Intense

He stared at me for a second. “Three hundred,” he said finally.

“Fine. Prick.”

I reached into my wallet and counted out the bills while the fucking asshole wrote out the prescription. I put the money in his hand, he gave me the script, and we got the fuck out of there before the good doctor remembered his ethics.

Tara was staring at me as we stood in the parking lot, waiting for Travis.

“I can’t believe you did that,” she said.

“Mason needed medicine,” I said. “I got it for him.”

“Still, that was a lot, and he didn’t really need it.”

“He did. We’ll stop and fill this on the way back.”

She bit her lip and nodded.

This whole thing was one damn clusterfuck. Poor fucking Mason was sick, and we were exposed as fucking hell. Not to mention I had just bribed a doctor for some fucking meds, which definitely would get everyone involved in some serious fucking trouble.

But that was what I was willing to do for her and Mason. It drove me fucking crazy thinking about it, but I would do nearly anything for them.

I was too fucking close, but there was nothing I could do. I was stuck protecting them, and I was going to do anything to keep them safe.

Even if it meant doing things that went against what I thought was best.

I was going to take care of her, like it or not.

21

Tara

I sat down with Mason in my lap on my bed and pressed the syringe of medicine against his mouth.

“Come on, Mason,” I said. “Drink this. It’ll help.”

He kept crying, but I managed to get the syringe into his mouth. I squeezed, and he swallowed the liquid. I pulled the syringe out and he continued crying, though less intensely.

“There you go. All better,” I said to him.

I knew the antibiotics wouldn’t really work for a day or two, and he wasn’t going to take every dose so easily, but I was happy we’d gotten one down. I felt a little bit better at least knowing that it was only an ear infection.

I couldn’t believe how angry at Emory I’d been. As soon as he said that we couldn’t go to the hospital, I’d wanted to kill him. I couldn’t believe someone would stop me from taking my baby to see a doctor. I’d thought he was a monster.

But that was wrong and I knew it. Emory wasn’t a monster. He was just trying to make the best of an impossible situation. Now that I had a little distance and the crisis was over, I knew that he meant well.

Especially with how he managed to make things run so smoothly at the hospital. He took control immediately, got us to see a doctor quickly, and even bribed that asshole doctor into giving him the medicine. I was surprised, but I shouldn’t have been.

Emory was doing everything he could to keep us safe. He didn’t want to see Mason suffering, maybe as much as I didn’t. But he had to balance that with the fact that The Network was still looking for us.

I felt guilty as I rocked Mason, bouncing him slightly. I felt bad that I had put so much pressure on him, put him in the situation where he had to choose between his mission and being a father. I didn’t know what he would have done if I hadn’t pushed, and honestly Mason probably would have been fine if we hadn’t gone to the hospital.

But he’d made the decision that I’d wanted him to make. Crazy as it was, dangerous as it was, I wanted to make sure Mason was safe, and Emory had made that same call.

I wanted to go downstairs and thank him, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave Mason. It was getting late anyway, and I could already tell that I wasn’t getting any sleep. I didn’t need to subject Emory to that same thing. Besides, I still had lingering anger about the whole thing.

I sat upstairs with Mason, reading to him and rocking him, trying to keep him as calm as possible. He ate a little, but not nearly enough, and went back to crying immediately after he was done. Hours slipped by that way, and soon it was nearly two in the morning.

For some reason, Mason’s crying began to taper off and I could tell he was on the verge of sleeping. I softly placed him down in the crib and watched as he drifted off, and finally, for the first time all day, there was silence.

I felt like I could finally think for the first time. I wondered briefly where Emory was, but it took me a second to realize that he would be sleeping like any other normal person.

I should have been exhausted, but for some reason I felt more awake than I had in days. I stood up and stretched, moving around the room as quietly as I could. I didn’t want to risk waking Mason up, not when he was finally getting some sleep.

I left the room, leaving the door ajar, and went to use the bathroom. I couldn’t help but think about Emory as soon as I got in there, though, as the memory of his body pressed up against mine in that room was still very fresh in my mind.