Caleb was genuinely concerned.
Wow.…
Kody slid her phone into her purse. “We know he can’t die from a mere beating, but the human who attacked him made a mess of him. He looks terrible.”
Caleb narrowed those beautiful dark brown eyes suspiciously. Because she knew him for what he really was, it was easy for her to see past his human beauty, but right then when he let his tough protector façade slip and she saw the vulnerable heart beneath his demon’s aura, he was every bit as handsome as Nick.
“Are you sure it was a human who attacked him?” Caleb asked.
“Positive. I think it’s why he was trying to walk away from the fight. Had it been one of us, I’m sure Nick would have torn into him.”
Caleb made a sound of supreme irritation. “I would kill his mother for causing this latest bout of stupidity, but…”
“I know. At this moment, I’m not happy with her, either.”
And speaking of his mother, Cherise finally arrived. She paused in the double doorway to scan for a familiar face. As soon as she saw the two of them in the back corner, she rushed toward them. Blonde, skinny, and petite, she was absolutely beautiful even with tears streaming down her cheeks. “Where did you find my baby, Kody?”
“In an alley off Royal. Not far from Liza’s.”
Menyara arrived just in time to hear her response. No taller than Cherise, and every bit as skinny, she had her dark sisterlocks tied back in a red scarf and was dressed in a red blouse and jeans. “Oh my poor Nicky,” she breathed. There was something about the depth and cadence of her voice that always reminded Kody of Eartha Kitt.
Her tears flowing even harder, Cherise turned toward Menyara, “Who would do such a thing to my Boo? Why Mennie, why? It doesn’t make any sense. My Boo such a good boy, and I was sharp with him when he called to tell me he was going to work and then coming to walk me home. I swear I’ll never yell at him again. Just tell me he’s going to be all right.”
“I hope so, Cher. I do.”
Kody started to explain what had happened during the fight, then thought better of it. Since she hadn’t been there for the beating, she couldn’t very well tell any human how she knew so many details about it since she hadn’t arrived until about an hour after it’d taken place.
So she settled for the most obvious explanation to soothe his mother. “It looks like a mugging.”
Cherise’s legs buckled. Caleb moved like lightning to catch her and keep her from hitting the floor. He swung her up in his arms, then carried her to an empty chair so that he could set her down for Menyara’s care.
Menyara sat beside her and took her hand. “It’ll be all right, ma petite. He a strong boy. It’ll take more than a beating to take him away from us. I promise you.”
“I pray you’re right, Mennie,” she sobbed. “Nick’s all I have in this world. If I ever lost him, you’d have to dig two graves. I can’t live without my baby. I can’t.” She broke off into gut wrenching sobs that brought tears to Kody’s eyes.
Trying to catch her breath before she gave into her own fears where Nick was concerned, Kody looked up to see a shadow of fierce pain inside Caleb’s eyes. Something about Cherise’s reaction haunted the demon.
But what? If Caleb had ever possessed a mother, he never spoke of her. Was it possible that he might have been married in the past? Had a family?
Demons mated, too, and some species of them were even more monogamous than humans professed to be.
Caleb’s daeva species was one of the ones most notorious for their loyalty to family ties.
I really don’t know anything more about him than he knows about me. For the first time, her blinders were torn off and she realized that even though the three of them spent so much of their lives together … that as much as they interacted with each other- her, Nick and Caleb- were really nothing more than intimate strangers …
How sad for us that this is what we’re relegated to.
But then how many people lived like that? How many people either were or felt like they were strangers in their own home? Or that no one in their family really knew or understood them?
In so many ways, we are all nothing more than orbiting satellites that occasionally collide with each other whenever our paths overlap. People formed social bonds to keep from feeling so isolated. But in the end, the only constant in any life was its own soul. And even that was transitory.
Souls could be, and were far too often, bought and sold like used shoes in a consignment shop.
And yet when two of those souls slammed into each other hard enough, they could form a single unit so strong that nothing and no one could tear it apart. Those unions were rare and she’d been around long enough to know that for a fact.
But she’d also seen those unbreakable bonds. Like the one Cherise shared with her son. There was no force in existence that could shatter their love and break it apart.
It was a love bond Nekoda had only felt with her brothers and one other person.
Don’t go there.
The pain of their loss was still too great for her to bear. And her nerves were already shot from what had happened to Nick. While their love wasn’t that strong yet, she could feel it growing every day and doubling with every new discovery she made where Nick was concerned.
He was so much more than what he knew. For the first time in centuries, she had hope.
And she owed that to a creature she should hate with every fiber of her being.
Life was so strange. Seldom did it make sense. As her brother would say, ‘life isn’t a puzzle to be solved. It’s an adventure to be savored. Let every challenge be a new mountain to climb, not an obstacle to get in your way and stop you. Yeah, it’ll be hard, but once you reach the summit of it, you’ll be able to see the world for what it really is. And at the top, it never seems to have been as difficult a feat to climb there as you first made it out to be. Most of all, you’ll know that you beat that mountain, and that you rule it. It does not rule you.’
I miss you, my brother. Even after all these years.
Life had no guarantees, except one. You will never succeed until you try one more time.
Even though her people didn’t believe Nick could be saved, she did. Tonight proved it.
Please be all right, Nicky.
Over the next hour as they waited for an update about Nick’s condition, the room began to fill with people eager to check on him. Wren. Aimee. Dev and his brothers. Jasyn. Mama and Papa Peltier. Talon. Acheron. Kyrian. Rosa and her son Miguel. Brynna and her father. But the one that caught them all off guard was when Bubba and Mark came in with Bubba’s mother.
Without a single hesitation, Dr. Burdette made her way straight to the counter to speak to the staff on duty. “Hey, sweetie,” she said to the triage nurse stationed there. “I’m Dr. Bobbi Jean Burdette from Perry County, Tennessee. And I’m a pediatric surgeon out of Vanderbilt and St. Jude’s. A friend of my son’s was brought in about an hour ago and I wanted to see if there was anything I can do for him.”
“His name?”
“Nicholas Gautier.”
The nurse turned her attention to her computer monitor as she searched for information on Nick.
One of the ER doctors approached Bubba’s mother slowly, as if he couldn’t believe what he saw. “I’m sorry, ma’am. Did I overhear you say that you were Dr. Bobbi Jean Burdette?” The Dr. Bobbie Jean Burdette who performs surgery at both Vandy and St. Judes, and who is a former Executive Board member for the World Health Organization?”