“I just told ’em the truth. That we’d been working together to find Romeo and Jules. I knew you didn’t know ’bout any of it. I’d been talking to you the whole drive here. If you shot someone, it had to have been to protect your brother—and my sister.”
“I saw you talking to the Feds too.”
“Same thing, Moretti. Not like I’d lie for ya. I just told ’em the truth.”
“Yeah, but you’re a sheriff,” Nova whispered as if reminding himself of that fact too. “I’d probably still be in lockup if you hadn’t stepped in. You didn’t have to call. I know you were dealing with other things.”
347
No, Wyatt didn’t have to call, but if the roles were reversed, he would have wanted to be there in the hospital, not sitting behind bars. “I saw some federal agents stop by a few hours ago. You still in trouble?”
Nova sighed. “Conner, I was born in trouble, but that’s my fucking burden to bear. No sense losing sleep over it. Life dealt you better cards. Be grateful for it and stop worrying about my shit.”
“You could get out,” Wyatt suggested, seeing that despite all of Nova’s sharp intellect, he was still very young. “I saw that stock went up to fifty-four dollars a share, and it’s still rising. You’re incredibly intelligent. You could do anything you wanted, something legitimate that’d keep the Feds off your ass and give you a real life.”
“Yeah, right.” Nova’s gaze turned hard once more as he looked up at Wyatt.
“Thanks for stopping by.”
Rather than get annoyed by the sharp change to Nova’s temperament, Wyatt left.
He walked back to Jules’s room thinking about his own cards in the game of life. As strange as it was, Nova Moretti was making Wyatt realize the hand he was dealt wasn’t half as bad as he thought it was.
348
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Come on, darlin’. Eat just a little,” Melody coaxed as she sat in a chair next to Jules’s hospital bed. “Babies need something besides that clear IV stuff they keep pumping in ya.”
Jules swallowed past the nausea, and even though she knew she should be eating, she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. “I’ll eat it later.”
“You said that twenty minutes ago,” Clay growled from his seat in the corner.
“You’re white as a damn sheet. Eat the food, Jules.” Jules looked from Melody to the plate. She tried to will up the strength to fight past the pain. They’d put her left arm in a sling when she’d discovered that moving it was too much agony to bear, but that didn’t help with the rest of her problems. It’d be easier if she was willing to take something besides ibuprofen, but she wasn’t. The image of those little babies on the grainy ultrasound screen flashed in her mind. She picked up her fork even if it went against the very core of her being. Food was truly repulsive at the moment.
“I think that ibuprofen made me queasy.” She closed her eyes against the wave of sickness. “And it didn’t do a lick of good. I still feel like hell. Just my luck to get shot the one time I can’t have anything good for it.”
“I know,” Melody whispered. “But you’re strong, Jules. I know you can do it.”
“I don’t feel strong,” she whispered miserably, thinking of Romeo. She’d been up awhile now, and no one could give her a straight answer. “Is he dead, and y’all are just scared to tell me?”
“No.” Melody shook her head quickly. “We’d have told ya.” Jules dropped her fork and wiped at the tears rolling down her face. “I can’t do it.”
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“Christ.” Clay huffed and stood, reaching for the big TV hanging on the wall. He pushed a button, and it flickered on, casting a strange glow in the darkened room. “It’s been nonstop Romeo and Juliet since last night. If he dies, they’ll be the first to know. I learned more shit ’bout you than I have in almost thirty years of knowing ya.”
“We’re here with Sara Jensen, who actually married the couple two days ago. Sara, what was your reaction when you first saw their names on the forms they filled out? ”
“It was romantic. Everyone came to watch. We’re all torn up over what happened ’cause they were a nice couple. You could tell they were really in love. ”
“Oh!” Jules gasped at the picture that flashed on the TV. It was Romeo kissing her under the magnolia tree. “I didn’t think I’d ever get to see those pictures.”
“There they are.” Clay gestured to the set. “They got tons of ’em. Those folks you put on a show for at the courthouse came to the media right away with the photos.” Fresh tears filled her eyes, and Jules took a bite of food to fight against it as she watched the news and saw different pictures of her wedding day. It was bizarre to see them for the first time on the national news, but she couldn’t look away.