Page 108 of Rumi: The Hawthornes

He was too far away.

“Why are you way over there?” I asked, reaching out to him. “Come sit with me.”

“I don’t know how you’re so calm,” he replied, climbing into the bed next to me. “I feel like I’m goin’ to start screamin’ or punchin’ the wall or something.”

I leaned into his side and wrapped my arm around his waist, grimacing as my ribs protested—I’d fractured two, not one. “You just saw me losing my shit,” I reminded him.

“I was panicking,” he murmured, his lips against my head. “When they told me you’d left and Samson had followed you. I don’t know how I made it to your place in one piece.”

“Is that when you realized he was the cause of all this?” I asked quietly, gesturing to my hospital gown. My mouth was beginning to throb from all the talking I’d been doing, and I licked my lip to make sure it wasn’t bleeding again.

“Brenna told me,” he replied with a huff. “And as soon as she said it, I realized how bad I’d fucked up.”

“I didn’t expect you to believe me.”

“What?” He leaned up and looked at me in disbelief. “Why would you say that?”

“Because if someone had told me that Pop would start losing his temper and blowing up, I wouldn’t have believed them.” I pulled him back down beside me. “I wouldn’t have believed if they’d said he’d start screaming at me—hitting me? That would be like telling me that someday I’d ride a bicycle into space. So why would I assume anyone would believe me?”

“You should’ve assumed that I would believe you,” Rumi said darkly. “Me more than anyone in the world.”

“It doesn’t matter what you say, you know,” I said, poking my thumb into his stomach. “I’m still not going to be angry with you.”

“That transparent, am I?”

“You’ve always done that,” I replied. If it wouldn’t have hurt, I would’ve rolled my eyes. “Any time you felt guilty about something, you’d pick a fight.”

“I do not.”

“You did it that day of the barbecue,” I countered. “You tried to make me mad at you.”

“Okay, yeah,” he muttered. “Maybe.”

“And when you broke the basket off my bike,” I said, remembering the day like it was yesterday. “You felt so bad and then you started making fun of my cool ass basket so I’d be mad at you and not sad that it was completely ripped to pieces.”

“Your memory seems to have also taken a beatin’,” he joked, gently rubbing my back.

“Or when you forgot my fifteenth birthday, so you—”

“Jesus,” he said with a chuckle. “Enough. What, are we going to go over every shitty thing I’ve ever done?”

“I’m just saying,” I murmured with a sigh. “It’s a thing you do. You pick a fight when you feel guilty.”

“I’m the worst,” he replied, kissing my head.

“You are,” I agreed jokingly.

I closed my eyes and drifted as my headache finally reached a level that didn’t make me want to slam my head against a wall. Rumi stayed with me, his hand still rubbing my back until the policeman showed up to take my statement. He had a partner with him and they seemed to take up all the air in the room as they filed in.

I’d had the three top members of the Aces MC in my room just an hour before, and I hadn’t felt the least bit claustrophobic, but once the detectives arrived, it felt like the walls were closing in.

Rumi sat up and helped me prop some pillows behind me so that I could sit up straight as the men introduced themselves.

“I’m Detective Lira and this is Detective Kent,” the taller one said. “We talked on the phone.”

“I’d say it was nice to meet you, but—” I shrugged. If we were honest, all of us knew I wished that I didn’t even know the two men existed.

“Understandable,” Kent replied with a smile. I instantly liked him.

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