Total pages in book: 104
Estimated words: 97836 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 489(@200wpm)___ 391(@250wpm)___ 326(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97836 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 489(@200wpm)___ 391(@250wpm)___ 326(@300wpm)
“With the event,” I growled. “Not with my fucking love life.”
Zane smirked. “I can always tell when you’re super-peeved because you play fast and loose with the f-word.”
“You’re all a bunch of assholes,” I continued, ignoring him.
Bash had the decency to look apologetic. “But you do actually love him.”
“I’m divorcing him in a fucking week,” I insisted, grabbing at my chest.
Kenji made a face. “Are you? Because you’ve been sitting on the paperwork for a few weeks now.”
“I… I… I just couldn’t find the right time to ask him about it. Tell him. To tell him about it.”
Bash frowned. “It’s obvious you don’t want to divorce him, Silas. So figure it out. Yes, you live in New York, and he lives in—”
“The back of beyond,” Landry suggested.
Bash ignored him. “But that’s not insurmountable.”
“Not now that you have satellite internet,” Kenji said.
Zane dragged the toe of his old suede trainers through the gravel. “There’s plenty of room here for a private landing strip.”
Dev’s eyebrows lifted. “He’s right.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said with less conviction than I’d intended.
Bash placed a hand on my shoulder. “Work out the details together. The important part is communication. Talk to the poor guy. Tell him he’s not alone in having real feelings here.”
“You make it sound so fucking easy.”
Bash got that dopey look on his face he always got when he thought about his partner, Rowe. “Maybe it is. Maybe loving someone is the easiest thing in the world once you stop fighting it.”
Landry made a gagging sound while Kenji rolled his eyes. I tried not to sound like an asshole. “Rowe isn’t straight. Rowe isn’t trying to carry an entire fucking town on his back in addition to holding his own personal financial head above water. I can’t talk to Way now. He’s in the middle of his big event. He’s been working toward this for months.”
Bash’s hand squeezed my shoulder affectionately before he pulled away. “Okay. Then we wait. In the meantime, we nail this exhibition and make these AdventureSmash people believe there’s no better place on earth for their races than Majestic, Wyoming.”
“Damned right,” Zane muttered.
“Shit yeah,” Landry added.
“Agreed,” Dev said.
Kenji just tapped something into his phone. A moment later, he gasped and looked up at me with wide eyes. It was the kind of look that made my stomach drop. “What?”
“It’s… hang on…”
I walked over to read the phone over his shoulder.
The headline of the news alert made my blood run cold and the breath seize up in my lungs.
Active shooter holding hostages in busy NYC ER.
“Surely that’s not…” I began, having to remind myself there were many busy emergency rooms in the city. But before I could get the words out, the article came up, and I spotted the name of my sister’s hospital.
My brothers stood around me, all staring at the small phone screen in shock.
Bash was the first to speak. “She’s probably not even on shift.”
Landry nodded. “You said she’s been working a lot of nights lately. Maybe—”
“She takes extra shifts around holidays,” I said woodenly. “Like Fourth of July.”
Dev’s soft voice was aimed at Kenji. “What can you find out?”
Kenji shouldered us away and began typing. I pulled my phone out and tried Camille’s number with shaking hands. It went straight to voicemail. I pulled up the location app to see where she was. It was something we only used to help each other find a lost phone, but there had been times I’d used it to make sure she’d gotten home safe after a late shift when worries had overwhelmed me.
It showed her in the ER.
My legs felt like they were going to buckle. “I can’t… I… how do I find out…”
Bash grabbed me and sat me on the edge of the porch, shoving my head down between my knees. “Give Kenji a minute. He’ll find out what’s going on. You know he can find out anything.”
Waylon. I need Way here.
But he couldn’t be with me. Not now. He had the town to think of.
I heard audio from someone’s phone, a news reporter speaking in a clipped voice, fading in and out behind sounds of emergency vehicles. “…what we know so far. Reports of a masked gunman… drugs and… staff are barricaded…”
Kenji’s voice was clear as he spoke over the tinny sound from the phone. “She’s assumed to be one of the hostages. Three ER docs, five nursing staff, and several patients are being held in a blocked-off area of the ER. There are reports of gunshots, but they’re not sure how many people have been injured.”
I jumped up and paced the small area in front of the porch, feeling useless and hating it. “I… I want to go. See her with my own eyes. Be there in case she needs me—”
“Then go,” Bash said.
I pushed a hand into my hair. “But the exhibition’s tomorrow. Way will think I abandoned him—”