her in that bed—and released a deflated breath.

I didn’t know how long I stood there, crying at the foot of her bed, and I didn’t know when my silent cries turned to body-racking sobs. But once the tears had started, they were relentless, a powerful force that I couldn’t contain even if I wanted to. I didn’t think about how stupid I looked, how ridiculous—I couldn’t. All I could think about was how she never would’ve been there, bandaged and bruised, in that bed, if I hadn’t broken her heart.

And that right there was the truth, regardless of what anyone else wanted to tell me.

She wouldn’t have been there if I had just lied about what Nate and I had done years ago.

And now, this—all of this—was on me and my inability to just let it go.

Wendy and Saul woke up at some point. Saul grumbled something unintelligible as Wendy hurried to wrap her arms around me, cooing whispers of reassurance that everything would be okay. But what the hell did she know?

“Hey, Saul?” Kate said.

It was the first thing she had said since I’d begun to break down—or at least, it was the first thing I’d heard.

Wendy handed me a wad of tissues, and I wiped angrily at my face.

Fuck, why couldn’t I keep my shit together for longer than a few minutes?

“Yeah, baby girl?” Saul asked, hurrying to her side like a doting father.

Howard . Where was her dad? God, was he okay?

Asshole. Of course he’s not okay.

“Can you guys give us a few minutes?”

Saul hesitated, but Wendy was already heading for the door.

“Saul,” she commanded with a harsh bite.

Saul glanced at me, hesitation in his hardened glare. I thought he’d ignore his wife, thought he’d insist on staying, but then he nodded. “We’ll just be out in the hall.”

There was a warning in his voice, telling me to proceed with caution. He didn’t have to worry about me though. I was already well aware that I had no claim to her time or energy. I didn’t deserve it.

They left, the door clicked shut, and all the oxygen was squeezed out of the room.

I hung my head, not knowing what to say. Not knowing if I should be the first to say it … whatever it was. There weren’t enough sorry s on the planet, and I wasn’t sure the words existed to cover how much I despised myself for what had happened. Talking seemed pointless, futile, but I would accept whatever verbal lashing she felt I deserved. It was the least I could do.

“Revan,” Kate said, her voice suddenly so loud above the beeping of her heart monitor.

“Yeah?” I answered, unable to look at her.

“Come here.”

I took a step closer, rounding the bed toward the chair. I wasn’t sure if I should sit, wasn’t sure if she wanted me here that long. But I stood beside it.

“No, I-I mean …”

The sheets rustled, and I looked up to watch as she shifted, moving over in the bed.

“Can you …” Her voice cracked; her breath hitched with a quiet sob. “C-can you just … h-hold me? Please?”

I looked at the empty space beside her on the bed. The IV line taped to her hand. The bruises on her face, her arms, her neck. I trembled with the fear that I’d snap her in half if I so much as breathed on her, let alone put my arms around her battered body.

“I-I don’t want to hurt—"

“You couldn’t possibly hurt me any more than I am,” she cut me off. “You wouldn’t .”

I already did , I thought, but I didn’t say as much while I swallowed against every other protest and inched my way closer to the bed.

Then, I carefully sat down, eased back against the uncomfortable pillows, and extended my arm for her to nestle in against me. She sniffled and offered a smile that didn’t come close to touching her eyes, then tucked herself against my body.

A sharp intake of breath hissed through her teeth, and I jolted.

“You good?” I eyed her warily.

She swallowed, her breathing shallow. “Yeah, I just need to get comfortable. I’m okay.”

I lay as still as stone, waiting patiently as she gingerly rested her head against my chest and maneuvered her middle away from mine. All the while, she gasped, whined, and finally sighed with something close to contentment.

“Okay,” she said quietly. “I think I’m good like this.”

Carefully, I wrapped my arms around her and asked again if she was okay. She hummed and barely nodded.

“This is all I thought about.”

I bit back the insistence that she shouldn’t want me at all and instead said, “Sorry. I should’ve come up here sooner. I didn’t know if—"

“No,” she replied, then sniffled loudly. “I mean, this is all I thought about when … when D-Donny …” She took a deep breath before simply saying, “All I thought about was you .”

Fucking hell. I couldn’t let her do this. I couldn’t let her fall back into depending on me when Nate and I had done what we did years ago. And, sure, neither of us was the monster who had stalked her for years. We weren’t responsible for the hell she had endured tonight. But I had played a part in being the bad guy years ago. Nate had, too, and there was always going to be a place for him in my life.

“It was Nate who broke into your house,” I said, timing be damned. “We worked at Roy’s. You came in, he asked you out, and you turned him down. He never took rejection well back then. He … always saw it as a reason for revenge. So, he stole your wallet and broke into your house. It was both of us. I was there. I didn’t want to be there, but I didn’t leave until he was ready. He’s done some shit—I told you that before—but he’s not a monster .”

She barely nodded against my chest. “I know he’s not.”

“I only told you that it was me because I thought …”

“You thought Nate was following me.”

I sucked in a deep breath, filling my chest. “Yeah. I wanted you to stay away from me because—"

“I know why, Rev,” she cut me off. “You were protecting me.”

“But I didn’t.”

“But you did .” Her voice was so full of insistence and strength, and I could hardly stand it.

I stared at the blank ceiling, brow furrowed. Trying hard not to fight her when I could only imagine how little fight she had left.

“The only reason I am even alive right now is because of you. The only reason my father is alive is because of you.”

I squeezed my eye shut, seeing Angela’s face. “But Angela—"

“I know,” Kate said, her voice broken and strained. “I-I know. I know, I know, I know.” Her hand lifted to touch the side of my face. “It wasn’t your fault. Nothing was your fault. I am here because you saved me, and I am making the choice right now to forgive everything else. Because whatever happened then doesn’t matter now.”

I grounded myself in the warmth of her palm against my cheek. I breathed in the disinfectant and cleanliness and her, forcing my mind to push beyond the guilt and pain I knew would revisit me time and time and time again, likely for the rest of my life. But for now, I chose to listen to her in a way I couldn’t listen to my mother or father or Officer Payton.

She was alive.

“I think I’m done bouncing,” I finally said, opening my eye to blink at that blank, bland, boring ceiling.

Boring . I could do boring for a while.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” I replied, nodding.

“That’s too bad. You were pretty good at it.”

I muttered a small, contemplative sound. “Maybe. But I think I’m ready to move on to something … less risky.”

“Well, that’s okay because, I mean, obviously, I won’t be dancing for a while,” she said, attempting a joke neither of us seemed to find funny. “Actually, if I’m being honest, I think I’m done for good.”

“Really?”

She nodded softly. “Really.”

“So, no more Indigo Sky?”

She shook her head and opened her mouth to speak before closing it immediately. Once, twice, three times … like she had something to add, but couldn’t quite find the strength to say it.

But that was okay.

I filled in the blank spaces myself.

What had remained of Indigo Sky was gone. She had been stripped away, stolen, and murdered, alongside Angela. There wasn’t anything left. What remained in her wake was this woman.

Broken, battered … but breathing.

She was alive.

I had saved her.

And whatever she did next … she was going to do it as Kate McLaughlin.

And I was gonna do it with her.

***

“And … well, uh … yeah, so that’s basically the gist of it,” I said, slumping into my chair in the hospital cafeteria.

Saul sat across from me, his jaw set and his eyes focused on a drop of spilled coffee on the table between us. He hadn’t said much since I’d started telling him the story of my childhood, my relationship with Nate, how I had come to be at Midnight Lotus—every event that had brought us to this moment now, a whole twenty-four hours after Nate and I had rescued Kate from Donny’s vengeful wrath. Just a grunt here and there or a subtle movement of his brow was about the extent of Saul’s response to what I had just told him, and now, I shifted awkwardly on this plastic chair, which was growing increasingly more uncomfortable by the second.

A groan ripped through his throat as he pressed his eyes shut and dragged his hands over his face before dropping them to the table. He leaned back, and although I knew he was about to speak, he kept his focus on that drop of coffee.

“That’s quite a story, Revan,” he said, his voice gruff.

Hearing my full name come from Saul’s lips felt suddenly worse than when Mom had scolded me as a child.

I didn’t know what else to say, so I said, “It’s not a story though. It’s what happened.”

“Yeah, I got that.”

He folded his hands on the table as he turned his fiery glare on me. Finally revealing the anger he held within his eyes, which I doubted came close to what he felt. Whether that anger was directed at me remained to be seen, but my nerves jolted into overdrive anyway.

“I should wanna kill you,” Saul said, low and menacing. “You and that friend of yours.”

I held his glare, but said nothing. I didn’t so much as breathe as he stared straight through me toward my trembling, cowering soul.

“You swore you’d never hurt one of the girls. You promised … but—" He released a sigh, slumping his shoulders while shaking his head. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t been there to stop that sick son of a bitch.”

In the blink of an eye, his anger was swept away with a rush of despair. His forehead crumpled, and he clapped a hand over his mouth, keeping his eyes trained on me as he shook his head slowly.

I had spent hours feeling like shit and beating myself up. After lying in bed with Kate until she fell asleep, after feeling sure of her forgiveness, I had thought I'd moved beyond the guilt. But now, having Saul look at me like this, I couldn't help but remind myself that it had all happened because I'd left.

Yet …

With that remorse came something else. Something that felt a lot like that look in his watery gaze.

Pride.

Saul dropped his hand from his mouth, letting it thunk against the table. He sucked in a deep breath as his head barely bobbed in a nod.

Then, he whispered, "Thank you, Revan. I speak for all of us when I say that. Wendy, the other girls, myself … Howard …" He shot his hand out to wrap it around my wrist. "Thank you. Hiring you is the greatest decision I’ve ever made, and I hope you know I mean that."

I swallowed against a surge of gut-wrenching emotion and nodded, unable to speak.

And just like that, as if someone had flipped a switch somewhere in this hospital, Saul cleared his throat, straightened his spine, and pulled his hand back.

"You gotta be exhausted," he said, smoothing out the wrinkles in his button-down shirt.

"Honestly"—I coughed, working the lump of emotion from my throat—"I dunno if I could sleep even if I wanted to."

The truth was, I hadn't thought much about what had happened at Kate's house apart from what I could've done differently to prevent it from happening altogether. I hadn't allowed my mind to slingshot me back into that place, where Angela was slumped over and blood oozed from a fatal gunshot wound and Donny lay at my feet, head and face beaten beyond recognition from the assault with a crowbar.

I had done that.

I had beaten him. I had taken his life, stolen his last breath, and maybe I should've felt something toward that. Maybe a sane man would've—a good man—but I didn't.

I just didn't want to see him when I closed my eye.

I didn't want to see him in my nightmares.

I didn't want Angela to haunt me for the rest of my life, regardless of her death being my fault or not.

Saul nodded, his eyes clouding with understanding. "You'll be okay, kid. Might take a while, but … you will be. You and that girl of yours."

I huffed a humorless laugh. "You don't know that."

"Yeah, I do," he replied, so sure and certain. "I feel it. You will be."