Chapter 21
HATCH
When Harry’s gone, I turn to the screen just in time to see Lucy’s already left her shower and changed into blue cotton babydoll pajamas.
Her damp hair lies loose behind a white headband, but the top of her nightgown is slightly damp from droplets from her hair, and the sight of her pebbled nipple makes my dick twitch.
Down boy.
The sight, though, fuck me, I can’t help it, and I have to grab my sketchbook and pencils from my bag.
By the time she’s settled in her bed with a cup of tea, that damn mangy cat sitting on top of a book beside her, I’m already roughly sketching the circles and shapes that comprise her relaxed form.
“Chessy, I want to read tonight,” she whines, making me smile. “Ugh. Fine. Okay one story, but I’m not making it interesting. No fantasy setting or anything, just the real thing, got it?”
But as she speaks it’s anything but “uninteresting.” She talks about when they all tried to sneak by a bouncer on Bourbon Street but everyone except for her passed with their fake IDs.
It isn’t until she says who came to her rescue from the cops that were immediately called over that my heart squeezes.
“Brylie came in guns blazing—figuratively, of course, because, geez, can you imagine?” She chuckles.
“Anyways, she started yelling at the cops because they wouldn’t let me go.
She didn’t even threaten them with her Luciano name, or the Troisgarde, although, everyone around there totally would’ve known.
It wasn’t our style. Did I ever tell you about the time that Luna and Nox’s parents actually left them in jail overnight to think about what they’d done.
I mean granted, sure they stole a cop car but—”
Lucy waves her hand. “I digress. Brylie came out yelling at them, telling them it was my first amendment right to tell people I was twenty-one years old and how they were going against the Constitution and my… I don’t know, another amendment I’m pretty sure.
I’m also pretty sure she was dead wrong.
She knew it too. She said half of it came from an episode of Law & Order and the other half ‘from her ass.’ Her words! Not mine.”
Lucy laughs and strokes the cat’s back. “But I think the cops were so scared of how confident she was that they wound up letting me go and we all just went to Pirates down the street instead since they hadn’t cared how old any of us were for months at that point.
I think she was just nineteen at the time?
But that mafia princess has always had the confidence of ten Godfathers from The Sopranos, I swear. ”
She sniffs a little and chuckles. I should feel like shit for invading this private moment, but I can’t bring myself to feel an ounce of guilt. Instead, my heart breaks for what she doesn’t know, and for what I do.
Dash will love hearing that story, if I ever have the courage to tell him.
Oh shit, I need to check my voice memos.
Lucy keeps telling more “Bourbon Street War Stories,” as she puts them—more war than anything Harry has seen, I’d reckon. The guy has literally never dropped the name of any of the wars, and we’ve been giving him hell for it for years. Eventually I run through my messages while I draw Lucy.
King asks me for an update. Kian yells full-on Irish at me.
Harry actually called to yell at me for letting a cat into his house.
Then for taking the cat back. I don’t bother responding to any of those.
Lucy convinces the cat to get off her book, and she switches to an actual story, a romance book if I had to guess, and I move onto Orion’s voice memos.
He fills me in on how great engaged life is… or something. I don’t know, I tune him out, choosing to listen to Lucy’s book instead. The fucker is entirely too happy for me to deal with right now.
But when I get to Dash’s messages, I hesitate, my thumb hovering over the play button.
I blow out a breath and press the play button.
“You sounded like shit that last message. Make sure to check in more, alright?”
He sounds like shit too. Tired to his bones, and my chest fucking hurts for him as he gulps.
“But I think… I think I need you to give Orion the updates. It sounds like you’re good with surveillance.
I’ll send you a video on how to connect it all to your phone, if you haven’t already, and I’ll keep doing what I can to hack into the CCTV, but like I said, closed circuits not on the cloud like that… ”
He sucks his teeth. “It’s tricky. I’ll keep trying.
Fuck, Hatch. Don’t tell the others, but…
I’m not doing too great. I’m kind of doing real shitty to be honest. They’re…
The doctors are talking about taking her off life support.
Her parents are against it, but the doctors are being pushy.
I don’t get it. I’ve never seen anything like it.
“The Lucianos have money and they’re willing to pay for an entire wing of the hospital to keep their daughter safe and sound there.
But the doctors keep insisting it’s time.
Fucking weird, man. And I… I don’t know what I’m gonna do if they let her go.
It’s strange right? You and me weren’t like Orion.
We rejected the idea of an arranged fiancée our entire lives.
“We’re raised knowing what we’re going into, sure, but for me, I was just certain that a wife would get in the way of my goals.
Now that I can’t have her—no, it’s not that.
Now that I’ll never see her happy again.
Fuck, I’d do anything for that. I feel like I failed, Hatch.
I feel… I feel like I failed her all over again. ”
“Fuck me.” I scrub my forehead, right over the tattoo that lines my brow. A continuation of the ink I got for the woman Dash is talking about now.
“I see her sometimes, ya know? What that fire did. We tried so fucking hard to save her, and then she was gone. In a blink. We were kids then, too young to know what to do even in that situation. But this… this feels worse almost. It’s not in a blink, it’s trying everything that could possibly work, for months not seconds, and it still not being enough. I’m still not enough to save her.”
“Goddammit, Dash.” I don’t listen to the other notes that came over throughout the day, instead calling him straight up. I hate hearing him like this.
We’ve all got shit about that day that fucked us up.
Orion feels like he didn’t protect her. He was on the lookout in the cemetery, visiting our aunt—my mom’s best friend and my dad’s sister—when we were attacked.
And the whole thing was my fault. The goddamn field was set on fire and she died protecting me after I…
I swallow and close my eyes, because Dash is the one that I need to be worried about right now.
He’s struggling because he’s been carrying blame for nearly a decade that he never should’ve carried to begin with.
He was a kid. Fifteen. And yet he still thinks that spending a couple of years as a vet tech on our dairy farm meant he should’ve somehow figured out how to save her.
But even the experts told him there was no way she would’ve survived.
She’d been burned alive and a tree had severed her femoral artery.
It was always my brother’s dream and burden to go to med school to save the people no one thought could be saved.
And now he’s going through torture, once again, over a problem he never caused and never had a chance to solve.
I get sent to voicemail without even ringing. Typical. When he’s like this, he disappears just like Lucy, but inside himself or in his work instead of physically. It’s almost impossible to drag him out.
I lean over and turn the phone upside down to talk directly into the speaker.
“Hey man. I got your messages. Well, I mean, I haven’t heard all of them, but I’ve heard enough.
” I sigh, shaking my head, pushing aside the hurt because fuck this is too much.
“Call me you sad bastard. I’m sick and tired of playing therapist over voice memos.
Let one of us love you in real time goddammit. You don’t have to do it alone.”
I wait like my brain is expecting him to answer, but then I hang up and toss the phone on the pull-out bed and hang my head in my hands. I’m exhausted too, so I settle into just listening to Lucy.
“You know what? I think that’s enough story time, Chessy. I want to read my book now, please. Shoo.”
I lift my head to see her grunt as she pushes the cat the size of a prized pumpkin off the book it’s sitting on top of.
She sticks her tongue out, making a reluctant smile spread over my lips, then takes the book and pulls out her bookmark.
My breath hitches as she places the Queen of Hearts card at her side.
It’s the last of the cards she’s been leaving her family to let them know she’s safe. My and Kian’s theory is that if she leaves this one, we’ll be shit out of luck. She’ll either come home—unlikely if she’s still terrified—or worse. We’ll never find her again.
I swallow thickly looking at that card, it’s faded even from here, the edges worn and curled. But it’s right at her side, and I need her to keep it there.
I blow out a breath and prop my feet up on my desk as she starts reading, going back to drawing and finishing up some of the base sketch.
She sips from a chipped mug and flips through one of her paperbacks.
I can’t see the cover, but from the sounds of it, it’s a boring romance book. One of her comfort reads, maybe.
The story’s not for me, but her voice is, damn.
It’s soothing, settling something I didn’t realize was tight and aching in my chest, and the gentle cadence rocks me into relaxation like the water does to her boat.
Eventually I set the sketchbook aside and slouch in my seat and rest my eyes.
I’d take the laptop to the bed with me and sleep beside her, but I can’t have it dying on me.
Without knowing all the players on this island yet, and after meeting the ruthlessness that is Castle, I don’t want her off of my radar—literally—for a second if I can help it, and the cord is too short to reach the only nearby plug.
I’ve already ordered a longer cord for that very purpose.
So for now, I close my eyes and cross my arms over my chest as I listen to her read.
The story’s not so bad if you actually listen to it.
I’ve never read a book for fun, but I could see how this would be enjoyable to watch.
It’s a romantic suspense, I think, and I can picture it all in my mind’s eye.
Only it’s me and Lucy who are now in the gym, working on her self-defense skills.
She’s hot in her sports bra and shorts as I teach her how to throw a mean right hook in front of the gym mirror.
It’s me that’s skimming my hands down her naked waist to position her, and it’s me that tells her to relax her back against the mirror before lowering to my knees as I look up at her and apologizing for not being able to talk her through what I’m about to do to her, explaining, “Because, baby, I don’t like to talk with my mouth full. ”
Wait.
I jackknife up in my seat.
What in the actual fuck is my girl reading?