“I’m fine,” I rasp. “Is there somewhere we can talk privately?”
Xana untangles herself from my arms and drops to her feet. Her eyes roam around the yard and she worries her lip while she thinks.
“We can go for a walk,” she suggests with a shrug.
I shake my head. “Not good enough. No ears. Not even yourbabes,“ I say with a sneer.
Xana cringes then quickly gives me an apologetic look. “I can explain.”
“Can we not?” I say, scrubbing a hand down my face. “Let’s go sit in my car and talk. It’s warm in there, anyway.”
She nods, closing the door as she steps out, then follows me to my car.
My sister dating my ex-best friend is the least of my worries at the moment. If the only worry Xana has is what her big brother thinks of her new boyfriend, then she’s in for a surprise.
I’m about to flip my baby sister’s world upside down.
17
Malia
“…comaforweeks,”Ihear a muffled deep voice say from somewhere near me. “When the fuck is she going to wake up?”
There’s pressure in my throat, causing me to cough. I realize my arms are bound and panic takes over. My eyes snap open, vision blurring in and out as I see a tube protruding from my mouth, which makes me retch. Two figures rush forward as my body begins to reject the foreign object. A woman lowers the top half of what appears to be a hospital bed as I start to convulse. A man steps to my other side, eyes frantic as his dark eyes assess me.
“Lean her head back,” the woman commands the man who narrows his eyes at her tone and hesitates, pride etching itself in his features. “Elio, we need to pull the intubation tube. Hold her head still.”
A fit of gagging and coughing snaps the man out of his minute of defiance and he rushes forward. Leaning my head back while the woman pulls the tube free from my throat. I gasp for air, trying to settle my body as it protests. I’m overrun with confusion and horror at how I woke up.
As my breathing slows, I pull against the binds on my hands.
“Please, I need my hands,” I croak, tears spilling over my cheeks.
“She’s going to need testing to see if there was any damage to her trachea,” the woman I’m guessing is a doctor says.
The man grumbles something under his breath, but I don’t catch it. I have no idea where I am and who these people are, let alone what put me on life support and in this bed in the first place.
Whatever it was, these two hadn’t expected me to wake up when I did.
Exhaustion settles in my already dazed mind and bones. The exertion to dispel the tube from my body was too much for my weakened state. I fall into a half-conscious state, while trying to grasp onto the awake part of me to make some sense of my muddled brain.
“Where am I?” I breathe, hardly able to speak above a whisper.
“You’re being taken care of,” the doctor says.
“Who are you people?” Is the last I can muster as I continue to slip under and answer the call to sleep.
I don’t miss the confused look the pair exchanges before I give up and sleep claims me.
“It was too soon to inject her,” I hear the woman drawl. “Her body won’t be able to handle an overdose.”
“Do what you’re paid to do and leave the rest to me,” the man says. “Should she succumb to the drug then she was too weak for what I have planned for her anyway.”
The fogginess of my mind makes it too hard to grasp onto what they’re saying. Too tired to continue to fight the exhaustion any further, I let it wrap me in its safe blanket in the recesses of my confused mind and tuck myself under.
The feeling of a hand trailing down my cheek calls me from my sleep. I open my eyes to the room I was in when I woke up before. Now the lights are dim and the man who was here then stands above me, tension in his shoulders as he goes stock still, his fingers frozen to my face.
I blink at him, trying to seize the recognition tugging at my mind, but finding none there. I reach up and tuck a lock of curly black hair behind my ear, and I realize I’m no longer bound to the bed. I look at my shaky hands, then the man whose jaw is clenched as he takes me in.