Chapter 158
I could tell that Jamie was trying not to laugh at me as he headed toward the door without another word. I wished I had an IAC so I could tell him to stop being a jerkface, but my sister would question our familiarity, so I chose to glare at the back of his spiky head instead.
Following Jamie to the door, Aaron said, “I’m going to go call his mom.” Cadence nodded at him and leaned back in her chair, her hand still on her gut.
Jamie brought in three more chairs and offered the first to me, which I took. He set one on the other side of Cadence and then sat down next to me. This was the first opportunity I’d really had to talk to him since I arrived, but with my sister here, it was a little awkward, so we sat in silence. I was staring at Brandon, lying there like he was just asleep, and realized my leg was swaying back and forth frantically. I tried to stop it, but I couldn’t. “You sure he’s okay? He’s awfully still,” I said to Jamie.
“I’m sure,” Jamie said. I turned and looked at the doctor for a moment, and he added, “Let me just go check.” He walked over to Brandon, fished his arm out, and felt his pulse. With a nod, he laid his arm back down and crossed back to his chair. “Everything’s good.”
“Cassidy, he’s going to be okay. The scary part is over,” Cadence assured me, her hand briefly brushing my arm.
“Oh, I know.” I shrugged and tried to be nonchalant. “It’s just weird seeing him so still and knowing I couldn’t wake him up if I wanted to.”
“He’s just fine.” Jamie reiterated what Cadence had just said, and I looked at him and smiled, but it didn’t reach my eyes.
I wasn’t the only one having trouble sitting still. Cadence’s knee was bouncing around like she’d just drank two cups of coffee. Jamie must’ve just noticed for the first time. If he said something to her, I didn’t know, but his eyes bore down on her in concern. “I’m fine,” Cadence assured him. Slowly, she added, “It just seems like there’s a Vampire around, and I don’t know why.”
I turned to look at Jamie to see if that seemed as alarming to him as it did to me. His eyebrows were knit together. “How weird. No one new came in today, right?”
Proud of myself that I’d asked a similar question in the gym, I turned back to Cadence as she said, “Right. I feel like I need to go jog the perimeter of the grounds and make sure there’s nothing suspicious going on.”
Continuing to stare at her, Jamie offered, “Maybe it’s just all this stuff with Giovani.”
Having no idea what they were talking about, I waited for my sister to answer. I hated that I was missing information. “I don’t know. Maybe,” Cadence shrugged. “Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. If I’ve felt like there was a Vampire nearby, it was because there was a Vampire nearby.”
“That is strange,” the doctor agreed. He turned and looked across the room thoughtfully for a few moments, and I continued to wonder if something new was going on with Giovani, or if they meant the footage Emma had found. Cadence’s leg continued to bounce, and Jamie asked, “I hate to change the subject, but when were you planning on letting me look at your knee?”
I saw my sister tense up. She looked at me for a second before she began to wiggle her leg every which way possible, and to Jamie, she said, “Look at it; it’s fine.”
“Very funny. I’m serious. I need to do an MRI.” A glance at Jamie’s face told me he really was serious.
Happy to have the opportunity to inquire about the situation Aaron had made me swear not to mention, I casually asked, “What happened to your knee?” as if I had no idea. I was getting awfully good at this, unfortunately
Cadence shrugged like it was no big deal, and as Aaron came back through the door, she said, “I was dropped out of an airplane.” Realizing he’d come back in, Cadence glowered at him, and I caught his eyes, letting him know I was playing innocent, my usual role.
Aaron cleared his throat and said, “I prefer to use the phrase ‘lovingly assisted.’” He moved his seat so that it was on the other side of Jamie, away from Cadence, which I thought was sort of funny.
Feigning shock and avoiding everyone’s eyes, I asked, “What? Who pushed you out of an airplane?”
But Cadence didn’t answer me. She just continued to look at Aaron with those harsh eyes.
“She had to get out, and she wouldn’t jump.” The way he said it now was similar to the way he’d originally told me on the way over here, while Cadence was sleeping in the back of the plane.
I let my mouth hang open for a moment as I turned and looked at Aaron. “You pushed her out of an airplane?”
The look he gave me was one I’d seen a few times before, the one that reminded me we were sharing a secret, and it sort of made me feel slightly important. He explained, “She was wearing a parachute. Besides, she would have been just fine if she would have listened to me and bent her knees when she landed.”
“Sorry, I guess I couldn’t hear you over my screams of terror.” Cadence actually stuck her tongue out at him and crossed her eyes, and I felt like perhaps I wasn’t the only child in the room now.
Raising his voice above the argument, Jamie interjected. “My point was I need to see if there’s any damage in there that didn’t get fixed correctly when I did the emergency healing on the side of the road. If there’s still damage to your ACL it could snap at any time--and it can’t heal itself.”
All pretending aside, I realized Jamie had a point. Cadence needed to have that taken care of. “You tore your ACL? That’s super serious, Cadey.”
“It’s fine!” Cadence attempted to assure me. “I’m fine.”
“You need to let him look at it,” Aaron said, a serious expression on his face.
“You need to not push people out of airplanes.” My sister folded her arms and turned away from all three of us.
My mouth suddenly became my mother’s. “Cadence, just let him look at it, jeez.”
Cadence glanced at me for a moment like she had no idea where that tone had come from. “Fine.“ She looked past me to Jamie and added, “But not until Cassidy goes home.”
The doctor’s tone was a warning. “I hate putting it off with everything that is going on with Giovani. What if something happens and we end up going off to hunt him down, and I still haven’t had a chance to look at it?”
