Chapter 29
Noah
We barreled through the glass doors of the vet clinic, Rosa’s breath coming in short, panicked bursts beside me. Birdie whimpered in my arms, his body trembling like a leaf in the wind. My heart felt like it was going to punch a hole through my ribs.
"Steve!" I shouted. "We need help!"
Amanda, my brother’s vet tech came running out from behind her front desk. “What’s going on?” she asked as her eyes dropped to Birdie.
From the back, my brother Steve appeared, still in scrubs, his eyebrows shooting up as soon as he saw the state we were in.
"What happened?" he asked, already reaching for Birdie.
"He started shaking, wouldn’t stand up, and he’s not breathing right," Rosa said, voice trembling. "There was a bag of M my heart pounding like I’d just done a five mile run in Central Park. I thought calling Morgan and pressuring her to admit the truth would help us, but now I was worried I might have made everything worse.
Rosa didn’t say anything right away. But she didn’t pull away when I reached over and took her hand.
For now, that was enough.
“What do we do?” Rosa asked, her voice small.
That was the question. I shook my head slightly. “For now, nothing.”
“But she said there’s footage of us?—”
“Footage that proves nothing.” I turned in the chair to face Rosa and cupped her jaw with my free hand. “All that footage proves is that we were drunk and having fun on our wedding night. The only people who can admit to any sort of wrongdoing here are you and me.”
She paused for a moment before adding, “And Kristen.”
“If she did that,” I started to say carefully, “She would be in such a breach of contract with me that she would have nothing left to her name when I was done with her.”
Before Rosa could respond to that, the doors to the back room swung open again. Steve walked out, wiping his hands on a towel. Both of our eyes snapped to him and we were on our feet, rushing toward my brother, all thoughts of Morgan and our dilemma momentarily forgotten.
“How is he?” Rosa asked, wringing her hands together.
"He’s stable," Steve said. "We got most of it out. He’s going to be okay."
Rosa let out a shaky breath and leaned into me, just slightly. I wrapped my arm around her shoulders, the tight knot in my chest loosening for the first time all day.
Birdie was okay. We weren’t okay—not yet—but maybe we weren’t broken beyond repair either.
Maybe this was the start of digging our way out.