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Sterling stayed silent as Parker’s head hung. “It’s true.”
I lowered my gun, and then re-holstered it. “Are there anymore out there?”
Sterling shook his head. Cleo was the one who answered though.
“Nope. There were only four of them. I think they spread themselves too thin. They didn’t do much recon when they were hitting this place. Otherwise they would’ve known the room was divided into practically two halves. Lucky for us they didn’t, otherwise we all would’ve been tagged with that grenade,” Cleo declared.
I kept my eyes on Parker, who’d looked up at me in confusion.
“I’ve regretted that day for fifteen years,” Parker said quietly.
I blinked. “You’ve regretted it? You nearly killed me.”
He shook his head. “I was a nine year old kid. I was dumb and full of myself. I have nightmares. I live those moments over and over in my sleep. My dreams are on repeat. They’re on a continuous loop of when you looked at me in such horror. Remembering what it felt like…sounded like when the knife sliced through your skin. It’s nauseating, and I hear it in my sleep.”
I stared at him for a long time, ignoring Mick’s snickers at how awkward the situation was.
I wasn’t mad at Parker, though. I’d have done the same thing when I first got in, too.
It was hard not to. It was either survive or die in those times, and I had a feeling the same went for Parker, too.
“Fuck,” I said scrubbing my hands over my face.
“Yes, please,” Cleo grinned.
I flipped him the bird and went to the holding cells.
“Anyone let the geezers out yet?” I asked as I walked towards the cell.
I walked up on the two men playing cards.
“Got any 7’s?” My stepfather asked Silas.
“Go fish,” Silas replied.
What. The. Fuck.
***
I walked into the room, heart in my throat.
The room was dark, except for the green lights of the monitors.
A weird rhythmic thump-thump had my eyes zeroing in on the monitor to the side of the bed before they focused back on the sleeping figure in the bed.
Channing was asleep on her back.
Her hand, the one not connected to an IV, was thrown up above her head.
Her hair was a mess, scattered this way and that around her head.
The gown she was wearing did nothing but swamp her figure, and my heart constricted once more to see her small body dwarfed in the oversized hospital bed.
“They gave her some sleeping meds. She was freaking out when she couldn’t find you. It was either sleep, or they’d have had to cuff her to the bed. I chose sleep,” my mother’stear filled voice said from beside me.
“Is she okay?” I choked.
My mom was sitting in the very corner. Her phone lighting up her face with what appeared to be a book on the screen.
