“They gave me something to calm me down. I feel like I’m floating. Am I floating? Have I gained the power to float?”
“I don’t think you have,” I say. “But maybe you just need to keep trying. Just don’t jump off any roofs to see if you can fly.”
Mickey grins before looking over at Vero. “You came! You were worried about me!”
“I didn’t want to go with the other one,” Vero says, confirming my hypothesis.
“You really do like us,” Mickey decides, which I’m confident isn’t what Vero meant or said. “I’ll be your friend.”
Vero’s eyes narrow like such a declaration has hurt him. “I have no friends.”
“Good! I’ll be your first,” Mickey says before the nurse comes in and explains that they’re going to get the wound cleaned andstitched once they confirm that the bullet isn’t lodged in his body anywhere. So without further ado, Mickey is wheeled out… much to his horror. In his ideal world, I would be spooning him on the bed while they took him away.
It’s really good they gave him something for his anxiety because he still tries to cling to me as they go.
Chapter Nineteen
Riley
I twirl the hourglass around and around while I stare at the sand shifting inside of it. I want to tear this cursed thing apart and draw the horse out… even though I want nothing to do with a horse.
But like this…
“You okay?” Mickey asks.
I jerk back to the present and look over to where Mickey sits on the edge of his hospital bed. Since he’s back and has been given the all-clear to go, we’re simply waiting for the nurse to return and actually allow him to leave.
“What’s the definition of ‘okay’?” I ask.
He laughs and nods. “Yeah. I feel ya.”
I push myself out of the chair and go over to help him while Vero remains seated in another chair with his eyes closed. “What do you need help with?”
“Everything. I don’t even know how to put a shirt on,” he whines.
“Do you really not know?” I ask, helping him into it as he grins at me. It’s a shirt that Kim had brought earlier,and apparently a shirt Mickey knows nothing about putting on because he even watches me button it up.
“If you keep treating him like this, he will never become a respectable human,” Vero states.
“You don’t even have your eyes open; you have no idea what we’re doing,” Mickey says.
Vero cracks an eye open and cocks his head. “I know you are treating him like a little pet dog that does everything he’s told.”
“Riley, Vero is bullying me, and it’s not as sexy when I’m sad and hurt,” Mickey complains.
“Not sure what you want me to do about it. Just look at the man. If I tried bullying him, he’d punch me into a different realm. Not to mention that he already murdered me once,” I say as the nurse returns with a wheelchair and hesitates when she hears that. She must decide it’s best to pretend she misheard because her smile returns while she hurries over to Mickey’s bed. I assumed Mickey would be so thrilled by this that he’d ask to take the wheelchair home with us so he can be wheeled for the rest of eternity, but he looks almost put off by it.
“I don’t need a wheelchair because these strapping young men are going to carry me to the car,” Mickey tells her.
The nurse laughs like she thinks Mickey wouldn’t actuallyaskfor this, while I help Mickey into the chair before I’m stuck carrying him somewhere else.
She hurries out the door as I text Kim that we’ll be right out so she can be waiting at the pickup spot.
When I look up from my phone, I freeze when I discover that neither Vero nor Mickey are in front of me. Instead, I find myself in some strange hallway I’ve never seen before, and at the end of it stands Famine.
“Brother, you need to wake up,” she says as she starts walking toward me.
The dark burgundy walls lit by candelabras make it clear that I’m no longer in the hospital.
