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The hopelessness bowing her slender shoulders damn near broke his heart. He hated whatever this battle going on inside her was, but he hated even more that she was losing it.
Well, Jennings wasn’t going to give up on Wren. What she didn’t know was that he was a persistent motherfucker, and healwaysgot what he wanted.
* * * * *
Walking into the nursing home brought on an instant reminder of what happened on her last shift with the patient’s grandson. In the end, she’d sent him running, but that didn’t mean the next shift hadn’t allowed him back into the room and broken the rules by leaving up the administration of pills to a family member.
She also hadn’t slept. The party in the Disciples clubhouse ended with a bunch of guys running outside and shooting guns into the air for hours. Every shot had her teeth gritting and a small scream trapped behind her teeth. In the early hours before daylight, she’d fallen into a fitful sleep and woken to Jennings shaking her.
She slogged through the hallways on her rounds, checking in on the people in the memory care wing. Usually these patients suffered from dementia or Alzheimer's and some had forgotten how to put on their clothes or feed themselves. Often her job went beyond the physical, though, and she spent a lot of time just talking to them and hearing what stories they remembered far better than what they had for breakfast only an hour before.
As she walked through the hallway to the nurse’s station, Janine was headed the opposite direction. A smile broke over her face, and she bounced up to Wren.
“Hey, girl! We’ve been on opposing shifts the past couple days. I never got the scoop on that guy you’re seeing!” She leaned in to whisper, “Is he bad in bed yet?”
Everything that happened overnight, and especially her letting Jennings take her so intimately had her in a tailspin, but Janine’s question threw her off. She giggled.
“I’m not one to kiss and tell.” She skirted around her friend and took off walking.
Janine followed her. “C’mon now. You can’t leave a girl hanging. I saw him waiting for you outside on a motorcycle. It’s not every day that a manthat hotwalks into your world. The least you can do is let me live vicariously!”
Again, Wren laughed. “He’s fine, and yes, Icanleave you hanging. I’m not giving you more particulars about my sex life.”
She folded her arms and shot Wren a smug look. “That means he’s great. I knew it.”
If Wren denied it, then Janine would only have more ammunition to fire at her and more questions that she didn’t want to answer.
Her brain was already packed with worries when it came to Jennings. Being out with him and his team had felt far too much like a family gathering. Sharing food and watching Quaide blow out the candles on his birthday cake got to her. How long since she had experienced anything so normal as a birthday celebration?
She’d stopped caring about her own birthdays after her parents died, and Danny’s came and went without any ways to mark the passing of time. Last year, she hadn’t heard from him at all and the only way she acknowledged his special day was by walking by a bakery and pausing to stare in the front window at a display of beautiful cupcakes. She’d whispered “happy birthday” to her brother, wherever he was, and continued on.
Compared to the fantastic food and company of Quaide’s party, that seemed even sadder now. Add in dancing with the man who wasn’t just a fantastic lover but treated her to other pleasures of life, and she didn’t know what to do with all these emotions tying her up in knots.
It would be so easy to let him sweep her away like Prince Charming. But it wasn’t reality.
A shout from the end of the hall tore her from her deep thoughts. She and Janine exchanged a glance and took off running. One of the security guards joined them just as they reached Mr. Craig’s room.
At first, she didn’t see anybody in the room. The bed was empty, the sheets balled up at the bottom.
Wren ran inside and looked in the bathroom. Then she spun around and spotted Mr. Craig curled up in the corner of the room, his arms thrown over his head as if hunkering down from an incoming missile.
“Get his sedative!” she called to Janine.
The orderly took a step toward the man, and he let out a bellow. “Keep away from me!”
Wren sliced a hand through the air. “Stay back. Let me talk to him. He’s done this before. He believes he’s in the war.”
“Everybody get away from me!” He started shoving at invisible enemies.
Seconds later, Janine returned with a syringe of medication to calm Mr. Craig’s nerves. Wren eyed her coworker.
“I’ll talk to him, distract him. I’ll try to coax him back to bed. If that doesn’t work, you move around behind and give him the injection.”
Janine bobbed her head in agreement.
“Mr. Craig, how are you today? It looks like you might be having some trouble.”
His wild eyes rolled side to side, anywhere but on her. He took a swing at one of the invisible people he thought were attacking him.
