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“What’s this?”
Caring.
“Hello.” A nurse in Hello Kitty scrubs pushes a cart of medical crap in and she obviously has to work to hold her smile as she assesses me and Logan. There’s small stuffed animals clinging to her stethoscope and the cart and it dawns on me... “I’m in the pediatric ward?”
“Ironic, right?” Shit-eating grin still there.
“I’m not a child!” I shout.
And Logan loses his grin and storm clouds descend over his expression. “You’re right. You’re not.”
The nurse quietly walks over to me, scans my arm bracelet with a device, scans something on her cart, and before I realize it, she’s pushing something into my IV. Coldness spreads up my arm, a strange taste enters my mouth, and my head snaps in her direction. “What did you give me?”
“Your uncle and doctor want you to rest.” Condescending pity eyes in my direction and panic is a chaser to whatever she put into my bloodstream.
Wetness burns my eyes as I slam my fist against the mattress again. She stays silent as she messes with my IV machine, changes out the saline bag, then wipes her name off my nurse’s board and writes somebody else’s name and like the other adults in my life—she leaves.
I fight to keep my eyes open. Logan’s in danger. I’m in danger. Logan’s in danger over me. I can’t sleep, but even if I’m awake, if someone walked in here now, there’s nothing I could do. I have no weapon, I’m weak, I’m a sitting duck and now Logan is too...over me.
Another slam of my fist against the bed and I cover my eyes with my hand in case the wetness should try to spill over my cheeks.
Fingers over my hand fisted on the bed and I shake my head. I don’t deserve this contact. “Go away.”
“I can’t,” he says almost in apology.
“You can, but you’re too stupid to do it.”
“Crazy,” he corrects. “My IQ scores invalidate your claim for stupidity.”
I snort and want to kick myself that I permitted his humor to break through my anger. What’s worse, he’s not kidding. The boy is brilliant and totally crazy.
Logan keeps his fingers over mine and somehow, without realizing it, I have threaded mine with his. His hand is warm, the skin slightly rough in places, and I immediately think of Logan working on cars with Isaiah, him crouched over home plate daring the runner to take him out as he tries to score, and the one time Logan brought all of us to Bullitt County because Chris needed help baling hay.
I didn’t do anything more than sit on the bales and order everyone else around, but I remember watching Logan. His shirt off, his back glistening in the summer heat, the way his muscles moved in this fluid way and how my stomach flipped whenever he’d glance in my direction.
These hands belong to someone who’s strong, who’s physical, who’s loyal and protective and I hate that I permitted myself the luxury of becoming his friend. Stupid. I was stupid. “I didn’t mean to jack up your life.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did.”
“My life was jacked up before we met.”
Silence. More silence. So silent that even my own thoughts no longer disturb me. So silent that I hadn’t even realized my eyes had closed.
“Do you want this life, Abby?” he whispers. “If you had the choice would you walk away?”
I turn my cheek into the cool pillow, toward the lovely deep sound of his voice, and don’t bother trying to open my eyes. There’s no hospital room, we’re back on Chris’s farm. The sun was shining then and it was a warm blanket over my body. “If I could, I’d run.”
“But you need the money for her, don’t you?”
I nod and my voice sounds far away. “She was in a nursing home and they hurt her, stole from her...” I swallow then lick my dry lips. “I love her so I brought her home.”
“We’ll figure it out,” he says, but before I can argue a crackle of a bag and something soft is tucked into the crook of my elbow. “I bought you a bunny.”
My lips lift and I can almost feel its little nose sniffing my skin. “A real bunny?”
“Yeah.” But his tone is so light that I can’t tell if he’s kidding. “It’s real.”
