But this once, I said nothing.
It would have been a lie.
Physically, I was okay.
Emotionally? Not so much.
My mind kept flashing back to Perish as he took those bullets, as he tried to reassure me that he was okay, then as he was loaded into the SUV unconscious.
A pained sound escaped me, making both my parents reach out to me.
But I couldn’t accept their comfort. Not when they had no idea why I needed it.
So I did the only thing I could do to get through the washing, cleaning, and dressing.
I disassociated. I slipped so deep inside myself that I wasn’t sure I would be able to surface again.
There was a prick in my vein.
Then I was drifting out of consciousness.
—
It was someone clearing their voice at my bedside that had me snapping awake, staring at the strange ceiling for a long moment before I remembered where I was.
Hailstorm.
The rest came rushing back so fast I felt dizzy.
Stranger still, it was Rune, of all people, standing over me.
“Rune?” I asked, my voice raspy from the choking.
“Your parents went to get something to eat,” he told me.
“Okay. But… but why are you here?”
To that, Rune shot me a small smirk. “I’ll try not to take offense to that.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know what you meant.”
Sure, we’d grown up together just like all the other cousins. But when he and his brother took off at eighteen, the bond we’d known as kids slowly but surely disappeared. It felt a lot like meeting new people when they finally made their way back to Navesink Bank.
“What?” I asked when he stared at me for a long moment, a muscle ticking in his jaw.
“No one said you were this fucked up,” he told me.
“Gee, thanks.”
I hadn’t gotten a look at myself, but if the way I was feeling was anything to go by, then, yeah, I bet I looked like crap.
“What are you doing?” I asked when he went to the foot of my bed, snatched up my file, and started to flip through it.
“Checking to see if there’s anything I gotta worry about.”
“Worry about how?”
