Leaning back against the cushion and staring up at the ceiling, I had to accept it was time for me to get my shit together. I’d spent three weeks living like this, and I felt like I had lead in my limbs. If I continued, there’d be consequences with my health, but more worryingly, there could be consequences with one of my patients' care. I owed it to myself to be better than this.
Which was a strange thought considering that when I’d first started down the road to ‘getting better,’ I’d done it for Ariana, not myself. I acknowledged that it would be a better life for me to live, sure, but she’d been the reason for it. But I’d just said that I owed it to myself to get better this time, knowing Ariana would benefit from it as well but using myself as the focus.
It was the growth we’d discussed only weeks ago.
“I’m not sure I like that smile on your face,” Dale muttered, moving his legs off the side of the couch so he could run if he needed to.
Turning it onto him, I warned him, “And with good reason, fucker. There can be only one master between the two of us.”
He knew when he least expected it, the master of ‘bow to your master’ was going to get his crown back, and it was going to hurt way moreEven though I’d been living in my head for the last three weeks, I felt closer to Ari now than I had before. When we’d gotten both ladies to the hospital, I’d been the one to check her over first, and I’d gotten to see all of the bruises all over her body. Hearing she’d been hit by a car, we’d sent her for x-rays, and Chris had double checked the results—confirming she had no broken bones, just bruising, the cut on her cheek, and some soft tissue injuries that would take six weeks to heal.
Remarkably, the bullet Moodie fired at Sadie had missed the bone completely, but it hadn’t gone through the other side and had caused damage to her anterior tibialis muscle, so she’d been taken into surgery to repair it.
Both women seemed to be doing fine, but I knew firsthand that delayed reactions happened, so we were watching them closely. Sadie would be on crutches for another three weeks or so, and because of that, all the women were sticking to her like glue, helping her out.
Her dad was driving to see her almost every day. It’d been cool getting to see a relaxed version of the very determined and efficient man who’d distracted Moodie long enough for us to trace his location and get to him before he could do any more harm to the girls.
At the time, I’d thought he was like a soldier robot, barking out instructions and making calls. Now, I saw him as a dad who loved his kids completely. He’d taken over the planning and organization, bossed us all around, yelled multiple times that we couldn’t organize a piss in a toilet, and had called in his security team to ‘get their gadgets and do shit to find them.’
Following behind Dale as he walked into the bar, I scanned the room and grinned when I saw Ari sitting at a table with her family, Sadie, her dad, and Rich, all of them watching the new installment of the girls’ night in.
“Why won’t this just end?” she whined, burying her face in my chest as soon as I sat down next to her. “I’ll give you the best blow job of your life if you pull the plug.”
Although it was tempting, I still wasn’t doing it. I was also hoping no one had heard it. Given that none of the people around us looked like they were going to stab me with a pretzel stick, I doubted they had.
“Y’all were in here for hours drinking, baby. There’s a lot to go through.” I didn’t ruin the surprise by telling her that the other hours had stuff in them that was too private to share, nor did I tell her that I knew for a fact this was the last one they had.
“You suck!”
Kissing her on the top of the head, I angled her away so I could whisper in her ear, “You can suck me later.”
Turning my chair slightly, I got a clear view of the wall and what was happening on the screen at that moment.5h 04m 10s into the video
It was clear to see that by this point, the girls were trashed. Not just wasted, but completely wasted. There was no coordination, no focusing, no equilibrium, nada.
There was a brief lull in conversation as they all sat, smiling at nothing, but then Ari sat up straight, looked in Sadie’s direction, and told her excitedly, “I have a wiener.”