AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I talked for two hours, telling the detectives what kind of man my pop had been. I described how we’d grown up and his personality before the big change and then I’d detailed every broken coffee mug and outburst and eventually what had happened when he’d followed us to the trailer that afternoon. By the time I was finished, I felt completely wrung out, and Rumi’s mom was sitting next to me in the bed, holding my hand.
“Do you have any questions?” I asked wearily.
They didn’t. After telling me that they’d be sending someone in to photograph my wounds, they left quietly.
“I get why you did what you did,” Heather said with a sigh. “But I don’t understand how Rumi missed it.”
“We haven’t been talking,” I replied, my defense of him immediate.
“Oh, yeah? Why’s that?”
When I didn’t answer, she huffed a quiet laugh.
“Isn’t it interesting how when something terrible happens, the shit you thought was so important suddenly doesn’t matter?” she asked knowingly.
Chapter 21
Rumi
They discharged Birdat four in the morning and I’d barely climbed out of Nova’s bed before he was climbing in next to her. The two whispered in the dim hospital lighting, Nova’s hand running through his short hair soothingly while Ash watched from the doorway.
“I think they’re going to discharge Nova soon,” I said, watching Nova and her brother. It looked like they’d been apart for months instead of just hours.
“Do you think you could go tell everyone?” Ash asked quietly, her normal boisterous personality absent. She looked like she’d aged ten years in a day.
“They’re still here?” I replied in surprise.
“Of course they are.” She snorted. “Keepin’ vigil.”
“I can tell ’em.”
“Thanks, honey.”
“Hey, No,” I called quietly, walking back toward the bed. “I’m goin’ to the lobby for a minute, yeah?”
“Okay,” she said with a sigh, looking up from Bird. She’d wrapped her arm around him and he was starting to fall asleep with his head on her shoulder.
“Be right back,” I said, leaning down to kiss her forehead.
“Tell everyone thank you for me?”
“Will do.”
I left the quiet room and squinted against the bright lights in the hallway. The rest of the hospital was awake and hopping, and it was a bit of a jolt after laying in Nova’s quiet cocoon of a room for the last couple of hours. When I got to the lobby, I realized that Ash had been right—there were Aces and their women filling the entire area talking in low voices.
“Hey, bud,” my dad said, looking up from his conversation. “News?”
“They discharged Bird,” I said as others got up to crowd around us. “So he’s in with No now.”
“Oh, good,” my gram said tiredly. “I know it was driving them both crazy being apart.”
“With good reason,” Auntie Farrah added.
“They’re going to discharge Nova pretty soon,” I said, exhaustion pulling at me as I rubbed the back of my neck.
“They’re going to need somewhere to go,” Brenna said.
“Shit,” I muttered. I hadn’t even thought that far ahead, I’d been so distracted by making sure that Nova was okay and checking on Bird whenever I could.
