Trust Me (Paris Nights #3)(14)
“But what if I want this one?” Ian said, with a gleam in his brown eyes, watching Jake.
“These hospital windows are pretty small,” Jake said. “Be a shame to have to stuff you through one.”
Ian stood up, delighted.
“Hey!” Chase protested. “No getting banned from the hospital. This place is killing me.”
“Technically, it’s keeping you alive,” Mark pointed out. “But yeah. Let’s not get kicked out.”
“I have to malinger just the right amount,” Chase explained. “I mean, I’m fine, obviously”—this even though he had an IV in his arm and looked like a corpse trying to grin cockily—“but my girlfriend is just down the hall. I need an excuse to stick around.”
Chase contrived to look smug about having such a hot girlfriend, but the glitter in his eyes revealed the darkness hiding under that smugness. Vi had been hurt worse than he had, and he was failing quite badly to handle that with the same aplomb with which he handled everything else.
“So you guys have to help me survive it,” Chase said firmly.
Yeah. They did. That was what it meant to be a team.
So Ian settled down and Jake lounged in the doorway, keeping an eye on the guards and the elevator and wondering when a certain pastry chef would stop by with special treats. She always brought extras for Chase’s buddies.
He’d always liked being the man who kept watch. He trusted himself more than anyone else with that job. You saw trouble a long way off that way.
Sometimes you even saw good things. When he was a kid, he used to lie out on his roof and watch for Santa Claus, determined to be the first to spot a glowing red light.
Of course, it had never worked out for him as a kid. Presents appeared under the tree, the few, very precious presents his mom could afford, but somehow Santa himself never showed.
Just like somehow that magic woman who would love a man through thick and thin never showed. Besides you, Mom, sorry.
He sighed. Braced his stomach muscles against defeatism. And kept an eye on the elevator.
***
Lina softened at the sight of Vi in the hospital bed, a feeling she could not get used to. Vi had a spirit that was pure flame, and normally if you got too soft around her, she’d crisp you to an oozing marshmallow. Not in a deliberate attempt to overwhelm you. She was just that powerful a force of nature.
But now Vi lay bandaged and weary and pale, her blond hair lank, shadows under her eyes, an IV in one arm. Lina hesitated under a wash of relief and guilt and rage, and her friend’s eyes flickered open. Vi angled the bed higher immediately, trying to get her energy to flare up. Violette Lenoir was not used to dealing with the world when she was down. She never let herself be put down in the first place.
“Lina.” Vi looked relieved and happy. Poor Vi. Bored out of her mind but too weary and wounded to do anything. Like being seasick and stuck on the cruise from hell.
“I brought you something.” Lina set down the case that carried the desserts and pulled a dart board out of a big plastic shopping bag.
Vi brightened. “Now that’s more like it. Although you know I really need my knives.”
“It would upset the nurses. This one’s magnetic, so you don’t have any actual sharp objects flying around.”
“Hospitals.” Vi groaned. “They take all the fun out of life.”
Lina grinned. Yeah. That flame in Vi had definitely not been put out, not even by this.
She opened the case. “And I’ve got something better than hospital food. Can you eat yet?”
“In small amounts.” Vi looked hopeful.
Lina pulled out a verrine—a small narrow glass—of mango and passion fruit and a light custard cream, not too rich, nothing difficult to digest or challenging for the liver. And very pretty, if she did say so herself.
“Lovely,” Vi said, green eyes happy. “Thank you, Lina.”
“Hey, don’t mention it. It was my bastard cousin.” If Lina hadn’t been there as a focal point for Abed’s hatred of successful women, he never would have chosen Au-dessus as his target. Maybe he would have still become a terrorist, since he’d chosen to wallow in hatred, but he wouldn’t have focused that terrorism on Lina’s people.
“Fucking pathetic little *,” Vi said.
The two women nodded at each other. That summed it up, and just because Abed had strapped on an AK-47 and a bomb to try to make himself into a bigger man only proved how tiny he had always been. Vi had called him a cockroach when they were teenagers. Too bad cockroaches in human form couldn't be crushed under a boot before they actually committed a crime, even when you knew they were trailing vileness everywhere they went.
And one of the wonderful things about friends was that Vi still saw her as a human being who had had really crappy luck in a certain relative rather than as the Muslim cousin of a terrorist.
“Chase not here?” Lina took down one of the generic hospital prints on the wall and hung up the dart board in its place. Chase had a tendency to sneak into Vi’s room whenever he could, to the great distress of the hospital staff, since he wasn’t supposed to be out of bed himself. The nurses had been pretty understanding about it overall, though. Anyone could see how much good it did the two of them to be able to touch each other.
“The nurses had to do a few things to me.” For a second, Vi looked exhausted. Then she blinked hard and lifted her chin. “He’s got company now, I think.”