Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
He didn’t say anything else for a long time, but he stayed with me, the hushed sounds of the hospital at night and Ash’s deep breathing our accompaniment.
“Vansi?” he said at last.
I shook my head. The doctors said my best friend had no severe traumatic injuries, but I knew the ones to her mind and heart might yet end her.
“I’m glad she didn’t wake up in the living room,” Aaron said softly. “The blood . . .” He rubbed both hands over his hair, dropped them in between his knees again, his forearms braced on his thighs. “I thought I was still asleep, caught in a nightmare. If I hadn’t felt the crumple of paper when I tried to shake V awake and seen your note . . .”
“I should’ve left another one in an obvious spot.” It infuriated me that I hadn’t even considered that Aaron might be the one who woke first. Because I hadn’t realized that, in her own warped way, Grace loved him. She’d never planned to cause him permanent harm.
“Not your fault, Lu.” A sob he caught and held in his chest. “I have no idea how you did what you did, got to Jim’s. And Bea . . . I went and prayed with her.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “She was just like she always was when I wanted to do that—I know she doesn’t believe, but she smiled and thanked me for thinking to do that for her.”
“Because she knows you do it out of love.”
We sat in another long spell of a silence filled with the questions I could never ask him—nor he ask me. The boundaries had been laid down, our friendship now bordered by fences that couldn’t be scaled.
“I’m going to go back to sit with Grace,” he said at last, rising from his seat. “The cops have been good about that.”
I stood with him. “I’m glad.” Though it wasn’t too much of a surprise since, prior to answering the cops’ questions, Grace had made the request for me and Aaron to be allowed to see her.
And, it wasn’t as if she was a physical threat anymore. Not only was she injured, she was handcuffed to one rail of the bed, with an officer inside the room with her at all times. She was also her normal, bubbly self—so much so that it was an indictment on the state of her sanity.
I stumbled a little as we walked out from the nocturnal dimness of Ash’s room and into the brightly lit corridor.
Aaron’s fingers around my biceps. “Whoa,” he said. “You’re tired. Rest.”
“I can’t sleep.” So much easier to blame tiredness for the stumble and not my eyes struggling to adjust to the rapid change in lighting. “I’ll collapse at some point, but until then I can keep the others company. Ash was awake for a couple of moments just before—not sure if he’ll even remember talking to me, but he was lucid at the time.”
Aaron’s face morphed, a roller coaster of emotion after emotion. “He’s going to be devastated. I can’t believe—” He pressed one hand against the wall, his fingers curling into a fist. “The way Darcie cried that day she told us that Beatrice had committed suicide.”
“You know, there’s one thing Darcie said to me that I don’t think was a lie—how, that night, she was saying goodbye to her sister. Because Darcie never planned to set Bea free.”
Aaron slumped against the wall. “She couldn’t have kept her locked up forever.”
“No. I don’t think she ever expected Bea to survive.”
My friend stared at me, his throat moving convulsively. “Grace saved Bea.”
“Yes,” I said, then hugged him.
He hugged me back as hard, before breaking off to lope to Grace’s room, his long legs eating up the hallway. I didn’t follow, instead taking a seat on one of the hard plastic chairs bolted to the wall. Detective Stu Ratene came out of Grace’s room as Aaron went in, the two exchanging glances but no words.
Spotting me farther down the corridor, he walked over.
I raised my eyebrows. “You’re working late.”
He gave me a one-sided smile, his face that of a boxer who’d taken a few too many hits, his skin pockmarked by youthful acne, and his body a wall of muscle on a tall frame.
Man oozed sex appeal of the rough-and-tough kind.
“This case is so twisted, I can’t even think about sleep,” he muttered, before walking over to the nearby coffee machine. “You want?” He dug out his wallet. “It’s not bad for machine coffee. Less like barely flavored water than usual.”
I went to say no, but realized I was cold on the inside. “Hot chocolate if the machine has it.”
“Coming right up.”
He waited until both drinks were ready, then carried over the disposable white cups. “Here you go, milady.” As he sank down into the seat next to me with a groan, his blazer opening around him and his thighs pushing up against his jeans, I saw one of the night-shift nurses shoot him a “come ask for my number” smile.