Within a mile, he's asleep.
I call Hadley from the burner.
She picks up on the first ring. "Silas?"
The sound of her voice undoes something in my chest. "Baby."
"You got him?"
I look over at Nash asleep against the passenger window. "I got him. He's asleep next to me. We're a couple of hours out. Where are you?"
The rustle of hospital sheets on her end. "Hospital. Mild concussion. They're keepin' me overnight."
My jaw locks against what I want to say about that. "Marlena?"
A pause that means she's looking at someone or something near her. "Out of surgery. She's gonna make it. Thunder too. Banshee's stable. Diesel's at Grace's clinic. Grace stayed with him."
I let out the breath I didn't know I was holding. "I'm comin' to you, baby. Just a couple of hours."
Her voice goes thick. "Silas. Bring Nash to me first. Before anything else."
My hand finds his small leg again on the seat beside me. "I am, baby."
I end the call. I put the phone on the dash.
I drive home with my hand on my boy's leg the whole way.
Eight hours ago I asked her to marry me in our kitchen.
Soon enough, I'll walk into a hospital room with our boy in my arms and put him in his mama's bed beside her.
I came out of my old life one time.
I just went back into it for the last time.
The man pulling into a hospital parking lot is the only version of me that comes home from here on out.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Hadley
The hospital room is quiet except for the tick of the IV beside my bed.
The light coming through the window is the late-afternoon gold that the Hill Country gives back in October before the wind switches.
I'm in a gown that ties at the back.
There's a butterfly stitch over my left ear where the laceration was that they couldn't fully close with a staple.
My hair smells like betadine and the kind of hospital soap that gets used on patients who came in with blood in their hair.
The nurses did what they could.
There's still a stiffness on the left side at my temple where the blood dried before they got to me.
I haven't asked for a mirror.
My phone is on the rolling tray next to the cup of water with the bendy straw.
