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Before I can, Lily turns and pushes the button for the elevator. I never see the doors move. Next thing I know, we’re stepping out onto a quieter floor next to a big round desk with nurses behind it. Lily leans in and says something I can’t hear, or can’t understand, and the nurse’s eyes get wide for a fraction of a second before she’s back to being totally professional.
She comes around the desk in her pastel scrubs, and Lily keeps talking to her as she leads us away into a different hallway that has key-card access. Mason’s driver, Scott, is on the other side. We nod to each other like this situation is normal and fine, and then he nods to the nurse, and then we’re in.
The nurse never looks down at the cage in Lily’s hands. It’s like Snowball doesn’t exist. I genuinely believe she doesn’t notice him until we stop in front of a wide, pale door and she bends down to Snowball’s level.
“You’re so cute,” she says, and he titters at her in a flirtatious way. The nurse straightens up. “I won’t say anything, but try not to let too many people see, okay?”
Lily flashes her a delighted smile. “Absolutely no problem. Thank you.”
Pastel Nurse leaves.
A plastic holder on the wall has a cardboard sign that saysHill,so we’re in the right place. The door’s even open a few inches. There’s no reason at all I can’t go in.
Except it doesn’t look right. It keeps going gray and dingy with rust on the frame from being scrubbed down with bleach and I can feel little arms cutting off my air supply and my shoes feel brand-new because my mom took me to buy them last week and there’s a whining hum in the air, an old, struggling air conditioning unit from next door, only that’s never what it is, it’s really the sound of Mason—
“Jameson, where the fuck have you been?”
Gabriel leans out the now-open door. Alive, not-dead Gabriel, wearing a pair of jeans and a button-down shirt, all of it flawless.
“I got held—” He takes me by the shoulder, pulls me in for an irritated-yet-relieved hug, and hauls me into the room. “I got held up. Sorry.”
“What happened to your eye?” Gabriel demands.
“Hail.”
He looks skeptical. “Did you get—”
“Jameson!” Remy leaps up from a sofa by the windows and jogs across the room toward me. It’s abigroom, with a swirling mahogany headboard taking up most of the wall behind the hospital bed, where Charlotte is, alive, and where Mason sits on the edge, also not dead. Remy throws her arms around my waist. “I was so worried about you. What happened?”
Everything changed. That’s what happened. “Nothing, I just—we don’t have to talk about me. I didn’t come here to talk about—”
“Jameson.” Mason’s watching me from his spot on the bed. He has every right to be pissed at me for falling off the face of the earth while some kind of baby emergency happened, but he doesn’t look angry. He looks tired, but…happy? Which probably has to do with the little bundle of blankets in his arms. “You okay? Do you need some ice?”
They’re all worried about my black eye. Jesus Christ.
“I’m fine. I don’t need ice.” I couldn’t stand to see this before, but now I can’t standnotto see. My feet take me across the room to the side of Charlotte’s bed. Her sunshine hair is in a twisty bun on the top of her head. “What about you, Sunshine?”
She smiles at me, and my heart slows from a breakneck pace to just a panicky sprint. “I’m good. I’m good.”
“I heard you weren’t so great this morning.”
Charlotte purses her lips. “The baby took us by surprise, is all. He came early. And fast.”
“So you’re not—there’s nothing—”
“No emergency situation now.” Mason uses a firm, quiet tone, and I feel like garbage. I feel like the world’s biggest piece of shit for having any questions at all. I should havebeenhere. The bundle in Mason’s arms makes a quiet mewling sound. “Go wash your hands, and you can hold your nephew.”
I take a step back. “I don’t think—”
“It’s here.” Remy tugs insistently at my arm until I’m in front of a sink at the opposite side of the room. She gives me the hair tie from her wrist so I can get my hair out of my face. I spend the entire time I’m washing my hands trying to come up with a way to disappear.
It doesn’t work. I answer questions without hearing them, and then Gabriel and Remy run some campaign to get me to an armchair by the sofa. My heartbeat’s loud again. What the hell am I supposed to do with a baby? Babies are soft, defenseless people who need to be far away from crime scenes, not getting cuddled by them. My siblings don’t want this. Maybe they’re pretending for the sake of the day, but nobody wants me toholdababy.Any baby.
Mason leans down to kiss Charlotte’s cheek, then stands up. He looks huge from this vantage point, but the way he walks ruins the illusion that he’s invincible. Mason never wanted anyone to pity him, so he learned to hide the damage the fall had done. Most people wouldn’t notice any difference in the way he moves.
I notice it.
He stops in front of me and nudges over a big, hospital-provided ottoman, which he sits on with only the slightest flicker of discomfort.
