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“I’m ready to tell them what happened.”
“You think that’s a good idea?” he asked, frowning. “Maybe you should wait.”
“Why?”
“You don’t have to be relivin’ all that shit yet. Give it a day or two, yeah? Let your body heal a little.”
“I love you, Rum,” I replied. “And I love that you want to shield me—”
“Fucked that up, royally,” he muttered.
“But I’m going to be reliving the last twenty-four hours for the rest of my life,” I continued, ignoring his self-flagellation. “Talking about it won’t bring it back up. It’s already there.”
“Alright,” he said slowly. “Let’s call Dragon in here first, though, okay? Make sure—”
“Make sure, what?”
“Just make sure that it won’t fuck anythin’ for Ash, yeah?”
“Okay,” I replied with a sigh. “Call him in.”
Rumi pulled his phone out of his pocket.
“Can you also call the nurse? My head is killing me.”
Rumi hesitated.
“What?”
“Well, you’re not supposed to have flowers while you’re still in the emergency department,” he said sheepishly.
I laughed and then groaned, my rib protesting. It felt like I was being stabbed.
“Okay, okay,” he said, grabbing the little remote by my bed. “Calling the nurse.”
By the time Dragon, Grease, and Casper filed into my room, the nurse had already been in to give me ibuprofen—which wasn’t making a damn bit of difference.
“Hey, doll,” Casper said, the first one to actually move further than a foot into the room. He came up beside me and leaned down to kiss my forehead. “How you doin’?”
“Not great,” I said dryly, making him smile.
“You’re talkin’,” he said. “That’s somethin’.”
“Rumi says you’d like to talk to the police now,” Grease said, nodding to his grandson as he came closer. “There anythin’ you wanna talk to us about first?”
“No.” I looked at Rumi in surprise. “He thought that maybe I should talk to you first. To make sure that I didn’t say the wrong thing, or—”
“There is nowrongthing,” Dragon said from his place by the door. “Samson lost his mind and beat you nearly to death. Don’t need our permission to tell the cops exactly that.”
“Do you think they’ll leave Nana alone if I tell them?” I asked, afraid of the answer.
Dragon scratched his jaw thoughtfully before answering. “I think it’ll be hard to see it as anythin’ but self-defense,” he replied. “Once they get in here and document your injuries—”
“They have to document?”
“They’ll take pictures,” Casper said soothingly, putting his hand on my shoulder. “Ask you questions. That’s all.”
“I—” I looked around the room, unsure how to explain my fear.
