Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Kira
Ipinch the sheet that covers me between two fingers, sure that I’m in a hotel and not a hospital.
It’s too nice and not at all scratchy, and when I shift my legs beneath it, it doesn’t rasp at my skin.
Looking up, I squint suspiciously. Real flowers sit in a crystal vase on the windowsill, and beyond them, the whole of Cloverwick spreads out many floors below.
The air smells clean, and not the bleach kind, but the filtered kind, reminiscent of money.
My gaze drops to my arm and follows the line of the IV into the pump, the steady beep of the monitor hooked to my chest the only thing keeping me grounded.
And Celeste.
Well, Celeste’s scrubs. Because she herself does not seem like any nurse I’ve ever known. She floated out of the room a few minutes ago and told me she would fetch my sister. Who talks like that?
There has to have been some mistake. Because if this really is a hospital, I’m in the wrong wing. I mean, the bed is a queen. I didn’t even know they had queen beds in hospitals.
“Kira!”
The door swings open, and I wince at the sight of Nix. God, her eyes are swollen. Red and full of fear, there’s also a tinge of fury. She looks like she’s been crying for hours and holding in the earful I’m about to get.
“I’m fine,” I try before she unleashes on me.
“No, you aren’t!” she screeches, throwing herself into me so abruptly it knocks the breath from my lungs. “I told you that you weren’t!”
She squeezes me so tight that I feel one of the wires hooked to my chest tear at my skin, and I’m momentarily shocked. I expected yelling. Anger. Not this desperate, aching hug. She stopped hugging me when she turned sixteen and became too cool for me. And this… this is the second time this week.
“I told you,” she repeats, somehow gripping me tighter as her voice breaks into a sob. “I told you that you needed to rest.”
Her small frame against mine brings the truth crashing down: eighteen or not, she’s still just a kid—my kid, in a way. All I wanted was to keep her safe, but I’ve let her down. I’m supposed to make sure she isn’t scared, and yet here she is, shaking in my arms.
“I know,” I manage. My arm slips weakly around her shoulders, my fingertips brushing soothing circles against her back, desperate to comfort us both. “I know, I didn’t mean—”
“You don’t,” she snaps, pulling back just enough to look at me, her face wet and furious and too young to be carrying this much. “You don’t know, because here you are. You keep doing stupid shit. You keep going to work. But I don’t care if we have food. I just want you.”
My stomach knots so tightly it makes me nauseous, and I wince, looking away, unable to stand the tremble in her lip. We typically don’t do feelings.
“I know you think you have to handle everything on your own, but you can’t handle this by yourself. You need doctors and medicines and rest. You’re doing too much, and I know we’ve had… stuff going on… which I’m really sorry about…”
I whip my head back to her in violent protest. How could she think she would ever need to apologize? “It’s not your fault.”
“It won’t matter whose fault it is if you die,” she snaps.
“Nix… I’m not going to—”
“You can’t leave me all alone,” her voice suddenly cracks, going from anger to small and hollow in a blink. “You’re all I have.”
Hot tears rush out before I can stop them, and I reach out and pull her against me before I fall apart in front of her. I squeeze her as tight as I can because she doesn’t realize that it’s the other way around.
“You’re all I have.” I bury my face in her hair and cry like I haven’t let myself cry in years. Ugly, gasping sobs shake through my chest and tear open everything I’ve been trying to keep down. I should try to reassure her that I’m going to be okay, but all I can do is selfishly hold her.
Because she’s right.
If I die, nothing will matter. It won’t matter what I tried to do or why. All that’ll be left is her—alone.
And I swore I’d never let that happen.
Because I know what it feels like. I was left alone with a newborn at eight years old. There was no one to turn to. No one to protect me. Just a screaming baby with tiny fists that didn’t care how tired I was.
I remember holding her in the dark, my arms numb, wondering if she was ever going to stop crying, wondering if I was ever going to stop crying.
We were both so small. I wasn’t even tall enough to reach the kitchen counter, but somehow I learned to boil the water for the formula without setting the house on fire.
I learned to fake a parent’s signature. I learned to lie to authorities and how to wipe vomit off her neck while shaking from hunger.
People talk about instincts, but it wasn’t that. I kept her alive because if I didn’t… then I would actually be alone.
She was all I had.
She’s still all I have.
“Ewww!” she screeches suddenly, ripping away from me with offended horror. “Did you just snot on me?!”
“No!” I quickly swipe at my nose.
“You did.” She paws at her hair. “Oh my God.”
“I didn’t,” I insist, though I’m pretty sure I did.
I grab the box of tissues on the table beside me.
It’s just a little snot. God. That’s what happens when you cry.
Good to know our moment can only last a second.
Rubbing my nose, there’s a softness, almost like…
Are these the lotion ones? I twist the box around.
Name brand. Oh, for fuck’s sake. They’ll probably charge me a hundred bucks per tissue used.
“Hey,” I try to get Nix’s attention back from her hair. “What’s with this room? Didn’t you tell them I’m on Medicaid?”
She raises a brow. “A Landon? On Medicaid?” There’s a playful lilt to her lip.
“A Landon? What are you—”
“Feeling better, Buttercup?”
Of. Course. Jax Landon. I narrow my eyes at where he’s leaned against the door frame, arms folded. He doesn’t have a hair out of place as he tilts his head. God, he’s relentlessly delectable.
And most likely overheard that I snotted on Nix.
“What are you doing here?” I grumble, even though I know exactly what’s happened now.
This room, the tissues, and the real flowers, it’s because of him. His money. His stupid fucking arms that must have carried me down that damn hill. Again.
“Just checking on my wife.” He smirks.
I choke. “Excuse me?”
I look to Nix, to my baby sister, for help. But she sucks in her lips to hide a smile and shrugs—as if she wasn’t just crying with me.
“I’m going to go continue to eat,” she says, skipping toward the door. “Did you know this level has its own cafeteria? And that everything is free?”
Before I can protest, she’s gone.
Bitch.
Without her, the room turns to static. The air is completely different, sucked out by Jax’s presence and the looming word of wife and the knowledge that the last time I saw him, he was inside of me.
I was so hell-bent on finding Marshal’s teeth that I was able to overlook it up at the Bluff, but now the mere inches between us feel… softer. Less hostile. And I don’t know what to do with it. It’s kind of hard to snap at someone when you know you’ve let them inside you.
I avoid his gaze. I know he’s taking me in. I can feel it. Especially since I’m in an ugly hospital gown. I feel painfully beneath him, and I hate that every time I see him, I seem to only get lower.
Before Marshal, I would have had no problem putting Jax Landon exactly where he belonged.
Money and looks don’t mean you get to be a smug, cocky bastard.
But this makes how many times he’s saved me?
It’s annoying. And it’s annoying how not annoying he’s becoming.
I mean, at some point, I have to be honest, don’t I?
If Jax hadn’t shown up that night when we pulled Marshal from the trunk, what would have happened?
Would Nix and Caleb have been able to handle it without me?
Because I was obviously no help. And I’m pretty sure that, based on the number of wires hooked up to me right now, I wouldn’t have been able to get myself off Horizon Bluff for help.
I most likely would have died out there.
So, maybe he gets to be a smug, cocky bastard.
But I still hate it, and I don’t need to be on the upper echelon of Memorial Hospital.
“I shouldn’t be here.” I keep my eyes trained on my lap, on my hands that twist like a child’s. I know I should say thank you. I know. But my mouth won’t do it.
“No, this is exactly where you should be,” Jax says with the type of unhurried drawl that proves just how confident he feels. “Where you shouldn’t have been is up at the bluff.”
Ugh. A lecture. As if I didn’t already get one from Nix.
Maybe hiking in my condition was a bad idea, but checking to make sure there was nothing left of Marshal so that I don’t go to jail seems perfectly sane to me. But I don’t expect him to understand desperation. Not with the way he walks on water.
I twist my hands harder and look away. “I can’t afford this.”
He probably thinks my shame comes from a place of being poor, but it doesn’t. I’m used to it. My embarrassment comes from being in his debt—or, I guess, more in his debt. Getting me to the hospital is one thing, paying for whatever this is? It’s too much.
Even when Marshal would bring by a paper bag full of chips and oreos, I had to gnaw on my cheek through the discomfort. And that was only twenty bucks. I shudder to think of the thousands of dollars a room like this costs.
Dragging a chair to sit beside me, Jax rests his elbows on his knees, and—God, he smells good. It’s not fair. Can’t he have anything to take him down a peg? I stay stiff in the scent until he finally speaks, and I have to force myself to look at him.
“You can’t afford it?” His voice is light, gratingly soft. “I think you are forgetting the ‘we’ part.”
He says it so endearingly that I immediately snort. We are partners in crime. That doesn’t extend to footing the bill for my hospital stay. Even if we did sleep together.
“We aren’t together. I’m not your… wife,” I whisper, annoyed that such a notion embarrasses me.
Jax’s jaw audibly ticks. “Would you rather be on the ground floor where the doctors are overworked?”
“Why should it matter to you?” I sound defeated even though I mean for it to sound annoyed.
“Well, you don’t seem to care about your own well-being, so someone has to.”
“Again,” I grit my teeth with newfound agitation. “What should it matter to you?”
He gets up, jaw clenched as if he can barely hold himself together, and starts pacing like a caged animal.
I wait for him to storm out—to accept that I’m incapable of believing he gives an actual fuck about me.
But he stops at the foot of the bed and turns.
He grips the edges of the bed, shoulders flexing under the tight fabric of his shirt.
“Who is Robert Matthews?” he asks.
His question throws me. “What?”
“The man who drove you to the scene of a fucking crime, Kira.”
I blink rapidly. How the fuck does he know about Robert? And how does he know his last name when I don’t?
“He’s just some guy,” I flail, reeling. “I needed a ride. He doesn’t know anything.”
Jesus, did he look into Robert? Is that what this is about? But it doesn’t track, not with the steam that seems to be coming from Jax’s nostrils. I have no doubt that if he thought Robert was a problem, he would take him out without so much as a second thought. So why is he so mad?
“Let me be clear, Kira,” he says with barely contained contempt. “If you need a ride—I’m who you call.”
Is he… is he jealous? My lips part to protest, but he shakes his head and cuts me off.
“If you need to see a doctor—I’m who you call. If you need money—I’m who you call. If you want to wear shorts like that ever again—You. Call. Me.”
“Excuse me?!” I sit forward.
“And you’re not going back to work,” he adds. “I already had Nix call and remove you from the schedule until further notice.”
“Who do you think you are?!”
“I’m not carrying your lifeless fucking body again!” he snaps, and I freeze.
He squeezes his eyes shut, a shudder running through him. When he finally opens his eyes again, he runs a hand through his hair and straightens. “I can’t do that,” he says, more composed, “not with your body, at least.”
I suck in a breath, but it sticks somewhere between my ribs and my throat. He carries a lot of lifeless bodies.
But he doesn’t want to carry mine.
“So you’ll stay here,” he says, turning slightly as if he has to look away to keep himself together. “Under my name. You’ll get the best treatment this hospital has. You’ll rest. You’ll heal.”
Everything in me wants to tell him no. Because there’s no food in our fridge, and I have to go to work to get some.
Because there’s a detective who wants to nail me, and I have to be ready.
Because who is going to check Nosy Nellie’s house every five minutes if not me?
But defeat feels heavy in my bones, and my rebuttal is weak.
“Jax, there are things I need to do.”
“And I’ll handle it.” He turns, and there’s such earnestness in his eyes that I look away.
“Your truck is already being fixed,” he says. “You won’t need to walk anymore.”
My head snaps up. “My truck? How did—”
“And Caleb is at the grocery store right now. He’s going to replace the food that your sister said you fell asleep on.”
My cheeks instantly burn. She told him that? I’m going to snot all over her when she gets back. That will teach her to—
“You need to rest, Kira.”
“But I…” I struggle to find a logical reason why I can’t stay here when he’s covering all the bases.
“The doctor says that if you don’t…” Jax trails off.
“What?” I weakly roll my eyes. “I’m going to die?”
He doesn’t answer right away. He just looks at me, and the solemnity in his expression makes my blood run cold. It’s a face I haven’t seen on him, stripped of arrogance and games, a face that makes my stomach knot.
“Yes,” he says. “You need a procedure.”