Page 71 of Avenging Jessie
The grin grew, curving his lips. “I’m a firm believer in them. I’ve been given more than I deserve, and look how good I turned out.”
He winked and she grinned through her tears. “We really need to work on bolstering your confidence.”
Just as he brushed a hand over her hair, careful not to jostle her bandaged shoulder, a knock sounded on the closed door.
Before either of them could answer, it creaked open and Tessa poked her head inside, a wild spray of grocery store flowers in one hand and a suspiciously large bag of gummy worms in the other.
“Hope we’re not interrupting,” she said, grinning.
Jessie let out a tired laugh. It hurt, but she didn’t care. “Get in here before I start crying again.”
Tommy followed close behind, holding up a bottle of sparkling apple cider like it was champagne. “Vintage…uh, fifteen minutes ago. Courtesy of the vending machine.”
Spence groaned. “If you pour that over my head, I swear?—”
“Tempting,” Tommy deadpanned, “but I’ll settle for toasting the fact that we saved the world. Again.”
Jessie smiled, soft and a little wobbly, as her brother set the bottle aside and leaned in for a hug. It wasn’t awkward—not anymore. It was solid. Real. The kind of hug that saidwe made itwithout needing to say the words.
She clung to him fiercely. “I thought I’d lost you.”
“Not a chance,” he said, gripping her just as tightly. “You’re stuck with me.”
Tessa dropped the gummy worms in Spence’s lap and slid into the chair next to him. “Flynn’s calling you both reckless geniuses.”
Jessie raised a brow. “Both of us?”
Spence gave her a crooked smile. “You did take a bullet and shoot out Brewer’s back window on the way to the hospital.”
Tessa smirked. “Ballsy.”
“Against my orders, I might add. I’m still mad about that,” Spence muttered.
“You’re welcome,” Jessie said sweetly.
Laughter bubbled up. It was the first genuine laughter any of them had shared in what felt like forever. It settled in the air, light and warm. For the first time, the room didn’t feel haunted by what they’d done or what they’d lost. Just who they still had.
Jessie glanced at Tommy, then at Spence.
Her brother was here. Alive. Hers.
And Spence was too.
Twenty-Eight
Spence
The hospital room was quiet,save for the soft blip of Jessie’s monitors and the distant hush of a cart rolling past in the hallway. Spence sat in the corner chair, one ankle hooked over his knee. He’d tucked a blanket around Jessie’s shoulders and now watched as she slept deeply, her face slack and peaceful for the first time in days.
But he was wide awake.
He’d had his wrist looked at and now sported an ugly brace. A bottle of pain meds sat nearby, but he didn’t need them. He just needed her.
He kept one hand on the armrest, the other curled around the Queen Victoria shilling that had traveled with him since the night he’d stopped being a kid. Its edges were worn smooth, its inscription faded, but it had always tethered him to something...even if he never quite knew what.
Tonight, it felt like more than a memory.
He reached for his laptop, careful not to wake Jessie, and flipped it open. With a few keystrokes, he decrypted the file he’d stored back at the safe house. Staring at the strange string of letters and numbers, he knew he had to find the connection.
