Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 90951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Who says romance is dead?
Not me, and I can’t wait to see how long Beatrice and Blue can pretend they aren’t on team Happily Ever After.
Chapter Twelve
BLUE
This is going to be fine. Probably.
I hope.
But the fact that I’ve barely heard from Beatrice since Charlotte took her home yesterday is troubling. More than troubling.
She must have read the messages by now, but still…nothing.
My stomach has been in knots for twenty-hours straight.
“I think this part of the hospital is haunted,” Clover whispers as I push her toward the elevator.
“Why’s that?” I ask, nodding to what seems to be the only nurse on duty, currently thumbing through a chart at the front desk.
It’s eerie in here today. It’s only half past four, but silent as the dead of night. Everyone on Clover’s ward is either asleep or something worse than asleep. As we pass a dimly lit room, where a victim of a different car crash lies motionless under a sheet, a tube down his throat, and machines beeping all around him, I’m even more thankful to be taking Clover home.
“Vibes,” she intones ominously as the elevator doors slide closed behind us. “The vibes are not vibing. My dreams last night were awful.”
I punch the button for the ground floor, where my truck is parked in the loading area. “Meds do that to me, too.”
“Yeah, I tried to skip them this morning,” she says. “But the pain was too bad. This pain is…really not good, Blue.”
I hum sympathetically. “I know. Broke my leg in two places falling out of a hayloft when I was ten. Worst pain I’ve ever felt.”
I don’t tell her that was probably because the Children of the Storm didn’t believe in medication for any of their followers at that point. Women in childbirth, kids with broken bones, old people with double pneumonia—we were all expected to tough it out with prayer and hope for the best. Things changed after two kids nearly died of a staph infection when I was in high school.
But in the bad old days…
I still remember waking up with tears running down my face because I’d shifted the wrong way in my sleep.
“Yeah,” Clover agrees. “So, I guess I’ll stay on the meds for a while. Even though they make me weird.”
“I like weird.”
She grunts. “Good. I’ll be sure to tell you all about the next conversation I have with a toilet. The one in my room was full of opinions this morning. We had quite the spirited debate.”
“Wish I’d been here for that,” I say as the doors open.
“Pretty fun stuff, but I’m glad we’re going home.”
“Me, too. Bea’s excited to see you.” I push Clover toward the exit, her medication bag rattling in my hand as we roll over the textured mat by the door.
They have her on some serious stuff, but she’s seriously injured. Honestly, she looks worse today than she did right after the crash, with a bruise coming in purple under the stitches on her cheek, and her eyes glazed with pain and lack of sleep. Hopefully, she’ll at least be able to get better rest at home, even if the pain is still bad for a few more days.
In the pickup zone, I lift her gently out of the wheelchair and settle her into the passenger seat. She weighs nothing, even with two giant casts on her arm and leg, making me mutter, “We need to fatten you up, kid.”
She smiles fondly, patting my shoulder as I buckle her in. “Feel free to try. You know how much I eat. I’m just a scrawn-dog by nature. What’s for dinner, by the way? The chicken and rice they gave us for lunch tasted like salty plastic.”
“Lasagna,” I say, folding the wheelchair to load it into the back. “I’m pretty sure that’s what Bea said.”
I honestly can’t remember, though. We only spoke for a few minutes—long enough for me to convince her that I should pick Clover up alone and make plans to eat dinner together around five—before she got a call from her producer and had to go. I still have no idea if she’s read the texts.
No idea what she thought of them if she did.
No idea if I’m driving into a new dawn or a bloody delta sunset that promises an ugly night ahead.
At least, for me.
“Oh man, meds make me carsick, too, I think,” Clover says as I pull out, reaching for the air conditioner vent and aiming it at her face. “I hate everything right now.”
Maybe an ugly night for Clover, too.
The difference is, she did nothing to deserve it.
At the apartment, I park in one of the visitor’s spaces to the right of the building, loading a visibly queasy Clover back into her chair as gingerly as possible.
“I might need something calmer for dinner than lasagna,” she says, wiping sweat from her upper lip. “Like…toast or something.”