Enraptured

Chapter 16

By the time Ms. Caddel finished her bath, I had finished disinfecting Theo's wounds and applying an ointment to the bruise on his cheek. I had also wrapped the open-wounded scrapes on his little hands with bandages since he seemed to have scabbed his tender palms pretty badly on the rough pavement when he was pushed around in the crowd.

She walked out of the bathroom, drying her hair with a small towel.

Even though I found a set of relatively small clothes from my teenage years, the shirt was barely hanging onto her shoulders and almost fell all the way down to her knees. To add on, the drawstring of the shorts seemed to had been pulled as far as it could possibly go to keep them on her hips.

But she still managed to make my heart flutter, even though she had just come out of the shower and her face was slightly swollen from before.

Taking barely any note of me, she went straight to Theo's side, kneeling down next to him as her eyes worriedly raked over his body. She chewed onto her lower lips anxiously when she caught sight of the bandages on his hands and leaned down to place a soft kiss on the back of his hands. She had spoken so softly that I nearly missed it, "I'm sorry, Theo. If only I had been stronger, you wouldn't have gotten hurt."

My chest ached at her words.

No one would blame her for not being able to stand up to a guy who was more than a head taller than her and most likely over 80 lbs heavily. She probably already did as much as she could to try to keep her son safe.

I sighed as I walked over to her, kneeling down next to her as I handed her a mug of hot tea. "It's not your fault, and I'm sure that Theo would never blame you."

She graciously accepted the cup from my hand and mumbled, "But I could've tried to be more alert of my surroundings or avoided—"

"Don't say that. I'm sure you tried your best, and—"

She looked up at me with tears brimming at the corners of her eyes. "But, they always say it's my fault! That I was the one who seduced them and made them act like that by... by how I dressed... or how I looked at them... or h-how..."

Her words were cut off with a muffled sob. She was in so much pain and yet she was still trying to keep it hidden in an effort to protect her son, trying not wake him even though she couldn't help but to break down right next to him.

I hesitantly slid one of my hands over her shoulder and gently eased her into my chest.

I was scared that she would push me away, but it never came. Instead, she buried her face into my chest and only cried harder, letting out all the pain bottled up within her.

I lightly rocked her from side to side. I wanted to soothe her sorrow, but I doubted my clumsy words would do any good. All I could do was hold her as she finally let out all of her anguish and grief.

I lightly stroked her head as her sobs started to die down with time. Her grip loosened from my shirt as exhaustion from today's events started to settle down into her body. And, soon enough, she eventually dozed off in my lap with ruminants of tears streaked across her cheeks.

In any other scenario, I would've been warmed by the fact that she felt comfortable enough to fall asleep next to me, but at that moment, all I felt was mind-numbing ache, a desperate wish to erase all her problems from her life so I would never had to hear her heart-wrenching sobs ever again.

I carefully lifted her off the ground in one arm and picked up Theo in my other arm, making sure not to jostle either of them as I walked into my bedroom. I gently set them down onto my California king sized bed and tucked them in, watching how they naturally rolled into each other's arms.