How About No

by Vale, Lani Lynn

My eyes flicked back to those perfect ones that had always made me feel like my world was okay, and I smiled. “I’m okay.”

  That was a lie, of course.

  There was something wrong with my stomach that felt like white-hot fire was roaring through it. That, and I couldn’t feel my legs.

  “You’re such a bad liar, Landry.” Wade smiled. “Ma’am,” he turned to Pru. “She’s in pain.”

  The nurse, who was doing something on the big computer by my feet, instantly went into action.

  “I’ll go tell the doctor,” she said, turning on her heels.

  I frowned. “Why?”

  He didn’t pretend not to understand me.

  “Why are you here?” he asked.

  I nodded, and pushed the mask farther away from my face, causing him to frown. “You need that on.”

  I shook my head and slapped feebly at his hand. “No. It makes my nose hurt.”

  The nurse was back, pulling the mask up to cover my mouth but not my nose. It didn’t feel right, but it was better than having it where it had been. “It dries your nasal passages out. The doctor said I could get you started on a morphine pump.”

  I frowned.

  Morphine?

  I didn’t know much about morphine, but what I did know was that it was used when a person was hurt and in a lot of pain.

  “Why?” I repeated, turning my head back to Wade.

  “You were shot,” he said without preamble, shocking the absolute hell out of me. “Do you remember?”

  Did I remember being shot? No.

  Should that be something someone forgot about? I didn’t think so.

  “No.” I shook my head at the same time as I said it. The mask that was covering my mouth made it hard for me to be heard, but Wade obviously understood it no problem.

  “You were shot by a woman—she was outside the mall in a car with another woman. They sped away afterward,” he continued.

  My mouth fell open. “Someone shot me?”

  He nodded, his face going hard. “The lady that shot you was apparently waiting for you to come out of the mall. She got you once in the stomach.”

  I blinked, completely dumbfounded that I would forget something so important as being shot.

  “Wow,” I finally settled on. “That’s unfortunate.”

  Hoax snorted. “Unfortunate.”

  I wrinkled my nose at him. “You have a crush on the pretty nurse.”

  Said pretty nurse snorted. “He can’t decide whether he wants to strangle me or kiss me. There’s a line there between the two that he hasn’t crossed over. My guess is at this point he wants to strangle me.”

  Yeah, right.

  They looked like they wanted to tear each other’s clothes off.

  Especially with the way they were both glaring at each other. It was almost as if it’d been happening for a while now.

  “Y’all are so going to have sex,” I croaked.

  Wade dropped his head to my arm and started to laugh.

  Or cry.

  With his face covered, I really couldn’t tell mostly because both reactions caused his back to move in very similar ways.

  Or at least, the way a person’s back moved. I’d never actually seen Wade cry, so I really couldn’t compare it to him crying because I’d never witnessed it before.

  Both Hoax and Pru, the cute nurse, looked at me over Wade’s shaking back.

  They looked like I’d thrust my fist into their stomachs.

  “What?” I said a little louder this time.

  I honestly hadn’t meant for them to hear me.

  Or maybe I had. I wasn’t too sure at this point.

  My head was getting fuzzy again and I was finding it hard to keep my eyes open.

  “Landry,” someone said from beside me. “Look over here, sweetheart.”

  I frowned and did, finding Castiel standing there.

  “You look like an angel of death,” I informed him, biting my lip after I said it because I didn’t want him to be mad at me. “I’m really sorry I hurt Wade. I didn’t mean to. I only meant to make him realize that I was more importanter than my sister.”

  “Importanter’s not a word, and I honestly understand now,” he promised. “Do you remember what happened to you?”

  I frowned. “I remember it felt like my soul had left my body when Wade went out there and hugged my sister. And when she started to cry as she tried to get her point across that I needed to donate, I broke a little bit inside when he gave her that really understanding look. That’s my understanding look, not hers. Mine.”

  Castiel frowned. “No, not then, honey. I mean now. Today. Do you remember being shot today?”

  I pursed my lips and tried to make my mind switch gears. “Yes. Kind of. Linc and Conleigh were standing in front of me while we walked to the car. I was standing behind because I was texting Wade to let him know we were on the way home and Conleigh had to poop. Did you know Conleigh won’t poop anywhere but her house? Apparently, it really is a phobia that she’s just recently acquired. A reporter followed her into the bathroom without her knowing it and she pooped, and it was all on that news channel, AMZ, CMT…something like that.”

  “Honey,” Castiel said, a smile on his face. “The shooting. Do you remember who shot you?”

  I glared at him. “I was getting there, Reaper!”

  Castiel held up his hands in surrender. “Sorry, sorry. I’ll try not to interrupt.”

  I glared. “You just do that.”

  I felt the bed shaking, but since I was a focused individual, I chose not to acknowledge it and instead continued my narrative.

  “Anyway, we stopped for a snack. I’m always hungry. We had some Subway, and Conleigh got a cookie. Linc told her not to get it because that particular kind always made her stomach hurt. But she got it anyway. And what do you know? She had to poop like fifteen minutes later, so we were going to go ahead and go. I was texting Wade about leaving when I must’ve gotten separated from Linc and Conleigh. I looked up and all of a sudden, I’m staring at a woman—the grandmother of one of my kiddos from the daycare—and she was pointing a gun at me. She was actually wearing a black ski mask kind of pulled up, but I could tell who it was from her body, her hands. She has this weird mole on the back of her left hand that looks like a pile of dog poop. Plus, she was with her daughter, Debbie Schultz, who I could see was in the car waiting for her—though she wasn’t wearing a mask.”

  I paused, thinking about it. “I dropped my cookie in the parking lot. Man, I really wanted that cookie.” I turned to see Wade staring at me with a thunderous expression on his face. “Will you go get me a cookie?”

  He blinked, and the thunderous expression was gone. “Yes, baby. What kind was it?”

  “It was a double-stacked piece of cookie cake from the Cookie Factory. The top part had white icing on it, and the middle part had pink icing in it. That’s important. They have to be the same kind, and look the same, too. Conleigh!” I cried out.

  “Right here, sweetheart,” Conleigh called, smiling wide.

  I frowned at her. “I hope you didn’t poop your pants. That would’ve been very awkward.”

  She opened her mouth and then closed it just as quickly. “No, I didn’t. That urge left me really fast when everything happened.”

  The certainty in her words made me relax. “Oh, good. After all that you told me about the paparazzi, I was so worried you’d shit yourself and then it’d be on the cameras. What happened to your forehead?”

  She pointed at her husband, who didn’t look the least bit sorry for hurting his wife.

  “This man right here tackled me to the ground. It hurt really, really bad.” She paused. “I asked him to do that to me once, and he said no. Now I understand why he told me no.”

  With that ringing in my ears, I went to sleep.

  Chapter 18

  Sometimes you have to be the bigger person and walk away. Just kidding. Turn
around and knock that mofo’s teeth out.

  -Wade to Landry

  Wade

  “I can’t decide whether to laugh or cry,” Linc said softly the moment Landry’s eyes closed.

  I closed my eyes as I replayed the last two hours in my head. Like a goddamn bad record on repeat, with the same fucked up problem every single time it started over.

  “Hello?” I answered the phone.

  “Got a problem. Shooting at the mall. Your woman was shot in the belly. She’s on the way to the hospital,” Bayou growled over the line.

  The next five minutes had been the longest of my life.

  I’d made that trip to the hospital hundreds, no, thousands, of time. It’d always seemed so short.

  But all of the times that I’d gone, it’d never been Landry in trouble. It’d always been someone else.

  Never her.

  I’d driven like a maniac, and I prayed the whole way that she’d be okay.

  Generally, I wasn’t a religious man. I believed in God, but I also believed in proven facts.

  Then, I hadn’t been able to prove a goddamn thing. All I could do was pray. So, that’s what I did.

  Possible liver laceration. Severe concussion. Blood loss.

  The list of her injuries were numerous, but the one that was the most worrisome was the liver damage.

  “We’re going to take her up to the OR now,” someone said, causing me to blink and yank myself out of my head.

  “What?”

  “We have to assess the damage to her liver, and we’re going to remove the bullet,” the doctor said. He paused. “If you know anyone with AB negative blood, get them in here. We worked four traumas over the last six hours, and we haven’t been able to replenish our blood supply yet. O negative will work in a pinch.”

  And that was how I found myself in the OR waiting room with my entire MC, waiting to hear the outcome of my wife’s surgery.

  It was two hours into my wait when loud footsteps caused me to look up. Only it wasn’t the doctor like I was hoping. It was Castiel.

  He looked pissed, too.

  He’d left earlier once Landry had been able to identify her gunman. From there I hadn’t thought about him again until then, my thoughts too focused on Landry and whether she was okay.

  But now, seeing the angry scowl on Castiel’s face, I stood up as I felt exhilaration start to race through my blood.

  “Did you find her?” I called.

  I hadn’t meant to say it as loud as I did, but I was too hopeful that he had.

  “I did,” Castiel confirmed. “At her house, wrestling in the front yard with her daughter.”

  I frowned. “What?”

  Castiel nodded once. “You heard me right. They’re both pretty banged up…so I brought them here.”

  I smiled for the first time since I’d gotten the call that my wife had been shot.

  Moving swiftly to the young woman that was manning the front desk—the one in charge of letting people know how their loved ones are or if there were any updates to be had—I stopped in front of her and said, “I’ll be downstairs. Will you please call me if there are any updates?”

  The woman nodded. “I have your number on file, sir.”

  I’d already been up to talk to her eight times. She was likely happy to see me go.

  “Thank you,” I replied gruffly.

  And, as one, nearly eighty-five percent of the waiting room got up with me.

  I held out my hand to them. “Stay.”

  The men snorted, but Conleigh and Izzy retook their seats—both side by side.

  The men followed me, and honestly, I couldn’t find it in me to care.

  I liked that they wanted to be there, and I liked even more that I had their support.

  Taking long, fast steps, I didn’t once notice the bite of pain in my leg, nor did I notice how angry I looked.

  If I’d been thinking more clearly, I likely would’ve tried to control the look on my face, or change my body language to not give away my murderous intentions.

  Instead, I barreled down the hall, only stopping long enough at the elevator to find out what floor they were on from Castiel.

  Unlucky for me, they were in the ER, which was filled with too many people for me to really do the damage that I wanted to.

  But, I was going to do what I had to do to. Right then, I wasn’t a cop. I wasn’t a nice person. I was a man, who had just seen the aftermath of his wife being shot by a woman who didn’t realize who she was messing with.

  I was about to show her.

  And none of the men at my back were going to stop me.

  I came to a stop outside of the curtain where the two women responsible for this entire shit storm were located. I was contemplating walking in there and wrapping my hands around the throat of the woman that had been the reason for all my pain and agony over the last few hours but held myself in check.

  Barely.

  “Shut up, Debbie,” the woman snarled. “This is all your fault. If you’d focused on doing it the right way, and not being a goddamn dumbass, this might’ve all worked out the way it was supposed to. And for God’s sake, stop worrying about the goddamn dog that she stole. Worry about the fact that you’ll never see your babies again.”

  “My husband will bring them to see me in prison,” she said. “Have you never seen that show on Netflix?”

  “I don’t think you’re understanding the gravity of this situation,” Debbie’s mother hissed. “This is not a goddamn TV show. This is real-fucking-life. I shot someone today!”

  “Shh,” Debbie whispered too loudly. “If you don’t admit it…”

  I’d heard enough.

  The two imbeciles behind the curtain obviously thought they were in a private room or something. They weren’t.

  I yanked the partition away and stared at the two women.

  One was someone I’d seen quite a few times before she stopped coming into the daycare. I’d often gone to visit my wife during the rush hour of dropping kids off in the morning. Debbie. The other was obviously Debbie’s mother. Hannelore Petty.

  They both clammed up tight at the sight of me—not to mention the other men at my back.

  Their eyes were jumping in between each other at a high rate of speed.

  Had anything in this situation been funny, it would be the look on their faces at seeing me.

  Unfortunately, I wasn’t in the laughing mood.

  “You shot my wife,” I said to Hannelore.

  Hannelore didn’t say a word, but her eyes did flare.

  “No, she didn’t,” Debbie lied. “Someone else did.”

  I didn’t spare the idiot a glance. My eyes were all for the mother.

  “You thought that what? You’d get away with it?” I questioned.

  She still said nothing.

  “She was watching my kids all day,” Debbie said. “I was also at home. You can check my ankle monitor status.”

  It’d been checked the moment that things had settled down enough for everyone to think rationally. After Castiel made sure that Landry had made it to the hospital alive, he’d immediately set out to investigating the whereabouts of Debbie—who surprisingly had been released on bail that morning.

  Unfortunately, her alibi had been easy to check out because she did, indeed, have an ankle monitor. The judge had deemed her a flight risk and made the monitor a condition of her bail—which had been posted by her mother. Surprise.

  I wonder if that’d been her mother’s goal, to have Debbie do the dirty work. It was possible that she hadn’t known about the monitor when she’d bailed her out. I hadn’t known about it.

  I also hadn’t known that she’d gotten out. Though that was easily explained by Castiel, who’d informed me that he’d had someone monitoring her twenty-four seven, and there was no way in hell that she was going to slip past them.

  Which, I suppose, she hadn’t.

  “It�
��s already been checked, and you did leave your house,” Castiel came to stand beside me. “In addition, we’ve had a positive identification on both of you. Once we get you cleaned up, Ms. Petty, we’ll be taking you to county lock-up for the attempted murder of Landry Johnson.”

  Hannelore’s mouth fell open in shock. “You can’t pin anything on me!”

  “Yeah,” Debbie said. “She wore a mask. You can’t pin anything on her.”

  She seriously couldn’t be that stupid, could she?

  “What color mask?” Castiel asked inquiringly.

  “It was black. I bought it off of Amazon during hunting season last year. It has a really cute Under Armour symbol right here.” She pointed to her forehead.

  “Like this one?” Castiel asked.

  Hannelore was shouting “I’m going to kill you with my bare hands” vibes at her daughter, but Debbie seemed clueless.

  It wasn’t until Castiel pulled out a folded piece of paper that showed the mask—symbol exactly where it was—on Hannelore’s face. The best angle Castiel had been able to find was one of a side profile shot with Hannelore tugging it down over her face. The only thing visible was her hairy goddamn chin.

  “That is the one,” Debbie confirmed.

  Castiel looked at me. “Why did we allow her to continue visiting with her children?”

  It was more than obvious that he thought Debbie was an imbecile.

  I happened to agree with him.

  But, since it was giving us what we wanted, I couldn’t fault Debbie for being a dumbass.

  Debbie shot me a smug look, and I balled my fist up tightly to keep myself from doing or saying anything that might get me sent to jail right along with them.

  Luckily, before I could act on the urges and desires that were running through my veins, my phone rang, interrupting the tense silence now happening around us.

  The moment I placed it to my ear, I could hear the caution in the volunteer’s voice that was on the other end of the line. “Um, Mr. Johnson? This is the volunteer that works in surgery? The doctor just called and gave me an update. They finished.”

  She didn’t give me anything more, and I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like the reason why.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I told the girl. “Thank you.”