The Little Dove #3 ✔️

67. A Time So Deadly

The first man to read me bedtime stories late at night when I woke up during thunderstorms, duding the strikes of lightning that did torment me and shock me and scare me as a child. He never once said to 'harden up'. He's never been unkind, never harsh. Even during the nightmares that plagued my thoughts, during the basic and natural fears a child has, he held my hand, just like I'm holding his now and he always curled his fingers around mine.

Those fingers would not move nor twitch.

He wasn't doing it.

He's supposed to curl his fingers around mine and tell me that what I'm seeing right now is another horrific, tragic nightmare that isn't real. None of this is allowed to be real as the chopper pulls out a stretcher. I'm shoved away from my Dad like a ghost in the rain. Familiar and burly arms wrap around my middle and I can't stop screaming. He lifts me, whomever is holding me, lifts me when I throw all my limbs towards my Dad.

They rip off his shirt, after skilfully removing the blade and pressing on the wound, an oxygen mask is placed over his mouth, I watch in slow motion as an automated external defibrillator is used to restart the heart I wished never stopped. The pads were placed on his chest as Grandpa Stevens rips a yelling Marvin out of the way.

My twin and I struggle as Mom holds Dad's cheeks. She presses a kiss to his lips before they run to the chopper. I scream for my Dad, the man holding me was stronger than life itself as he kneels us to the wet grass floor.

"Edmund, TAKE ME BACK!" I scream at the man holding me, I grip his arm as he holds the back of my head. He raises me in his pale arms, his accenting biceps I knew all too well as I catch-with blurry eyes-as Grandpa Stevens throws my brother in one of our SUV's.

I scream into Edmund's chest in the car. He squeezes me to him, speaking sweet nothings in my ear, the faster the vehicle goes, the scarier my heartbeat dims. I wasn't breathing fast, but I was crying hard. Edmund holds the back of my head from thrashing and reaching for a helicopter that flies over our heads with great speed.

So much of this moment was a blur to me as Marvin screams for Grandpa Stevens to drive faster against the motorway, to the hospital we knew my Dad would be placed into. I watched Charlize's eyes, those devil eyes that reddened in a roaring target when she saw my Dad fighting against one of the Cordial Matrix's most trained operatives.

He won...before he got stabbed in the back.

I grip Edmund's collar in biting hands, "Edmund." My lips tremble as he cups my cheeks.

Silver eyes penetrate mine, "Breathe." He says.

I shake my head, "I can't. This can't...be...happening. I can't..lose...him!" I stress to him.

Edmund grips my cheeks, "He will be fine. I saw them, they got his heart beating before they got on the chopper, it was a clean wound. He will survive this, lemon." He murmurs, peaking the tears off my cheeks as I smooth my hands against the back of my neck.

I close my arms around his neck in a hold that feels like rope tightening and knotting around it's anchor and I bury my head into him, into his darkness where all I wish to do is fade. His heart was beating fast while mine was running racetracks as my veins freeze and I feel as though I was shutting down, light was draining from me and I could only imagine how Mom was feeling.

God, the look on her face. I could never, ever erase the image of my Mom holding my Father the way she did. If she lost him, if we lost him...there would be no Parker-Myers family left to hold onto.

I couldn't risk this.

This was not possible, this should not be how our story ends. A love like Poppy and Maximus Myers was rare and impossible to find. A Romeo with no Juliet, but Poppy Parker instead. Dad said it took time, time he loved with every beat of his heart and every step of his journey to finding the key to her heart and asking her if she would do him the honour of spending the rest of her life with him. That's how he told us the story of The Lone Dove. A tale of finding her.