Page 154

Again, Elliot didn’t find that take amusing.
She had confessed to everything rather easily. Beau witnessing her literally pushing me to my death, security cameras and phone records would’ve incriminated her pretty quickly if she hadn’t. A criminal mastermind she was not. She used her own phone to send the text, had bought the poison using her own credit card and had borrowed her daddy’s gun to use in her attempt to kill me. Oh, yeah. She was the person behind the shooting in the woods. She wasn’t even smart enough to dispose of the would-be murder weapon.
I was unconscious for days after. The kind of poison she used didn’t actually have an antidote, so the only thing doctors could do was pump me full of IV fluids then essentially wait it out to see if my body was strong enough to fight the poison. Luckily, it was.
Chief Finn had apologized profusely for not somehow being a superhero able to sniff out blonde psychopaths. Well, not that exactly. He was just wracked with that male blame of not being able to protect and serve or whatever.
I’d waved away his concern with my hand. It felt heavy, what should’ve been a simple gesture bringing sweat to my brow. “You were looking for a villain,” I told him. “Men rarely look atthe blonde-haired, blue-eyed, all-American girl. Even I didn’t.” I winked.
He hadn’t smiled at that. Nor did Elliot, but he had been only on day two of his no smiling streak. Nor had he been so forgiving with Finn. He’d given him an earful, which Finn had taken without complaint. I’d had to stop Elliot from full-on shouting at him.
Elliot, my mild-mannered, even-tempered man.
I expected and received pretty much the same from my caveman brother who did his fair share of stomping around my bedside, muttering things.
But Rowan did not measure up to Elliot’s broodiness those days in the hospital. Once my parents had gone home, my mother with some new gray hairs given to her by me. My sister and her kids having ensured that my fridge would be covered with enough get-well cards to last me a year.
My brother had been almost a permanent fixture, though Elliot had him beat since Rowan had a wife, newborn and toddler who had also been in and out.
Rowan was hovering. There was only so much of his grim, stormy glare I could weather. “Have you showered? Slept?” he asked Elliot with an impressive amount of empathy since there had already been tension between the two of them before this whole ordeal.
“Give him a whiff,” I teased. “You’ll get your answer.”
Neither of them smiled. With Rowan, it wasn’t surprising. With Elliot, it scalded my gut more than the poison that was luckily out of my system.
“Go shower,” I ordered Elliot, just realizing how much of his basic needs he’d forgone to stay vigil at my bedside. The lower half of his face was covered with a dark-blond beard, his hair rumpled, eyes bloodshot, and I was pretty sure he’d been wearing that same tee for days. I’d seen him eat and drinkenough to technically survive, but I swore his face looked gaunt, shadows in his cheekbones that hadn’t been there before.
He didn’t move.
“I’ll survive the fifteen minutes it’ll take,” I assured him sarcastically.
Still, he didn’t move.
“I’ll watch over her.” Rowan clapped him on the shoulder.
I rolled my eyes. Like the various monitors I was attached to couldn’t do that. I didn’t vocalize that, though, because Elliot seemed moved by Rowan’s offer. “I’ll be ten minutes.” He leaned in to kiss my forehead.
“I’ll be fine,” I promised him.
He lingered with his lips against my forehead for a moment before he straightened and walked to the bathroom.
Rowan sank into the chair beside my bedside that had probably formed around the contours of Elliot’s impressive ass.
Rowan’s heavy gaze hadn’t lightened even a little since I woke up from my disco nap—which some people dramatically called a coma.
The shower turned on in the adjoining bathroom. My hospital room was as nice as a hospital room could be, yet The Four Seasons it was not. I looked forward to my own sheets and Elliot’s bed.
“Calliope.” Urgency emanated from Rowan’s voice. I realized I’d been staring at the bathroom door, missing Elliot like some lovesick idiot.
I looked back at Rowan. His eyes were bloodshot, dark circles smudging under his eyes.
“You look like shit,” I chirped happily. “And that’s coming from the woman who was poisoned and hasn’t been able to do her skincare routine inthree days. An atrocity when you’re over thirty-five.”
Rowan’s lips didn’t move a millimeter.
I didn’t expect them to. “Henry not sleeping?” I asked. Nora had looked pretty rosy-cheeked and well-rested when she came by with my deliciously squishy nephew, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if my brother did the entire night shift to ensure that his wife got a solid night’s sleep.
“Henry sleeps fine,” he barked.