Page 73 of Bombshell

Slamming through the doors the nurse had pointed me to, I paused as my eyes scanned the packed room. Pepper shot up out of her chair in the midst of Judgment members, prospects, and ol’ ladies. Her face was stricken, eyes swollen and red, and I felt like my world had just been snatched from me.

“Where is she?” I asked her.

“Surgery,” she replied. “They think there is internal bleeding.”

“FUCK!” I shouted, my voice laced with the agony gripping me. I bent down with my hands on my knees as the pain seared through my body. “What happened?” My voice was thick and hoarse. It didn’t even sound like me.

“You need to sit down,” Pepper told me. “Come with me.”

Her hand touched my back, and I flinched.

“I can’t sit down, Pep. I can’t fucking breathe.”

I heard her sniffle, and I gripped my knees tighter.

“Don’t cry. Don’t you fucking cry. She’s going to be okay. She has to be okay. She has to. She has to be okay.”

I heard her small sob, and I jerked away from her. I couldn’t listen to her cry. It meant she doubted that Tink would make it.

“Tell me what the fuck happened!” I demanded to no one in particular. I just needed an answer.

“Calista went and talked to her. I followed her, watched it,” Tex said from across the room.

The look on his face almost doubled me over again. I needed someone to tell me she was going to be okay. Not look as if they were preparing for a damn funeral.

“I don’t know what she said, but it upset Dolly. I was waiting until Calista left to go check on Dolly, but she turned and walked right into oncoming traffic.”

Calista. Fucking Calista. I was going to kill her and Canyon Acree too. Both of them would die.

“I called 911 as I ran to check on her. I was with her the entire time. Until they put her in the ambulance. Then, I followed it here,” Tex explained.

I saw the blood on his shirt beneath his vest now. Dolly’s blood.

“Mrs. Dixon,” Pepper said, snapping my attention from Tex to the woman walking into the room.

She was petite, older, had darker hair than Dolly’s, but the mouth and eyes were the same.

“What happened, Pepper?” the woman asked, her eyes damp with tears and her nose bright red as she clenched a tissue in her hand.

“She didn’t see a car and stepped out onto the crosswalk, Mrs. Dixon. They have her back in surgery now,” Pepper said, putting her arm around the woman.

I watched as Dolly’s mother looked around the room and tensed up, her eyes widening.

“It’s okay,” Pepper assured her. “These are friends of Dolly. They care about her. That’s my brother, Micah.”

Mrs. Dixon’s eyes swung over to look at me. She assessed me slowly, then sniffled and wiped at her nose again. “I guess that explains a lot,” she said, then narrowed her eyes at me. “Dolly is a good girl. She was raised to do right.”

I nodded my head. “Yes, ma’am.”

She sighed and let out a small sob. “Last I talked to her, I was upset. We had words.”

Pepper kept her arm around the woman. “She knows you love her. Girls argue with their moms.”

“But she’s fragile, and it’s my fault,” the woman said as a louder cry came from her.

Pepper walked her over to the chair she had been sitting in, and Grinder jumped up out of the seat beside it so that Pepper could sit down with her. I saw Pep whispering to her and consoling her.

Looking at her, I wanted to feel sympathy. But I couldn’t. I agreed with her. She had let Tink down. She’d allowed her to suffer abuse I still didn’t know the details of. I wasn’t sure I could forgive the woman for that. Tink had deserved more as a child. She’d needed protection, and her mother had failed her. It was a momma’s job to protect their children. Tink had no one.

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