“To find him and to beat the shit out of him.” It was as simple as that. “And if I kill him…”
Keeping hold of my arm, Archer raised his other fist in the air at the same time as Levi. That’s when I saw the cuts and bruises all over their knuckles and how swollen they were.
“We found him,” he admitted unnecessarily. “Chris told us downstairs, so we went out and hunted him down. Know who he was with?”
I was still trying to process what I was seeing, and the contrasting feelings of relief and frustration that I was feeling over the possibility of not getting to beat the crap out of him myself.
Not waiting for me to answer the question, my other brother filled me in. “He was banging the fuck out of Carly’s mom,” Levi imparted, shuddering at whatever it was they’d come across.
The words registered, but then it all began to add up. “Oh, fuck!”
“Yeah,” Archer hummed, leaning against the wall, looking like he didn’t have a care in the world. If you knew him though, you’d know he was hyperaware of everything going on around him, and that underneath it all he was still furious. “Also found out Chris had nothing to do with the drugs in the tequila that put Bonnie in hospital. That was confirmed by Rob who bragged about it before I punched him. Repeatedly.”
Snorting, Levi shook his head. “No man, he ran into your fist repeatedly,” he chuckled, then looked at me. “You should have seen it, it was hilarious.”
This all just seemed so surreal. In one day, my world had been great, then it had gone to shit, then it had been great, then I’d seen my woman’s insides, then I’d passed out, then I’d found out my son was a girl, then I found out it was a guy I’d forgotten about, then… what in the actual fuck was happening?
“Where’s he now?” I asked both of them, looking behind them just in case. It was a stupid thing to do because I doubted they’d have left him in any state to walk, but at this moment random shit just kept happening so it didn’t hurt to check.
“Prison, along with Carly’s mom,” Levi told me, finally taking a sip of his coffee and grimacing.
“Don’t like the hospital’s idea of java?” The nurse Charlotte asked as she walked up behind Archer and Levi.
With a yelp, Levi jumped and spun around to face her, almost knocking into Archer.
“Uh, it’s…”
Shit? Not coffee? Tastes like elephant dung?
“Great,” he lied, lifting it for another sip, doing his best to not shudder.
Her eyes glinting, she leaned in and looked into the cup. “Ah, you went for a triple shot from the machine, didn’t you? Big mistake.” When she stood up straight, she added, “None of us drink the coffee from there. It either has a laxative effect on you, or it’ll put your heart into an arrhythmia.”
Neither of those sounded good, so I leaned over to put mine down on the table and tried to remember how much I’d actually drank of it. As I lifted up, I saw Archer doing the same thing, both of us looking smugly over at Levi who took another sip and shuddered.
“Anyway, I’ll leave y’all to it. I just wanted to come and see how your girls were doing, Mr. Tate Townsend,” she stressed the name seeing as how there were three Mr. Townsends. “And to check on your head.”
“They’re doing great, and my head’s ok.” Lies, it felt like someone was banging around the inside of it with a medieval weapon.
Not calling me on my shit, she walked up and lifted the dressing to check underneath it, standing on her tiptoes to get to it. “Do you remember what happened yet?”
Did I ever, well some of it. “I remember seeing things,” I gagged at the memory of the caesarean carnage. “But that’s it.”
Moving back again, she put her hands on her hips and looked up at me with her eyes twinkling. Beside her, Levi took a step nearer, getting so close he almost touched her. “When you stood up, you saw the caesarean and the baby being brought out of the opening. That made you faint, and you hit the floor before anyone could try to help you. It was like watching a tree getting cut down.”
I frowned trying to remember that last bit, ignoring my asshole brothers who were laughing. I mean, I knew my head was banged up, and I could feel aching all over my ribs and shoulder on that side, but that was about it. They also didn’t see what I saw, it was like something out of your worst nightmare.
“Anyway, you’ll be just fine, but every so often we’ll pop into the room to check on you too,” she reassured me before looking at her watch. “I’ve got to get back to it. If you need anything, just press the button in Lily’s room, ok? I’m downstairs again now, but you can always ask for me if you want to. Given the circumstances, they’ve okayed me going between floors to help y’all out.”