Burn Down the Night (Everything I Left Unsaid #3)- Molly O'Keefe Page 0,115
of coffees. Annie had a duffel bag over her shoulder.
Exhausted, I rubbed at my eyes like they were an illusion. But they were real.
“What…?” My voice cracked. “How did you know—?”
How did you know I needed you? How did you know how scared I was?
He was my brother. That’s how.
Dylan shook his head and sat down beside me.
A sob rose up in my throat and I tried to swallow it down. But couldn’t. It was hard and solid and when I opened my mouth to breathe it broke right out of me.
Dylan leaned his shoulder against mine.
He was here. My brother was here. I was not alone. I didn’t have to be alone ever again.
“She hasn’t woken up,” I said.
“She will.”
His faith gave me faith. He handed me one of the coffees.
“You stink,” he said, which made me laugh. “And you’re covered in blood.”
“Yeah,” I said, putting my hand against the rusty stains covering the shirt.
“We have clothes,” Annie said. “For you and Joan. We have food and we got a hotel room if you want to—”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said.
Annie nodded, like she didn’t expect anything else.
“But there’s a girl in the bathroom. Jennifer, she’s Joan…Olivia’s sister. She might need some clothes.”
Annie nodded and turned to go find Jennifer. Another wild sob sat in my chest, but I kept this one down. I was too tired to talk, and Dylan seemed to know it because he just sat beside me. His shoulder pressed into mine. Support when I needed it most.
Olivia’s door opened and the nurse stuck her head out. “She’s waking up.”
Part 3
Chapter 30
Olivia
Oh, the drugs were good. The drugs were so good. It was like I was floating around on pink fluffy clouds. I could do this all day. All damn day.
But there was a reason why I couldn’t. Something…something I had to do. Right? Jennifer had school. She was probably sleeping in again…I swear that girl, she could sleep through anything.
The pink fluffy cloud suddenly had teeth—sharp ones—and they clamped down hard on my side.
I sucked in a breath and my eyelids fluttered open.
The green walls were not familiar. The bed was not mine.
“Hey.”
I turned my head toward the voice and there was Max.
Max.
The sight of him was like sunlight right into my body. Like an infusion of something good and healthy. Something my body needed and gobbled up with greed.
“Hey,” my voice was barely a breath. Not even a whisper.
The chair he sat in scraped across the floor as he pulled it closer. I closed my eyes at the sound. “Did Jennifer get to school?”
“No, baby.” Was he…laughing at me? I opened my eyes and caught his smile as he smoothed his hand across my forehead and down over my head. “Do you remember what happened?”
I blinked. Blinked again. Something awful and sharp was breaking up the nice pink clouds.
Jennifer!
“Where’s Jennifer?”
“She’s fine. She’ll be here in a second.”
“The FBI?” I asked. “The lawyers?”
“Jennifer and I both talked to them.”
“And what happened?”
“They’re still working shit out. But it’s not looking too bad for me. Or for you, in case you were worried.”
I hadn’t been worried. Not about myself. Jennifer and Max, yes. Myself not so much.
“Lagan?”
“ICU somewhere and then jail. For a long time.”
I relaxed back against my clouds, which weren’t actually clouds but a rather uncomfortable hospital bed. It was all coming back to me in slow drips.
“I was shot!” I put my hand to my side where the low ache was throbbing. Max caught my hand and pulled it away.
“You were. In the side. It nicked your spleen. You lost a lot of blood. You’ve been asleep for a day.”
My eyes went wide. A whole day. I finally got a good look at Max, who was wearing a dirty shirt and a day’s worth of sleeplessness.
Of course he wore it well. Like a badass.
I turned my hand around so instead of holding my side, I was holding on to him. “You came,” I said. “It was a trap and you knew it and you came.”
He nodded, blue eyes rimmed in red. Filled with concern and something big and rich and deep and it made me want to shrink away. I felt afraid and worried and unsure. Scared, really.
But I forced myself to look at him. To soak him in. His exhaustion and beauty. His bravery and selflessness. I made myself accept the fact that he was here for me. And that I deserved that.