I smile at Teagan’s easy agreement. “Are we good?” I ask, holding up my hand.
She weaves her fingers in with mine. “Yeah, we’re good. Always.”
“So what’s next?” I ask. “When can I leave?”
“Maybe later today.”
“What’s the date?” I ask, looking towards the window to try and gauge the time of day. It’s covered in heavy drapes, making it impossible to see anything outside.
“It’s Saturday.” She looks at her phone, turning it in my hand so she can see the front of it “Ten o’clock in the morning. You’ve only been here overnight.”
“And Mick? Is he okay, really?”
“Yes, he’s really okay. He’s out of surgery and everything is fine. He’ll go home in a couple days.”
“I hope he has insurance,” I mumble, feeling responsible for his injuries.
“He does, thanks to me. I set it up two weeks ago, thank God. His kicked in before mine since he’s been there forever.” She pats me on the hand. “Do you want to see Mick, now?”
“Will they let me?” I ask, sitting up a little. I can feel my hair plastered to the back of my head. I wonder if I’ll have time to buff up my look before I see him.
“Oh, I’m sure it won’t be a problem,” she says, smiling all evil-like.
I frown at her. “I suddenly don’t trust you for some reason.”
An angelic look takes over. “I can’t imagine why not.” She gets up from the side of my bed and pushes the curtain next to me all the way to the wall. Looking over at the bed next to me, she says, “Yo, home boy. Wake up. Quin says she wants to visit.”
My jaw drops open as I take in the patient under the sheets not five feet away from my left arm.
Mick’s lids are closed, but I swear I can see his eyeballs jiggling underneath.
You are so going to fucking die, I say silently to Teagan.
She wiggles her fingers at me and grins broadly. “Toodle-oo! Your parents should be back in about an hour. They went to get Jersey from Saturday school so he could visit before lunch. Have fun, kids.”
She and Rebel leave me in the room alone with Mick.
He opens his eyes and stares at me as the door shuts behind them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
MY HEART IS BEATING SO hard it feels like it’s ready to leap out of my chest. Thank goodness I don’t have one of those bleeping monitors attached to me. Mick does, so I can tell he’s not as nervous as I am.
“Hi,” I say, more eloquent words failing me at the moment.
“Hi.”
“How are you feeling?” I want to touch my hair again to try and gauge how awful it is, but I don’t dare call his attention to it. Instead, I take a piece of my sheet and start folding it into a tiny accordion. Keeping my fingers busy takes my mind off the mess I’ve made of my life recently.
“Lighter,” he says.
I pause in my folding and look over at him. “You feel lighter?”
“Yeah. Seems like I left an organ behind in the operating room.”
I smile a little. He’s making jokes. That has to be a good sign, right?
“Does it hurt?” I ask. Guilt. Oh, the guilt!
“Not as much as the car ride over did. I’ve got good drugs right now.” His words come out sounding tired, maybe a little bit slurred.
“Sorry about that,” I say, my face flushing with the memory of our trip. “I guess I wasn’t very smart about the whole thing.” More and more and more guilt. Will it never end?
“What whole thing?”
It’s a loaded question and we both know it. I hate how a simple stare from him can turn me upside down like this. I sigh with the burden of my stupidity. “With everything.”
“Don’t beat yourself up about it. Colin’s a dick.” He looks up at the ceiling, turning his head away from me.
That hurts more than anything he could say. I feel well and truly rejected with just that simple movement and those few words. But I’m not ready to abandon all efforts to make this right. He’ll never want to go out with me again, sure, that’s fine; but I can’t let him keep thinking his brother’s evil. The least I can do is try to fix that issue. The problem is, I have to attempt to explain it in a way that it might make sense, but I’m not sure I can pull it off.
“I saw his paintings the other day and they just blew me away. I told him he should get them into a gallery, that he’d sell the hell out of them.”