FLETCHER
I must’ve fallen asleep hunchedover, because when I woke up, my neck ached something awful. I glanced around blearily, disoriented. Where was I?
And then it all came crashing back.
Tears filled my gritty eyes. No… It wasn’t just a bad dream. Adam was gone. I really did kill Tank. I ended someone’s life. My chest ached as I leaned against the cinderblock wall and tried to talk myself down from the anxiety gathering in my soul.
Officer Stan said I might get out on self-defense, but if not, I would accept my fate. A life behind bars. My lynx bound in silver and caged for eternity in a shifter prison, no doubt ending up as some Alpha’s bitch.
A tear slipped free.
“Mr. Rose?” I glanced up as the officer from last night unlocked my cell. Hesitant, I stood and tried to shake the ache from my bones from sleeping on the hard floor. “Come with me,” he said.
I did, but I was surprised when we didn’t go deeper into the cellblock and instead, went up into the front lobby area of the jail.
I frowned, confused. “I don’t understand?”
“We’re letting you out on bail,” Officer Stan said. “We don’t have enough evidence.”
I blinked. “But… I confessed?”
“In self-defense,” he asserted, and then his expression tightened. “Mr. Rose. Fletcher. Adam Sinclair is in critical condition, but stable, at the Canterbury Hospital.”
My breath halted in my lungs. Everything inside of me seized up in that moment, like my brain literally shorted out. “He’s alive?” I managed to breathe.
“Yes. He is your mate, is he not? You need to be there. Go.”
I bit down on my lip, glancing around before shaking my head helplessly. “I… I can’t. I don’t have a ride, and Tank slashed our car’s tires, and?—”
“We’ll drive you,” Officer Stan assured me.
That’s how I ended up in the back of a police cruiser for a third time, my heart pounding so hard I feared it might fly out of my chest. I looked like a mess wearing clothes straight from the lost and found that didn’t fit at all, but it was better than the orange jail jumpsuit.
I wasn’t sure how I made it from Point A to Point B. I was in a daze, my head filled with cotton and foggy. Everything sounded far away.
I went up to the reception desk and asked for Adam’s room. “I’m his mate,” I proclaimed, even though my voice shook. The blonde-bobbed nurse took my ID and then sent me to Room 208, on the second floor.
I took the elevator. I was afraid I’d fall up the stairs.
I went into the room, terrified out of my mind.Deep breaths. You can do this.I crept closer to the bed where Adam lay, very still, surrounded by a sea of starched white bedsheets and medical machines beeping and hissing.
He was on a ventilator, the machine doing the breathing for him. There was liquid in a bag hung from a pole, dripping into a line in his arm. He was very pale, his cheeks hollow.
“Oh, Adam,” I whispered, my hands clutched together at my chest. I was half-afraid to touch him, afraid that he’d feel cold like a corpse, afraid that this wasn’t real, that he would jerk awake like a zombie and bite me, that I was somehow still locked in that cell, and he was dead, and this was all a dream.
But his skin was warm. Adam was alive.
Tears rushed free. “Oh, Adam. I’m so sorry. This is all my fault,” I choked out, kissing his knuckles as saltwater dotted the sheets. I pulled a chair over and leaned against the bed, clutching Adam’s hand and crying softly. “I fixed it. I might go to jail forever, but he’s gone. He won’t hurt us, ever again.”
A week later,they took Adam off the ventilator. For the most part, he’d been unconscious, but last night, he’d squeezed my fingers very feebly. I’d jolted to awareness and when I looked at him, his eyes were slitted open.
“Adam,” I whispered, kissing his knuckles. “It’s gonna be okay, baby. Everything’s gonna be okay. Just relax and rest. I’m here.” He looked at me for a moment longer, then his lashes fluttered and he was gone once more.
After I’d told his nurse, she and the others on his care team decided it was time to remove the vent and see if he would breathe on his own. I was terrified, but thank god, he did. I wasn’t sure what I would’ve done if he’d suddenly coded.
I stroked my fingertips over his knuckles and sat alongside his bed, where I’d remained vigilant for what felt like an eternity. My body was riddled with exhaustion. I hadn’t slept more thana few hours at a time, and I was barely eating, picking at the cafeteria food as my appetite allowed. Nothing sounded good. Everything tasted like blood and sawdust.
More than anything, I wanted to go home and take care of Adam in the privacy of our own house, but I knew that the hospital was better equipped to handle his care.
