Page 112 of Danger and Dominance
David felt himself slowly relax.
Everything was going to be okay.
Cassidy
“I can’t believe you killed him,” Claudia complained.“It’smybirthday.I should have gotten to kill him.”
That couldn’t be right.Either Cassidy had misheard, she was hallucinating, or…
“You were drunk,” Lincoln said sternly.“Besides, a dead body is not an appropriate birthday present.”
“Says you,” Claudia grumbled.“I’m never drinking on my birthday ever again.I didn’t get anything I wanted for my birthday.”
Cassidy opened her eyes and saw nothing but white.It took her a moment to realize she was staring up at a ceiling.
“Hey, Cassidy’s awake!”Jennifer’s face blocked out the ceiling, pure relief covering her expression.“Oh my God, I’m so glad you’re okay.”
“I’m okay?”It came out as a question, even though, technically, she did feel mostly okay.Her head was a little woozy, but nothing hurt.She tried to lift her head to see who else was in the room, but she couldn’t.
“Hey, don’t try to move around too much,” Jennifer said, putting her hand on Cassidy’s shoulder to keep her pinned to the bed.“You fainted when the EMTs were checking you over and one of them touched the back of your head.You got really banged up there.”
As she was talking, more people appeared around Cassidy’s bed.Claudia, Ashley, Lincoln, Yasmine, Naomi, Drew, Jensen, Mason…
“Where’s David?”Fear suffused her.The last thing she remembered was seeing him on the ground.
No… wait… he’d been holding her.
No, he’d been shot.She must have imagined him holding her.
Oh God, had she imagined him holding her because he was dead?Had it been some metaphysical?—
“David’s fine.He’s in surgery to get the bullet out of his shoulder,” Mason said soothingly, patting near the foot of the bed and managing to catch her ankle.
He was alive.
Cassidy burst into tears.
“Okay, okay, let’s clear the room and give her some space,” Claudia ordered.“Everybody out.”
‘Everybody’ didn’t really mean everybody, it turned out.It meant everyone except Claudia and Naomi, who both stayed to provide a supportive shoulder and give her a rundown on what had been happening while she was out.Cassidy did her best to pay attention, though whatever painkillers they’d put her on was making it difficult, and it became even more so when the nurses came in to check on her now that she was awake.
She got the general gist of everything, though.
David had been shot, but he was going to be okay.The bullet hadn’t hit anything vital.He was going to need some physical therapy to help him with movement after he healed, but nothing too terrible.Cassidy still felt horribly guilty, but she was also relieved it wasn’t anything worse.
The biggest relief came from hearing that Don was dead.
Which made her feel like a bad person.
She felt worse about feeling relief than she did about him being dead.
She was going to have plenty to talk about at her next therapy appointment.
Once the nurses were done checking her over, they told her the doctor would be by to see her shortly and started to leave.The door was still open when they came to a halt, blocking entry to someone out in the hall.
“That is my granddaughter in there, and I am going in to see her!”Brenda’s voice came through loud and shrill.
“That’s Brenda,” Cassidy said, blinking in surprise because she was pretty sure Brenda was trying to get intoherroom, but obviously, Brenda wasn’t her grandmother.She was David’s grandmother.
