Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 76953 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76953 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
“Dad?” I cried, all the strength suddenly leaving me, all the fight falling away. My body went slack, and my father nearly dropped me. “Daddy?” I whimpered.
He scooped me up like he used to when I was a little girl, holding me to his chest.
“It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s okay. I’ve got you. It’s going to be okay.”
But I saw Perish as he was pushed into the back of the SUV.
His body was slack.
His eyes were closed.
It wasn’t going to be okay.
I turned my face into my father’s chest and cried.
He never let me go. Not as he slid us into the backseat of someone’s car. Not as the car started moving. Going where, I had no idea.
It wasn’t until I was pulled back out of the car and heard the buzzer attached to the gate that I knew where I was.
Hailstorm.
“Oh, baby,” my mom’s voice said, her hand smoothing down my hair as my father carried me down the long corridors toward the inner depths of the building. Then, to my father, “Where is all the blood coming from?”
She was trying so hard not to sound panicked, but there was an electric tension in her voice.
“It’s not hers,” he said, hugging me a little tighter. “It’s Perish’s.”
The pained animal sound that escaped me had my mom’s hand going to my arm, rubbing up and down.
“Right over here,” a voice said as the scent of disinfectant and antiseptic met my nose, making it wrinkle even as I sniffled hard.
“I’m fine,” I insisted as I was lowered onto an exam table. “I need—”
“You need to get looked at,” my father said, his hands pushing me flat.
I knew far too well that there was no reasoning with a parent who was afraid for their child.
So I went limp against the stiff mattress, staring blankly up at the stark white ceiling and the fluorescent lights that made the migraine slice into my eyes.
“Oh,” my mom whimpered as she got a look at my face for the first time.
My gut instinct was to assure her I was fine, to brush it off.
But this once, I said nothing.
It would have been a lie.
Physically, I was okay.
Emotionally? Not so much.
My mind kept flashing back to Perish as he took those bullets, as he tried to reassure me that he was okay, then as he was loaded into the SUV unconscious.
A pained sound escaped me, making both my parents reach out to me.
But I couldn’t accept their comfort. Not when they had no idea why I needed it.
So I did the only thing I could do to get through the washing, cleaning, and dressing.
I disassociated. I slipped so deep inside myself that I wasn’t sure I would be able to surface again.
There was a prick in my vein.
Then I was drifting out of consciousness.
—
It was someone clearing their voice at my bedside that had me snapping awake, staring at the strange ceiling for a long moment before I remembered where I was.
Hailstorm.
The rest came rushing back so fast I felt dizzy.
Stranger still, it was Rune, of all people, standing over me.
“Rune?” I asked, my voice raspy from the choking.
“Your parents went to get something to eat,” he told me.
“Okay. But… but why are you here?”
To that, Rune shot me a small smirk. “I’ll try not to take offense to that.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know what you meant.”
Sure, we’d grown up together just like all the other cousins. But when he and his brother took off at eighteen, the bond we’d known as kids slowly but surely disappeared. It felt a lot like meeting new people when they finally made their way back to Navesink Bank.
“What?” I asked when he stared at me for a long moment, a muscle ticking in his jaw.
“No one said you were this fucked up,” he told me.
“Gee, thanks.”
I hadn’t gotten a look at myself, but if the way I was feeling was anything to go by, then, yeah, I bet I looked like crap.
“What are you doing?” I asked when he went to the foot of my bed, snatched up my file, and started to flip through it.
“Checking to see if there’s anything I gotta worry about.”
“Worry about how?”
“I’m gonna smuggle you out of here,” he said, making my brows pinch.
“What?”
“Got the club SUV. If we’re careful, we can get out before someone stops us.”
“Why would you sneak me out?”
“To go see Perish.”
I shot upward.
The world spun.
But I twisted to swing my legs off the side of the bed.
I was dressed in a hospital gown but had no memory of being changed. Maybe my mom did it after the meds knocked me out.
“Whoa. Slow down.”
“Where is he? Is he okay?”
“He’s just getting out of surgery,” Rune said, holding a hand up to me. “He’s gonna be in recovery for a bit. We have time.”