Something Else Entirely

43 - Leave it all behind.

They wouldn't let anyone but immediate family into the NICU to see the twins, so Dad and Mum took turns in there with either Madden or myself, rotating around to receive all the visitors that came in to the hospital to see them. Mum's room was looking more like a florist than the one downstairs near the entrance of the hospital, and there wasn't a single rose in sight.

We'd been there since 9:00 a.m., and by 4:00 in the afternoon, during Mum and my shift with the twins, I was starting to feel the lack of Logan, who I still hadn't heard from yet. Mum clearly noticed it too, watching me check my phone religiously for notifications every five minutes.

"Everything okay, baby?" she asked, putting down her copy of Persuasion, which she had previously been reading to the twins as she sat next to the incubator, determined to make literature nerds out of them already at not even twenty-hour hours old. The sound of her voice reading her favourite words was so soothing to me, but there was a very real fear in the back of my mind that I had fucked things up with Logan, and that was a constant distraction from the tragically romantic tales of Annie and Freddie.

"I thought we might see Logan today . . ." she added, prompting me to talk and correctly guessing what was wrong with me, as only a mother could.

"I kind of told her to fuck off and leave me alone last night," I admitted regretfully, before turning to my brother and sister and apologising for my foul language.

Mum looked as shocked as I felt at myself. She can barely believe I spoke to the love of my life like that anymore than I can. "Jetty, why on Earth would you do that? You love Logan."

"Because I was scared? You'd been carried off in an ambulance—for all I knew, bleeding to death—and we got here and you were already in surgery and they weren't telling us anything. I was hating myself for everything that happened, and assumed you'd all want me gone. And I just snapped."

She closed her eyes and sighed deeply. "Oh, Jetty. When are you going to just accept that we love you?"

"It might have sunk in a little now you haven't kicked me out after last night," I chuckled, excited by my sister's reaction to hearing the sound of my laugh, stretching one of her hands out and closing it again.

"Jet, you could probably shoot someone and I would still think the world of you and defend you fiercely in court," she said very seriously. "Even though you know I hate guns."

"I know you would, Mum. But you don't need to worry about that. I'm not going to kill anyone," I said, before reconsidering and adding angrily, "Except maybe Axel and Kora."

"That kind of hatred will eat you up inside, baby," Mum said, shaking her head in disapproval. "The more you hang onto that resentment, the less true happiness you'll know in life."

Disbelief gripped me as I tried to take in her words. "How can you say that? After what they did to you? After that they did to them?" I said, holding my hand against the glass.

"Jetty, if there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that people like them—Axel, Kora, Jaeden, Jared, my stepfather, Camden, Davis—they aren't even worth the energy it takes to remain angry at them. Now, I understand that my obvious anger last night would contradict my current claim," she chuckled to herself, and both my brother and sister reacted to her, like they heard and loved the sound of their mother laughing as much as I did. "But you're only doing yourself more damage by holding on to that negativity. They sure as hell don't give a damn if you hate them or not—that's why they're able to continue doing all the evil shit they do. But why do these assholes get to have that control over us?

"I've worked damn hard to get that power of thought and emotion back in my life, Jet, and so have you. Being around those people and dwelling on those memories only ever ends in you losing your beautiful self in the process. The only time I've ever seen you be anything other than the gorgeous man you are is when you let these people and everything they represent get the better of you."