How About No
Page 44

I frowned.
Wade had been asking me if I was ‘alert’ all day long. If I could understand where I was, and what had happened.
All of those answers had apparently not been enough for him, which I hadn’t really cared about since I’d been so tired and weak. However, after getting some apple juice and some beef broth in me, I felt like a new woman.
A new woman that had her sister in her hospital room with her that also so happened to have apparently given me blood that had caused her to pass out and not move for hours.
I didn’t want her blood in me! I’d take anybody’s blood but hers!
The look on Wade’s face made me pause in concern.
He was looking at me like I wasn’t going to like what he had to say.
“Anyway, I’ve learned some interesting things over the past forty-nine and a half hours,” he started, causing Lina to snort in amusement.
I glowered at her before returning my gaze back to Wade’s face.
“And?” I said impatiently.
My side was starting to hurt with all this talking—as the nurse had said it would—but I didn’t stop myself. Only continued to stare at the man sitting in the chair beside my bed.
“And when I went to ask Lina if she’d be willing to donate half her liver—” I couldn’t let that go without a derisive snort. “She came straight here. Unfortunately, the doctor denied her because of her cancer background. Her mother, however, learned that she was here as well…” I groaned at his use of ‘her mother’ as Lina had been saying over the last hour. “And she came up here and confronted us.”
My brows lifted in surprise. “No shit?”
She nodded once. “No shit.”
“Then let’s get this over with. What did they say?” I asked.
I was assuming it was bad because Lina was wincing with sympathy, and Wade looked like he’d rather cut his leg off than tell me.
“Dear God, just spit it out already!”
Castiel, who’d been occupying the seat in the corner, was the one to say it.
“Your father fucked your mother’s sister, got her pregnant, and then didn’t find out about you until your mother died. The only reason your mother allowed you to stay in her house without throwing an unholy bitch fit was due to your sister having a disease that only you could cure with your bone marrow. Since your father was used to the cushy lifestyle that your mother’s trust fund financed and didn’t want to be separated from his sick daughter, he went along with his wife’s demands. Which was, in essence, to alienate you. Your father’s conditions were simple. She couldn’t harm you or tell you that you weren’t hers. As long as you weren’t seriously harmed in any way he was okay with everything else.”
Wade cursed under his breath just as Castiel cursed.
I blinked as my sister smacked him upside the head. Lina groaned as she started to laugh at Castiel’s glare.
I stared at everyone in confusion.
Then started to laugh myself.
“Then, let me get this straight,” I said carefully, trying to control my hilarity despite it causing me pain. “I was shot by a grandmother whose daughter burned my house down. A woman who has also been stealing dogs out from under my nose and murdering them when they easily have at least a year or two of good quality life left. My father admitted that she wasn’t actually my mother—my actual mother being deceased. My father allowed me to be emotionally abused, but not physically abused, over the course of my lifetime. My sister doesn’t actually hate me like I’ve thought she’s hated me seeing as she willingly donated me a pint of her blood. Oh, and I’m still married when I thought I wasn’t. All in about a month’s time. Do I have this correct?”
Almost as if they’d planned it out, everyone in the room nodded—even Pru, the nurse who was standing next to Hoax.
Why the nurse was there, I didn’t know.
But she wasn’t actually my nurse any longer.
She and Hoax were standing side by side whispering about something, small smiles on both of their faces.
My sister was wiping her eyes with her hands, but a smile was solidly on her face.
My husband was looking at me like he wanted to kiss me.
And then there was Hoax, who was looking at me like I was finally getting some inside joke or secret that I wasn’t understanding before.
“Yep,” Hoax agreed. “That’s what I hear, anyway.”
That’s when I, too, started to laugh.
And it hurt.
Like a mother fucker.
Chapter 22
My spirit animal would fuckin’ eat yours.
-Landry to Wade
Wade
I crossed my arms over my chest and stared at the lawyer that was appointed by the state for Mrs. Petty, the woman who’d almost stolen my wife’s life.
“Your honor,” the lawyer tried to interrupt.
“I’m sorry, but the doctor has spoken. The jury has spoken. And I have spoken. There’s no longer a choice in the matter. Mrs. Petty is not clinically insane. She was more than aware of her misdeeds.” He slammed his gavel on the desk then stood up. “Case closed.”
That’s when he stood and walked out of the courtroom, disappearing through a door along the side of the room.
Moments after he was gone, the officer in charge of the court walked over with a set of handcuffs, which he deftly slipped onto the lying cow’s wrists.
Moments after that, she was taken from the room as well.
Landry looked from the now-closed door to me, and then back again.
“She got everything we’d hoped for,” she whispered in awe.
I grinned. “People don’t take kindly to cop’s wives being shot at. You’re part of the LEO—law enforcement officer—family. Plus, Judge Painter doesn’t pull his punches. I had a feeling he wasn’t going to go easy on her.”
Mrs. Petty had received twenty-eight years in prison with a possibility of parole at eighteen years. By that point, she’d be eighty-three, and likely unable to do anything in retaliation once she got out.
If she made it out.
Older females didn’t make it long in prison for some reason. Which was my secret hope.
Not that I’d be telling anybody that.
“Well, we couldn’t have asked for a better outcome,” my Uncle Jimmy said as he stood. “Now. What do you think….”
“We’re staying married,” I cut him off at the same time that Landry said, “He’s mine. No one can have him.”
I grinned at my wife.
My uncle rolled his eyes. “I was going to say what do you think you want to eat for lunch?”
I rolled my eyes.
Landry seemed to seriously consider it.
“I want a steak,” my father said, sidling up to us.
“I’d love a good Porterhouse,” Hoax said, his arm around the blonde nurse.
It’d been a little over two and a half months since Landry had been shot, and during that month, life had changed a lot for us.
We’d started building our own house in a new subdivision in town, and it was about halfway finished.
Debbie Shultz had been tried and sentenced to a mental health facility where she would remain until she was stable enough to go to prison for ten years for arson.
Debbie’s ex-husband, Mal, had moved two states over with his children so they’d be “away from the crazy” according to him.
Kourt, after finding out all that had gone down with Landry, had understandably been suspicious of Lina’s motives and had set about proving her wrong.
All he’d done was prove her right, especially when he’d snuck into their parents’ place and found a few stray letters that Lina had written to Landry stuffed in her mother’s jewelry box.
It was only a matter of time now until those two were fucking each other.
At first, I’d thought that she and Castiel would possibly get something going, but it quickly became apparent that Castiel and Lina were more of a brother and sister type relationship rather than romantically.
Landry’s parents had made zero attempts at reconciliation with either of the two girls.
Which worked for me. If they never came back, I’d be happy.