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If I had the heart to leave when he’s pale and scared and about to rush to a hospital in the city to see if his brother and his wife and their baby are okay.
On the drive here, I convinced myself that I could be a heartless, ruthless winged creature of the night. I convinced myself that I could get back at him for getting himselfarrestedas if that was a more appealing idea than having a lot of sex in his cabin for another week.
From inside the SUV, Snowball tweets at the top of his tiny lungs. It sounds like he’s scolding me for a pointless delay.
Later. I can be a heartless winged creature later.
“I’m coming,” I tell both of him, then fly around the SUV and take my place on the passenger side.
3
JAMESON
Ihave to stop thinking I’ve hit rock bottom.
It’s an open invitation for the world to slap me across the face and remind me that things can always get worse. Oh, you kidnapped a girl? Now you’re in love with her. You got yourself arrested to keep her safe? Now she’s bailing you out. You think you might have a fuckingsecondto think about everything that’s happened?
Not a chance.
I don’t take a full breath all the way to the hospital. Normally, I wouldn’t bother with the valet, but the thought of finding a parking spot might push me over the edge.
I might do something unhinged, like re-kidnap Lily.
She hops out while I’m handing the keys over and climbs into the backseat. A few seconds later, she reappears with her bag over her shoulder and Snowball’s cage in one hand.
“Here. Hold this.” I take the cage. Lily reaches into her bag and comes up with a hair tie. I’d rather watch her twist her hair into a neat red bun than walk into the hospital. I’d ratheruntwist her hair just so I could hold onto it. When she’s done, she takes Snowball’s cage back. He’s a little white ball in some of his nesting material. I bet he hates hospitals, too. “Okay. Ready?”
“They’re going to have a problem with Snowball.”
She flashes me the biggest eyes I’ve ever seen on a human being, her face transforming from serious to painfully innocent in no time flat.
“They’re not going to say anything to me. Let’s go.”
Lily,I want to say.Angel. You cannot come to the hospital to meet my brother’s new baby and watch me get my ass kicked for disappearing at this critical moment. I can’t take it if you see this.
But my heart’s so loud in my ears and I’m so close to throwing up on the sidewalk that I don’t say anything.
The main hospital lobby smells like clean carpet and lemon-tinged antiseptic. It has seating areas in a blue theme that’s probably supposed to be calming. Navy blue chairs float in little islands of multicolored nylon like they’re floating out to sea. Sunlight streams in through windows three stories high.
It’s nothing like the emergency room a cop escorted Gabriel, Remy, and I into the night my parents died, but it might as well be. My lungs have become deflated balloons. A sharp, aching hope like a heart attack wriggles behind my ribs and sticks there like I swallowed a chunk of concrete.
When my foot comes down on the floor for the next step, I’m not me anymore. Or—I’m the fourteen-year-old version of me, following a cop down a long, fluorescent-lit hallway while a little kid screams somewhere out of sight and my six-year-old sister clings to my neck like I can protect her. I’m wearing the last pair of Nikes my parents would ever buy me and praying to any god who has a chance in hell of existing that somebody made a mistake. It’s somebody else’s parents and brother who were brought here. The cop was vague about the details because no one is sure what happened, not because the worst happened, and soon my dad is going to laugh at the idea that anything in the world could take him from us, and my mom is going to saydon’t worry, Jamie, it was all just a big misunderstanding,and we’ll all go home.
“Jameson.”
We’re out of the sun-soaked lobby somehow. Lily’s hair is bright against the silver backdrop of a bank of elevators.
“Yeah?”
“We have to go up, I think.”
My vision clears enough to see the sign next to the elevator doors. “Emergency is on this floor.”
Lily looks up at me, her face half as innocent as it was before and twice as gentle. “I asked at one of the reception desks. The woman I spoke to said they’d be on the maternity floor. That’s the fifth one.”
She holds the handle of Snowball’s cage in both hands, right out in front of her.
I could grab them both and run.
