Page 112 of Well Aware

The trainer of the Cowgirls said, “Bring her here. We can get it looked at.”

An hour and forty-five minutes later we were in a hospital and Iris was getting a cast that matched her mom’s. Iris was finally calmed, having only done so once she’d been administered some drugs that would calm her.

Oh, and she’d gotten her blood drawn via a court order to ascertain whether or not she was Magnolia’s child.

“What now?” Magnolia whispered.

“Apollo is on it,” I promised.

Apollo had flown home sometime last night, so he was able to get here before we had even arrived.

He also was armed with his laptop and a sheriff’s deputy of his own.

He was talking to him quietly, showing him the footage on his laptop of these so-called small-town cops that’d injured a child and caused such a stink that their faces were now plastered over every news station in America.

What they were thinking, coming into a professional soccer game with so many news crews around, I didn’t know.

Even worse, they’d harmed a child in the process. The child they were supposedly “protecting” from Magnolia.

“Is it…”

“Shh,” I urged. “Not here.”

She nodded, her face a mask of terror.

I pulled her into my arms and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

“It’ll be okay,” I whispered directly into her ear.

She clung to me, as Iris had done a couple of hours ago when I’d picked her up after she’d been hurt.

“All right, Mom,” the doctor said. “She’s good to go. I’m going to get the nurses working on the discharge…”

“She’s not going anywhere,” one of the cops that hadn’t left the room snapped.

The doctor ignored him and kept going, explaining what needed to happen for the first forty-eight hours.

Iris leaned up and held her arm out to Magnolia, who placed her injured arm next to her daughter’s. “Twinkies.”

Iris smiled, resilient despite all that had happened.

Fuck, that made me happy to see her no longer in abject terror.

“Results.” A nurse came in holding out a laptop.

The doctor glanced at it and rolled his eyes. “You owe her a huge apology, and you should probably hire a lawyer, because she’s going to sue the pants off this department.”

The second-most assholish cop stepped forward and said, “What the hell am I looking at?”

The doctor explained. “That means they’re a genetic match. She’s her mother.”

Oh, thank God. Apollo had gotten it fixed.

“I don’t know, maybe we need a second opinion,” the cop grumbled.

“We have one,” the nurse said. “The test was run twice. By this hospital and a neighboring hospital. They’re a match. Here’s the other hospital’s paperwork.”

The nurse handed him over a stack of papers, not that he knew what he was looking at.