{18+ COMPLETE} For the past three years, Bren Hadaway has been preparing to die.
When he was sixteen, he watched his dad murder his mom. And ever since, he's been counting down the days until it was his turn to be at the end of a gun. And Bren has...
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"Madeline Rose Lenertz, I am so mad at you."
I held the phone away from my ear to save myself from losing my hearing. Nessa's voice grated on my senses, which were riddled with pain meds to distract me from where Luke Hadaway tried to slice my organs in two.
My doctor, a no-nonsense woman with bouncy gray-white curls and glasses she wore on the tip of her nose as she referenced my charts, told me that I was lucky. An inch or two lower, and my reproductive system might have been injured.
She said she would have thought he was aiming for it if she didn't know any better.
Bren barely contained himself at that, fisting the sheets in my bed as she spoke. But he visibly relaxed when Dr. Webber said that I would be fine. The damage Luke had done would not be lasting. And at the look on Bren's face, she even reassuringly stated that my chances at getting pregnant in the future would not be affected.
Bren got a little red and flustered at that. And my brain responded by conjuring up images that I knew I shouldn't be thinking of yet—images of a baby with dark brown hair and eyes.
"Madie, are you listening to me?"
"Ah, sorry. Not really, to be honest. A little hard to focus over here."
Nessa's voice softened. "What do they all have you taking?"
I shook my head. "I don't even know. You'll have to ask Bren. He's keeping track of it all."
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bren nod his head once. He was bent over his phone, slumped in a chair in the corner, doing god-knows-what.
"Now, what were you mad at me for?" I asked, chuckling a bit.
"I'm mad because you ran off to Fresno on some dangerous mission without a single word and left me here with Grayson!"
I laughed. "Oh, that. I bet you guys had fun, though."
Nessa snorted, not committing to my statement. "He told me that you directed him to stay with me, and he took that very seriously."
A broad smile spread over my face. "Do tell."
"Well, I tried to get him to drive me to Fresno, and he refused."
"Good job, Grayson."
I could practically hear Nessa rolling her eyes. "And then when I tried to leave the room to find my own way there, he had the audacity not to let me leave."
If I could have clapped without dropping my phone, I would have. Instead, I just giggled into the speaker. "Well I did tell him to stay with you even if you threw a fit."
"Oh, I threw a fit alright," Nessa said beneath her breath. "And then do you know what he did?"
