Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 78364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
“It’s gonna be all right,” I assured her as Bodhi walked by on his way to the archway.
“Hey,” I called.
He stopped and came back, squinting at me. “Why are you in here?”
“Oh, I dunno, princess, are we done preening?”
“Fuck off,” he told me, chuckling, and Angie’s mouth fell open.
“Shit, sorry,” Bodhi said, glancing around. “I forgot about the kids.”
Since there were no kids around, I was thinking he shouldn’t have worried.
“No, it’s not…that,” she said, and I saw her looking at us. She could see one of his hands on my bicep, but the other, on the small of my back, she couldn’t.
“Good,” he said, tugging on me gently. “Let’s get you in the brace.”
Once we were in my room, he put the small piece of gauze on the wound, then began wrapping my shoulder.
“You can do this a little faster, yanno. You’re not wrapping my dick.”
For whatever reason, that struck him funny. He started laughing, and when you get the giggles, that’s it and it’s catching. And then, because it was a shared memory, we started talking about the guy we’d busted once who had his dick stuck in the neck of a beer growler, and there was only one way to get it off. That, of course, was how Hayden found us: Bodhi on my bed, barely able to breathe, and me glaring at him, wiping the tears from my eyes.
“What’s going on in here?”
“Your boyfriend’s an idiot,” I told him.
He smiled at me. “Let me help you with the brace.”
“No,” Bodhi said, still chuckling, standing up, having the hiccups now. “I’ve”—hiccup—“got it.”
Holding his breath as he wound the bandage around my bicep and shoulder, as soon as he couldn’t hold it anymore, he did it again.
“What are you doing?” Hayden asked him.
“You don’t hold your breath to get rid of hiccups?” I asked.
“No. You drink water.”
I met Bodhi’s eyes. “Have you ever tried drinking water?”
He blew out his breath. “Yeah. It doesn’t work,” he said, taking a deep breath and holding it again.
“I’ve never even heard of that,” I told Hayden.
He stood there watching Bodhi finish the bandage, and then Bodhi pointed at my duffel.
“Just get me a T-shirt,” I told him, “and do you have my zippered cardigan with the hood? The lightweight one?”
His head tipped like he was confused.
“With the…yanno”—I moved my hand up and down, miming lines—“the vertical stripes.”
Head back like yes, he understood, he nodded and bolted from the room.
Deep sigh from Hayden.
“Are you all right?” I asked him.
“No,” he confessed.
“Anything I can do?”
He looked at me a moment and then huffed out a breath. “Sadly, no. Because if you go home, so will he.”
I understood. Our reestablished bond was eating at him, and no doubt it would have annoyed me as well if our roles were reversed. The Callahan and Redeker show was back on the rails, and at the moment he had to be feeling like a third wheel. Most people did when they were around us. “Listen, Hayden, if it’s bugging you to have me here, distracting him with work stuff and ’cause I’m hurt, I’ll take the next flight out. No problem.”
“But that’s what I mean, Jed. If you go, he’s out of here. I had no idea you two were so close. I thought you were just partners.”
“Yeah, but this, me and Bodhi, this is how all the partners I know in the marshals service work,” I explained. “Your partner is basically in your pocket all day, every day. That’s the gig. I would take a bullet for him. He’d take one for me. We spend eight to twelve hours together five days a week, and sometimes more. There’s no way not to know that person best.”
He took a moment. “I met him when he had just finished that assignment with the DEA, and then directly after, he was with Yamane.”
“Yeah…not his partner. He was babysitting him. I’m the real one.”
“Yes, I see that quite clearly.”
Bodhi returned then with my cardigan over his shoulder.
“That’s Jed’s?” Hayden asked. “You wear that all the time.”
“Yeah. That’s why it’s a little big on me. His chest is wider, and he’s a bit taller.”
“I’ve got two inches on you, buddy.”
“Like that even matters,” he said, going to my bag and pulling out a pale-blue T-shirt. “You know you could hang your stuff up so it’s not all wrinkled.”
I squinted at him as he gently put it on over my head.
“Fine,” he said, “yes, I am usually the one who does that for you when we’re stuck in some shitty hotel somewhere.”
“Remember that place where the moths were bigger than your head and ate your Foo Fighters hoodie?”
His glare was fast.
“It was a nice hoodie.”
“Fuckin’ West Virginia,” he growled, helping me put my bad arm through. “I was never that cold until we moved to Chicago.”