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I stay by her side for hours, half afraid someone is going to snatch her up and take her away from me again.
“You should go home, Skylar,” Tammy says once the sun sets. She sits in the plastic chair next to me, watching April sleep. “Get some rest.”
I don’t want to leave. I want to stay by April’s side until she wakes up.
“Go home to your pack,” Tammy adds gently. “She’ll be here tomorrow.”
As painful as it is to leave her, Vincent takes me back to my house, where Landon and River are waiting. Both of them look exhausted on the couch, but they’re up on their feet immediately when they see me.
River is the first one to reach me, and he pulls me into a long hug. The bond between the four of us thrums in my chest, and I slow my breathing as River embraces me.
“You did it, baby,” he whispers.
I shake my head. “You did it,” I mumble into his chest. “It was all your guy’s hard work.”
As we eat dinner, I finally get the whole story.
Someone had spotted a woman matching April’s description unconscious in the backseat of a truck that was in an abandoned industrial park on the outskirts of town.
Landon, River, and Ben found her.
Vincent was the one that told Tammy.
“It’s going to be a long road for her,” Landon says over a bite of pasta, “but having you as such a good friend will help.”
I blush. “I hope so.”
Vincent sits on the couch next to me and takes my hand. “We’ll help her, as well,” he says. “Whatever she needs, we’ll do our best to make it happen.”
“Tammy, too,” River adds. “They’re family now, right?”
My heart swells.
“Yeah,” I murmur. “They are.”
April sleeps and sleeps.
But after every shift at the café, one of my Alphas gives me a ride to the hospital.
And every day I’m there, I talk her ear off.
I tell her about everything she’s missed at the café. How we finally carry macadamia milk, and despite what she thought, customers enjoy it. I tell Devyn’s story of permanently banning the bitchy lemon bar lady, and how she’s creating her own flavors of macarons now.
I mention April’s Apricots, the special edition macaron I made just for her.
Then I tell her all about the detectives.
I start with our first encounter, with the day in their office parking lot where I was hit by a car.
“It was ridiculous,” I say to her. “My shoes flew off, too, like in a cartoon. It was so stupid, April.”
I could swear her finger twitches, but I must be imagining things.
“I think you’ll like Landon the most,” I say. “He’s the sweetest one of them. River will probably get on your nerves once in a while. Oh, you know what, though? He might not, because he messed up Jason’s truck while they were looking for me.”
Her finger definitely twitches this time, and I imagine she’s laughing.
I spend a whole week having one-sided conversations with her, replaying old memories and bringing up inside jokes we’ve had for years.
