“Wyatt? Everything okay?” It was his sister, leaning into his room with a slice of pizza in hand.
Why does everyone keep asking me that.
“Yeah, everything’s fine.”
“I highly doubt that.” Julie came and sat down on the edge of the bed, the thin mattress loudly complaining about the added weight. “You told me work was crazy today. You didn’t tell me there was an entire shoot-out in the middle of the museum.”
“I was going to tell you. Just didn’t want you to worry.”
Julie scoffed at that. She was younger than Wyatt by three years but always acted as if she had ten over him. And rightfully so. She’d been the one to hold it all together after their parents passed; at only fifteen years old, Julie had taken the wheel and guided both her and her brother back to a semblance of their old life—pre-helicopter crash. It took Wyatt some time to regain his footing, having been dealt with the loss of his parents and the loss of his promising career all within months of each other.
“How’d you find out?” Wyatt asked.
“It’s all over the news. No one’s said a motive or anything yet. Just that men with guns stormed the museum.” Julie shook her head, and Wyatt could see her bottom lip quiver with the impending crash of tears. “Guns, Wyatt. Were you near them when it all happened?”
Wyatt could see the nightmares already beginning to take shape behind his sister’s eyes. He decided skirting the truth would help more than hurt in this situation. “No, I wasn’t. I was safe. It all happened so fast, anyway. I still can’t really believe it.”
Julie wrung her hands so that the tips turned cherry red. “Did they take anything? Or was it like a gang thing?”
“Both, I think. There were two groups there, must have been after the same thing. No idea what that was, though. I can’t think of anything we have in the museum that would cause a freaking Wild West shoot-out.” Echoes of gunshots rang through his skull. Images played across his vision like a broken reel: blood, smoke, more blood, two men with their throats flayed open, even more blood. His stomach flipped again, and he was forced to close his eyes to stop the room from spinning.
Except closing his eyes only gave the images a cleaner canvas to work from. The back of his eyelids became projectors, the lifeless corpses staring back at him.
He snapped his eyes open. The room would have to keep spinning.
“Roman was there.”
Julie’s head snapped to face her brother, her honey-gold eyes wide and her bottom jaw hanging open. “Roman Ashford?”
“The one and only.” Wyatt let his head drop against the wall, gaze floating up toward the popcorn ceiling, to the crack creeping across the corner where the white paint had turned brown from water damage. The upstairs tenants not only enjoyed playing soccer in the dead of night using bowling balls, but they’d also caused three leaks and set off five fire alarms in the two months that they’d been there.
“What… what was he doing there?”
Wyatt shrugged and let out an exasperated sigh, that question having stuck to him like a thorn through skin. He had a couple of guesses as to what Roman had been up to since they last spoke but nothing in the way of solid answers. From the way he was throwing around commands, it seemed like Roman had been the man in charge, but what the hell was he in charge of?
And what did he need Wyatt’s help with?
Julie stood up and paced a small circle into the beige carpet. “Have you guys talked since everything happened?”
“Nope, not a single word. Not until today, after he tackled me to the ground and saved me from getting shot in the head.”
“Jes—Wyatt! Really? How bad was it in there? Don’t lie to me.”
He filled his lungs with a deep breath, the oxygen feeling like a gulp of fresh water in the middle of a desert. “I don’t think I was ever really in danger. They were there for something, and I don’t think either group wanted to leave behind a big body count getting it. I just don’t think they were expecting to be there at the same time. It messed everything up.”
“And how did you feel? Seeing him again?”
Wyatt avoided his little sister’s gaze. She knew just how badly Roman had hurt him, having been the one to comfort Wyatt after everything began falling apart. He’d fallen hard for the tall kid with the green eyes and effortless grin, his best friend and secret crush. Except it didn’t stay secret for long, when they both drunkenly made out with each other at their high school graduation party. Wyatt had already come out to Roman but never told him about the feelings he had for his best friend. He was shocked when Roman confessed to having those same butterfly-farm-in-his-chest kinds of feelings. Not just because he thought his friend was straight, but because he assumed that even if he wasn’t, he’d still be out of Wyatt’s league.