I had to believe him or I’d lose my fucking shit. Add in the buckets of blood at my feet, and I wasn’t far off anyway.
Kit in hand, I returned to Joe and set about cleaning him up enough to tape back together. I’d already checked the rest of him for serious damage, and he seemed to be okay. Either that or he was inhumanly tough.
Perhaps it was both.
Regardless, the wound on his head was superficial, and the rest of him seemed to have survived. I taped him up like I still did that shit every day and cleaned the blood from his face. He was mostly presentable when Toby charged across the yard and burst into the kitchen.
Out of breath and somehow flushed and ashen-faced at the same time, his gaze darted rapidly between me and Joe, eyes wide with a fear so deep I forgot about Joe and embraced him.
He was trembling. “Damn.” I held him tighter. “Are you okay?”
Toby hid his face against me for a moment and sucked in a shaky breath. “Yeah, I’m fine. What about Joe? Is he all right?”
“I’m okay, kiddo,” Joe supplied from behind me.
I swallowed the correction that bubbled up my throat. Toby wasn’t a kid to me, but he had been to Joe, and their relationship predated me by a decade. Hell, when they’d first met, there was every chance I’d been falling into bed with Harry, and wasn’t that a riddle I didn’t want to unpick?
And why the hell was my brain going there right now?
Jesus-fucking-Christ.
With Herculean reluctance, I let Toby go and stood back so he could see Joe for himself.
Joe got gingerly to his feet and held out his hands. Toby took them, but they didn’t embrace. They simply stared at each other before Toby blinked and shook himself. “I thought you were fucking dead.”
“Not this time.” Joe grinned a little and released Toby’s hands. “Better not tell Harry that version of events, though, okay? If he asks, I walked into a door.”
“If you want him to believe that, you’re gonna have to beat the shit out of whatever door got in your way, and we need to get rid of this blood.” Toby cast a wobbly gaze at the floor and the trail of blood that led outside. His expression matched the delayed horror building in my gut, and perhaps it showed on my face.
Joe clapped a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll get the mop.”
“Sit,” I ordered him absently. “If you want Harry to be chill, he needs to know we took care of you.”
“I’ll get it,” Toby said.
He disappeared.
I faced Joe down until he sat, then filled the sink with water.
Toby came back with the mop. He set to work on the floor while I followed the red trail outside.
It was everywhere. I filled buckets of water to rinse the gravel and hosed down the gates and fences we’d passed to get back to the house. Horses watched me from their stable doors, but I couldn’t see Shadow. And I was glad of it. I didn’t have the balls to look him in the eye at the best of times.
I wound the hose up and put it back where I found it and returned the buckets to the feed shed. At the front door, I found a splotch I’d missed and crouched to blot it up. The ground was closer than I’d anticipated, and my hands shook. I swiped at the blood until long after it had gone, nausea simmering lowly, threatening. Ominous. Damn. I was squeamish now? That was new.
“Cole?”
“Hmm?”
I raised my head. Toby stood over me, frowning. I blinked. “What is it? Is Joe okay?”
“Probably. Harry’s got him.”
“He’s home?”
Toby glanced between me and Harry’s car that was now parked in front of the house. Somehow I’d missed it rumbling over the gravel. “Are you all right?”
A month ago—nah, fuck that—a week ago I might’ve given him a bland nod and waited for the world to keep turning without me, but I didn’t want to be that blank motherfucker anymore.