“Riles, you’re awake!” Jasper blurted, coming into my hospital room with a large take-out tray of coffees in his hands. “What the fuck, dickhead?” This was aimed at Beck, who gave an unapologetic shrug.
“So much for calling us if she woke up, you prick,” Evan added as he followed Jasper into the room. “You look good, Riley. Like a Disney princess just woken from a coma.” His compliment fell flat when Jasper snickered and eyed my hair. No doubt I resembled a character fromThe Walking Deadmore thanSleeping Beauty.
“Thanks, Evan,” I muttered. “Nice to see you all alive too. Where’s Dylan?”
The guys all seemed to exchange alook, and Beck just kissed my hair before peeling himself off my bed. “I’ll go tell him you’re awake,” he said, totally evading my question. “Don’t go anywhere, okay?” He cupped my face and peered into my eyes with total seriousness until I nodded.
“I’m not moving from this bed,” I assured him. “I don’t think I could, even if I wanted to.” Because now that the drugs were fading out of my system, I could tell my whole body was just one massive bruise.
Beck pressed a gentle yet lingering kiss on my lips, then shot a warning look to both Evan and Jasper before slipping out of my room.
In his absence, I eyed up my two friends suspiciously.
“Which one of you is going to spill?” I prodded them. “What’s with the weird looks when I asked about Dylan? Where is he, really?”
Jasper shook his head and pointed at Evan. Typical.
“Uh.” Evan rubbed a hand over the back of his head, looking uncomfortable. “He didn’t take everything so well. You were unconscious and got shot at way closer range than us... Or maybe just that you’re more breakable...” He was rambling, but it answered the question of why I was in a hospital bed and they all weren’t. Then again, both Jasper and Evan were wearing hospital ID bands so they couldn’t have been discharged too long ago themselves. “So, yeah. He’s in the chapel.”
Evan paused, and I raised my brows at him.
“Praying,” he explained, motioning to me in my hospital bed all hooked up to an IV drip, “that you wouldn’t die.”
Oh.
I didn’t really know what to say to that.
“Not that we didn’t care enough to pray,” Jasper added, right as I was about to make a smart remark at him. “But you know how it is. Our belief in a higher power is a bit jaded, considering how we all grew up.”
“Also,” Evan added, “You’re tough as shit. We never doubted for a second that you’d be fine.”
I snorted a laugh at this and shook my head. Laughing was better than crying at this point.
“One of those had better be for me,” I told Jasper, changing the subject away from Dylan. I was staring at the tray of coffees in his hands and he gave me a broad grin.
“Uh, ofcourseit is.” Balancing the tray on one hand, he grabbed the marker pen from my chart and scribbled something onto the side of one of the cups. “See? Yours.”
He proudly handed over the cup, turning it so I could read what he’d written. Where the barista had scribbled “Beck,” Jasper had edited it to say “Mrs. Beck - Boss Bitch.”
“Cute. You’re lucky Beck takes his coffee the same as me.” I snickered, taking a long sip of the coffee and groaning. “This is definitely not hospital coffee.”
Jasper grinned. “It is when you own the hospital.”
I gasped and almost choked on a mouthful of my black coffee. “Holy shit, I’m so sorry. Your dads...”
Jasper’s comment about owning the hospital had reminded me that there were a shit load of casualties from Catherine’s desperate attempt at a coup. Casualties which left my friends sitting on the board of the world’s most powerful company.
What I wouldn’t give for a “normal” company structure where crap like blood heirs didn’t play a part in who held power.
“No need to be sorry,” Evan told me. “The world is better off without those miserable bastards.”
Still, now that I looked closer, Jasper held a thin air of sadness about him that suggested he wasn’t entirely glad to see his father in the ground.
“Is Eddy okay? They didn’t hurt her, did they?” Fear rose back up in me, and my eyes darted to the door as though I expected my sassy girl friend to come waltzing in at any second. If she was okay, that was.
Jasper nodded. “Yeah, we sent Dante a warning, and he got her out just before Graeme’s goons showed up. He’s keeping her safe until the media circus dies down a bit.”
Evan piped up. “Thankfully my sister was away at her fancy mountain yoga retreat when Catherine’s hired guns showed up at the dorms.”
