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“I’m not leaving her.”
“I get it, you’re worried about her. But you need to be strong for her and that gaping hole in your shoulder isn’t going to help matters. May I suggest you look after yourself so you can look after her?”
“Fine, do what you gotta do, but then I’m coming back here, and I’m not leaving until she wakes up and walks out with me.”
He nods. “Well, it’s a start, I suppose.”
In one of the emergency room cubicles, he removes the bullet. My insistence on no painkillers sparks that fear versus fascination in him again.
“You’ve got a strong pain threshold,” he says, impressed. “But then, you certainly fight like you do.”
“You watch me fight?”
“Oh, Ares, my boy, you won me fifty dollars against the Scorpion.”
I grunt, but my mind automatically switches back to Rory, and it brings a new wave of fear with it. My hands curl into fists. If she dies, I don’t know how I will survive this.
“Look, if I can offer you some advice. You seem like a lovely fellow, and you obviously love Aurora. But torturing yourself over what has happened isn’t going to help her. It’s not going to help anyone.” This doctor likes to talk when all I want to do is quietly torture myself. “Honestly, the best thing you can do for her now is to make sure everything is taken care of, so when she wakes up, all she has to focus on is getting well again.”
After he sews me up, I convince the doctor to let me see Rory again. But we’re stopped on the way to her room by Sheriff Pinkwater and Jack.
“You found him?” I ask.
“Right where you said we would. Full of holes and floating in the lake.” Pinkwater’s gaze slides to the doctor, then back to me. “He had so many holes in him, we’re lucky he didn’t sink.”
“Forensics is at the boat now,” Jack adds. “So are the FBI.”
“FBI? They didn’t know about it two weeks ago.”
“Now they do.” Pinkwater shakes his head. “Just in time to take all the fucking credit.”
“Let them. We don’t want the exposure,” Jack says.
He’s right. With exposure comes interest. With interest, comes trouble. Especially when you make good money from a thriving marijuana and bootlegging business.
I don’t linger, I need to see Rory again.
But as we pass, Jack stops the doctor. “Anything she needs, she gets.”
He knows how much Rory means to me. He also knows why she was in town. When she was in surgery, I filled him in on the details. I was hesitant about telling him, but I’ve never hidden the truth from Jack. It’s why he counts on me so much.
I thought he’d be pissed.
Call me a dumbass for falling for the wrong girl.
But he thought about it and then nodded. “If Bronte had come to town looking to put a bullet in my ass, I would have loaded the gun and handed it to her.”
The doctor takes me to see Rory.
And again, the sight of her unconscious and connected to machines kills me.
Standing by her bed, my knees go weak. I love her so damn much.
I reach for her and touch her face, wanting to soothe her but at the same time needing to feel her.
“Maybe touching isn’t such a good—”
I throw the doctor a murderous look.
