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CHAPTER51
NOVA
Dru yanksme away from the wall and away from Zeke the moment he puts his body between Lisa and my mother. A scream tears through my throat before Zeke’s knees hit the ground, Mom going down with him.
There’s another bang, and I crouch down, putting my arms over my head. I hear Dru scream and her footsteps pounding on the floor. When I look up, Dad holds the gun, his face ashen. He must have wrestled it from her in the confusion. Lisa and Dru are nowhere to be seen.
Dad meets my eyes for only a moment before he rushes out the door after them, and I’m left frozen in my spot.
“Nova.” Mom’s hazy voice cuts through the shock, but barely. “Nova!”
She screams at me, and the world comes into sharp focus.
Zeke grunts and falls forward onto the ground. Blood soaks his t-shirt just over his shoulder blade. Mom scrambles back and dials 9-1-1, and I’ve never been so thankful that she always has that fucking phone clutched in her palm. We’re surrounded by the glass from the window.
“Zeke.” I hit the ground, pain searing through my knees from scrambling over the shards of the window. “Zeke, talk to me.”
“Put pressure on it,” he says, and I stare at the blood for only a moment before I pull my sweater off and ball it up over the wound, front and back. I clamp down on both sides of the muscle that runs from his neck to his shoulder blade. He screams in pain. I let go and scoot back, terrified to hurt him. Terrified he’s going to die.
“You can do this, Forrester. You have to. I need you.” His voice is a hiss, and his fist is clenched tight. I crawl back to him and put pressure on his shoulder, ignoring his cry and letting the tears flow freely down my face.
Within minutes, the security guards that patrol this neighbourhood are at the door, and there’s nothing but panic. Dru stumbles back into the room, her lip split, blood already crusting over it. Mom still sits in shock in the corner, and Dad makes it back in.
“Ambulance is on the way. Security arrested Lisa. We’re okay.” Dad says.
“He is not okay!” I scream, and fresh tears flow down my cheeks, dripping from me to the blood-soaked sweater. Dad tries to pull me away, but I refuse to move from Zeke’s side. He needs me. Me.
He asked for me. He trusts me to keep him safe.
Zeke threw himself in front of my mother to save her, and I’m so fucking mad at him but relieved at the same time, and it tangles up everything inside of me.
“This is your fault,” I scream at Dru. She jumps at the accusation. “This is your fucking fault. Why would you do this? Why don’t any of you just talk to me?”
“I tried to tell you, Nov,” Dru begs. “I did. Twice. She ran me down in the street and broke my arm the first time. That’s when I knew this was more than a grudge. This was revenge. I was careful after that, but you sounded so broken, I almost told you again. But that’s when Lisa went to find you. She sent me a picture of herself in front of your house there. Of Zeke’s ex-girlfriend. She sent me the photo she took of you two.”
Dru casts her eyes away as if not looking at me while she says it will make it less invasive. “That’s why I came. That’s why I took that photo of Zeke and sent it to the press. That’s why I called Border Control and told them to send you home. That’s why I showed up and dragged you out. Jesus, Nova, I knew he would follow us back. I assumed you’d bring him with you. I was the one who called the press and told them about him. I sent the pic of him shirtless to distract people. To keep them occupied with something petty and harmless. To give people something inconsequential to talk about until I could figure out how to destroy the evidence.”
I’m full-on sobbing. I barely understand her words, but with the pain in her voice, the defeat in her posture, I know why this all felt off. Why I knew it was her, but it didn’t feel like her. She was as much a victim in this as I was.
“You should have just told me! We could have figured it out together.”
The sirens blare outside as the door flings open. Two paramedics enter, and it takes both my parents to pull me away from Zeke. His eyes are closed, but he curses loudly when they put him on a stretcher and wheel him to the door. I follow, but Dru grabs my hand, and I have to look at her.
“I love you, Nova. You’re my sister. I was trying to protect you.” She pleads as we walk out the front door. My knees sting with the cuts from crawling over glass, and I wince at the pain inside and out.
I pull my hand from hers and climb into the back of the ambulance with Zeke, my hands covered in blood as I stare at a paramedic cutting his shirt off and exposing his torn shoulder.
Guilt washes through me, a moment before anger. I never knew the pain Lisa was in or the sacrifices Dru had made, or the worry in my father’s heart, or the determination in my Mom.
All I saw was me.
But no one ever said anything. No one spoke the truth, included me, or talked about any of it. Everyone was just in silence, alone, stewing in our own shit until it divided us, overtook us, and poisoned us.
And Zeke is the one who took the shot. Zeke is the one that put himself in front of a bullet for my mom. For me.
“Forrester, I can smell the smoke from your brain working,” Zeke mumbles, and my eyes snap to his. He has a small smile, and his eyes are hazy, assuming the drugs are kicking in.
I look to the paramedic, who’s pulling gloves off his hands.
“He’s going to be fine,” the man says. “It was a damn lucky shot. Through the deltoid—just missed the artery. Someone was watching out for you today, man.”
Zeke’s eyes flutter as the drugs take him down. I stay by his side as he’s taken into the hospital, stitched up, and put in a sling.
