Page 140 of Hushed

“What happened?”

“Thank God you’re OK.”

“Yeah. Sorry to scare you, sis. I’m not leaving you again any time soon.”

“You remember that promise,” she said as sat on the hospital bed next to him.

“How long will you have to be here?”

“If they need to do surgery, it will probably be a couple of days. But hopefully the x-ray comes back and they can just put a cast on it and call it a day.”

“I hope so too.”

Gage stayed quiet for most of the exchange, but now he cleared his throat.

“Samuel is waiting to talk to you. Are you ready for that?”

Reggie winced. “Might as well get it over with.”

Kenzie wondered why he didn’t want to talk to Samuel. Was there history? Reggie didn’t seem as close to Samuel as Gage did.

“Come on, Kenz. Let’s get something to eat and let them talk.”

She let him take her hand and lead her to the door.

At the door she stopped and stared at her brother, trying to memorize his face.

“I’m not going anywhere, Gabs-a-lot.”

Her shoulders sagged. “You better fucking not.”

Gage chuckled. “What your sister said. We’ll be back.”

“Sneak me in a bag of chips or something. They offered me hospital food and I don’t want any of it.”

“Oh, poor baby,” Kenzie teased.

“Says the girl who refuses to eat anything mushy,” Reggie shot back.

In the hallway, Kenzie leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. “That was way more stress than it needed to be. I’m so glad he’s OK.”

“Me too, sweetheart, me too. I don’t mind admitting my heart was in my stomach for a little while there. But it’s not what we feared, so let’s focus on that and go tell Samuel he can come in.”

After telling Samuel he was free to chat with Reggie, Gage took her to the cafeteria where they ate sandwiches that were too dry and drank tea while they made small talk about their trip to New Orleans.

“How would you feel about giving up your apartment, and buying a place in the city with me?” Gage asked, taking her by surprise.

“What about your house?”

“We’ll keep that too. And if you’re attached to your apartment, I’d be willing to share it, but I would rather have something bigger where we can both have an office as well as a spare bedroom for friends coming over.”

She searched his face to see if he was truly serious. There wasn’t an ounce of humor in his expression, only excitement.

“I’ll do it however you want, Gage. I’m picky about my office, but I don’t care where it’s at. But do we really need two places to live?”

“We can have one in every major city if you want. That way you could take DJing gigs all over the country.”

Her eyes bugged out. “Just how much money do you have?”

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