Page 77 of Creeping Beautiful

He points to the bedroom.

I squint my eyes in confusion. “He’s here?”

Indie positions herself in front of me so I can’t see Nate. “He’s sick, OK? He’s been bedridden for months now. And you would know that if you knew anything about me at all!”

I look at McKay. “Did you know this?”

He nods. “I knew.”

“And you let her come over here to… watch movies?”

“Oh, my God!”

“Shut up, Indie!” McKay and I say it at the same time.

Then McKay turns to me. “Look. I get it. We need to sort this out. But I think we should just take you into the emergency room and make sure you’re OK. She hit you fucking hard, Adam. You most certainly have a concussion. You were out for almost thirty minutes. I was about to call a goddamned ambulance.”

I point my finger at Nate. “This isn’t over.”

And then I walk out—mostly by myself, but actually with a lot of help from McKay. Indie follows. And somehow, they get me back over to my own property and into McKay’s truck.

I have emergency surgery to relieve swelling on my brain, spend two days in an induced coma, then spend another ten in a hospital in New Orleans under observation as a slew of random nurses and doctors come in and out of my room telling me how lucky I am to be alive after falling off that roof.

So it’s actually two months later when McKay, Donovan, and I pick this conversation back up.

Indie has been grounded since the ‘incident’ at Nate’s house. I know she feels pretty bad about what happened because McKay tells me she hasn’t complained once about being locked up in the house.

And she’s nice to me.

I’m not saying she’s been mean to me all these years, but I am not her favorite… guardian.

Funny how there’s a legit word for a person who takes care of a random kid who is not related to them, but no good word for what that kid is to said guardian.

Ward?

No. Dependent. That was the word I decided on. But maybe protégé is more accurate?

My memory is still a little bit fucked since the ‘incident’. But I’m mostly fine. McKay shaved my head the day I came home from the hospital so I didn’t have that huge patch of baldness where they cut me open after Indie… you know.

I don’t like to think about it.

Haven’t worked since that day. But turns out it doesn’t even matter. Nick Tate was fucking serious. The Company is… well. I’m not sure such a massive global organization can just be erased, but the whole thing kind of just… fell apart.

I haven’t gotten all the details yet since it went down while I was in that induced coma. But McKay told me what he knew. And Donovan knew a little more because the auction island was raided by law enforcement in the Bahamas and the CIA. And his grandfather, Gerald, killed himself during the final standoff and Donovan was notified of that by the estate lawyers.

But other than that? Fuck if I know what happened to the Company.

Fuck if I care.

Good for Nick. I hope he and his people are happy. I have a more immediate problem to think about.

Indie.

Right now, McKay, Donovan, and I are in the TV room in the back of the house, just off the kitchen. Actually, I’m sitting on the couch that faces the wall of windows that look out onto the backyard. Donovan is sitting at the kitchen bar talking to McKay as McKay makes us tomato sandwiches.

I glance up at McKay. He’s smiling and laughing at some story Donovan is telling him about one of his girlfriends at Duke. He’s in his second year of lab rotations for some kind of clinical neuroscience PhD.

But, with the exception of a few weekend trips back to North Carolina for some exams and meetings about his research, Donovan has taken the semester off and has been here with us since the ‘incident’.