Sunny laughs and pats my shoulder. “Don’t let them scare you, Eli. Patch reallyiskind. I promise.”
“Yeah,” Abby agrees. “Once you get past the death-glare and the part where he stares into your soul like he’s checking for spare lungs.”
“Super comforting,” I mutter.
Skip grins at me. “You’ll love him, baby.”
“I don’t think that’s how love works,” I whisper back.
“Sure it does,” he says. “You love me, don’t you?”
My brain ejects itself from my skull.
Sunny snorts. Abby chokes on her water. Knuckles mutters, “Always pushing it.”
Skip just smirks at me like he knowsexactlywhat he just did.
“Insane,” I remind him. “You are certifiably insane.”
“Youwilllove me, pretty boy,” he smirks. “One way or another, I will win that heart of yours.”
“I’m going to actually die from the sweetness,” Sunny sighs dramatically. “Tell Bones I want to be cremated and my ashes scattered across the world.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you, woman?” Knuckles hisses, glancing around. “You can’t talk like that. Bones will kill us all out of spite.”
“He’s not here, silly,” she laughs.
“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” Skip says. “He’ll know. The man always knows when you’re not one-thousand-percent safe.”
“You guys are nuts,” she giggles…right as her phone rings.
Her eyes go huge when she sees the name.
“You can’t kill them for spite,” she answers the call, and Skip groans like he’s already accepted his fate.
“Hey, remind him that I have cancer and will be dead soon,” Knuckles says, hands raised. “His time will be wasted killing me. Zero satisfaction. Tell him Skip is more than willing to take my place.”
“Mother. Fucking. Fucker,” Skip laughs. “Using the cancer card? Sacrificing your brother?”
“Hey,” Knuckles shrugs unapologetically. “Spike won’t let me go out and have fun, so I get my entertainment however I can.”
What the hell did I walk into? My life used to be boring. Predictable… sort of. Safe… sort of.
Sure, my body sometimes decided to pull the plug and drop me, but I had routines. Patterns. Everything was carefully managed to try and avoid the unavoidable for as long as possible.
Now?
Every five minutes, something terrifying or bizarre or confusing hits me in the face like a freight train.
“Alright,” Skip says, sliding his hand to the small of my back. “Eli’s about to drop, so I’m getting him into bed before his body decides to shut down on me. We’ll be in our room if you need me.”
“How do you know I’m about to drop?” I ask as he guides me down the narrow hallway. “I don’t even know if I’m about to.”
“Your eyes were far away,” he says.
“That’s because mymindwas far away,” I mutter.
“What were you thinking about?”
