Page 92 of Bona Fide

? Someone Else — Miley Cyrus ?

It takestwo days for Mama to open her eyes for more than a few minutes. There are machines everywhere, doctors and nurses in and out of her room like clockwork. So many that I can’t keep track of them all.

With her cancer, they’re worried, but they try their best to cloak how much they say when I’m in the room and give me their basic updates on all her vitals.

I ask them if she’s going to be able to make it through this, they tell me to stay hopeful. However, everything changed the moment Marty entered the scene, and I know that’s why I’m only getting half the story.

Thing is, I’m too exhausted and afraid to even argue with him about it. Wade’s specialist came in yesterday and said he’d continue to stay for as long as Mama needed.

After a two minute long and tedious argument with Wade, he went back to his office today and texts me every thirty minutes asking for an update or to tell me he’s thinking of me.

My feelings and thoughts have been clashing together ever since Marty showed up. The reason I’m here and Mama is laid up in a hospital bed is because of Wade. It’s because he kept a problem looming around in his past to come back and do unimaginable things.

When the cops came, Marty spoke to them. I didn’t ask for the details just yet, but I did tell him about Demi.

Let’s just say, he wasn’t very happy about it.

Currently pacing the sidewalk outside, I’m waiting for a miracle or someone to just take me out of my misery already.

While normal me would be plotting a way to fuck Demi’s world all around twice and backward for her to relive it again, there is no energy or bright ideas that cipher into my head.

I’m afraid I won’t be walking out of this hospital with Mama in tow, and I don’t know how Marty and I are going to handle that.

I’m not sure how I’m going to manage being alone when he has to go back to wherever it is he was and continue out his service.

“Stop pacing the sidewalks, Rea, you’re going to start making potholes.” I don’t have to turn around to see that my brother has successfully hunted me down. There is no hiding my anxiety from him, he can read me like the back of his hand.

“You got any weed on you then?”

Marty steps in front of me, blocking my current route, and a perfectly straight line might I add, to get me to look up at him.

“Still smoking, Rea Rea?” He hoists a brow, looking down at me with worried green eyes.

“How did you get so big?” I blurt, taking him in for the hundredth time. His muscles look like he bench presses over two hundred pounds a day, every hour. His boyish looks have faded and turned into a man who’s seen some shit, and I worry about what kind of shit that is.

Marty chuckles and shakes his head at me. “It’s called boot camp, constant training, and being bored.”

“I’m just wondering how you move because you’re the size of a semi-truck.” Marty’s arm reaches out to wrap around my upper back and pull me to him.

“Always the smartass.”

I grin into his chest. “Still the same.”

“That’s all I wanted,” he replies. “To never lose your spunk and to always be your favorite.”

I scoff and pat his hard chest. “Jury is still out on that second one.”

“Well, news flash, no one else would deal with you soooo...you’re fucked.”

I pull from his grasp. “Mhm, same goes for you. This waiting around bullshit for you to come home is really trying.”

Marty rolls his eyes. “Like I want to do this military shit for the rest of my life.”

But he does to keep Mama’s health care going.

“You can’t,” I tell him. “We need another game plan.” He nods and pulls his gaze from me, I’m sure he’s thought about it before because he’s missing everything.

“I know.”

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