by Misti Murphy
“I’ll go,” Rebel says as he levers himself out of the chair. I know he hates that she can’t stand to be around him. That it makes her feel like her world is still imploding around her. I know it makes him angry and sad. I know he misses her.
I just wish I knew how to fix it for them. So we could go back to the old days. Where we were all family. And it didn’t feel like Riot and I have to choose sides every time the four of us end up in the same place.
“N-no.” Rochelle frowns and her chest rises and falls a little too fast to be comfortable, but she sets her jaw and takes a step into the room. This time her voice is a little stronger. “No, please, stay.”
His whole body double checks, confused as to whether he’s coming or going. “Are you sure?”
“Please,” she reiterates as her gaze flits from Rebel to Riot to me. “You look like hell.”
“Thanks.” I wink, hoping that if I pretend I don’t notice how awkward the moment is it’ll help her feel more at ease. “Nice of you to say so.”
“What happened?” She leans against Riot, who puts his arm around her waist and holds her close. They’re like symbiotically close these days. It’s almost weird. If they were any other two people you would think they have feelings for each other, but as far as I’m aware Ro’s still hung up on Rebel. Talk about complicated, huh? I can’t imagine what it must be like for her to recall the worst moments of her life every time she looks at the guy she has a crush on.
“The doctor will be here in a moment.” Summer bustles back into the room with a bottle of water and a can of Fresca. “Hey, Riot.”
“Hey, Little.” Riot’s voice shines with affection.
She shakes her head but doesn’t smack him like she normally would when he uses her brothers’ nickname for her. Her attention is diverted by Ro.
“Rochelle, it’s good to see you. How are you doing?” Summer asks as she hands the soda to Rebel and twists the cap off the bottle before she hands him that too so she can unwrap a straw. There’s a lot of sympathy between the two women. They’ve both been through a lot. And they’re both strong as hell, even if they can’t see it.
“You know hospitals supply jugs of water to patients,” Rebel informs her.
“I know.” She pops the straw in the neck of the bottle and brings it over to me. “Bad experience. We’re not talking about it.”
I raise a brow as I put the straw between my lips and sip the cool beverage. It quells the rage in my throat from being under while they dug out the bullets. Wink at her. Wanna see my brother lose his shit? “Thanks, kitten.”
“Fuck off with that.” Rebel growls as he grabs Summer’s hand and tugs her back to the safety of his lap. She collapses into him with a yelp, but he soothes her quickly with a few whispered words that have her blushing.
Rochelle pretends like she doesn’t see my brother’s happiness. She barely blinks the whole time this is going on. She swallows around her feelings. At some point she’s going to need to move on. From her feelings for him or just from the residual mess left from what happened with Alec. Most likely both. “So what happened?”
Another rap on the wall inside the doorway reveals another visitor. This time it’s the doctor. Unfortunately it’s not the Doctor that travels through time and space in a blue police box. It’s just a guy in a white coat who looks like he belongs on the set of Grey’s Anatomy, carrying a tablet that he studies as he crosses the room. “I’m Dr. Comfort. Surgery went well.”
“I’m still here,” I agree.
As he glances around at my visitors, he gets that look. The one where almost every orifice on the face widens—eyes, mouth, and ears—because he’s just realized how many famous people are in this room. I really hope he doesn’t try to smell us because some of us, I’m not naming names, need to wash their flight—and last night’s afterparty—off them.
“We’re probably breaking some visitor limit or something, right?” Riot asks. “We should give you the room.”
“No need.” He busies himself with checking my chart like he rubs elbows with celebrities for a living. Perhaps he does. “Everything looks good. We’re going to keep you overnight to be sure, but you can most likely go home tomorrow.”
“Thanks, Doc,” I say.
“Get some rest,” he orders before he walks out of the room.
“He slept with a cult leader’s daughter,” Rebel answers Rochelle’s question from earlier.
“Can I tell my story?” I ask. “You won’t tell it properly and this is the kind of adventure that gets shared again and again and again. I want to make sure it’s accurate.”
He shrugs. “Go ahead.”
“I slept with a cult leader’s daughter,” I begin.
Riot rolls his gaze to the LED lights in the ceiling and groans. “This is going to be good.”
“You have no idea.” I take another sip of water to clear out the last of the razor blades. Can’t have them detracting from the story now. “I was just waking up from a post-orgasmic slumber when the cult leader burst into the bedroom with a gun. He was hollering and hooting like old Yosemite Sam, who, now that I think about it, bears a striking resemblance to your brother Burke, Summer.”
“He does not.” She tosses the wadded up straw wrapper at me. And then gets up to put it in the trash. “But I’m going to tell him you said so.”
“Great. Now, back to the story.” I fill them in on how I narrowly evaded getting shot by diving over the balcony in what must have been a four hundred foot death defying stunt of bravery.
“You are so full of shit.” Riot laughs.
“What? Embellishments are art.” I smirk. “They’re what make the story good. With any luck I’m the next blockbuster in the making. Me, played by… well, me, of course. Rebel, you’d only fuck it up with your broodiness.”
“Just finish your story.” Rebel shakes his head.
“Well, I caught a bullet to the ass in the pool. Hid behind a statue of a cherub. Bolted across six acres of the most beautiful lawn you’ve ever seen faster than Usain Bolt could have done. Climbed a twenty foot stone fence. Got shot. Again. And was finally rescued by a Disney princess and her nightmare vehicular steed of duct tape and rust.”
“A Disney princess?” Rochelle looks as confused as everyone else. They glance between themselves as though I’m in the hospital because I’m hallucinating and not because a couple of bits of metal embedded themselves in my flesh.
“Must be the morphine,” Riot says.
“Nope. It was Elsa. From, what did she say it was? Frozen, I think. She would have made a better Cinderella, though, if you ask me.” I push up on my elbows. I’m surrounded by my nearest and dearest, but there’s one person missing. “Where is she? Have you seen her?”
“Your Disney princess?” Rebel looks like he doesn’t know whether to call the nurse or laugh.
“Yeah.” I strain my neck trying to see outside the doorway.
“I think I might go.” Rochelle shifts away from Riot and gives me a quick hug. “I’m glad you’re okay. Get some rest.”
“I’m going to go too,” Riot says on a yawn he barely manages to hide behind his hand. Standing, he rests his hand protectively on the back of Ro’s neck.
See, weirdly symbiotic. Maybe it’s the drugs but they do seem closer than normal.
“It’s getting late,” he continues. “But I’ll be back in the morning. Rebel, Summer, I’ll see you at home.”
“I need to make some phone calls.” Summer pulls out her phone and starts tapping away at the screen. “The media are dying to know why Rogue Maddox was dragged into the hospital, bleeding and riddled with bullet holes.”
“Go be my publicist, Red.” When she first came into our lives she manhandled my brother into letting her be his PR manager. Now, she’s mine too. And she consults with Riot’s band’s manager, Kelsey, when they need her. “Bro, help me out of this bed so I can see where my Disney princess got to.”
“I’m sorry to have to tell you ther
e was no one here when we got here.” He clasps his hands together between his knees. “No princess, human or cartoon character. No girl at all.”
“Damn it.” I rub at the stubble on my jaw. I at least wanted to thank her for saving my ass. Ouch, okay no, not saving my ass since clearly my left cheek took one for the team. But quite possibly my life. “Are you sure? She promised she would stick around.”
“What’s her name?” He starts to rise.
“Elsa. No.” That was her character. She told me her name. “Her name is Uma Cookie.”
“Uma Cookie?” Rebel’s forehead furrows and his brows go up. So do the corners of his mouth though he tries to stifle them. It’s kind of like looking in a slightly less sexy and handsome mirror.
I know that expression. I’ve worn it often enough. And it may have just hit me that the name that came out of my mouth bears a striking sameness to I’m a cookie. “Don’t even say it.”
“Oh boy.” Rebel’s face splits from ear to ear. “As in I’m a cookie?”
To be honest, considering how much he’s scowled these last couple years, I kind of prefer this look on him even if he thinks I’m full of shit.
“I told you not to say it.” I scowl at him. It sounds ridiculous now that he’s made it obvious, but I’m sure that’s her name. It’s what she told me as they were preparing to take me to the operating room.
“That’s some morphine-induced hallucination you’re having,” he says.
“No, that was her name. I swear.” I wrestle myself up onto my elbows. “Can you please just go check for a girl in a blue dress. She had blue eyes and platinum blonde hair. She was wearing a crown.”
Rebel steps up to the bed. “I’m sorry bro, but we spent a couple hours in the waiting room. Your princess wasn’t there.”
I collapse back into the pillows. “I’m kinda tired.”
“Which is why we’re all getting out of your hair.” Rebel picks up a sports bag from the floor and shows it to me before putting it back beside the bed. “I brought you a change of clothes and your toothbrush too. Let me know if you want me to bring in anything else in the morning.”
“A new phone.”
“Done.” He squeezes my shoulder. “If you think of anything else get the hospital to call me.”
“Will do.” I shut my eyes as he turns down the lights and exits the room. A white chocolate chip and macadamia nut cookie with ice blue eyes does a sultry dance in my head as I drift on a cocktail of post-surgery exhaustion and painkillers.
Chapter Four
Ivy
“What do you think? Aren’t they fabulous?” my cousin, best friend, and locally semi-famous drag queen, Adira Hunt asks as he strides the middle aisle of his store, Hunt Luxuries, in a pair of seven inch platform gold boots, skinny jeans with a handful of loose studded belts, and a silk handkerchief top. “They’re Lulu Blues. Custom-made.”
I watch him strut while I work on the hem of a black ball gown for his show at Mojito Bar. I’ve been sewing and altering costumes for the performers since I was fifteen, when Adira made his stage debut. It was my first parttime job and since I need money more than ever it's one of multiple jobs I fit around my class schedule at Cal State. The cushiest of which is occasionally working as Adira’s assistant, since most of the time it consists of telling Adira how fabulous he is when he’s dolled up.
Especially in those shoes. I would kill to be able to pull off his confidence in them. How Liam can make being a girl look so easy I will never understand. And I have the equipment that says I should be able to rock my feminine wiles just as hard as he does. But I suck at it in comparison. “They look amazing on you.”
“I know.” He does a little skip and kicks his foot up behind him like a total flirt. “Aren’t the soles the cutest? Periwinkle.”
Sigh. Like Rogue’s eyes. So blue.
“I’m jealous.” Of the shoes. Of his ability to make everything sassy. He loves the spotlight, while being the center of attention gives me hives. That’s actually something he has in common with the rest of my family, though he’ll deny it to his very last breath.
"Of course you are, Love. Your shoe collection is so minimal these days it’s disturbing.” He pivots and sashays away.
I push my glasses up my nose. I seriously wish I could learn to walk like that because I have been doing it wrong my whole life. “It’s not a priority.”
“Hush, Love. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s not like I can wear them to class.” I tap the toes of my scuffed Converse together. “These do the job well enough.”
“Hmm.” He stares down his nose at them. “If you say so.”
“I do.”
“Too bad.” He claps his hands together. “I miss your closet of treasures. I see an entire shelf of one-of-a-kind JDV heels in your future. James Deveraux owes me after I managed to find him a gold-plated tricycle for his daughter. It was motorized too.”
I ignore the threat of a closet full of designer shoes and pick a peanut butter cookie off the platter on my desk. “I have no idea how you do it.”
Politicians and sheiks, billionaires and celebrities all come to Adira for the most impossible items and he finds them exactly what they’re looking for. I can only assume it takes a lot of phone calls and possibly some voodoo because Adira just taps his nose and mutters something about trade secrets when people ask.
“I have a particular set of skills,” he says, coming to a stop at the counter and pulling himself up to sit on it. He swings one glittery gold boot over the other. “I will find what you want. I will obtain it. And I will sell it to you at an exorbitant rate that no mere human can afford.”
“Okay, Liam Neeson.” I roll my gaze at his flagrant misuse of his favorite quote from a movie we have watched one thousand times too many. “But that’s not how that quote goes.”
“Well, that’s because I was misquoted.” He pretends to flip his hair over his shoulder while he levels me with a cheese ball grin. He straightens back to his feet when his phone beeps with an incoming call. “I need to deal with this.”
“Okay.” I close down the document and cruise the internet for entertainment news. It’s been a week since I last saw Rogue Maddox.
After they’d wheeled him away for surgery I’d loitered in the waiting room for news. But people were looking at me the whole time. At my costume and the blood on my sleeve. A little girl; she was probably only five or six years old started screaming because she thought Elsa was dying. I’d had to leave.
I’d gone home and cleaned up. I’d packed the Elsa costume up to be dry cleaned and tried to study. But I couldn’t stop thinking about him. About his blue—as a summer day sky—eyes and the way he held my hand as he begged me to tell him my name. I had to know if the surgery went well and if he was okay. So I’d gone back to the hospital and when his family left I snuck in to see him.
I’d waited until he was asleep of course, since I was out of costume at this point and he would never have recognized me as the Elsa who drove him to the hospital. Or even noticed me, since he never did before.
Adira wraps his fingertips around the screen of my laptop. “What is so gripping?”
I startle. “Uh. No. Don’t.” It’s too late though. He’s already adjusted the angle so that he can check out the screen.
“Rogue Maddox? You hussy. Obsessed much?”
“I’m not obsessed.” I return my laptop to its original position while I scowl at my bestie. I’m not usually so entranced that he gets the drop on me.
“You’re totally fixated. And that is a good part of why I love you. You’re so passionate about the things you love. As long as you don’t turn into a stalk…er, what is this look?”
“What look?”
I swallow hard as he swirls a finger to indicate my face. Purses his lips. “This one.”
“There’s no look.”
His eyes light up as he leans stylishly on one arm. His finger gets closer to the end of
my nose. “What did you do? Did you stalk him?”
“I didn’t.” There is no hope for my cheeks. I press my fingertips to my heated face. “It wasn’t like that.”
He gasps. “You naughty minx. What was it like? And don’t cut out any of the good parts. Especially if the details are dirty.”
“They’re not. Unless you count the blood.”
He turns his nose up at that. “Mmm, that’s a little too kinky, even for me.”
“You know I’m a virgin,” I squeak. “We didn’t have sex. He was shot.”
“What? Shot? As in…” He mimics a gun with his fingers, his thumb the trigger. His brown eyes widen.
“Yes.”
“Seriously?”
I nod. “I drove him to the hospital.”
“But he’s okay?”
“Yep.” I pop the p like that’s the end of the discussion and that’s all he’s going to get out of me.
He presses his lips together like he’s trying to keep his thoughts to himself. Not that it will last. Any second now…
“And…?”
“That’s all.”
He gives me that look. The one where he knows there’s more and he knows I’ll crack if he just keeps staring at me.
“And I might have gone back.” I grimace. I might have watched him sleep. For several hours. Like a damn stalker. But Adira doesn’t understand how beautiful Rogue Maddox is up close.
“You have a problem,” Adira says.
“You weren’t there.” I lean in. “You don’t understand what he’s like.”
“I can’t encourage this behavior,” Adira says. “Your dad…he made me promise I would look after you.”
“I’m fine.” I brush off the talk about my dad, even though it makes my heart ache so bad I can barely breathe under the million tons of crushing sadness. “Rogue asked me to be there when he woke up, but I had to leave because I was covered in blood. I just went back to keep my word.” And wound up sitting beside his bed and watching him sleep for hours.
“You didn’t talk to him.” He shakes his head.
I don’t blame him for not believing me. “I did.”
