Trips steps forward to defend me, but I place my hand on his arm, calling him off. Her anger needs a target. I’m the best candidate.
“Why isn’t he in a hospital? Emma isn’t a doctor. She isn’t even a vet. My brother could die, and instead of getting him help, real help, you dragged him to a storage unit to do backroom surgery on him?”
My heart breaks knowing that anything I say won’t be enough. “I wish he were in a hospital, too. And if this doesn’t work, that’s where he’ll go. But if he goes to a hospital, he’ll go to jail.”
“Why? What the fuck has my brother done besides support your cheating ass?”
“Evie,” Emma interjects.
“Don’t ‘Evie’ me.” She turns her rage on my best friend, and I know if she takes even a single step toward Emma, I’m tossing her out, grief and fear be damned. “You’ve seen the way she looks at this guy. The way the other guys talk about her. Youdon’t think she’s sneaking around behind my brother’s back? You don’t think she’s with all of them in some capacity? Do you think I’m an idiot? She’s fucking engaged to this rich asshole!” She spins back to me, poking me in the chest, tears in her eyes. “Is my brother not good enough for you? Because you sure as shit will never be good enough for him.”
“You don’t understand,” I whisper, her vitriol so justified in her eyes, Trips vibrating with rage beside me, desperately trying to hold back.
Because she’s right. I’m not just involved with her brother. And he’s unconscious because of me, unable to tell her that this is what he wants, unable to defend this strange family we’ve made in a way she might understand.
Her teeth snap as she shakes her head at me, taking a step back. “There’s nothing to understand. You’re dead to me. And if I have my way, you’ll never hurt my brother again.”
I glance at Jansen across the room, the slow rise and fall of his chest comforting as the tears I’ve kept at bay wet my cheeks. “I never wanted anyone else to get hurt,” I whisper.
Evie turns her back to me, marching toward Emma. I go to intercept, but this time, Trips is the one holding me back.
“And you,” her voice cracks. “I can’t be with someone who’d do this. Who’d side with a cheater and do fucking backroom surgery as a goddamn pre-vet undergrad.”
“Evie,” Emma says, tears in her eyes. “You don’t understand,” she says, echoing my words.
“And I don’t want to. I’m taking my brother and bringing him to a real hospital,” she says, circling the table.
Trips strides across the room. “I can’t let you do that.”
“And you’re goingto stop me, big guy?”
“If I have to, yeah. There’s more at stake than you know.”
“My brother’s life is at stake!”
Trips stays calm, and the evidence of his change settles deeper into my bones. “And he’s stable. If that changes, we’ll call an ambulance. RJ and Walker will come and wait with you two. But until then, I’m going to ask you to sit next to your brother and do whatever counts as prayer for you. Because he needs that right now.”
“Prayer doesn’t prevent death.”
“No, it doesn’t. But it might prevent your brother from spending the next ten years in prison, so get your ass in that chair and stop whining about shit you don’t understand.”
She glares up at him, but when it comes down to it, she’s surrounded and outnumbered.
Only as she slips her hand into her pocket on the way to her chair, I realize she isn’t going down without a fight. I sprint forward and catch her elbow, tugging the phone from her grip with a practiced move. “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you do that,” I say, the tears still streaming down my face.
She screams at me, rage and fear pouring from her in words meant to destroy me, but Trips steps in, wrestling her into the chair. With a snick, he handcuffs her to Jansen’s bedside.
She looks at him in shock, her rage earned but misplaced. Mostly.
“Please,” I say. “Wait and see. We won’t let him die, but we can’t send him to prison because of your fear.”
Emma’s hand shakes as she reaches across Jansen’s still body for her girlfriend, only to have Evie pull away. “Don’t touch me. We’re done.”
The shock on Emma’s face is quickly covered as her alarm goes off, reminding her to check Jansen’s vitals again. “Call the guys,” she says, not addressing the heartbreak that echoes in the storage room as she busies herself with his care.
I nod, putting Evie’s phone on the cabinet, then taking Emma’s phone from her, texting the guys in code, too wracked to call. I have to be strong. One moment of weakness, of showing Jansen how badly I’d been hurt, has led to this: to inpatient treatment, which I hate to admit was long overdue, and from there to whatever caused him to break out tonight and come for me. I want to be honest with him, with all of them, but right now, their worries are already sky high. Having them higher won’t help us get what we want. Their concern risks everything. Or at least, Jansen’s has.
This was never part of the plan. I’d never imagined having to make this choice for him a year ago—jail or backroom surgery by a pre-vet student.
