“Are they looking for me?” My stomach churned at the thought.
“Probably will tomorrow, just to let you know that he’s gone,” Will explained, stepping out of his boots.
“I can’t talk to them like this.”
“You can,” he assured me, sitting down next to me on the bed. “You got into a four wheeler accident today, so you stayed the night with your boyfriend so he could help you with Rebel.”
“My boyfriend?”
“Nothin’ else is going to make a damn bit of sense.”
“But wouldn’t I have called my dad if this happened? I left voicemails on my dad’s phone asking him to keep Reb. I—”
“Already taken care of,” Will cut me off. Got a tech guy that’s tits. He got into your dad’s voicemail and erased all of it. Casper found your dad’s phone and it’s toast. They find out you called him? Fits in with the story that you got hurt and you were trying to let him know.”
“I don’t know if that will work,” I murmured, watching Rebel as she pulled a stuffed animal to her chest and hugged it tightly.
“It’ll work, sugar. You just tell them that you were over here for the party and we decided to take a couple of the four wheelers out. You wrecked, I took you to the hospital. Did you call your dad? Yep. He didn’t answer. Did you text him? Same thing—no response.”
“You thought of everything,” I said faintly, staring at Rebel as she made herself a little nest of blankets in the middle of the bed.
“Molly, look at me,” Will ordered. I turned my head to find him watching me intently. “These men aren’t fuckin’ around. They find out you talked and it’s gonna be that much harder to protect you. You gotta do what I ask, sugar. There’s no other option.”
“Why did this happen?” I asked in confusion, my breath catching. “I don’t understand why this happened.”
“Your dad was workin’ to take them down, baby. He knew what the risks were.”
“But why? How did he even know those guys?”
“That’s not somethin’ I can tell you,” he answered, his voice dropping.
I nodded. Did I really want to know more than I already did? No. I didn’t want an even larger bullseye on my back. This wasn’t my life. I was the single mom of a daughter with special needs and I worked as a nurse. I’d been raised by a successful single father because my mom had died of an overdose when I was still a baby. I’d had the same best friend since third grade.
“Where’s Mel?” I asked, standing so I could walk around the foot of the bed and crawl into the spot between Rebel and the wall.
“Her and Rock left for the weekend,” Will said as he unbuttoned his jeans and dropped them to the floor. He grabbed a pair of sweatpants from the dresser and slipped them on before striding back to the bed. “They were goin’ up campin’ and we haven’t been able to reach either of them.”
“Do you think they’re okay?” I asked as he lay down on the other side of an already snoring Rebel.
“Sure they’re fine,” Will whispered back. “Service isn’t good out where they were headed. We’ll probably hear from them when they head back in a couple days.”
“Okay.”
“It’s going to be okay, Moll,” he said, reaching over Rebel to rest his hand on the curve of my waist. “I’ll take care of you.”
“I don’t need you to take care of me,” I said groggily, letting my eyes fall closed.
“You been handlin’ your own shit for a long ass time,” he replied as I relaxed completely against the bed. “But not anymore.”
Chapter 16
Will
“Church,” Casper announced the next morning as I sat at the bar with Rebel on my lap. She’d woken up at five, but I’d been able to smuggle her out of the room before she could wake up Molly. I wasn’t sure how Rebel had woken up after less than five hours of sleep, but I didn’t mind getting up with her.
She’d changed so much. Her wispy brown hair hand grown past her shoulders and the baby curls were gone. She’d also thickened up, and seemed sturdier than she’d been before. Her brown eyes were still the same, though, and still magnified behind the lenses of her glasses like a little bug. She signed a lot more, which meant I had no clue what the fuck she was trying to tell me most of the time. She also talked. Not much, but some. She knew what she wanted, and she didn’t let you ignore her.
“I’ve got Reb,” I said, getting to my feet. She growled and bent in half to reach the rest of her donut sitting on a paper plate on the bar.
“Bring her,” Casper mumbled, stuffing a donut into his mouth.