Chapter 29
Twenty-Nine
Evermore — Taylor Swift featuring Bon Iver
CALLIOPE
I had been wrong. Little Blondie was in fact brave, bloodthirsty, and brazen enough to not only poison me but try and drown me.
Gotta credit the girl for wholeheartedly going after what she wanted.
And what she wanted was Elliot.
In true fashion of her generation, she felt entitled to him and did what had been done for centuries. Blamed the woman.
She blamed me for being with Elliot, and in her twisted, definitely in need of chemical balancing brain, she had been sure that if she murdered me, Elliot would find solace in her arms, and they’d live happily ever after.
Fucked-up fairy tale.
Stranger things had happened, I guessed.
I couldn’t remember a whole lot after I’d stumbled outside. I remembered the rain, the firm, biting grip against my arm. The sneer on Blondie’s face as she dragged me toward the dock, muttering about how Elliot would thank her one day.
She was only able to drag me because she had drugged my water.
She’d been planning, for a while, it seemed.
My demise. She’d offered to help Elliot behind the bar, which meant she had refilled my water.
I had been too complacent to even notice the jug she used for me wasn’t used to fill anyone else’s glasses.
Apparently, she was some sort of chemist because I hadn’t tasted the poison.
Aconitine. Tasteless. Lethal in certain doses. It first muddled the brain then weakened the limbs. Hence her being able to lug me to the dock.
I’d struggled, but I was so weak, it was a laughable amount of effort. I hadn’t even truly understood what was going on until she pushed me into the water without fanfare.
I’d sank into the depths of the ocean, the coldness shocking me into awareness for a handful of seconds.
I’d fought then, kicking my heavy legs upward, gulping for air when I surfaced.
Then a wave crashed against my face, forcing me to swallow a lungful of seawater.
Once again, I coughed and spluttered for air before I was under again.
My limbs stopped working.
The ocean was judging me. Taking me.
Then came Beau.
He’d emerged just in time to witness Blondie push me into the water. Despite the shitty visibility, he’d seen her and launched himself into the ocean. My unlikely hero.
He didn’t like being teased about it either. Or thanked. Regardless, I’d done my fair share of both. Mostly the former.
Elliot did not share my dark humor about the situation. In fact, Elliot had not smiled the entire three days after I woke up. A record. And I’d tried my hardest, cracking some seriously good jokes. He didn’t seem to think me almost drowning and then going septic from being poisoned was funny.
I did, considering I’d gone up against a whole organization of killers—including one of the deadliest assassins in the business—leaving without a scratch, and it was a twenty-year-old waitress from a small town who had almost accomplished the feat that no man had managed.
Feminism, baby!
Girls got shit done.
Or almost.
Again, Elliot didn’t find that take amusing.
She had confessed to everything rather easily.
Beau witnessing her literally pushing me to my death, security cameras and phone records would’ve incriminated her pretty quickly if she hadn’t.
A criminal mastermind she was not. She used her own phone to send the text, had bought the poison using her own credit card and had borrowed her daddy’s gun to use in her attempt to kill me.
Oh, yeah. She was the person behind the shooting in the woods.
She wasn’t even smart enough to dispose of the would-be murder weapon.
I was unconscious for days after. The kind of poison she used didn’t actually have an antidote, so the only thing doctors could do was pump me full of IV fluids then essentially wait it out to see if my body was strong enough to fight the poison. Luckily, it was.
Chief Finn had apologized profusely for not somehow being a superhero able to sniff out blonde psychopaths. Well, not that exactly. He was just wracked with that male blame of not being able to protect and serve or whatever.
I’d waved away his concern with my hand. It felt heavy, what should’ve been a simple gesture bringing sweat to my brow. “You were looking for a villain,” I told him. “Men rarely look at the blonde-haired, blue-eyed, all-American girl. Even I didn’t.” I winked.
He hadn’t smiled at that. Nor did Elliot, but he had been only on day two of his no smiling streak. Nor had he been so forgiving with Finn. He’d given him an earful, which Finn had taken without complaint. I’d had to stop Elliot from full-on shouting at him.
Elliot, my mild-mannered, even-tempered man.
I expected and received pretty much the same from my caveman brother who did his fair share of stomping around my bedside, muttering things.
But Rowan did not measure up to Elliot’s broodiness those days in the hospital. Once my parents had gone home, my mother with some new gray hairs given to her by me. My sister and her kids having ensured that my fridge would be covered with enough get-well cards to last me a year.
My brother had been almost a permanent fixture, though Elliot had him beat since Rowan had a wife, newborn and toddler who had also been in and out.
Rowan was hovering. There was only so much of his grim, stormy glare I could weather. “Have you showered? Slept?” he asked Elliot with an impressive amount of empathy since there had already been tension between the two of them before this whole ordeal.
“Give him a whiff,” I teased. “You’ll get your answer.”
Neither of them smiled. With Rowan, it wasn’t surprising. With Elliot, it scalded my gut more than the poison that was luckily out of my system.
“Go shower,” I ordered Elliot, just realizing how much of his basic needs he’d forgone to stay vigil at my bedside.
The lower half of his face was covered with a dark-blond beard, his hair rumpled, eyes bloodshot, and I was pretty sure he’d been wearing that same tee for days.
I’d seen him eat and drink enough to technically survive, but I swore his face looked gaunt, shadows in his cheekbones that hadn’t been there before.
He didn’t move.
“I’ll survive the fifteen minutes it’ll take,” I assured him sarcastically.
Still, he didn’t move.
“I’ll watch over her.” Rowan clapped him on the shoulder.
I rolled my eyes. Like the various monitors I was attached to couldn’t do that. I didn’t vocalize that, though, because Elliot seemed moved by Rowan’s offer. “I’ll be ten minutes.” He leaned in to kiss my forehead.
“I’ll be fine,” I promised him.
He lingered with his lips against my forehead for a moment before he straightened and walked to the bathroom.
Rowan sank into the chair beside my bedside that had probably formed around the contours of Elliot’s impressive ass.
Rowan’s heavy gaze hadn’t lightened even a little since I woke up from my disco nap—which some people dramatically called a coma.
The shower turned on in the adjoining bathroom. My hospital room was as nice as a hospital room could be, yet The Four Seasons it was not. I looked forward to my own sheets and Elliot’s bed.
“Calliope.” Urgency emanated from Rowan’s voice. I realized I’d been staring at the bathroom door, missing Elliot like some lovesick idiot.
I looked back at Rowan. His eyes were bloodshot, dark circles smudging under his eyes.
“You look like shit,” I chirped happily. “And that’s coming from the woman who was poisoned and hasn’t been able to do her skincare routine in three days . An atrocity when you’re over thirty-five.”
Rowan’s lips didn’t move a millimeter.
I didn’t expect them to. “Henry not sleeping?” I asked. Nora had looked pretty rosy-cheeked and well-rested when she came by with my deliciously squishy nephew, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if my brother did the entire night shift to ensure that his wife got a solid night’s sleep.
“Henry sleeps fine,” he barked.
I tilted my head. “Then why don’t you? You’re meant to sleep when the baby does.” I would never say this to a mother, to whom such a statement was utterly cruel when they had to pump, shower, take care of basic needs when and if their child slept.
His eyes widened. “I don’t sleep because when I close my eyes, I watch a man I owe a fuck of a lot to giving you CPR while your man begged you to fucking live, Calliope.”
My body jolted. No one had given me a complete rundown of what happened, and the single sentence was ugly and painful.
“I’m fine, little brother.” I patted his hand awkwardly.
His eyes shimmered. “Calliope, I watched the man who loves you more than anything beg you to live while his brother pumped your heart until it resumed beating. I sat there and watched because there was nothing else I could do.”
My chest throbbed, not just from the bruises Beau had given me during his enthusiastic CPR. That man had hands like bear paws.
It surprised me, the amount of visitors I’d had.
And I had hated it. A steady parade of people witnessing me in a hospital bed, otherwise known as my worst nightmare.
But the people had come because they cared.
And it shocked me that I had as many visitors as Elliot had after the fire.
The golden boy of the town, and I was sure I was the wicked witch.
But the room smelled like Nora’s baking and various bouquets of flowers, surfaces cluttered with drawings and cards from children with varying degrees of talent with crayon. I treasured each equally.
“I’m fine,” I repeated to Rowan, not sure what else I could say.
“You’re not allowed to do that shit again.” He slammed a fist onto the mattress.
“I’m not allowed to be poisoned and almost drowned by an unhinged twenty-year-old?” I scoffed. “Victim blaming is seriously out , little brother.”