Nox really was the very best of all of us. Danny, Parker, Remy… all of us. Hell, he even had the sass that only Kennedy seemed to have. And he was right. The traumatic shit that we’d gone through brought us together, closer than anything else.
Emma sidled up next to me, wearing a bright-pink onesie that had white clouds all over, and leaned against my shoulder, taking note of where I was looking.
“You know he’s just like his daddy,” she murmured quietly.
“You’re kidding, right?” I smiled despite the seriousness of our situation, sitting around waiting for an update on Kennedy. “Danny would be running around like a chicken with his head cut off. He couldn’t sit still for anything.”
Emma shook her head, and I felt it more than saw what she was doing. “No, dummy. I mean that Danny always had a way of saying exactly the right thing at the right time.”
To that, I agreed. “Parker told me that he fell in love with someone else overseas.” Changing the subject might be the only thing to save my sanity. “But I lived with him, Emma. I think I would have known.”
“Would you?” Emma countered, wrapping her arm around my back. “Or were you so obsessed with Kennedy, like you always have been, that you didn’t pay attention to the signs?”
Before I could protest, she went on like she hadn’t just insulted me.
“Of course you wouldn’t know. You didn’t know when I fell in love for the first time. You didn’t know when Mom decided to color her hair. There are some things, big brother, that you just don’t see. And that’s okay. If Parker said it, I believe her. Think about everything she gave up for our family.” She smiled at the little family, who were having a quiet conversation with Casper and Cole, and squeezed my waist a little bit tighter.
Alex and Veronica were rushing forward in the next second, and we turned to see Dr. Tyler Masterson standing there with an inscrutable expression on his face. Tyler’s twin was one of the deputies for Birch County, and I counted both of them among my closest friends. Especially when Tyler left his psychotic wife at home.
“Tyler.” Alex held his wife in his arms and stared at the young doctor, waiting for an answer about Kennedy’s condition.
“What is it about your family, Chief Townsend?” Tyler shook his head and put his hands in his pockets. “Kennedy is going to be fine. She’s got one hell of a concussion and a few broken ribs. But there’s no internal bleeding.”
“Concussions fucking suck,” Parker said suddenly in a singsong voice from behind me.
How I ended up standing directly next to my dad, who stood on the other side of Chief Townsend, I don’t know. But there I was.
“I brought clothes,” Parker piped up again, pushing forward with a bag of clothes. “In case they had to cut anything off her.”
“Great.” Tyler nodded his head and added, “She also asked that no one be here when she gets out.” A round of snorts and denials filled the room and Tyler just stood there. “Point taken.”
He turned to leave but I was stepping forward before I could stop myself. “Can I see her?”
My heart raced while I waited for him to deny me. For him to tell me to go home and wait. After all, Kennedy wasn’t mine. Not really. I didn’t have a claim to her other than one from when my life wasn’t a complete wreck.
He bit his lip for a second and looked back over his shoulder briefly.
“Follow me.”
With my heart in my throat, my lungs on fire, and my future down the hall, I followed him and hoped that Kennedy wouldn’t kick me out without giving me a chance to tell her… Hell, to tell her that she was everything to me.
11
Kennedy
The most embarrassing thing that ever happened in my entire life was waking up in a hospital with a hot guy looking under my hospital gown. A hot guy that looked a lot like one of my deputies.
“Oh, no.” He looked up at me with blue eyes and a smile that matched his brother’s. “Please don’t tell Travis you saw my goodies.”
Tyler Masterson laughed as he continued to inspect something under the gown and then rolled his eyes when I blushed and pulled away. There had to be something in the water in Birch County, because almost all the men in our town were good-looking, and I didn’t want a hot guy poking around on my body.
“Kennedy, it’s literally in my job description. Plus, I figured you’d rather have me do it than Nurse Ratched, as you called her.” He nodded toward the door, where Mallory stood in a pair of scrubs, staring at me with shock and something akin to fear.
“Why’s she look scared?” I whispered loudly.
Tyler finished what he was doing and offered me a hand so that I could sit up, and then he helped me pull a sheet over my lap to help cover the hospital gown as much as possible. “Because you threatened to kill her when they brought you in. And then we had to sedate you to keep you from getting off the bed. Nothing major,” he added when he saw the concerned look on my face. “Just enough to keep you from thrashing around while we got scans.”
I sat there, trying not to burst into tears at everything that happened, and closed my eyes to get a sense of peace.
“You’ve got a concussion, which I expect you know, and some bruised ribs. So you’re going to be in pain for a little while, but if you take it easy, you’ll be back to it soon enough,” Tyler prattled on, and I had to cut him off.
“I get it,” I said waspishly. “Am I allowed to work, with the concussion?” My mind was already moving on from the accident to trying to figure out my schedule. If I was out sick, dispatch would be down another person, and I don’t know how they’d make it work.
“Since I know you’re going to ignore me if I tell you to stay at home, I’m not going to give you that mandate. However,” he added when I perked up. “I will expect you to take it easy. Don’t try and do anything crazy, and let your body heal. No alcohol for a week, and no vigorous activity.”
“My family’s here, aren’t they?” I looked around, surprised that no one had forced their way into my hospital room yet. “I can feel it. They’re hiding, aren’t they?”
Tyler nodded. “I can keep them out if you want.”
“Yes,” I whispered gratefully as a steady staccato of pounding in my head started to ramp up. “Can you tell them to leave? I don’t want any of them here when I get out.”
“I’ll go let them know now.” He left without another word, and I sat there surrounded by machines and wondered about how lucky I’d gotten.
The accident played on repeat in my mind, and I couldn’t believe so much damage happened in less than ten seconds. When I closed my eyes, trying to stop the room from spinning, I wasn’t prepared for the sudden onslaught of memories, or the smell of Cassie’s perfume to hit me in the chest like a freight train.
She’d been there, a hallucination, along with Danny. Keeping me there, grounded in reality, when everything was wrong.
Footsteps in the hall caught my attention, and I turned to see Tyler standing in the doorway with a bag, but he didn’t step into the room. Instead, he turned back.