Long Way Home (Thunder Road #3)(28)

Even though Mom’s talking, Eli keeps his eyes on me and I don’t like that he watches me so intently. My thoughts have been tough to capture, but what if he’s able to read me and he knows what I’ve been assigned to do?

“She’s still not talking,” Mom whispers.

“But I bet her hearing still works,” he responds.

The right side of my mouth turns up and Eli almost smiles along with me. A crinkling near his eyes, a small spark, but his expression then falls near black with seriousness.

I agree. This entire scenario is as serious as a severed artery.

“Are you purposely ignoring me?” Mom pushes down the sleeves of her red sweater. “Because if so, that’s childish. I’ve been worried sick—”

My forehead furrows. The thrumming. It grows louder and causes a slashing pain in my head.

“She’s not ignoring us,” Eli says, and Mom’s guilt trip magically vanishes.

Now it’s his turn to lower his voice like I can’t hear. “Just talked to Pigpen. Chevy’s confirmed it’s been a complicated few hours for her. More than we originally thought.”

The air catches in my throat. Chevy.

“Complicated?” Mom’s hand goes to her chest like the word crushes her lungs. “Complicated how?”

“I’ll tell you in the hallway. I’d like to talk to you and Nina at the same time. An opportunity for all of us to get on the same page.”

Eli angles for the door and I grab his wrist. He knows about Chevy. Eli turns back to me, studies my face, then the worry in his expression fades. Sort of like he had spent the past few hours trying to solve a math problem, but then the answer appeared in a heavenly glow along with a choir of angels.

“Chevy’s okay,” he says like that’s a secret between us. “He’s tough. Just like you.”

He’s okay. That’s a start. I drop Eli’s wrist and calculate how I can find him without Mom freaking out.

“Want to see him?” Eli asks.

Yes.

Eli does a quick scan of the IV leading from me to the machines. A tug of his ear and he sweeps me up into his arms. Multiple hospital sheets and all.

“What are you doing?” Mom demands, but I know and approve. “Eli, her knee. Be careful of her knee!”

“Do me a favor, Jenny, and grab that IV machine.”

And we’re moving. Eli kicks at the closed door of my room as a knock and the door is immediately opened by Hook. He’s Razor’s dad and my mind slowly feels like it’s stretching after being asleep.

Razor.

Oz.

My best friends. My brothers.

I want to see them. Want to figure out if being here is a dream. My head swivels as if I can snap a panoramic picture. Along the hallway and the nurses’ station, there are plenty of men from the club, but not Oz, not Razor.

The guys from the club smile at me, nod at me, watch me as if they’re grieving, angry and relieved. A strange combination. A wall of men. Most of them are men my father called family.

“Razor and Oz aren’t here.” Eli carries me down the hallway. “They’re texting everyone in the club every ten minutes, though. And now they have Emily texting me every five minutes. They’re driving me nuts. Razor and Oz are with your brother. Keeping his mind off you being gone.”

Good. That’s good.

“Put her back in her room!” Nurse Becky shoots in front of Eli, but he doesn’t stop. Instead, he steps around her. She keeps yelling and it sounds as if someone is yelling back.

We reach the end of the hallway and Pigpen winks at me as he opens a door. My heart stops beating when Eli enters a room almost identical to mine, but instead of my mom, there’s Chevy’s mom and in the bed is the one person who could possibly understand the thrumming.

Dark hair, dark eyes, battered, definitely bruised, but he’s still a strong, safe port in a raging storm. Chevy sits up in the bed, the pure relief on his face an echo of the unraveling of tension happening within me.

“Brought you a visitor,” Eli announces, and when Chevy scrambles to move out of the bed, Eli shakes his head. “Stay put.”

Eli gently lays me next to Chevy, and when our gazes meet, my eyes burn. He’s okay. Chevy’s okay.

“Eli McKinley!” Rebecca, Oz’s mom, flies into the room. Pieces of her black hair falling from a bun. She’s in her blue nursing scrubs, and she looks like she’s ready to roast Eli over an open fire. “I am doing my best to keep the hospital from throwing you and this club out the door and then you go and pull Violet from her room? You can’t do that!”

Rebecca checks my IV machine, pushing buttons, tracing my line and then checking where the needle goes into my skin. Her eyes flicker from me to Chevy, then back to me. She purses her lips, then she tucks my hair behind my ear. “You okay?”

I nod, and she tucks the hair behind my ear again. I like Rebecca. She understands that sometimes words are overrated. She understands a lot of things. I often used to wish she was my mother instead of Oz’s.

“When are they going to be discharged?” Eli asks.

“After the doctor goes over their test results. I’ve told you this.” Rebecca returns her attention to my IV machine. “She’s on a morphine drip. You can’t go messing around with the machines.”