Page 61 of Devil Inside: Green

“Can I touch her?” Please say I can touch her.

“You can hold her hand as long as you don’t move more than that.”

There’s a chair in the corner that I pull up to her bed and I carefully take her hand in mine, linking our fingers together. “I’m here, Preppy. Don’t know if you can hear me, but I love you. You can’t—” My words hitch on my damn tears. “You can’t leave me. I need you, babe. You leave, I leave, too. Promise you that.”

I clear my throat and take a breath.

Now I have to make a call I really don’t want to make. Phone in hand, I let out a long breath and then press the contact. “Misty? Sweetheart, I need you to sit down…”

21

DANNI

This constant beeping rouses me. The last I remember I was in a tree in the woods. How did I get into bed? It takes a lot of effort just to move my eyeballs around. It’s a hospital room. Green holds my hand. I’d recognize his form anywhere. He’s bent forward with his face pressed to my leg. I think he might be sleeping.

I give his hand in mine a gentle squeeze and his body shoots up.

“Danni?” His haggard appearance is still the most wonderful sight I’ve seen in my life. He’s wearing at least a week’s worth of stubbly overgrowth and his hair sticks up everywhere. My Green doesn’t do facial hair. If he stood up now, he’d probably find he’s grown roots, keeping him in his spot. The man probably hasn’t been home in at least a week.

When I open my mouth to speak, I can’t get any words out. My throat feels so dry and scratchy and I wince.

“Water?” he asks, letting go of my hand to pick up a plastic cup about half filled with clear liquid. I nod and he brings it up to my mouth to help me sip it. It might be room temperature, but the water cools my throat and it feels good.

I turn my head slightly to show him I’m done and while he’s setting the cup down, I chance to speak again. This time, it works. “How long have I been here?” my voice comes out in a whisper.

His eyes shimmer with glassy wetness when he turns back to me. “Week and a half.”

“You’ve got a beard.”

He scratches his chin. “Don’t get used to it.” Then Green picks the hand up that he’d held to kiss it. “It’s so good to see your eyes again. For a while, I didn’t know if—”

He cuts off his thought just as I hear, “Danni!” My sister stops short in the doorway.

“Misty?”

“Oh my god, sissy…” She runs around my bed, dropping what looks like food on the movable tray next to my bed, and grabs up my other hand, the one with the IV. “You’re awake. They said it might take a while.”

“They?” I ask.

“The doctors,” Green answers. “They made the decision to put you in a medically induced coma because of your injuries. You had spinal cord bruising and swelling. They had to make sure you didn’t move and end up paralyzed.”

“They said they were bringing you out today because you’ve been healing so well,” Misty says. “But it would take time for the meds to wear off.”

With the two people I love most in the world in this room, the emotion overwhelms me and the tears begin to fall. “I can’t believe you thought to get my sister,” I whisper.

“Babe,” he answers. “She’s family.” And I love it all the more that he says she’s family, not she’smyfamily.

“They were going to send Vlad’s nephew Waite to come get me, but my dad saidno—he was bringing me.”

“Your dad brought you?”

She nods enthusiastically. “It looks like he and Evil Lynn might be getting divorced. She freaked out saying that I wasn’t allowed to come here because you decided to whore yourself out to a biker gang.”

I jerk my head back from that response and realize that hurt. Note to self: Try not to jerk my head.

“Yeah—then she went on to say some really mean things about Mom and Dad went off. He said Constantina Ramero was one of the best women he ever knew. Just because their relationship didn’t work out didn’t make that any less true. He then told her he always loved you but kept distant because Evil Lynn didn’t want you in the house. Danni, there was so much yelling. Finally, he said, ‘How did I not see how much of a bitch you are before? Misty’s my daughter and she needs to go to her sister now.’ Then I kid you not—he told me ‘Misty, go pack us each a bag.’ I started up the steps and she said, ‘Over my dead body.’ Then my dad looked her square in the eye and said, ‘Then you better go pick a casket.’ And that’s when he called Green to say he was bringing me.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

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