Page 68 of Playing With Forever

Watching my dad stare out the window of the packed waiting room hurt.

It hurt my eyes, my heart, and my stomach.

Echo was standing next to him, saying something I couldn’t hear, and by the looks of it, my dad couldn’t either. He hadn’t blinked, hadn’t moved, hadn’t said a word to anyone, including me.

And I got it.

Josie was in surgery, and she had been for a really long time.

No one told me, but I’d heard Kane talking to DJ on the phone, and Kane knew—two stab wounds to the stomach, a four-inch incision on her throat, and massive blood loss. When she was brought in, she was unconscious.

I could feel Kane’s pain, but that was because he was sitting next to me with his arm around me.

My dad was staring out the window, lost without Josie.

Not that I blamed him, I was lost without her, too.

“Lindy, honey, do you want to go take a walk with me?” Shiloh’s friend Quinn asked.

I didn’t mean to shrink away from her, it was rude. She’d been nothing but kind since she and a bunch of other women who worked with Josie showed up, but I didn’t want to leave my dad or Kane.

“No, thank you.”

Kane’s hand on my shoulder squeezed, and he hugged me tighter with the arm that was around me.

Josie was his mom, I was supposed to be comforting him.

“I’m sorry, Kane, I can⁠—”

“Stay right here.” His voice sounded funny, deeper and gruffer than normal.

Pain.

So much pain filling one small room.

“She has to be okay,” I whispered. “She has to be.”

“She will be.”

He didn’t sound like he believed that.

But I did.

She had to be.

It happened almost an hour later. The door swung open, and everyone’s eyes went straight to the door, but instead of a doctor, it was DJ with Carrie following behind him.

I felt Kane stiffen beside me, which made me tense.

Without looking at anyone else in the room, DJ beelined for my dad with angry, pain-filled strides.

“Shit,” Kane mumbled under his breath and started to push out of his chair when it looked like DJ was going to hit my dad.

But at the last second, he swung his arm around my dad and hugged him.

Kane blew out a breath and settled us back in the chair.

I watched as my dad embraced Josie’s son.