Page 33 of Filthy Liar

I’m in the hospital.

Blinking, it takes a moment for my eyes to focus. When they do, I turn my head to the side and notice I’m sharing a room. King is in the bed beside me. He also is passed the fuck out.

Pushing myself up to sitting, I let out a heavy sigh and wince at the immense pain that radiates throughout my side. Fuck. I was really stabbed. Moaning, I close my eyes, and then I hear King groan beside me.

I turn my head to look at him. His head lolls to the side, his eyes cracking open, and I can tell they’re completely fucking unfocused for a moment. Then he closes them again in a long blink before he opens them fully and focuses on me.

“What the fuck?” he asks.

“We were cocky bastards and got ourselves stabbed. Beyond that, I have no goddamn clue. I just woke up.”

“Fuck,” he groans.

Before he gets to the end of the word and lets out thek, the door opens, and I watch as a nurse makes her way into the room. She stops when she notices we’re awake, and her lips curve up into a soft smile.

“Good afternoon, boys,” she says, her voice gentle but her tone cheerful at the same time.

I don’t bother asking what day it is. I have no doubt it’s been at least a full day if not two, and I’m just going to be even angrier at myself if I know the truth about it. My woman is still at home, and I’m not there with her—all of which is my own fucking fault.

I grunt, and King snorts. Obviously, we are not feeling the same happy, good mood that she is. The nurse is completely unbothered by our sour moods as she moves around the room. She checks my side, then goes over and checks on King as well.

“So, what happened to us?” I ask.

She’s standing behind the computer and stops, lifting her head. Her eyes find mine, and she blinks. “You don’t know?” she asks.

I do know, but I’m not about to tell her that shit. I decide to wait and see what she has to say. Because I honestly do not know what happened to me after I got stabbed. The rest of my bodydoesn’t feel like it’s in pain, so I assume they didn’t beat the shit out of me while I was down, which makes me extremely curious.

If they wanted me dead, I was down, we all were, and they could have killed me. I would have killed them without hesitation.

“You were stabbed. Three of you were brought in by your friends,” she says.

“Friends?” I ask.

She nods her head. “The other guys who were wearing matching vests.”

I almost laugh when she calls our cuts vests, but I don’t. Instead, I watch her for a moment, then clear my throat and shift in my bed, moaning when the pain slices through me. I glance at the bags at my side, trying to see if I can make out what they’re giving me because if it’s pain meds, they aren’t working.

“No pain meds through the IV,” she states. “Not with your affiliations.”

“So, you told the cops, then?” I ask.

We have zero goddamn connections in Tennessee. We will never get out of this. They saw our cuts. They know who we are. We are not getting out of this without a million questions.

I can only hope the other guys cleaned up the inside of that clubhouse well enough that I won’t be thrown in prison… again. I cannot do another stint, and this time, no matter what strings are pulled, there's no way I would go into a low-security prison, not for murder.

“It’s our policy. They didn’t seem too concerned. It was just the three of you, no other victims. They’ll probably ask some questions.”

That’s what I’m worried about.

The questions.

And then the answers.

“You’ll be discharged tomorrow, though. They’ll probably be by sometime this afternoon now that you’re awake. Did you want to see your visitors?”

It seems as if she’s speaking quickly, with a lot of information, or maybe I’m still just a little confused. I think it’s the confusion because King responds almost immediately.

“Send in our friends. And the third guy that was stabbed?” he asks.

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