Mess Me Up
Page 39

From what I’d been told, Landry was a selfish person who’d chosen her old life before Wade over her new life with Wade. That included returning to the man who she’d been with before Wade, leaving him and ensuring that they would be together again.
Looking at Landry, there was no doubt in my mind that she loved Wade. None.
She looked gutted.
Then there was Linc, who’d been sitting off by himself for the last two hours, on the phone.
He looked like he was about to jump right out of his skin.
The moment he dropped the phone from his ear and tossed it on the plastic waiting room seat beside him, I stood up…or tried to.
The moment my thighs tensed as if to move, Rome’s arm tightened around my waist to hold me in place.
His big hand splayed over my belly and pressed down, and that’s when I felt it.
Our baby. Moving around inside me and kicking. So hard that I could feel that little foot or elbow.
Everything froze in that second.
I’d been waiting for this second for a very long time, and to experience it while I was in Rome’s arms was better than anything I could ever imagine.
Rome felt it, too.
Another tap-tap against his right ring finger had me holding my breath, hoping for more.
And it came. One after the other. Tap-tap. Nudge-tap.
Rome and I stayed that way for so long that I began to have a cramp in my left leg.
When the taps slowly subsided, likely indicating that our baby had found sleep after all that energetic exercise, only then did either of us move.
“Shit,” he breathed against my shoulder blades.
His breathing was choppy, and I felt tears prickle my eyes.
I’d been dry-eyed for barely an hour, but the waterworks were about to start up again—this time because of the beauty we’d just shared, and not because of the ugliness that had brought us to the hospital.
I turned in Rome’s arms, but Rome didn’t move his head, so when I turned slightly, his forehead rested on the side of my now ample breasts.
“Rome?” I whispered.
He rocked his forehead back and forth, silently saying something that I assumed was ‘please don’t talk.’
I bit my lip, torn between wanting to talk to him, and letting him process whatever it was he was trying to process on his own.
In the end, I pressed my hand to his head and let him do it on his own, which turned out better than I ever expected.
When he finally looked up and made eye contact with me, I felt every bit of need, pain, love, desire, and contentedness that was shining in his.
“I love you, Isadora.” He paused. “Will you marry me? Will you be mine forever?”
I blinked.
“You…what?” I asked on a gasp.
“Mine. Will you be mine,” he repeated. “Will you marry me.”
I swallowed hard, and then replied the only way in the world I possibly could have.
“God, yes.”
Then my whole world was changed.
But not for the reason I would’ve thought.
Because the next second the entire waiting room exploded in activity.
***
Rome
One second, I was sharing something monumental with Izzy, and the next the waiting room was in a panic. There were bullets flying everywhere.
Gunfire. In the hospital.
I moved before I could blink, shoving Izzy down onto the ground and covering her with my body.
My heart was pounding in my chest, and I couldn’t breathe.
People were shouting, chairs were screeching across the white tiled floor, and I kept feeling sprays of plaster dust hit the walls and floors around me.
“Rome!” Izzy cried out, trying to move.
I flattened myself down farther, ordering her to stay put.
Her struggles ceased, but I could practically taste her panic.
Then, as suddenly as it’d begun, it ended.
I chanced looking up, and that’s when I felt the line of liquid fire trailed down my back.
I ignored the pain and picked up my head, seeing the chaos with my own eyes.
The chairs were all knocked over in everybody’s panic to move to the ground. People were lying on the floor, some, like me, looking up. While others were quite clearly too hurt to do so.
There was blood on the white floor—some of it in a spray pattern, while some seemed to spread into an ever-widening pool underneath the obviously injured people.
But nobody looked dead from what I could tell.
Bayou was on the ground, his hand on his waist, grimacing.
He’d obviously taken a bullet to the side.
Liner, who was across the room, was still sitting up in the chair he’d been occupying earlier, but he had what looked to be a bullet graze along his neck. He was pale and covering the wound with his hand, but the blood was still seeping out from between his fingers.
Wade’s wife—ex-wife—was on the ground, her eyes open wide, with a bullet hole in what looked to be her hand.
She was staring at her hand out in front of her face, mouth agape.
Castiel, who’d walked into the room with us forty-five minutes earlier dressed in his police officer uniform, had his firearm secured in his hand as he looked around with alarm, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
He was on his ass in the middle of the room and had blood running down one half of his face, making him look like he was on the set of a horror show.
Which, I guess, was the truth.
We’d just been and lived through our own personal horror show.
Linc was the first one to stand up just as the doors that’d somehow closed were yanked open and the other officers who’d been taking up another part of the hospital waiting room entered.
As one, everyone looked at the lone man that was on the ground at the door’s entrance, one single bullet hole marring his otherwise perfect face.
That’s when I recognized him.
He was the other lawyer from Izzy’s ex’s law firm.
Chapter 26
I like to have my cake and eat it, too. I’d love to have yours and eat it, too.
-Izzy to Rome
Rome
We’d set up a triage room in the main entranceway of the hospital.
The waiting room we were just in was now a crime scene, and I was currently having my back disinfected and cleaned by Izzy.
Apparently, I’d taken a stray bullet, but it’d only grazed me down the length of my back.
“God, you were so lucky,” she repeated for the fourth time in as many minutes. “This could’ve been so bad.”
I knew that just as well as she did.
It could have been awful.
Nobody but the shooter had died, even though the shooter could’ve done a whole lot more harm had he been experienced.
Just as Izzy was about to continue, Rodrigo was wheeled in, in handcuffs, as another officer whose name I couldn’t place right then leading him.
Everybody stopped talking as the newcomers made their way inside, and that was when I noticed why Rodrigo would be there in the first place.
He had a gunshot wound to his left thigh.
Two teenagers followed him, looking just as murderous as Rodrigo. They both looked malnourished and scared. Another officer was in front of them, likely to keep distance between Rodrigo and the children.
The two teenagers scanned the hallway around them and seemed to lock on Izzy because in the next second they were both bolting in our direction.
I tensed, but the officers stopped them before they could move toward us.
“Aunt Izzy!” the kid screamed.
Izzy left me like a hot potato, rushing toward the two children with a look of horror on her face.
“Oh, my God!” Izzy gasped as she moved. “Diana! Ruben! Oh, my God! Are y’all okay?”
They didn’t look okay.
Honestly, they looked like they were about to fall over.
Then Ruben did just that. Or almost did. The officer right next to him caught him around the arms and helped him find a seat directly next to my bed.
Diana was in a little better shape, but not by much.
“What happened?” Izzy repeated.
Ruben’s eyes went to where Rodrigo had been taken, and he glared.
“That piece of shit kept us in his freakin’ basement for three months, that’s what.”
***
An hour and a half later, we found out that what the children said was true.