“I’m gonna go get you some drinks to have nearby. You want anything to eat? Those pain meds and antibiotics will probably give you a stomach ache if you don’t put something in,” he added.
“Sure,” I agreed, mostly just because it would give me a few minutes alone to call my parents.
He didn’t ask what I might like.
Because he knew all of that.
All the foods I craved and under what situations I craved them. PMS? I wanted grease, not chocolate. Bad day? I drowned that in mac & cheese. Celebration? I would opt for ice cream or ice cream cake over anything baked.
He knew all that.
Because he knew me better than almost anyone on the Earth.
Damnit.
As soon as he was gone, I grabbed my phone and dialed my mom.
“Hey, babe, what’s up?”
“Hey, Ma. Are you at work or home?”
“Home. Why? Is something up? You sound off.”
“Is Dad home?”
“He’s right here. What’s going on?” she asked, voice hitting that borderline hysterical edge that moms got when they were worried about their kids. Even if their kids were grown.
I heard the background noise as my mom switched me to speaker.
“Do I need to dig out my lye?” my father asked, and that old, familiar line made my lips twitch even after such a shitstorm of a day.
“Okay. Listen. I’m fine,” I prefaced.
“Oh, God. What happened?” my mom asked.
“Do I need bail money?” my father asked, keeping calmer. I doubted it was because he was actually feeling calm, but rather that he was trying to keep my mom from going too overboard.
“No. It’s okay. I was on a job.”
“With the Henchmen,” my mom clarified.
“Yes. And I was sort of babysitting slash protecting this girlfriend of one of the members. And things went upside down. And I ended up shot,” I told them, laying it all out there to get the shock part of it out quickly.
I heard the indrawn breath of my mom, so it was my dad who spoke next.
“Why am I not hearing the sounds of monitors, baby?” he asked, voice a bit more stern than usual since he already knew the answer. Because I didn’t go to the hospital.
“It wasn’t that bad. It was a through and through. Kind of the fleshy part of my butt and the upper side of my thigh.”
“It wasn’t bad,” my mother scoffed. “Louana, you got shot. Getting shot is always, by definition, bad.”
“I mean, yeah, but it could have been worse is all I am saying. I’m okay. I’ve been cleaned up and provided antibiotics and pain medicine. Which should be kicking in at any point.”
“I should have said I didn’t want you prospecting,” my mom grumbled.
“You know that would have only made her want to do it more,” my father reasoned.
“It’s dangerous.”
“I mean, objectively, this is actually a lot less dangerous than what I have been doing for the past several years,” I reasoned with her.
“Listen, I just blanked all that out,” my mom said, a hint of amusement in her voice.
She had been, when she’d met my father, a poisons expert who spent her life traveling around the world. She knew a thing or two about danger. But it had never stopped her either.
I guess it was just different when it wasn’t you, it was your kid. Which I had to understand. It was why I never talked much about the nastier parts of the job when she was around. But if she ran out or went to bed, that was when my dad got all the other stories out of me.
“Really, I’m okay. And if things start to seem weird, you guys know there are multiple places I can go to get taken care of. There’s Lo’s medical team at Hailstorm. And there is that lady who is related to the Grassi Family…”
“Lettie,” my father supplied.
“Yeah, her. I have options that are just as good as the hospitals. If not better since I would be one-on-one with the doctors and nurses.”
“I want to come see you,” my mother demanded.
“Okay. Just not tonight, okay?” I asked, feeling like a shitty daughter for making that demand. “Things are still kind of crazy since I was shot and Finn was shot. And we couldn’t save the girl, so now everyone else is trying to. I think we need a night or two just to calm things down.”
“Honey, I will give you the night since you are probably going to pass out from the pain medicine anyway,” my mother said. “But you are only getting one night. I don’t care if they want me there or not. I am coming. I will call in Lo and all the moms in that girls club to stand up for me if I need to.”
“Okay, okay,” I said, voice soft, trying to soothe her. “That’s fine. Just not the crack of dawn either. Let me sleep in a little.”
“I can do that. And I’ll bring you lots of snacks. And some supplements that will help healing.”
See, my mom went from a poisons expert to an employee at a health food store to the owner of one who created her own teas and supplements for all sorts of various ails. My entire childhood was a mix of herbal teas for colds and PMS to poultices for wounds.
It would probably break her heart to know that during my travels, I barely managed to remember to take a general multivitamin, let alone all the other stuff she told me would help with jet lag and the various discomforts that came from eating different cuisines than you were accustomed to.
“That would be nice,” I told her because, well, it was always nice to be fussed over.
“I didn’t know if you still took your tea… oh, I’ll come back,” Valen said, backing out before I could even say to.
Because, apparently, Valen still had a fear of my parents.
I mean, as he should.
On the third day of seemingly nonstop crying after he left without a word, it had been my mother in bed with me, stroking my hair, listing off all the practically untraceable poisons that she would use against him if she ever saw him again.
And my dad, well, we all knew how much he was dying to get Valen in a tub with heated lye melting his body.
“Was that him?” my mother asked, voice running cold.
“Yeah.”
“They are making him take care of you? Are you fucking serious? I am driving over there right now to give Reign a piece of my mind.”
“Fallon,” I corrected. “Fallon is in charge now. And, no. I mean, no one assigned anyone to look after me. A lot of the guys are just gone dealing with the situation. And Valen…” I trailed off, exhaling hard. “He just stepped up,” I said, trying to use the least personal way to describe it.
For them.
But for me as well.
Because if I let myself think of how careful and kind he’d been, it was going to create issues with the whole “hating him for life” thing.
“Stepped up, huh?” my father grumbled, not having any issues with the “hating him for life” thing. “Must be new for him. Hope he stretched first.”
I couldn’t help it.
A smile tugged at my lips at that.
Life was hard.
But it was made a hell of a lot easier when you had family who would love you no matter what, and hate people for you even when you were struggling to hate them yourself.
“Right?” my mother agreed. “Listen, if he is being a shit and you need anything, I mean anything, even just being helped to the bathroom or something, you call me, do you hear me? I don’t care how late it is. I will come right over and, trust me, they will let me in or I swear to shit I will stab them all with a little mild dose of belladonna and let myself in.”