Winning His War

40

Devon's POV

Jem and I sat in silence as I bent over his laptop, trying to figure out the complex order of everything he had laid out there. Every file he had was guarded by some 20 character long password and was also under a fake name. The first time he had asked me to do something on his computer while he wasn't here it took me 30 minutes just find the file he was talking about.

He had tried to teach me a thousand times now to decipherer everything but I had always brushed him off. I never thought there might be a day when I had to do this without him so I didn't care to learn.

"We have to talk about your so called 'safety precautions'. This is just ridiculous," I sighed as I glared down at Jem, who remained unmoving for the 10th day in a row.

He had started to get a bit of his color back and the bruising was definitely getting better and the bullet wound had finally stopped bleeding this morning. Now that the bleeding has stopped the wound will finally be able to actually start healing and before long he'll be back on his feet. Hopefully.

Of course that could still take weeks so I'm stuck doing all his work until he's awake and well enough to do it himself.

A frown covered my face as I flipped through the small notebook full of his passwords that I had made over the years just so I wouldn't be totally lost if anything happened since he didn't have any. God only knows how he managed to remember every complicated password he had but couldn't remember his credit card number.

"I can't keep doing this shit James," I said when I clicked on the fourth wrong file. All I was trying to do was look at the profits he had logged to compare them to this week and see where we did better or worse but everything looked the same. "If you don't wake up soon and do it yourself then it's just not going to get done."

I wait for an eye roll or some stupid comeback but when it doesn't come my heart squeezes.

I missed him. It had only been a few days but I missed him so much.

We had been inseparable since we were kids. We went to school together, we skipped classes together, we took the same shifts when we first started the gang, and we've been roommates since the moment we moved out of our parents' houses. Even when he or I went away for business trips we still called each other to check up on how everything was going or just for the sake of talking to each other.

Even though we were still sitting in the same room it feels like he's never been this far away.

I'd been coming to work beside him every day since it happened and the longer I stayed the more I couldn't help but think that I should be in his place.

Things would have been so much better if I was the one lying in bed instead of him. He wouldn't be batting in eye at doing my work on top of his but I was all but drowning in his alone.

Besides, living in a world without Jem, even a temporary one, wasn't one worth living. Not to me anyway.

He was my first everything; first friend, first kiss, first crush, first time, first love. And because I wouldn't stand up to him and force him to not go through a dumbass plan like that, I almost lost him.

I had always told myself that I would follow Jem everywhere. Ever since the first time he dragged me into some stupid situation and almost got caught doing it I had decided he was too idiotic to get himself out of those situations and declared it my job to help him out of them. Now because I didn't act out the plan fast enough he almost died and was now going to have a long recovery.

I deserved to be in his place for not acting fast enough. Jem did nothing wrong other than putting his trust in me.

"Should we update anyone outside your people," Andrew's voice cut through the air. I looked up at him boredly for only a moment before going back to Jem's laptop.

"Who would even care?"

"His parents maybe? Or any siblings he may have." A scoff forced it's way out of me before I had a chance to stop it.

"He's an only child and his parents stopped caring about him when we left so no, there's no one."

"What about Liam," he asked as he sat down in his usual chair, his voice more timid than usual.

My heart skipped a beat at the mention of Liam like it always did. It had been years since Jem made him leave but it was still a sore subject.

"Jem wouldn't want to worry him. Besides, he'd want to come and visit him and that's a big no."

"He deserves to know. His anxiety is already starting to get to him from not hearing from him since it happened. He knows something's wrong and not knowing is going to give him a panic attack if we're not careful."

"It's not the first panic attack and it won't be the last. Jem comes first. He's the one who almost died. If Jem wouldn't want him to know then we don't tell him. Make something up about him going out of town unexpectedly or something."

Andrew frowned at the thought of lying to his client and to be honest, I wasn't very excited about it either but Liam would only worry more if he knew what happened.

"I really don't think that's fair," he pressed on. "Wouldn't you want to know if Jem was hurt?"

"Not if Jem didn't want me to know," I lied as I looked back at the laptop.

He rolled his eyes at me before looking over to Jem. He looked better today. I know I shouldn't get hopeful considering we still had a long way to go but it was hard to not feel hopeful when he looked like normal for the first time in nearly two weeks.

"I disagree with you."

"Disagree all you want. It's the truth."

"I'm asking him when he wakes up."

"Then I'll enjoy being right," I said with a shrug. The last thing I needed was Jem being all grumpy as soon as he woke up, especially at me.

My eyes drifted over to Jem just in enough time to see his fingers twitch ever so slightly.

That small movement was enough to lift a pressure off my shoulders.

Any day now, we just had to be patient.

Last updated March 31, 2022