Adelaide Beck dared Tristan Presley to become her best friend in the fifth grade... and he said okay.
After a summer of doing nearly everything together, Tristan suddenly becomes distant with her. Adelaide had always guessed that natural causes had...
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It's been exactly one week since that night. Tristan has been able to recover from most of his injuries, but his ribs will take longer to fully heal.
I was at the hospital, sitting in the chair I had been in most days of the week. I hated hospitals, they just lingered with sickness and injuries and misery.
Dad came home and Carson and I had come clean with the news of what happened with Braedon. Well, almost clean. We may have had to work around the whole illegal underground fighting thing, and the hostage thing, and the guns out and swinging thing.
And that's how the four of us ended up here in the hospital. Me, dad, Carson, and Braedon.
Braedon was still recovering from his bullet wound. If it had hit exactly two inches to the right, the bullet would have gone straight through his heart.
The story was that we all went to the city for a night out. We were separated and the boys got jumped. They were fighting back when one of the robbers pulled a gun on them and that's how Braedon ended up shot.
Dad bought it and so did the hospital workers when both Tristan and Braedon needed medical attention.
Lachlan's men stayed tucked away in the hole they crawled out of when he was officially announced dead. We don't expect to hear from them again. Especially from Nolan.
I was sitting with Tristan in his hospital room about two days after that night when the mood shifted.
"Are you sure you're not tired of the same TV? I could bring you a book if you want." I said to Tristan who was making a face at the show they were playing re-runs of.
"That doesn't sound so bad." He eyed the book I brought with me, bringing his fingers over the top to get a better look at the cover. "Read it out loud to me?"
"Mmm.. how do you feel about a fantasy romance?"
"I don't care, as long you enjoy it and it's you reading it me."
So I humored him. I started at the beginning of the chapter I was on, reading the words off the page and telling the story to the both of us.
This chapter wasn't action packed, it wasn't sad, wasn't stressful, wasn't anything that brought about any anger or negative emotions.
So why was the hell was Tristan looking at me like that?
I looked up from my book when I realized it. He wasn't looking at me exactly. His steady hard gaze was locked directly on the spot of my face that I applied extra concealer to. The same spot Nolan had hit me.
My makeup must have smudged. He reached a hand up, gently rubbing his thumb over the concealed area to get a better look. I winced a little at the pressure and he stopped.
