Chapter 3 Tommy Boy #2
Head Case’s mouth tightens in a way that reads as respect.
“We are. She’s a tough one.” He tips his head at me.
“She asked for… well, she said, ‘Tell Tommy I said to tell you again: no narcotics.’ Then she laughed. Then she went out. Girl was worried about you knowing she wants to stay clean, brother.”
That’s my girl. Even shot and hurting, she’s trying to manage the room.
This is my woman. The one who fought her own battle of the mind. The one who ripped her hand away from a life she could have stayed in forever. The one who, even when she’s broken, doesn’t give in.
“Is she going to be okay?” Jenni asks, voice a thin edge of glass.
Head Case softens. “We’re past the scary. But this shit is tough. She’ll be sore as hell. Sling for a while, at least while the clavicle heals. Doc’s got her. Your sister is a survivor.”
“Damn right she is,” I breathe.
People peel away then, as people do when the worst has been pronounced over.
Tank claps Tripp on the back on his way out the door to follow up with the clean-up details.
Red squeezes my neck. Pretty Boy gives me a look I can’t read and nods once.
They’ll be back. We break up our grief in shifts. We always have.
Crunch hovers long enough to walk Jenni down the sidewalk to the next duplex.
“I’m two doors down,” he tells me, quiet.
“If you need… anything.” He holds my gaze a second.
There’s an old fight still in him, and a new peace in the man.
Then he tucks Jenni under his arm and they disappear into the dark.
It gets quiet.
I scrub my hands over my face, look down at the sunburst of brown dried on my forearm, and feel something like a vow settle into my bones.
I used to think a vow was a loud, shouted thing.
Turns out, it’s private, steady, made in a room where an old HVAC rattles and the only witness is a coffee machine with a mind of its own.
The door opens again. Kelly steps out, tired eyes, satisfied mouth.
“She’s out and stable. We dosed with non-opioids plus local anesthesia at the surgical site.
Pumping fluids and antibiotics in her through the IV.
She’s been sedated but mildly so she’s going to be in and out of sleep.
That one is a trooper. Sling’s on. No major vascular compromise.
I’m keeping her here for a bit and I’ll be in the other room if anything changes.
You can see the stats and the alarms will buzz if she has a problem.
You can sit with her if you can keep your mouth down to a whisper and your body to a chair. ”
“Deal,” I say, already moving.
The bedroom room is dim. The bed covered in white hospital sheets. Machines hum like faraway engines. Kelly doesn’t like hospital beds even though we do have one in another duplex should the need arise. She believes in rest you can actually get.
Jami looks small against the pillows. A sheet covers her bare skin and her bloody clothes are in a pile at the end of the bed.
There is tape and gauze across her collarbone, a line of purple bruising already ghosting under the skin.
An IV snakes into her hand. Her lashes cast shadows, her lips are chapped, her hair is a mess on the pillow.
All I can think though is she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
I pull a chair to the bed, but it’s not enough.
It’s never enough to sit near something you need to guard.
So I slide off my boots, ease myself onto the mattress like I’m trespassing, and slide one arm under her.
I lay on top of the blanket, pull another corner over us like a tent, and take her hand so she’ll know when she comes back to herself, someone is here.
“Tommy,” she whispers, so faint I almost mistake it for a dream.
“I got you, baby.” My voice comes out scratchy, softer than I knew I had. “You gotta rest.”
Her eyes crack just enough for a sliver of green. “Am I okay? No pain meds, did you tell them?”
God, the woman. Even bleeding, even carved on, she’s managing her sobriety like a general manages a battle plan.
I squeeze her fingers and sit up enough to make sure she can see me.
“You told them,” I say, and let pride into my voice because it belongs there.
“You fought to tell them yourself. Kelly listened. Head Case listened. They took care of you.”
I take a breath. The words stack behind my teeth like they’ve been waiting there all day, maybe all year. I’m not a man who talks feelings—not the long, delicate kind. Mine usually come out in fists or miles. But a bullet rewires a man.
“Jami,” I whisper, low. “You got a second chance at life tonight. And I’m not missing mine. I can’t walk away. Can’t let you go. I gotta know—this second chance you got—can we give it a go? Me and you. No more running.”
She smiles then. Not a big thing, not a performance. It’s the kind of smile that makes a man believe in a version of himself that only she can see. “You are everything good Thomas Oleander,” she whispers, a little slur of exhaustion at the edges, and nods once like she’s signing a contract.
I lean down and press my lips to her forehead. It’s warm and smells like soap and a little like copper and a lot like home.
By the time I pull away, she’s asleep again, mouth parted, breath shallow but steady.
I settle in beside her, back against the headboard, our hands laced. The room ticks. Somewhere outside, a bike growls then dies. The night wraps around the duplex like a blanket stretched tight.
I let my mind roam because if I don’t, it’ll circle the same square foot of flooring like a caged thing. It drifts where it always drifts when I’m too tired to aim it—backward.
The first time I saw her after our kiss, I knew this was a problem waiting to happen.
She stepped onto Mom’s porch with those clear eyes that looked like they’d been polished new, and I lost my breath.
She smelled like clean shampoo and summer, not like the whiskey cloud she used to bring with her.
She laughed soft and real. She kissed me under the string lights, a quick, clumsy thing, and then walked away like she hadn’t set me on fire.
I told myself to back off. Told myself she needed air and time without a man in her way. I’m not good at backing off. I am good at waiting like perching beside a road I know a person has to take.
When she went into the trailer tonight—went to face the devil in his own living room—and I watched her stand there and take her life back. I watched her say she wasn’t owned. I watched her bleed to prove it. I don’t know how to walk away from that kind of courage.
The truth is, I don’t want to.