Dream Chaser (Dream Team, #2)(108)

Luckily, Mom had it going on, so did the Sadlers (all three of them), so the awkwardness only hit the danger zone, not the stratosphere.

And maybe it was weak, but I didn’t care.

When we got outside Brian’s room where a uniform cop was hanging, I asked Boone to go in with me.

Angelica said he was torn up, and if he looked bad, I needed Boone.

And Brian hadn’t been all that nice to me lately, so if he kept up that bent, I needed Boone.

Mom didn’t make a peep, and neither did Porter or Anne-Marie. The Sadlers said they’d go get us coffees and be in the waiting room.

Boone, being Boone, said one word.

“Absolutely.”

Boone talked to the cop to gain entry.

Mom went in first, and Boone held my hand when we went in after her.

And Brian was torn up.

Obviously, there’d been some shattered glass because he had little cuts all over his face. The array of the worst of it seemed to come down from, my guess, the biggest wound. The one under the bandage that was smack in the middle of his forehead. And his arm was in a sling.

So yeah, there was that head wound and how it looked and how it made clear how incredibly worse it could have been.

He also looked pale, but green around the gills, the first his health and predicament, the last a hangover.

Oh yeah, one last thing.

He was handcuffed to the bed.

I noted he looked sheepish when he saw Mom.

He looked angry when he saw me.

He got enraged when he saw Boone.

“Are you serious with this fuckin’ guy?”

Those were his first words to us.

“Brian, this is Boone, your sister’s boyfriend, and—” Mom began.

“So now you’re fuckin’ him?” Brian asked me.

I sucked in breath.

Boone went perfectly still.

Incidentally, Brian had also been at that party at Lottie and Mo’s that Mom went to.

There were a lot of people there, I didn’t think he’d met Boone either.

But he obviously knew who he was.

“Probably can get him to get all sorts of shitty stuff for you to hold over family and friends, you let him bang you,” Brian went on.

“Brian, I can imagine you’d prefer not to focus on your current situation,” Mom stated. “But at no time is it all right to speak to your sister like that.”

Boone’s hand started pumping mine.

“Mom, stop talking to me like I’m a child,” Brian bit out.

“Then stop acting like one,” she returned.

Brian looked again to Boone and me.

“You know, I don’t need Ryn to bring her A-Team asshole in to get up in my shit. How many reps you do to get biceps like that, bro? Fuck, you’re a joke.”

“Brian, stop talking,” Mom snapped.

Boone abruptly turned to me and urgently bit out, “Ryn!”

But that was it.

All went black and I was out.

*



“Fuck you.”

“Fuck me? Christ, your sister just passed out in your hospital room, holding her breath because she can’t deal with watching the brother she loves destroy his goddamn life at the same time listen to him hurl vile shit at her. A room a cop is outside to take you into custody because you can’t get out of a world where you think it revolves around you. It’s not that you’ve fucked up her day. You’ve fucked up the last few years of her life after she took care of your ass for the first ones.”

“Saint Kathryn.”

“Yeah, seems to me.”

“It would, since she’s sucking your cock.”

“Jesus. You’d know a joke, Brian, seein’ how big a goddamn one you are.”

I opened my eyes.

I was in a chair in the corner of Brian’s hospital room, Mom sitting on the arm, holding my hand.

I was a bit slouched, but hearing Boone and Brian talk to each other like that, I sat up, whispering, “Mom.”

She shook her head and whispered back, “Let it happen.”

I shook my head too and repeated, “Mom.”

“He needs to hear this.”

“I—”

“Quiet, Kathryn.”

I looked beyond her, and I could tell just by the line of Boone’s body how insanely pissed he was.

He was at the foot of the bed, probably to position himself somewhere where he wouldn’t be tempted to put his hands on my brother.

Brian was sitting up, red-faced and infuriated, leaning toward Boone.

But he must have heard Mom and me because he was looking directly at me.

“Saint Kathryn wakes,” he said snidely.

Boone shifted to the side so my brother couldn’t see me.

He also said, “Christ, you’re still drunk.”

“I just had a few and this is not that big of a fuckin’ deal.”

“You’re in a fuckin’ hospital.”

“I had an accident!”

“Wise up, you made an accident happen, bro. And you’re are so motherfuckin’ lucky, you have no clue. You hit somebody, after you got out of prison, there’d be no hope, you’re so goddamned weak, the guilt would annihilate you and you’d spend the rest of your life at the bottom of a goddamn bottle.”