Page 116 of Hey, Daddy

“…came in and scared us, and then he pushed my son down! Of course, I’m going to threaten to shoot him! This is Texas!”

The redhead clocked me, and she reluctantly blocked my way toward the dumbass.

Another detective I hadn’t seen until now walked up to me and offered me his hand. “My name is Detective Dorsey, with DPD. Can you tell me what happened?”

I did, leaving out not a single detail, starting with how my day had started with Finn.

By the time I was finished, Detective Dorsey was looking at me like I’d rocked his world. “She ran over your dog?”

My phone vibrated, and I stopped mid-sentence to answer it.

“She’s awake,” Shasha said. “Her blood sugar is under control. Her heart rate is a little erratic, but they’re stabilizing that with drugs.”

I wilted.

My knees hit the ground, and I just fucking…broke.

A sob left my throat, and my hands covered my face as I listened to Shasha tell me about her injuries.

It took me two more hours before I could get to the hospital.

By the time that I was able to walk into the ER, she’d been stabilized, and they were talking about moving her to a floor room where she would remain overnight for observation.

I walked in on the tail end of the explanation as the doctor went over everything with her.

Her eyes were open. She was breathing. She was even smiling and nodding.

She was sitting upright in the hospital bed when her eyes came to me.

Tears started to spill onto her cheeks as she said, “My hero.”

I rubbed the ache in my chest as I said, “Any fucking time, baby. Any fucking time.”

Hours later, I was asleep in the most god-awful chair in existence when I was woken up by laughter.

“Every single depression of his hands into her chest you could hear the bones grinding together,” Shasha said.

The memory made me wince.

It would not be a sound I would soon be forgetting.

“I feel like I’ve been kicked by a horse,” Nastya whispered.

When she said it, I knew that she was looking at me based on how her voice sounded.

I blinked open my eyes to see her staring at me with so much love in her eyes that I found it hard to breathe myself.

“Six broken ribs,” she said, though didn’t take her gaze off of me. “I’ll take them all day every day if it means I get to spend another day with him.”

Tears once again stung my eyes.

I hadn’t cried in fuckin’ years, yet I’d done it multiple times today.

Needless to say, this day had been one I wouldn’t be forgetting.

I reached for her hand, and she tangled her fingers with my own.

“Desi?” I asked quietly.

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