Page 25 of Playing With Forever (Hollow Point #4)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Lindy Saunders

Watching my dad stare out the window of the packed waiting room hurt.

It hurt my eyes, my heart, and my stomach.

Echo was standing next to him, saying something I couldn’t hear, and by the looks of it, my dad couldn’t either. He hadn’t blinked, hadn’t moved, hadn’t said a word to anyone, including me.

And I got it.

Josie was in surgery, and she had been for a really long time.

No one told me, but I’d heard Kane talking to DJ on the phone, and Kane knew—two stab wounds to the stomach, a four-inch incision on her throat, and massive blood loss. When she was brought in, she was unconscious.

I could feel Kane’s pain, but that was because he was sitting next to me with his arm around me.

My dad was staring out the window, lost without Josie.

Not that I blamed him, I was lost without her, too.

“Lindy, honey, do you want to go take a walk with me?” Shiloh’s friend Quinn asked.

I didn’t mean to shrink away from her, it was rude. She’d been nothing but kind since she and a bunch of other women who worked with Josie showed up, but I didn’t want to leave my dad or Kane.

“No, thank you.”

Kane’s hand on my shoulder squeezed, and he hugged me tighter with the arm that was around me.

Josie was his mom, I was supposed to be comforting him.

“I’m sorry, Kane, I can?—”

“Stay right here.” His voice sounded funny, deeper and gruffer than normal.

Pain.

So much pain filling one small room.

“She has to be okay,” I whispered. “She has to be.”

“She will be.”

He didn’t sound like he believed that.

But I did.

She had to be.

It happened almost an hour later. The door swung open, and everyone’s eyes went straight to the door, but instead of a doctor, it was DJ with Carrie following behind him.

I felt Kane stiffen beside me, which made me tense.

Without looking at anyone else in the room, DJ beelined for my dad with angry, pain-filled strides.

“Shit,” Kane mumbled under his breath and started to push out of his chair when it looked like DJ was going to hit my dad.

But at the last second, he swung his arm around my dad and hugged him.

Kane blew out a breath and settled us back in the chair.

I watched as my dad embraced Josie’s son.

It wasn’t one of his normal hugs—the good kind of embrace. This one was all wrong. It hurt to see the two men together—no, it hurt knowing why DJ was down in Hollow Point a week early, meeting us in a hospital waiting room.

All wrong.

Ugly wrong.

This was not what Josie had planned.

Dinner was all set, we’d already put together the menu and found the perfect placemats for our family meal.

Family.

We were supposed to be a family.

We couldn’t be one without Josie.

She couldn’t leave my dad.

She couldn’t leave me .

I needed her. I’d waited practically all my life for her.

Mamalious .

I called her that because it was the closest to calling her mom I could get.

But I didn’t want to use Kane’s nickname for her.

I loved it and all, but I wanted to call her mom. I wanted her to know I loved her.

We can’t be a family without her.

I glanced around the room, everyone looked like they were swimming in a fishbowl.

Ugly.

Wrong.

What was wrong with me?

“Lindy?” Kane called.

“We can’t be a family.” My voice sounded funny.

“What?”

“We’re supposed to be a family,” I tried again.

“We are, Lindy. Everything’s gonna be okay.”

I looked back at my dad, he was no longer looking out the window, he was staring at me.

And that hurt most of all. The way his eyes had gone dead.

We’d never recover without Josie.

I squeezed my eyes closed.

I felt my dad’s hands holding mine. I slowly opened my eyes, and God, it was worse up close. It was pouring out of him.

“I’m sorry, Daddy.”

“She’s gonna be okay,” he said in a horrendous voice that was hued in grief and saturated in agony.

I nodded.

“Lindy, girl, Josie’s not gonna leave us. She’s gonna pull through.”

If she leaves us, we can’t be a family.

I nodded again.

My dad turned his head and stood, taking me with him. Kane was up, and he grabbed my other hand.

“Josie Lark’s family.”

Family.

Would we still be that?

My dad stepped forward, pulling me along. Kane came with, and DJ and Carrie completed our huddle.

We were Josie Lark’s family.

For now.