She paused her spoon halfway to her mouth and looked up at him. He had come to drop off some clothes for her and Mark and had decided to stay. The doctors were talking about releasing her this afternoon if she could keep her food down, so she was currently eating a breakfast that consisted of chicken broth and jello.
Yum.
“I don’t know man.” Mark scowled at Branson across the room.
She eyed Mark warily.
She didn’t know if it was because he didn’t get any sleep the last couple nights, or if it was because he had literally been in an explosion. But he was extremely grumpy. Twice this morning he had gone head-to-head with her nurse.
No easy feat.
He refused to leave the room, even to get some food.
He was like a bear with a thorn in its paw.
“Mark,” she whispered trying to get a little bit of reason across.
None of this had been Branson’s fault, and he was being nothing but helpful. If anything, them being there was the reason that his house had been burnt down.
She slammed her mouth shut when Mark turned to look at her.
“Do they know how it was started?” she asked Branson, giving up on getting anything rationale out of Mark.
“It’s still early, but they found a gas can outside, and the whole mountain reeks of fuel.” She cringed, looking down to her mostly full bowl. Her stomach twisted, and she put the spoon down.
“Eat,” Mark muttered.
“I’m so sorry, Branson.” She said instead.
“It’s no problem. My parents had a good insurance policy on it, so I will get to rebuild the whole place.”
She nodded, but she knew that having his home burned to a crisp had to hurt.
The explosion had made the whole thing ten times worse. Instead of just the little cabin that her and Mark had been staying in, it had spread to the main house as well.
It hadn’t burned the whole thing, but huge sections of it were going to need to be completely redone. From what the morning nurse had said, it was the talk of the town.
That the whole mountain side was singed.
Her heart hurt at what was left, and she hadn’t even seen it.
“It could be because of me.” The scowl on Marks’s face grew deeper at her words.
“It could also be because of me, a year ago I took that fucker out Winter. We’ve been expecting something,” Mark countered.
“I could also be because of me,” Branson muttered from across the room and both her and Mark turned towards him.
“What?” She gaped at him. She couldn’t picture Branson being into something like that.
“This have to do with that thing you were talking about.”
“Yeah something like that.” Branson reached up and rubbed at his neck. “I may have taken out a supplier.”
“Ricardo,” Mark muttered, and Branson’s eyes went wide before he nodded. “Fuck, when I was under, looking for her, there was a rumor going around that some guy had gone off to find his son, and had disappeared.”
“Yeah, well that may have been me. Although to be fair the son died of natural causes.”
“Natural causes, that what we’re calling it?” Mark said a tone in his words.
