Chapter 15
Fifteen
Oh, look. Nobody gives a shit.
—Apollo to Webber
APOLLO
I was woken up by not one, not two, but three nightmares since I went to bed four hours ago, and I was utterly exhausted.
Just when I got into deep sleep again, another one would come creeping in, and I’d wake with a racing heart and the deep, dark sense of loneliness that only the loss of the ones you loved the most could cause.
I was just getting back to sleep for the fifth time when I heard the door to my room click, indicating that someone had arrived.
It was still dark, but I’d know that silhouette anywhere.
“You’re early,” I muttered, eyes barely open.
Fuck, but I was tired.
“Go back to sleep. I need to shower.”
I did, but woke up a second time to her climbing into the bed with me.
I pulled her in close, pressed my forehead against hers, and dropped off to sleep moments later.
I didn’t have another nightmare the rest of the night.
When next I woke, my bed was empty, and I could hear voices from downstairs.
I reluctantly got out of bed and checked the time on my phone as I passed, noting that it was well past eleven o’clock.
I rubbed at my eyes as I walked straight into the shower, turning it on cold, before stepping inside.
I took a quick shower, my eyes now wide open after the cold water jolted me enough to drag me out of the haze of sleep.
When I got out of the shower, I headed for the closet to get dressed and found Dru’s iPad, which was on the nightstand, buzzing away.
I went to it and glanced down to see Daniella’s name on the screen.
The text that popped up at the bottom was quite comical.
Daniella:
I was trespassed at the hotel. Luckily, I was able to put a fraud alert on Eugene’s credit card and they froze it. He had to come to the bank to see about getting it fixed, and I was able to talk to him…
I couldn’t see what else was said, but I knew that there was a lot more.
Especially after seeing the one hundred and two unread texts from Daniella alone.
Getting dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, I headed downstairs to find that my kitchen was full of Truth Tellers.
Cutter, Copper, and Chevy—the Clayborne siblings—were all at my island picking at what was left of the food on their plates.
Jasper and Gunner were at the stove cooking.
Webber, Doc, and Audric were leaning their hips against the counter, shoveling food into their own mouths.
Then there was my girl, who was standing at the kitchen sink washing the dishes.
I walked straight to her and dropped a kiss to her bare shoulder—she was wearing one of my tees, and it was so big on her that her head and most of her left shoulder were exposed.
“Morning,” I replied roughly when she turned and smiled at me.
“Hey, Finnian,” she murmured. “You sleep okay?”
“Once you got here,” I admitted.
She turned, soap suds covering her hands, and said, “You had nightmares?”
I shrugged. “Always have ’em.”
She placed the pot she was washing back into the sink, left the water running, then turned to cup my face with soapy hands. “You should go see a doctor and get some sleep medicine.” She turned to Chevy. “Can you write a script for him so he doesn’t have to go in?”
Chevy’s eyes came to me, took in the soapsuds that I could feel clinging to my beard, and winked. “Sure.”
She nodded once before picking up the dish towel she had hanging over her shoulder and wiping my face off. “Your food is in the microwave.”
I dropped a kiss to her forehead, then went and claimed my food.
I also kicked Copper out of my seat at the head of the table and dug into my food.
“What’s the plan for today?”
I ignored them, not wanting to think about later tonight at all. At least not until I got all my food down. The moment I started to think about everything, the harder it would be to swallow.
“Or we could talk about the news of the plane crash making a media firestorm.” Dru quickly changed the topic, likely sensing the tenseness in my entire body just by glancing at me. “Finnian, did you know that there were two senators on that plane with you?”
I took a quick bite of toast and then pulled out my phone.
“I looked up the manifest because I was curious,” I said between bites. “Two senators, quite a few lobbyists, and several family members of politicians. The DFW flight was a layover to other cities as well. There was also a high school wrestling team on the flight.”
“They hadn’t shared that yet,” Dru hissed in a breath. “Oh my god. How awful.”
“No other survivors were found?” Webber asked.
“None.” I paused. “Other than the baby.”
“Which is another huge controversy.” Dru dried her hands off and picked up a newspaper I hadn’t seen until now. “Concerned father of newborn Mark Paul Renard begging volunteers to help him find his son.”
She walked the paper over to me and laid it on the table between Doc and me.
Doc took a sip of his coffee before saying, “Isn’t that sweet. He’s actually acting like he’s the caring husband. Devastated that his wife was killed in a freak accident. But he still hopes to find the remains of his son.”
“There are over three hundred people missing from that tornado,” I mused.
“There’s damn well no way to know if the kid’s even in the same area anymore.
If the plane had been the only thing to happen, that’s one thing.
But then that tornado came through right after we’d crashed, and they’re finding debris from the plane ten miles away. ”
“They found a cow that was on a farm near y’all on top of a house in the next county over,” Cutter said as he turned his phone around.
“That’s AI,” I said.
“Fake,” Doc agreed.
“I’d have said the same, but literally look.” Cutter zoomed in. “You can see all the gashes all over this cow.”
“How can you tell if it’s AI or not?” Dru asked.
I hooked her around the hip and guided her to sit in my lap.
She leaned against me stiffly for a few seconds before I patted her belly and whispered, “Relax.”
She snorted, but she did relax.
“Artificial intelligence is getting really good,” I said. “But if you look closely, you can see that it’s just a little bit too glitchy here.”
I showed her where the AI came into effect, and she shook her head. “That’s insane.”
“That’s the worst,” Chevy noted. “All these new medical students coming in are literally building their foundations on AI. They have no fuckin’ clue about half the shit that they should because they’re having the computers answer their test questions for them.
Let alone writing notes and studying with whatever AI gives them. ”
“Guess it’s good that they still have to pass the exam to make them a physician,” Doc said.
“I volunteered at the National Registry Exam this past weekend to help with getting new paramedics their wings, and nearly half of them couldn’t pass it.
The hands on was even funnier because it was like they drew a blank.
Without some computer to give them the answer, they had no clue. Over sixty percent failed.”
“Good riddance,” Cutter muttered. “I don’t want anyone that doesn’t know what they’re doing working on my wife or my kids.”
“I think they’ll all even out,” Dru interjected. “There are still those ones that really want to be there. They’ll study. They’ll pass the tests. They’ll be the ones taking care of you. Plus, they’ll weed themselves out eventually. If they can’t pass the test, then they won’t be there.”
I let my thumb sweep up and down the length of her belly, and she settled back just a little bit more.
“I know we don’t want to talk about it.” Webber crossed his arms over his chest and continued.
“But we need to. The viewing is tonight. I spoke with a few of Knight’s military buddies, and they’re going to have an honor guard with him tonight.
Plus, a few of his buddies will be able to get here in time tomorrow.
They know we cremated him, but they still want to help any way they can.
I was wondering if you’d care if a few of them stay here? ”
I felt sick to my stomach.
I’d heard all about these men.
“I have no issue with them staying here,” I murmured quietly. “I just have to go make up the rooms…”
“I already did that.” Dru patted my hand. “I found everything today and fixed up all the beds. I also placed a huge grocery order. And there are several people who have already contacted me about bringing food over. I asked them to bring it to the reception tomorrow at the convention center.”
I turned my hand over and caught hers.
“How are they getting ahold of you?”
“They actually were calling you, but I did that call forwarding thing to send all calls to my phone. Hope that’s okay,” she replied, looking at me over her shoulder with a sheepish expression on her face.
“You can answer my phone calls for the rest of our lives if you want,” I chuckled, though it was halfhearted at best. “If they don’t text, they don’t get answers.”
“Ask us how we know,” Audric drawled. “But I’ll be damned if I don’t answer his. He calls, I answer, because I know it’s important.”
“Damn straight,” Doc grumbled. “I missed his call one time, and he didn’t talk to me for a week.”
“I’m a busy man.” I shrugged.
Dru giggled, but the expression quickly sobered off her face as I felt her phone start to vibrate in between us.
I let her go when she went to get up, and listened as she started talking before she’d even left the room.
“…Yes, I need to make sure we have enough tables for at least a couple hundred. I’m sure most won’t stay long, but they’ll need somewhere to sit…”
I missed the rest of what she had to say because she’d moved too far away.
Turning my gaze back to the table, I saw that all the men were watching me.
“What?”
“She’s good for you,” Copper said. “She keeps you grounded.” He tossed his brother a look. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him sit this long without a phone in his hand doing something.”
He had a point.
After initially looking up the flight manifest to show them, I hadn’t picked it up since.
That was definitely weird on my end.
My phone was usually an extension of my hand.
But when it came to my girl, I thought about other things.
Kind of like when Tavi had been here.
He and I always had something fun and exciting to do, but it’d never involved electronics of any kind.
I rubbed at my chest.
“You think they’re up there right now looking down on us?” Gunner asked. “Laney, Tavi, Knight, and Elaine?”
“Probably having the time of their lives,” I murmured softly. “Tavi loved the three of them. Like his own parents. He loved y’all, don’t get me wrong. But those three? It was like the world shined on them, and he only saw them when they were around.”
Audric cleared his throat. “I’m getting really fucking tired of losing people.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.