Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 72401 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 362(@200wpm)___ 290(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72401 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 362(@200wpm)___ 290(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Had I been asleep long enough for her grieving process to end?
“You should go home, sweets. Get some rest,” Sebastian murmured into her hair as he kissed the top of her head.
Tears ran freely down my face as I listened to the two speak.
“I can’t go home. Not to our bed. Not again. Not without him. It’s too big. You know the last thing he said to me in that bed? That he wanted another baby. I told him he was out of his damn mind.” A sob caught in her throat. “I should’ve taken him up on it. I should’ve relented a few months ago when he’d first brought it up, because maybe if I had, I would be carrying him around with me,” she wept.
The room was silent except the erratic beat of my heart as long moments passed by.
Finally, Mina lifted her head from Sebastian’s chest. “I’ll sit here and wait for Cleo to get back. I’ve already requested that they let Torren come in here for a little while so we can make the arrangements.”
Sebastian nodded and led Mina to the vacated chair near the corner of the room.
And there we waited, nobody able…or willing…to break the silence.
***
Cleo
“I can walk, dammit,” I snapped at Baylee.
Baylee was the vice president of the Dixie Wardens, Sebastian’s, wife.
“I damn well know you can walk, but your ass is hanging out, and you’re showing the entire hospital,” she snapped back.
Chastised, I let her tie up the ties in the back so my ass wasn’t on exhibit, and then shuffled stiffly to the door of Rue’s room.
It’d been a long twenty one hours, but she’d made it.
Although she’d had quite a bit of smoke inhalation, having her face buried in the couch had saved her life.
It’d provided an adequate enough seal that smoke couldn’t permeate easily, and offered her enough room for her to breathe as well.
It turns out that Torren had had to use a computer chair as a battering ram to break through the thin wall connecting Rue’s apartment to the one beside her.
After fifteen painstaking minutes of trying to get a hole big enough for him to fit through and tearing a ligament in his shoulder in the process, he’d finally gotten through, and just in the nick of time.
Around the time that we’d seen the back entrance way collapse, Torren had gone through the wall.
He’d gone out the front, while we’d all been watching the back like hawks.
I hadn’t known until after we’d arrive at the hospital and I was treated for smoke inhalation that they’d both made it. Though, only because I’d heard the stupid whore who’d been responsible for it all yelling that she should’ve just ‘fucking shot the cunt who refused to die.’
The stupid bitch had ran through the woods behind Rue’s property and was bitten by a rattlesnake.
Most likely, she’d be losing her leg.
If she was lucky, she’d die.
Because there was no way that I wouldn’t pay all the money I had for her to be put away for life in the most disgusting filth of a jail on earth, just so I could see her suffer.
And I had a feeling that the majority of The Dixie Wardens felt much the same way.
I’d found Rue in the next room, unconscious but alive, and had stayed by her side until an hour ago when I’d been told I needed an x-ray of my lungs done.
Luckily they’d been in good working order. Unluckily, I hadn’t been there when Rue had woken up.
“She’s okay?” I asked for the fourth time.
Baylee smiled at me knowingly. “She’s fine.”
Finally somewhat relieved, I breached the door to Rue’s room, and was a little taken back when I saw Mina in the corner.
She looked like hell, which was to be expected.
She’d been on shift when we’d come up to her floor.
It’d not been very fun to tell her that her husband had died in a fire.
In fact, twenty two hours later and it still hurt just as much now to see that look on her face as it did when I put it there by telling her that her husband was gone.
Tearing my eyes away from the grieving widow, my eyes softened when I found Rue scooted over to the very edge of the bed, and Torren lying next to her.
I owed that man my life, and nothing I could ever do would ever be enough to repay him.
He said he was just doing his job, but he hadn’t been on shift at that moment in time, and I’d never stop trying to make him realize just what it meant to me to have him save my woman.
“Hey,” Rue said softly when she caught sight of me in the doorway.
“Hey,” I rasped back.
I sounded like I was a four pack a day smoker, and she sounded much the same.
However, we were alive and that was all I could focus on at that point.
‘Cause if I focused on anything else, I just might shatter.
***
Cleo
“So how do all those people fit in?” Rue asked later that night as we snuggled into the bed.
After being discharged, we went to my place, and the rest of The Dixie Wardens had followed, along with the wives.
Mina had gone home, opting to spend some time with her daughter who was confused as to why her daddy wasn’t coming home ever again.
The rest of the group had gone home after a long night of comfort food, leaving us by ourselves for the first time in nearly forty eight hours.
“My boss is Vanessa’s dad’s half-brother. Vanessa has him wrapped around her little finger. She calls him ‘daddy.’ It’s not known, yet, whether they had anything more of a relationship or not, but we do know that Alonzo’s son was the man who tried to break into your place. Now those two did, indeed, sleep together.”
She grimaced at the visual.
“How’d she get that medicine?” She asked quietly.
I scratched my head. “I never heard. But I’ll find out for you if you want to know.”