“Except everyone here,” I snapped, feeling my blood pressure spike. “Why are they all still here when Wes is gone?”
Parker glanced at the onlookers behind me, smiling hesitantly as he tugged me closer. “Because they wanted to make sure you were alright. Just smile and thank them for coming.”
I’d smile alright, but it would be followed quickly by a throat punch to each and every one of them.
“Baby, your psycho is showing,” Parker murmured.
Right. Crap, I was supposed to be holding it together and getting along with everyone in the town. Instead, I was basically letting my killer side show.
“Thank you all for coming,” I smiled, hoping I was pulling it off. “I’m doing fine, but right now, we need to find Wes. We think he has Jeff’s truck.”
“Miscreant,” one of the murmured.
Parker pinched my side, signaling for me to hold it together.
“If you could help us search for him, we would be extremely grateful.”
With that, Parker led me to the door, knowing I only had so much patience before I started yelling at every single one of them.
“I can’t believe how badly I’m failing at this parenting thing!” I snapped. “How the hell am I supposed to take care of a baby when I can’t even take care of a kid who’s nearly grown? I mean, he’s basically self-sufficient, and yet, I still lost him!”
“You didn’t lose him,” Parker replied. “He took off.”
“Yeah, because of us. I mean, what does that say about us?”
“It says more about him, baby. He’s struggling.”
“And where were we?”
“In the hospital,” he emphasized. “Blake, you passed out.”
“Yeah, but just a little. It wasn’t even like fully passing out. It was more like a junior version of passing out. And it wasn’t even for a good reason!”
“Yeah, being anemic is definitely a bad reason,” he jested.
“I’m serious. If I had massive blood loss or had just seen a cat devoured by a baby rhino, that would have been a good reason to pass out. He probably saw that and thought I was a major loser.There she goes, passing out because of a tiny baby taking all the iron in her blood. Man, I can’t hitch my wagon to that!”
“I think you might be slightly exaggerating the situation at hand.”
“Oh, trust me. There’s no exaggerating anything because if I saw some woman pass out over a little iron, I’d be thinking the same thing. Run. Run as fast as you can because if she can’t handle a little missing iron, there’s gonna be problems coming that I don’t want to deal with. And that’s what he’s thinking.”
Parker smirked at me. “I just love it how you know exactly what a teenager is thinking. Seriously, it’s brilliant. You should get your own TV show and everything.”
“Maybe I could have t-shirts made.”
“Yeah?”
I nodded, feeling a little better. “It’s likeSurvivormeetsDateline. Hang in there and don’t murder anyone yet.”
“That’s funny.”
“I can’t take credit for it,” I sighed. “I saw it on a meme.”
“But at least you’re thinking positively. Murder is bad. Just keep repeating that to yourself, and you’ll be golden.”
Huffing out a laugh, I dropped my forehead against his chest and sighed heavily. “I’m going to be a horrible parent.”
“You’re going to do fine. He’ll cool down, and then you can yell at him all you want.”
