Chapter 234: A SIMILAR HABIT
Carl didn’t say anything, but tears streamed down his face. They stained the white sheet of his pillow as he stared at the ceiling. He could feel Laurel’s hand holding his, but aside from that, he felt numb again.
"I don’t want to die," Carl said. "I thought you would come if I did this."
"You know how foolish that was, right? You hurt yourself, and you hurt me, too."
"I know." Carl lifted his free arm to cover his face. "I know." His voice turned into a whisper. "Without you there, that place is not like home anymore."
Laurel squeezed his hand tightly, but she didn’t say anything. Carl didn’t need a response; he needed to vent what he felt.
He kept bottling up everything: the guilt, the anger, the shame, the sadness... He didn’t know how to mourn the family that he once had.
"Dad has never cared. It was always you and me at home, Mom. Even now, he doesn’t care. While Grandma cares too much, her attention overwhelms me. And I am feeling guilty because I don’t feel better."
Little did Carl know that Wena was standing outside the door, listening to what he said, and so was James. He came here immediately once he learned that Laurel had come to the hospital.
He thought she wouldn’t come, since she was determined that she wouldn’t have anything to do with his family after the divorce.
However, here she was, still caring about his son.
However, what Carl said affected him deeply. He didn’t enter the room; he chose to listen to his son. For the first time, he truly listened...
***
"Robbery?" Hazel said, almost disappointed, when the stalkers were simply burglars. There were four of them, all in their early twenties.
Hazel expected the McKennas had started to make their move, but it was simply a robbery when they asked her and Ranon to hand over their valuable things.
It was almost ridiculous for Hazel.
"Here, take this and go home." Hazel pulled some cash from her wallet.
"Give us all of your things!" One of them, with a buzz haircut, demanded. He looked at Hazel and Ranon back and forth, but Hazel didn’t see any guns on them. All of them held knives, though.
"Don’t be greedy, take this and go home." Hazel put the money on top of the car next to her and grabbed Ranon’s hand to take him away. "Let’s go."
"Where are you going?! Do you think you can leave easily?!" The young man with the buzz cut took a long stride to approach Hazel. But before he could reach her or Ranon could do something to him, Hazel had taken quick steps forward and kicked his face.
The impact was powerful, as the knife clattered on the asphalt and the young burglar was thrown back, landing on his butt with a loud noise.
Hazel stared at Ranon. She nudged his arm. "Why don’t you bring the car here? I will take care of them."
"Take care of them, huh?" Ranon gave Hazel a lopsided smile.
"You know that I am more than capable of taking care of these boys." Hazel waved her hand at the burglars casually, as if they were nothing but annoying children who demanded her attention.
Ranon thought for a moment before he decided to agree. "Okay." He watched the excitement in Hazel’s eyes.
"Hey! Where are you going?!" The man with the buzz cut yelled at Ranon as he walked away to retrieve the car parked not too far from there.
They could still hear the bustling sounds from the narrow street, but they could also hear the cars from the main road.
"Hey!" The man with the buzz cut was livid; he then approached Hazel. "Give me your bag!" he demanded.
"Na ah." Hazel wriggled her finger, and this enraged the man; he started to charge forward and attack Hazel.
Meanwhile, Ranon watched everything unfold from inside the car. His sharp eyes were on his wife as she fought the four burglars. He didn’t immediately approach her.
Only when she was done, did he drive over and open the car door for her. The strange look on his face vanished, and his gaze softened as Hazel grinned widely at him.
Later that night, when Hazel lay on the bed, sleeping, and Ashlyn had been returned to their bedroom by Renna, Ranon received a phone call from Elric. He was a friend of Ranon’s from the training center.
"They are alive," he said from the other end of the phone. "Why did you even do that?" There was an apprehension in his voice because he couldn’t find the right reason why Ranon would hire those burglars.
On the other hand, Ranon walked out of the room and went to his study while still on the phone with his old friend.
"Nothing."
"What do you mean by nothing? You staged the burglary for your wife to fight them. Are you out of your mind? I thought you loved your wife."
"Pay them handsomely. I will come over tomorrow." And before he heard any response from his old friend, Ranon had hung up the call.
He opened his laptop and saw a training video. He received this video from Lucian, who obtained it with the help of the former people of the Lozen family.
The video showed a young woman in her twenties having a mock fight against a few men. It was a video of River when she was training. It was very difficult to find.
Ranon’s sharp eyes were glued to the screen as he recognized the movement.
Everyone had a habit when they did something, especially the thing that they had done regularly, just like River’s habit of making a little jump before she did a spinning back kick.
He saw Hazel do the same thing when she fought those burglars.
Ranon had seen Hazel fight when they went to the training center for the first time, when a woman challenged her to a fight. But at that time, she was wearing a dress, which restricted her movement. Ranon also saw her when she trained there a few times, but those were not real fights.
Therefore, only now did Ranon see it. His guess was correct; they had the same fighting technique.
He leaned his back against the expensive chair, staring at the screen, where the young River took down two men twice her size.
This was an old training video, but even from years ago, she had developed that habit.
One more thing that Ranon noticed: there was a similarity in the way River stared at her opponent coldly. The killing intent that you could feel through the screen, the same cold stare that, a handful of times, he caught Hazel having.
***
"Can we talk for a while?" James asked as he approached Laurel, who was about to leave the hospital. Carl was sedated and had fallen asleep. "I will not talk about reconciliation," he added quickly.
Laurel looked at her ex-husband and nodded. Both of them went to the nearby café, where Laurel ordered black coffee and sweet pastries. She needed caffeine to face this conversation. More so, she had not been sleeping the entire night.
"What do you want to talk about?"
They sat at the farther part of the café, with a big window that showed the main street. People were walking on the pavement. It was a normal, beautiful morning with the sun shining brightly.
"I know that you’re tired of hearing me apologize, but I want to say it once more. I am sorry for everything I did, for how I treated you, and for taking you for granted. If I could turn back time, I would never make that stupid mistake again and ruin our beautiful family."
If he hadn’t been that stupid, he would still have his family, the stability that he took for granted. He wouldn’t be here, a widower, sitting across from his ex-wife, while his son was in the hospital for an attempted suicide.
"I know this means nothing to you, but I have never stopped loving you, even when I betrayed you. I always know, deep down in my heart, it’s only you that I want. I was so stupid to trade our beautiful life for that."
Laurel nodded; she accepted that, but she didn’t say anything. There was a time when she wanted to yell at him and spill all of her feelings so he would know, but at the moment, she didn’t feel the need to do it.
She had her own closure a long time ago, even before his sincere apology.
"Don’t make the same stupid mistake again next time," Laurel said at the end of James’s monologue, and then she left.
***
Hazel had been mulling over the information that she learned from Rize three days ago about what Arthur had done. She knew about the drugs but didn’t have any idea about the human trafficking.
How could she be so clueless, when she thought she handled all the matters related to the business between the Lozens and Rafael Scar?
Hazel was considering calling Rafael from the phone that River was supposed to use, but then, everybody had already learned that River had died. She couldn’t be River anymore.
And as Hazel contemplated everything, watching Ashlyn play with Peni in the living room, her phone buzzed. It was Lucian.
"Hello?" Hazel asked with a dull voice. Her mind was elsewhere.
"Hazel, you need to come to the hospital. Ranon is injured," he said in an eerily calm voice.