“I’m fine,” I say. Merc is ignoring us. Wendy is trying to sit up now and he’s focused on removing her IV before she rips it out. I want to pay all the attention to her recovery, but Harrison is still looking at me, so I feel the need to keep going with him. “I’m pissed, actually. I mean, what the actual fuck? You knew who she was, you knew this was a bad idea—”
“I’m OK.” I turn and find Wendy trying to smile at me. “It’s OK, Nick. I’m OK.”
I walk over to her, kneel down, and smile as we lock eyes. It’s a real smile. “You sure?”
She nods. Then she narrows her eyes and directs a scowl to Merc. “You’re an asshole. Stay the fuck away from me. And I mean that. If you—”
“OK,” I say, cutting her off. “He gets it.” I send Merc the compulsory warning look, which just makes him narrow his eyes at me, daring me to threaten him. But I don’t. We’re done with Merc for the moment. I want Wendy all to myself. “Come on.” I brace her against my shoulder and help her to her feet.
“Whoa. Slow down there. She needs to sit for a while or she’ll just pass out.”
“I got this,” I tell Merc. “I’m taking her to the bedroom.”
Merc looks like he wants to object, but Harrison cuts in. “Let him go. We need to talk, anyway.” And then he’s also narrowing his eyes at me.
Lots of suspicion being thrown around this room at the moment. And I should probably hang back and wait for Harrison to voice his concerns to Merc, just so I’m up to speed. But fuck them. I need to get Wendy somewhere private, and that needs to happen now.
I pick Wendy up, cradling her in my arms, and then I take her into the bedroom and kick the door closed with my foot. I set her down on the bed, then turn, lock the door, and let out a long breath. “Are you sure you’re OK?”
Wendy coughs again and sits up, like she needs to catch her breath. I’m instantly hot with anger over how this played out. “Wendy.” My voice is stern now. Because if she ignores me, then she won’t have to answer. And if she doesn’t answer, then she doesn’t have to lie either.
She takes a couple more breaths. “I’m OK. I promise. It was—”
“Never mind that. We’ll talk about that later.” Her speckled blue eyes meet mine and she coughs again. “In private,” I whisper. This makes her look up and around for surveillance. I don’t know if Merc broke into my control room and took over my cameras and microphones in the house, but if I were running his side of this little operation, that’s what I would’ve done.
Wendy nods, getting it.
“Now tell me the truth. Are you really OK?” I’m not so worried about the coughing. I know this is a side effect of the drugs Merc used. They tighten up the alveoli in the lungs and this is what triggers that reflex. It’s not going to kill her. The symptoms will wear off over the course of the evening
What I’m worried about is her mind.
He was inside her.
It feels every bit the violation it sounds like.
He was in her head. He had control of her. He manipulated her.
And I. Am. Pissed.
“I’m fine.” She whispers this. Then pats the bed. “Come on. Here. Come lie down with me.”
I want to. I haven’t seen her since last New Year’s and I just want to fucking hug this girl and never let her go. But I can hear Merc and Harrison talking out in my kitchen. So I hold up one finger, letting her know I’m listening.
Then there’s a sharp knock at the door. “What?” I say. It’s loud and sharp too. But I don’t open the door.
“Harrison has to get home. I’m going to the store to get food. You don’t have much here.”
That’s because I don’t actually live here full-time, you dick. That’s what I want to say. But instead I just say, “Town’s about twenty-four miles north of here. Pick Wendy up a cookie-dough Blizzard from DQ, will ya?”
She snickers softly in the bed.
“Anything else?” his snide scoff is clear, even from the other side of the door.
“Tacos.” Wendy smiles at me. “From Roberto’s on the corner of Main and Sunflower.”
There’s a long silence on the other side of the door. And I imagine Merc and Harrison shooting each other looks, coming to a conclusion on what to say next. I’m pretty sure Merc is mad about letting me take Wendy into the bedroom now that he’s stuck on the other side of a locked door. But he’s truly not here to hurt us. He just wants info. And I know he just wants info, so I’m taking advantage of his desire to keep this whole operation as clean as possible. And he’s already fucked up. I don’t know if he meant to steal Wendy’s mind—was that part of his plan? Or was Wendy about to get the best of him when they met up and the mind-fucking just turned into a last resort kinda solution?
I won’t know that until she and I can talk freely.
Finally, Merc has something to say. “Are you gonna be here when I get back?”
I look over my shoulder at Wendy. It’s her call. She’s in charge, and she nods. “We’ll be here,” I tell him.
There are a few more minutes of whispers and shuffling from the kitchen, but then the back door smacks closed. I walk over to the window, peek through the pillowcase curtains, and watch Merc and Harrison having a final conversation. They walk down the driveway towards the jet, which is parked in the middle of the lonely dirt road, and seem to come to some kind of conclusion. Then Merc walks back this way and gets into Wendy’s truck as Harrison gets into his jet.
Two minutes later, they’re both gone.
I turn back to Wendy and smile. “Hello, Mrs. Tate.”
She smiles back. “Hello yourself, Mr. Tate.”
There is no way to stop my wide grin. She bites her lip as I study her. She’s been through some shit over the past several days, but she’s here and she’s OK.
I walk over to her and collapse down onto the bed. She immediately grabs a hold of me and fits her body next to mine, her head on my shoulder, her fingers grabbing my t-shirt, one leg thrown possessively over my thigh. She lets out a long sigh. “We gotta stop meeting this way.”
It’s not really funny, but it really is funny. So I laugh. “That’s a sick joke.”
“Sick? How do you figure?”
“You know how.”
She chuckles a little. “Did you miss me?”
“Fucking missed the hell out of you.” I sigh and run my fingers through my hair. “I was really worried.”
“I swear, I’m OK.”
“We’ll talk about that later. Outside.” I look down at her and find her looking up at me. I’m not smiling now, even though I’m happy, because I’m still a little bit pissed about how this turned out. Wendy is smirking up at me like she’s got a secret. I can’t help it. I break and grin back at her. “What’s that look for?”
“I missed you too. We really gotta get together more often.”
I almost guffaw. “Yeah. That would be an alternative way to run this marriage.”
She chuckles in that cute way I love. “There’s nothing wrong with our marriage. It’s working, right?”