Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 81182 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81182 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
CHAPTER 16
walker
“Oh no,” I hear Hanna whimper, and a second later, she’s crawling over me to get out of bed and rushing to the bathroom. I follow right on her heels and watch her fall to her knees in front of the toilet as she begins to heave.
Pulling her hair away from her face, I rub her back, then flip on the sink and grab a washcloth from her linen closet. When it’s soaked, I ring it out and rest it on the back of her neck as she gags. Nothing comes up—probably because she didn’t eat last night.
“Better?” I ask, squatting down next to her, and she shakes her head, looking over at me. Her eyes are still red-rimmed and puffy from crying herself to sleep and she looks absolutely heartbroken.
“No.” She drops her head to her arm resting across the toilet. “I have a migraine.”
“Do you get them a lot?” I’ve never had one, but my mom would get them on occasion while Miranda and I were growing up, and she’d have to lock herself away in the dark until it passed.
“Not often, but they get more regular when I’m under stress. I have medicine.” She squints over at me like the little bit of light coming in through the smoked-glass window in the room is causing her pain. “It’s in my carry-on from the plane, in my toiletry bag.”
“Do you need to eat something before you take it?”
“No, it’s a shot.”
“Let me help you up before I get it.” I start to reach for her, but she shakes her head.
“No, I live here now,” she whispers, and if I weren’t freaking the fuck out, I might’ve laughed. Standing, I head for the living room where her bag is and start to dig through it.
“Everything okay?” Otto asks from the couch where he slept last night, while Ham took the spare bedroom. Neither of them wanted to leave after what we walked into yesterday, even with them having a room paid for at a hotel nearby.
“Hanna woke up with a migraine.”
“Shit.” He sits up. “Do you need me to run out and get anything?”
That right there is why I love him even when he does shit to piss me off. He’s always got my back when it counts.
“No, she said she has medication. I just gotta find it,” I say quietly, not wanting to wake Ham, who is probably still asleep, since it’s not even eight in the morning. I know he and Otto didn’t go to bed until after two. When I finally find her shower bag, I take it with me across the hall and shut the bedroom door. I find her just where I left her, and I’m almost sure she’s asleep until she turns her head my way.
“Thank you.” She takes the bag from me and unzips it, pulling out a small gray box and flipping it open.
Sitting on the floor next to her, I watch carefully what she’s doing so that if I ever need to do this when she can’t, I’ll know how. After she injects herself in the thigh, I take everything from her and place it on the counter.
“Do you want to go back to bed?”
“Yeah, I just need to brush my teeth first.”
I help her off the ground and load up her toothbrush, then stand behind her until she’s finished. “How long does it take for the medicine to kick in?”
“I usually fall asleep from it, so I don’t know,” she whispers as I help her back to bed. Once I have her tucked in, I softly kiss the top of her head, and stand back to watch her for a few minutes before I even leave her to rest.
“Is she okay?” Otto asks as I walk to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee.
“Yeah, she’s probably gonna be out for a while though.”
“What’s going on?” Ham asks, joining us.
“Hanna woke up with a migraine.”
“Damn, is she okay?”
“She had a rough night.”
“Was she close with the woman who died?” Otto asks, joining us in the kitchen.
“They were friends.”
“That sucks.”
An understatement. “Yeah, it does.”
As the guys hang in the living room watching TV, I take out my computer and start doing some research. After not being able to get ahold of her last night and walking into what I did when I got here, I need to figure some shit out. There is no way I’m going to be able to continue on like we have been.
I figured we could stick this out for a few months, but even a few more weeks might be too much for me to handle. If I hadn’t already been on my way here last night and had instead been on the boat and gotten an email or text about it after the fact, I would have lost my shit. There is only so much I could have done from a distance, and I would have been depending on Toni and everyone else to have some pity and take me back to shore. I don’t like the idea of things being that much out of my control.