Page 143 of Ozzie

“I’ll think about it.” He fidgets.

He’s not a fidgeter.

“Is there something more you aren’t telling me? Was it more than simply seeing your underwear?”

He turns to face me, placing one arm on the back of the couch. “When I saw you on the floor in that house, I thought you were dead. That I’d failed you again.”

I take his hand in mine. “You didn’t fail me. You saved me.”

“We can agree to disagree.”

We sit in silence for a moment, and all I can think about is the fact that neither Durango nor Ozzie brought up my marriage. “Why haven’t you brought up my marriage?”

Durango blinks at me. “What marriage?”

“What do you mean, what marriage? Mine and John’s.”

He jumps up again. “What are you talking about? You married that asshole?”

My brow shoots up. “Not willingly. It was in the hotel room. His parents were there. They had me in a wedding dress but tied to a chair. A minister came in, and even though I didn’t say I do, somehow, it’s official. I saw the license. His mother took photos.”

“They put you in a wedding dress?” Durango asks.

“That’s what you’re focusing on?”

He closes his eyes. “When we found you, you weren’t wearing the dress. You were in corduroy pants. You’d never wear those, and I wanted to ask you about them. But I…” His eyes meet mine, and they are glassy. “Then you tell me you two were married. Did he force you to consummate the marriage?”

“No!”

He places his elbows on his legs and bends. “Thank God.” Then he stands. “Why the change of clothes?”

“How many days in a row would people believe I would have worn a wedding dress?” I shudder before I tell him the next part. “But the real reason is because they had to change me. They wouldn’t let me use the bathroom after I almost escaped.”

“Who changed you?”

Thankfully, he doesn’t focus on the other part.

I frown. “I don’t know. I was in the hotel room, and then I woke in the ambulance. But that doesn’t make any sense. Tom was going to drug me one time, and Patsy stopped him.” Another thought hits me. “You didn’t read my hospital report?”

My cousin always asks for all the information.

“No.”

He doesn’t add more.

“Why not? You’re family, and you’re you. I figured you would have grilled all the doctors.”

“I wasn’t sure what all you’d been through, and I wanted to give you a choice in what you told people.”

“Because you thought John forced himself on me.”

He nods.

“He didn’t. But the fact that his father gave me a sedative after they discussed he shouldn’t makes me think their plan changed.”

There’s a knock on the door, and Durango holds his hand up for me to be quiet.

“It’s Ozzie,” he says through the door.

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