Total pages in book: 193
Estimated words: 184001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 920(@200wpm)___ 736(@250wpm)___ 613(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 184001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 920(@200wpm)___ 736(@250wpm)___ 613(@300wpm)
I, for one, cannot wait to see what drama the entertainer has in store for us next.
THORIN
Can you please take it easy?” Khalil gripes as he helps me back into the hospital bed after my shower. He’s always standing over me these days, clucking like a worried mother hen. I want to deck him, but I kind of love him, so I don’t.
“You beg me for weeks to wake up and now you want me to take it easy?” I bark back. “What did you think would happen?” I’ve been in a sour mood ever since waking up from a coma, confused as fuck, barely able to speak, and with no memories of how I’ve sunk so low. It’s no surprise that I’m impatient to get back some normalcy for myself.
And now…
Now I’m in a rehabilitation center trying to learn how to fucking walk again. Or whatever the hell the doctors said—regaining the strength in my legs. In three months, I’ve gone from bedridden to wheelchair-bound to short shuffling steps after getting frustrated and purposely snapping the cane they gave me in half.
Once I’m settled in the bed again, Khalil returns to the recliner in the corner while I glare at the red heart-shaped balloon one of the volunteers left in my room for Valentine’s Day.
Fuck love.
Love isn’t real. Love doesn’t lie. Love doesn’t leave you when you’re fucking fighting for your life.
The door to my room opens, and a hooded figure walks in. I don’t have to see his face though to know his mood is as bad as mine. The three of us have been scowling and snapping at each other for weeks with no sign of our moods improving.
“Where the hell have you been?” I grunt.
Zeke doesn’t answer though, as he collapses on the couch pushed against the wall across from me. He’s got a secondhand Android in his hand that he bought used off eBay. He stays on that damn thing searching for signs of her. Khalil’s got a similar one that he rarely touches, except for keeping track of Zeke when he disappears during the day for hours.
Despite the cramped room and lack of bed, the idiots still refuse to get a room at the hotel next door when it means leaving me alone. Instead, they take turns sleeping on the too-small couch at night.
“She’s back in Los Angeles,” Zeke says, his voice hoarse from disuse. He hasn’t spoken a word to us in days. “She’s back with him.”
“Who?” Khalil asks when he forgets to pretend not to care. “Her uncle?”
“The bodyguard.”
Tyler fucking Westbrook. “So what?” I grunt despite the jealousy running through my veins. “We have to move on, Zeke. She left us. She made her choice.”
“She left us, but that doesn’t mean we have to let her go.”
“Shy of kidnapping her, I think it does.” Khalil stretches lazily and then pulls his phone from his pocket, and I narrow my gaze on the device when he starts to fiddle with it, likely looking up whatever news article that riled up Zeke.
“When the fuck did you get so soft?” Zeke snaps at him.
Khalil looks up from his phone to stare at him blankly. “Since Aurelia.”
The two of them start to bicker, and since I can’t run away, I pull my pillow from behind my head and try to smother myself with it. A moment later, the pillow is yanked from my grip, and Zeke scowls down at me from under his hood as he tosses it away.
It’s the first time I notice how much the tables have turned.
I watch Zeke return to the couch and then pocket his phone inside his hoodie to glare out the window at the darkening sky.
“Shit, yes!” Khalil shouts before looking up from his phone with bright eyes. “I just got the email. Our passports have been approved. We can go home.”
“Yippee.”
Khalil’s excitement doesn’t deflate from my lack of it though. He’s the only one who ever had any reason to go back. My home, my real home, burned down months ago.
I have no home.
Khalil stands and walks over to the bed before picking up the paper that I glanced at once and never again from the nightstand. It’s a list of recommendations for physical therapists in the States to continue my outpatient treatment. Khalil places it on the swinging table overlapping the bed, and I look away to stare at the ceiling.
“The doctors said you’re recovering well and should be out of here in a couple of weeks. You need to choose which therapist you’re going to see once you’re out.”
“Pass,” I say immediately.
Khalil’s eyes become hard. “It’s nonnegotiable, Thor. You still have a long road ahead of you. You need to take this seriously.”
“I. Am.”
“Are you? We have to go three rounds with you every day just to convince you to get up and do the therapy here.”