Revealing Annie - Freya Barker Page 0,87

phone number for the nurse, who promises to call if Bryce wakes up and needs us. Then he bends over the bed and kisses his son’s head before wheeling me out of the room.

To my surprise, a tall police officer meets us in the lobby downstairs.

“Was about to bring your keys up to you. Ramirez told us to drop your truck off,” he says to Kyle before looking down at me. “It’s parked a few rows over. Let me quickly pull it up for you.”

“Thanks, Jay.” Kyle claps him on the shoulder.

I’m surprised to find it’s getting dark outside. I’ve lost all sense of time.

In minutes we’re on our way home, and the tension I felt coming off Kyle earlier seems to have returned.

“What’s wrong?” I finally ask him when he pulls up to the house after a silent drive home.

He puts the truck in park and turns the engine off before turning to me, his head hanging low as he looks at me from under his eyebrows.

“Killed me, Annie-chan.” His voice is so low I can barely hear him.

I reach over and put a hand on his arm. “I’m fine, honey. I promise. Bryce is gonna be fine too.”

He shakes his head.

“I was so torn, look for you or go with Bryce. If something had happened to you I—”

I put my hands on his cheeks and force him to look at me.

“Enough. I would’ve been pissed if you’d left that boy to come looking for me. You understand me? Of course you went with your son, that’s not even a question.” I plant a hard kiss on his lips. “Now let’s go inside, those dogs have been cooped up long enough by themselves. We’ll be lucky if we don’t find any surprises they left for us,” I tell him firmly, before letting him go and opening my door.

I hear him getting out the other side and wait for him to help me down. Instead he lifts me in his arms and starts walking to the door. There he sets me carefully on my feet so he can unlock it, but before he opens the door he turns to me.

“I love you, Annie Flowers.”

29

Annie

My hip still bothers me a little when I climb out of my car.

A barren plot of dirt is all that’s left of what was my little haven. The burned-out remnants removed at some point this past week.

I hear a muffled woof walking up the path to Edward’s place, as the door opens and the little chubby pug jumps down the step and waddles up to me.

“Hey, Blossom-girl.” Her body wiggles, turning figure eights around my ankles.

“I see you haven’t forgotten about us,” Edward grumbles by the front door, and I grin up at him.

“How could I, with that sunny disposition?”

I hear Hattie laugh uproariously from right behind him.

We brought Bryce home from the hospital yesterday afternoon. Kyle was able to take the rest of the week off to hang out with his boy, who is mostly confined to the couch in the living room. This morning I left them playing the game system Kyle temporarily moved upstairs, and they were so absorbed in the game, I’m pretty sure they won’t miss me.

I hand the tray of butter tarts I baked last night—his favorites—to Edward and am rewarded with the barest twitch of his mouth.

“Guess you’re gonna want coffee,” he mutters before yelling over his shoulder, “Hattie, get Annie some coffee, will ya?”

“I swear, you holler at me one more time, all you’ll get is my frying pan over your head, you old cantankerous coot!” comes from inside.

I see things haven’t changed much here.

What used to be a single chair by the side of his door has grown into a small table with two chairs and a third folded up, leaning against the trailer. Edward slides the tray on the table before taking a seat and—assuming the second one is Hattie’s—I grab the folded chair. My old neighbor doesn’t say anything but he nods his approval.

“How are you feeling?” I ask him.

He shrugs. “Half the time I can’t tell for the pain that woman puts me through.”

“I heard that!” Hattie says, stepping out of the trailer with a tray holding coffee accoutrements, and I watch Edward hide a grin from her. I make room on the table for the coffee and catch her hissing at him, “I’m thinking I’ll sleep back in my own trailer tonight.”

Yowza. Edward looks over and shamelessly winks at me.

These two. I’m learning