Total pages in book: 35
Estimated words: 32280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 161(@200wpm)___ 129(@250wpm)___ 108(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 32280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 161(@200wpm)___ 129(@250wpm)___ 108(@300wpm)
“Just relax, Red. It’s okay now.”
She slowly closed her eyes, her fingers very loosely wrapping around mine.
Fuuuuck. It felt so good to have her touching me like this again, but I was so damn worried about what to expect now.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Aaliyah
“Easy, Red,” Johnston soothed as he helped me off the bed. I slumped against him, the right side of my body not doing much to hold me up. I was still too weak on it, courtesy of my stupid ex, who was now hopefully rotting in a prison cell for attempted murder.
I was torn between being angry and wanting to cry. I hated relying on others, and that was all I could do until my body decided it was ready to operate correctly again.
If it ever decided to. If was a word the doctor usually avoided when he talked to me about my recovery process, but he’d slipped up a couple of times.
Johnston hated the word. He had some kind of gut feeling that I’d recover.
I thought he was full of shit.
My optimism was pure shit right now. I wasn’t hopeful about anything anymore.
“I don’t know if I can walk,” I mumbled, part of my face feeling slack. I hated this shit. How the hell could Johnston still look at me like I was everything in the world to him when half my damn body didn’t work, and I was also recovering from a gunshot wound still?
There were so many other available women out there who would make a much better old lady than me. Why the hell was he sticking around still?
Time had passed since my surgery and since I’d been strangled. The doctor had kept me in the hospital for weeks, and he finally deemed it okay for me to go home, but I had to have around-the-clock supervision. Johnston didn’t even seem to care about how much trouble I would be—like he wasn’t even really taking into consideration what around-the-clock care actually meant. He just nodded at the doctor, promised I’d be back at the hospital for all my physical therapy sessions and all my follow-ups, and signed off on my paperwork without even blinking an eye.
He was being way too good to me. I wasn’t sure how to deal with it, to be honest. I didn’t understand his actions right now, and when I didn’t understand things, I got agitated.
“You want me to carry you?” Johnston asked me. “Or I can get a nurse to bring a wheelchair. Just tell me what you want.”
I shook my head. I wanted him to tell me what he was thinking so I could figure out where the hell my life was going from here. But right now wasn’t the time to ask those kinds of questions. I just needed to focus on getting the hell out of his hospital. I was sick of it—been had enough of these endless white walls and overly-friendly nurses.
“Just carry me. I’ve bothered all of them enough lately as it is.”
He sighed as he lifted me, obviously not agreeing with me calling myself a bother. He cradled me against his chest like I didn’t weigh a thing, though I knew I’d gained weight while laid up in that hospital bed, since I hadn’t really been able to move around, and the hospital made sure I ate three meals a day. I grimaced at the mere thought of looking at myself in the mirror now. I’d been thick before, but it had been a good-looking kind of thick where my body was evenly proportioned. Now, I felt like a blob.
I linked my left arm around his neck, my right arm just resting over my chest, just about fucking useless.
Like most of me was. Fuck, I hated myself right now, and I hated my ex and his stupid wife even more.
Johnston pressed a kiss to the top of my head before striding out of the hospital room. “Let’s get you home, Red.”
Home.
Was home with him now?
Tears sprang to my eyes when Johnston stepped into the clubhouse with me cradled in his arms. The club girls had strung up balloons and party streamers with a big “Welcome Home, Aaliyah” banner dangling from the ceiling. The guys were swarmed around us, greeting me with half hugs the best they could, all of them beyond happy to see me back home.
Home. Because I guessed this was my home now. This was my family now.
I was pretty sure I was about to cry. I was feeling overly emotional.
“Guys, give her some breathing room,” Johnston ordered, stepping back from them a bit. I was cradled against his chest, and so far, it didn’t seem like he had any plans of letting me go. “She’s still tired and needs her rest.”
They parted for their president like the red sea, and he strode through them with ease, heading over to the couch, which had been replaced since the last time I’d been here. The old worn, brown pleather couch had been traded out for a U-shaped gray cloth couch with a matching massive ottoman in the center.