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Mason and Gabriel take over the coffee table in the living room near my couch, which is the only place I can be comfortable for a few minutes at a time. What a full-circle moment, am I right? Gabriel came here after his jump, and now I’m here after a bunch of overzealous cops beat me up.
Everybodyis here. Nate and Lydia come in and out, offering suggestions for the wedding.Charlotte, who should be lying in a chaise lounge and being fed by servants, keeps whisking Lily out of the room to talk about wedding gowns. Elise is losing her mind over the cake in the kitchen. Or maybe just baking cake in the kitchen. I don’t know.
Mason wears Robin in a baby carrier and paces around the coffee table, then crouches down next to Gabriel and looks at their battle plans.
“Hey.”
They both look at me, eyebrows going up.
“You need something, buddy?” Gabriel says.
“Don’t you think this is overkill? Like, a full wedding? We could just do an announcement.”
They exchange a look.
“Holy fuck, I’m so tired of peopleexchanging looksin front of me. I’m not on my deathbed.”
Gabriel leans over from the love seat and brushes my hair out of my face like a Victorian nurse. “Jameson,” he says gently. “Youlooklike you’re on your fucking deathbed. Put your ice pack on your face.”
“That’s not going to make the bruises go away faster.”
“It will help with the swelling,” he says, all imperious, like he knows about swelling.
He does, but not more than anybody else.
“It’s not overkill.” Mason takes out his phone and checks something. “Hades and Zeus were right about the judge.”
That ups my blood pressure. “Did he do something?”
Mason puts his phone away and holds up his hand to tick things off on his fingers. “Missing persons report for Lily. Three strange cars outside the building, rotating on a schedule. Sheriff Dawson is mysteriously out of contact.”
“What? Theme-Park? He didn’t do anything.”
“Sheriff Dawson,” Mason says pointedly, “let you leave with me. So when the prosecutor showed up to check on you—which he’s never done before—”
“Before?”
Mason narrows his eyes at me. “When’s the last time you had your drugs?”
“A hundred years ago.”
He and Gabriel exchange another look, and Gabriel hops up from his chair and leaves.
“I saidstop exchanging looks.”
Mason stares into my eyes. “Now I’m exchanging a look withyou. Is this better?”
“Not really, but I’ll take what I can get.”
“The prosecutor is a guy who routinely argues cases in the court where Beaufort Hayes is a judge.”
My abs tense up, every individual muscle sore and aching. In the corner of my eye, a wedding ring in a pile of ash glints in a camera flash. Somebody’s screaming, somewhere I can’t see.
“It’s—” My abs hurt. That’s the only real part. I’m in Mason’s living room, next to Mason and his baby, who really does sleep most of the day. “Hard to take him seriously with a name like that.”
“Jameson.”
“Beaufort. Can you imagine getting with him? Do you just have to call him Beau? Or do you just pick a pet name and ride that into the sunset?”
