“Father?” I ask, hating how small my voice sounds.
“I think it’s clear that your injuries need more time to heal, Savage. You’re no use to us like this and you’re only putting yourself and us in more danger. Go back to your brother’s and rest up. Stay off the grid and stay the hell away from anythingto do with Banna business. When you’re feeling better, we can make a plan of attack.”
Father’s tone doesn’t leave room for argument, as usual. I can’t help but feel chastised, but I’m not sure why.
“Colm, take him back to Micah.”
Eamon snorts. “Enjoy playing happy housewife with the little queer,Savage.” He somehow makes my name sound like an insult.
Rage filters through my incoherent view of the world, but when it tries to grip my body, I’m already too exhausted to do anything about it. Instead, I turn toward him and make a point of looking down at where he’s seated at the table.
“Sure. I’m on vacation. Enjoy picking up my workload while I run a train through the local talent.”
The words feel gross and performative even as I’m saying them, but I have to say something. Preferably something that makes me seem more normal in front of the men I just accidentally unhinged and displayed my psychotic mind to. And if I tell him how I really feel—that he needs to take Micah’s name out of his mouth before I relieve him of his tongue—I think the guys might take it the wrong way.
Fucking random girls is normal. It’s what normal guys do. They’re telling me to lie low and pretend to be a normal, small-town man, which is kind of what I always dreamed of, anyway. I can do that.
Maybe.
I turn around and head for the door before he has the chance to answer, forcing myself to walk upright no matter how much my body screams at me for it.
As soon as I get through the front door, I double over and puke into the wilted grass in front of one of the fox cages. I vomit water, then bile, then I dry-heave until I realize that Colm’s hands are the only thing holding me up.
My abdomen hurts so much I wouldn’t be surprised if I looked down and saw my intestines hanging out, so I don’t let myself look.
“Come on Sav, let’s get out of here,” he says in a hushed tone.
He half-drags, half-escorts me back to the Escalade. By the time we get there, the dark spots at the edge of my vision have traveled into the center, and I’m pretty sure I pass out before he has the chance to put me inside.
Chapter Ten
Micah
Of course my first night back at work is a full moon. On a Friday night. In my shitty, small-town ER.
I don’t know what I did in a past life to deserve this, because I definitely didn’t earn this kind of punishment in my lifetime. I’m not perfect, but I do my best. My karma can’t be this bad.
“Micah—new patients in beds four, six, and eight are yours when you get to them,” the charge nurse, Rebecca, yells at me as I hustle past with an armful of supplies. I’m on my way to a trauma bay to help with an emergent paracentesis because they don’t have enough hands. It’s not my patient, but there’s only one tech for the entire unit tonight, which means all the nurses are doing their own tech work as well as helping each other where they can. Just physically transferring patients to inpatient and back is keeping our girl wrapped up all night, so for everything else, we’re on our own.
Which sucks, because I already have the maximum amount of patients they can legally assign to me. But it is what it is. We’ll only get through it by helping each other.
The House Supervisor wasn’t exaggerating when she told me we were short-staffed tonight. Wait times are so long I’d almost think it was worth people driving all the way to the city, if I didn’t know it’s probably just as busy there.
Every linens cart is bare, I’m late for all my vitals, and if one more person asks me to get them a cup of coffee and a turkey sandwich, I’m going to scream.
I’d rather deal with a fucking code.
Not really, but it’s close.
The only upside is that all this hustle leaves me no time to worry about Tadhg. He still wasn’t back by the time I left for my shift, which wasn’t a surprise, but does nothing for the worry slowly eating a hole in my chest. I’m beginning to wonder how slim the chances are that he’ll come back at all.
If he collapses or has a medical emergency during their “meeting”—or whatever dark, violent shit they’re doing—will they bring him to me here? Or will they let him rot until I get home, uncaring about whether he lives or dies, just like before.
I’d always thought I made my peace with the anger I held for Patrick. I’d folded it into a small, containable thing that lived buried deep inside me and rarely put up a fuss.
But right now, that anger is a living, breathing beast. It’s kicking inside me, scratching and clawing at my insides, demanding to be heard. Because everything he ever did to me paled in comparison to how he treated Tadhg, and it looks like in the past twelve years, it’s only gotten worse.
I swear, if my brother re-injures himself in some chauvinistic display of faux-fortitude because his piece-of-shit father is watching him, I will murder someone.
