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His mother, his father, and the woman he loves huddle around his bed.

Sharing Jello.

Fussing.

And he forgets about the bullet wound in his chest.

All he feels is his swollen heart.

As the automatic doors whoosh open, I step outside for the first time in almost twenty-four hours. A breeze caresses my skin and I shiver with pleasure, inhaling deeply to fill my lungs with something other than sterile hospital air and fear.

Hours of pushing my luck later, Nurse Keily finally kicked me out. I wanted to stay overnight—I would’ve dropped to my knees and begged to sleep on the floor if that’s what it took—but Finn had backed the eviction.

“You need some rest,” he’d reasoned as if I didn’t spend most of the day dozing on his chest, and I pouted and used irritation to mask the genuine, all-consuming panic that gripped me when he suggested I go home for the night.

Propped against the mountain of pillows I pinched from a storage closet across the hall, he’d reached for my hand, kissed the back of it with a hot smirk. “And a shower.”

I’d scoffed as I flicked him on the chin, but I can’t say I disagreed.

As much as I tried to rinse off in the ensuite attached to the hospital room, a grimy layer of stress sweat still clings to my skin, salty remnants of a breakdown makes my face itch, and I’m one-hundred-percent sure there’s still some blood in my hair, camouflaged in the mess of tangled red.

“Fine,” I stooped for a kiss, stealing another as I brushed my knuckles against his cheek to check for any sign of the fever the nurses keep warning of, and then I kissed him again before forcing my ass out the door without a backwards glance.

Now, I chew on what little is left of my poor fingernails and scan the parking lot for a taxi.

When the doors behind me open again, I resist the urge to dart back through them.

Instead, I shuffle out of the way of whoever’s exiting, peeking sideways to see if they’re trying to track down a ride too.

I jolt when my nose practically brushes a shoulder, and again when I tilt my head back to find the towering frame that definitely didn’t skip a generation looming over.

“Jesus.” My hand flies to my chest, settling over my pounding heart. “You scared me.”

Readjusting the purse slung over her shoulder, Mrs. Akello cocks her head. “You’re very jumpy.”

“Yeah, well.” I slip my hands into my back pockets, feeling the whittled figurine I tucked back there for safe-keeping. “It’s been a day.”

Mrs. Akello hums, agreeing. “Heading home?”

I nod. Something defensive makes me clarify, “I’ll be back in the morning.”

“I’m sure,” she drawls, crooking a single, neat brow. “Need a ride?”

God, no, I just about manage to stop myself from blurting. Forcing myself to at least try to look grateful, I jerk a thumb towards the yellow vehicle pulling up to the sidewalk. “I’m good.”

“It’s no trouble.”

I take a step towards the cab, more likely to throw myself under it than I am to not get in it. “No, thanks.”

“Lottie.” Mrs. Akello sighs my name, and God, she sounds so much like Finn, it makes me freeze. “Let me drive you.”

Tugging my bottom lip between my teeth, I nervously rock on the balls of my feet. “I would really rather not.”

Surprisingly—shockingly, actually, enough to have me jolting again—she laughs. “Finn said you were like this.”

Jesus. As if there isn’t a whole heap of possibilities for that little statement. “Difficult?”

“Honest,” she corrects wryly.

Now I laugh. When was the last time anyone accused me of that? “I think the word you’re looking for is blunt.”

“Bluntness is just honesty in a pretty dress.” A hand lands on my shoulder, and I stare at it with a frown as it pats firmly. “C’mon. Let’s get you home. You look like you need a coffee.”

I do. About four of them. Desperately.

I only follow Finn’s mom to the parking lot because I’m worried if I go looking for one alone, a little whiskey might find its way into my mug.

“I was just heading out to get some dinner,” she tells me as she fishes her keys out of her purse, clicking a button that makes the rear headlights of her rental car flash. As she ducks inside and settles behind the wheel, I slip onto the passenger seat. “Any recommendations?”

“Bishop’s,” I reply automatically, only a little because it’s actually good, a lot because it’s pretty much the only place that stays open past sunset around here. “I’ll, uh, call my sister to pick me up from there.”

Although my gaze remains focused out the windshield, I feel Finn’s mom cut me a sharp glance. “That’s a bar, isn’t it?”

I tense. “It’s a restaurant too.”

Silence settles, and fuck me if I don’t recognize this particular brand of tension.

Slumping against the door, I sigh. “He told you, didn’t he?”

To her credit, she doesn’t try to lie, or even hesitate. “My son and I are very close.”

“I know.” He told me, of course. And I knew he told her about me. I don’t know why I didn’t assume that meant he told her every nasty detail too. “I’m not interested in drinking.”

“I think that’s a lie.”

My nostrils flare with a sharp exhale, her correct assumption rubbing me the wrong way. Tone rough and biting, I amend, “I’m not going to drink.”

Mrs. Akello says nothing.

“Is that why you’re driving me home? To make sure I don’t slip?”

“I’m driving you home because my son asked me to.”

“I won’t tell if you don’t.” I reach for the door handle, but right as I grasp it, the lock clicks into place. I huff. “He said drive , not kidnap.”

A snort cuts through the strain.

“ Kidnap her if you have to .” She eyes me sideways, a hint of a smile curving her mouth. “That’s what he said.”

Despite the circumstances, I smile. “Of course, he did.”

“My son is important to me. You’re important to my son. That’s why I’m driving you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s no trouble,” she repeats, and I shake my head, I’m not talking about a ride home.

“I mean for…” I lift a limp hand, gesturing vaguely, the lump in my throat preventing me from explaining properly. “ This .”

“He doesn’t blame you.”

“But you do.”

“I imagine you blame yourself enough for the both of us.”

I keep quiet. What am I going to do? Deny it? Lie?

Mrs. Akello makes a noise in the back of her throat, one that sounds suspiciously like a synonym for that’s what I thought .

Jamming her keys into the ignition, she turns on the engine and pulls out of the parking space, and it’s not until we’re on the main road, hurtling to Serenity, that she unlocks the damn door.

I could make a joke about having thrown myself out of a moving vehicle to escape an awkward conversation before, and I’d do it again. Ordinarily, I would. But as the silence settles thickly once more, I find something else is on my mind—a statement rather than a quip.

“I heard you earlier,” I blurt before I can think better of it, curling my fingers around the curves of my knees. “And if it makes you feel any better, I am well aware that I’m not good enough for your son.”

Mrs. Akello glances at me as she obeys the droning GPS system and hooks a left turn. “Pretty sure I didn’t say that.”

“It was implied.”

“Was it?” she asks rhetorically, clicking her tongue before coming out with a real question. “Do you know why Finn left home?”

I shrug. “He never told me any specifics.”

“I fired him.”

My head whips towards her. “ What? ”

“I love that boy, God knows I do, but he’s too nice for his own good. Too happy being complacent. He doesn’t love the cattle industry, not like his Dad and I do, but he never would’ve left on his own. He wouldn’t do that to me, so I did it to him.”

“That’s…” I don’t know. It’s a hundred things at once.

Harsh and thoughtful and incredibly familiar because I guess that’s what Lux tried to do to me.

For different reasons, obviously, but seeking the same result.

Forcing a change. But Mrs. Akello couldn’t know that, so I ask, “What does that have to do with me?”

“He’s never been much for talking my ear off about girls, but I thought when one did catch his eye, she would be like him.

Sweet. Safe. Someone who made him happy enough, but not…

” She lifts a hand from the steering wheel, flicking it through the air in search of the right word.

“Someone he liked enough, but he didn’t really love. ”

My heart jumps at that word.

And again when she shifts her gaze to me just long enough to make me squirm. “Not enough to take a bullet for her.”

A lump in my throat, I tell her the same thing I told her son, “I don’t want to talk about this.”

She stares for a long moment before nodding sharply.

The rest of the drive passes in silence, only broken when she pulls up to a drive-thru window and orders two coffees, quickly enforced once more after handing me one. I sip it slowly to pass the time, focusing on the hot liquid burning my tongue, not the whirlwind of thoughts searing my brain.

They stop abruptly when we reach the end of a familiar dirt road.

Anything coherent evaporates as I take in the ruined remnants of the barn I spent so much of my childhood in—as it slaps me in the face how close I came to being buried beneath the rubble.

I see Ruin, tail twitching erratically as he paces the yard, and my eyes water.

I must make a noise, do something to draw Mrs. Akello’s attention because I feel it land on me once more. As tangibly as I feel a hand land on top of mine where it’s resting on my lap, balled into a fist.

“They told me you swung at an EMT when they tried to take Finn away from you.”

I blink. I don’t remember that.

“You threw your credit card at them and demanded they let you into the operating room.”

That either.

“You said if he died, you’d get their medical licenses revoked.”

That rings a very vague bell.

“The nurse said she was afraid someone gravely injured would stumble in and leave after seeing your scowl.”

Yeah. Okay. That, I don’t have to remember to believe. “Finn likes when I scowl.”