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Chapter Fourteen
Quinn
When Quinn opened her eyes,she thought she was back in the clearing with Julius and Hudson, lying in the grass and staring into the bright sky. There was the gentle rush of the creek, the sound of the wind through the trees, the intermittent beeping of the...
Quinn blinked. Then she blinked again.
“There you are,” said a female voice she didn’t recognize.
Quinn tried to look at the voice, but there was something that kept her from moving her head.
Suddenly, things came back to her in flashes: getting in the SUV, screaming as she stomped the gas pedal, the terrified look on Vince’s face right before the crash.
She was somewhere with a lot of beeping and bright lights.
“What,” Quinn said. She meant to ask more questions than that — What’s going on, where am I? — but she couldn’t get her body to cooperate. Her mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton, and her tongue was so slow to respond that she thought it might have come disconnected somehow.
Then there was a straw at her lips and a friendly but unfamiliar female face hovering over her.
“It’s water,” she said. “Drink, you must be thirsty.”
Quinn managed to close her lips around the straw and take a couple of sips, getting almost as much water down her front as into her mouth.
“You’re in the hospital,” the woman said.
Duh, thought Quinn.
“You’ve got some fractured ribs, a broken nose, two black eyes, and some pretty bad whiplash, but the doctors think you’re gonna be fine,” she went on. “I’m Cora, Ash’s mate, by the way.”
Quinn swallowed and tried to control her face. She just felt so out of it.
“Yeah, you’re supposed to put on your seatbelt before driving into brick walls,” said an unfamiliar male voice. Quinn patiently waited for him to enter her field of vision, and in a few moments, there he was, a guy with chin-length hair also leaning over her.
“I’m Hunter, Ash’s other mate,” he said. “Welcome back.”
Quinn tried to smile, but it didn’t quite work.
“Juliudson?” she managed to get out.
“Julius and Hudson are still at the police station,” the man said, exchanging a glance with Cora. “They’re fine.”
Someone’s hand reached out and stroked Quinn’s hair, gently.
“Everything’s going to be okay,” Cora said, her voice soft and soothing. “Get some more sleep. We’ll be here when you wake up again.”
“Thank you,” Quinn managed to whisper before slipping under.
* * *
She woke again hours later,a sharp pain in her side making her eyelids fly open. This time, sunlight streamed in the windows, and the room looked almost completely different than it had previously.
“Quinn!” said a male voice.
It was Julius’s voice.
In moments, Julius was on one side of her, Hudson on the other, both holding her hands. Someone held the water to her lips again and she sucked at the straw, getting most of it in her mouth this time.
Then she took a deep breath, looking from one of them to the other. Her ribs protested and she cringed.
