2-19: Another Set Of Wings

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Rain awoke to sunlight on her face. But not in the direction it usually came from when she was in her bed. She directed her gaze towards the beam of yellow light, realizing all at once where she was. She turned her head to look at Ryan, pushing his arm off of where it had been resting on her side.

"Ryan! Wake up!"

She shoved his shoulder, getting to her feet as quickly as she could. The fireplace had been reduced to embers, and the house was cold. The candles had melted down so far they barely cast any light at all. 

"How could you let me fall asleep here? Thorne is going to think the absolute worst thing happened!"

She had no idea what time it was, but she knew it didn't matter. Thorne was up with the sun almost every day. And she had no excuse for where she had been.

She groaned, pulling her fingers through her hair, watching Ryan wake up slower than her mom did. Which was saying something. He rubbed his eye with his fist and pulled his phone out once he got to his feet. Rain could feel the panic escalate in her chest. She fought to come up with something that would diffuse the situation that was waiting for her.

"Why do I have 7 unheard voice mails?"

He mumbled the words, lifting the phone to listen, and Rain sighed, heading for the door. 

"I have to go. I have to deal with this before it gets worse."

Ryan pulled the phone away from his ear, his eyes widening slightly as he spoke.

"Hold on, Rain. I think you should hear this."

He held the phone out to her, and she stepped over to him hesitantly. The look on his face already told her it wasn't something she wanted to hear. Could Thorne have gotten his number? She was so careful to have deleted everything she had...

But it wasn't Thorne's voice that she heard when she hit replay on the message. It was her aunt Kiara's.

"Hey, Ryan. I don't know if you were able to see Rain, but if you did, she needs to call Eden right away. Thaddeous overdosed on heroin last night.

And this time he didn't make it."

The hand holding the phone fell to her side and she felt something nauseating slip into her veins. 

How long had it been since she'd seen him? Six months? More? Less?

She'd lost count. 

And now he was gone. And she'd never be able to see him again. 

She'd chosen Hawthorne over everything, no matter what he had done to her, and he took everything away from her in response. Rain held the phone back out to Ryan, something foreign spinning around her head. Tears fell from her eyes, but they were not just from the loss.

They were from anger. The full intensity of the betrayal she felt.

This man said he loved her, and yet, he'd taken so much.

In a matter of months.

She stood there, shaking. Ryan's eyes looked unsure of what he was supposed to do.

"Rain... I'm so sorry."

Rain looked up at him, shaking her head.

"Me too. And I think I want a divorce."

Ryan's surprise was clear in the way his mouth dropped open, but he quickly shut it. 

"That's not quite the response I was expecting... I thought you were happy with this guy?"

She scoffed, turning for the door behind her. Rain was already lightly falling when she got outside and it coalesced with the tears on her face, cooling the heat on her cheeks.

"I'm not happy."

Ryan's footsteps were close behind her, and they continued to follow her all the way to the back gate of her house. She faced him when she reached it, letting out a breath.

"This won't be pretty if you go in there with me."

Ryan shrugged a shoulder, glancing up at the door.

"I have a feeling it's not going to be pretty even if I don't."

Rain took a deep breath and nodded. He was right. And at least with Ryan there, Thorne wouldn't hit her. It would ruin his image.

She pushed the gate open and approached the back door, but before she could touch it, it creaked open on its own.

Thorne stood there, and the look on his face made her blood run cold.

She stepped through the doorway, and before Thorne could protest, Ryan was right behind her.

Thorne's words were slow, calculated. 

"Where were you, Rain?"

Rain's words stuttered, but she got them out, one piece at a time.

"I was with Ryan. He came to give me some news about Thaddeous."

Throne raised an eyebrow, looking back and forth between the two of them.

"Oh?"

Rain opened her mouth to respond, but before she could, her vision went blurry. She put a hand against the counter next to her, but it slipped off, her knees shaking.

Blackness ascended into her mind and the last thing she heard was Ryan's voice.

But no words.

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"Mrs. Campbell, we have the results of your blood test.

The reason you fainted was low blood sugar, brought on by early pregnancy.

You're about 5 weeks along. There has been some damage to your rib cage from your fall, but the baby is perfectly healthy."

The doctor smiled at her, turning for the door with his clip board in hand. He stalled with his hand on the door, looking at Hawthorne.

"Congratulations."

Rain's mouth dropped open and she looked at Thorne, her stomach turning.

A baby? With Hawthorne?

Not only was she only 19, her entire future just got a little bit darker.

She was married to him, that could eventually end if things got too cold. 

A baby... A baby could never be. Not even an option in her mind. No matter what, she would have a piece of this man forever. You couldn't escape from a shared child.

And after Thaddeous... It couldn't have happened at a worse time. Or maybe it couldn't have happened at a better time?

She hadn't even had time to process the fact that her baby brother had died, and now she was having a baby?

A baby was a blessing, right?

Then why did it feel like nothing but a curse right now?

She was going to leave him. She had wanted to. He had ruined her entire life.

But a baby was a reason to stay. Maybe everything would be different when it was born.

Or, maybe, just maybe, she was making a terrible decision by even considering staying for this. She could just take the baby and go. 

Go home to California. Home to everyone who loved her. To Ryan.

But when she looked up at Thorne, and his eyes met hers, they were gentle. He reached his hand out, lightly tracing the space of her stomach.

And for some reason unknown to her, Rain felt like it could be okay.

That her baby could have its father, and she could have her husband back.

Miracles happen right?

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The flight to California for the funeral was quiet, empty of emotion. Mostly because Rain had drained all of hers through tears and Thorne never acted like he had many. Besides maybe anger.

Ryan took the flight with them, quieter than Thorne the entire time. Rain was convinced that the only reason she was even on this flight at all was because he had stuck around after the trip to the hospital. Something told her Thorne saw Ryan as an adversary. But not one he was sure he could take on.

And when the plane touched down at the airport, Ryan was the only one who stayed close to Rain's side. The only one who seemed to understand at all how she felt.

She hadn't told him about the baby. Wasn't sure how to tell any of them. Not right now.

Everyone still had to work through the death of her brother, not deal with an incoming baby in the midst of it.

Hadn't that been what had happened with her grandma? Bliss was born a few months after her aunt Lyric had died.

Maybe her family was just cursed. Babies following deaths. Maybe it was an underlying theme of her bloodline. Some kind of curse.

The funeral passed, a week passed after that. She wanted to go back to London, and she knew Thorne did too, but she couldn't bring herself to leave. Eden was a mess. Everyone was. Every atmosphere she entered was tinged with death. She could almost touch it with her fingertips.

She had always felt everything way too deeply, and this was no different. Everyone's pain seeped into her system and intensified her own. It was too much to handle.

She tried to get away from all of it. Hide away in her room, but one after the other, everyone would find her. Give their condolences, relay stories they had of her brother growing up. Memories of her with him.

The empathy she felt was choking her and she couldn't breathe. The empathy and the regret. All the time she had missed with him. All the words she had said, and the fact that she had never gotten to tell him she was sorry.

About anything. About everything.

So she found herself in the one place none of them would go. Thaddeous' room.

She laid down, and her tears soaked into his pillow, and it felt somehow like desecration. His room still looked like it had when they were younger for the most part. Old family pictures replaced with band posters, and a little darker, but the same.

The only picture he had kept was one of all of her siblings. Storm and Rain pulling some kind of goofy faces at the camera, and Thaddeous looking bored. Some random trip to the beach they had taken as kids. She wanted to know what was special about it. Why out of all of them he had kept that one.

But she couldn't. She could never ask him anything again, and the realization added to the ton of bricks already sitting on her chest.

She drew in a breath and it shook violently as it left with more tears. She didn't even hear the footsteps that meant someone else had entered the room.

"Jesus, Rain."

She pulled the pillow over her face, trying to cover the mess that she knew she resembled.

"Not now, Ryan. Not right now. I need to be alone. I can't take any more people telling me how sorry they are for me. I can't take another 'I know he loved you'.

Just go away."

Pressure dropped onto the bed next to her, but the pillow didn't leave her face. 


"I'm not going to say anything like that. I'm not stupid.

I know nothing anyone says is going to help this."

She took a deep breath, and suddenly the pillow was almost as heavy as the weight in her chest. She tossed it aside, looking at Ryan with swollen eyes.

"This isn't fair. Why him? Why not me? Why now?"

Ryan inhaled slowly, looking out the window over Thaddeous' bed.

"No one can answer those questions. They don't have answers. Death doesn't have answers.

It's just a part of life, Rain."

Rain glared at him bitterly.

"Not for you."

Ryan instantly looked back over at her, his eyes sad.

"I can't help what I am, Rain. I was born into this family."

Rain rolled onto her side, facing the wall away from him.

"Okay. Can you go now? Your pep talk isn't working. 

I'm angry, and I'm hurting, and I'm pretty sure that I'm dying."

His hand brushed against her shoulder and she recoiled into the blankets beneath her, letting out a noise.

"At least you're feeling something. Your mother looks dead. You can see it in her eyes."

Rain's voice was muffled by the blankets as she spoke.

"My mother doesn't do emotions."

"And all you have are emotions."

Ryan's whisper sounded more like a realization than an affirmation.

"Yes. It's lovely. "

She paused, her last words a repetition of what she had said earlier. Almost lost in the sea of Thaddeous' blankets.

"It should have been me."

She tried to drown out anything else he had to say, focusing on keeping her own breathing steady through the ache in her chest. But she heard him. She heard what he said as he stood, and what he said as he left the room.

And she wished that she hadn't.

"I know you're in pain. I know that you feel like you deserve to die instead of him, like somehow that would fix everything, but you're wrong. 

There's a reason that you're still here.

I wouldn't let you die, anyway. I couldn't. I'm in love with you."

His leaving voice emptied out the last amount of strength she had. It had been hanging on by a thread as it was. She buried her face in the pillow again, some kind of scream leaving her throat.

It wasn't fair. He didn't deserve to die, and she didn't deserve to carry the guilt and regret with her for the rest of her life.

But he did.

And she would.

And there was nothing that could change that.

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Lately I just keep my windows open
Hoping I might feel you in the wind
Time heals all, but somehow i'm still broken
'Cause parts of me ain't ever gonna mend