Free Free Fall (Free Fall Vol. 2): (Loving Summer #7: The Donovan Brothers #4) by Kailin Gow Page B

this was supposed to be
under the radar. Us getting The Dragon and his men was secret work.  I looked
over at Brandi. She wasn’t supposed to be here, caught up in this lunacy. She
was the only civilian here, besides Summer and Drew.
    Drew…
    “We
need to take him to the hospital,” Summer said again.
    “No,
we can’t,” I said. “All of this…it’s highly confidential. We need to take him
to a private medical facility.”
    “You
have one?” Summer asked.
    “For
guys like us, who operate under the radar, we do…”
    “Hurry
then, please,” she cried. “I can’t. I can’t lose Drew. Please.”

Epilogue
     
    Summer
     
     
     
    I followed Nat, who had hoisted Drew into his
arms, to the van outside. My mind was on Drew, and everything else was a blur.
    Nat
placed Drew’s body on a cot at the back of the van, and sat next to me in the
back as we took off. He reached over and squeezed my hand. “Don’t worry,
Summer. He’ll pull through. He always does.”
    I
could only nod. I felt numb.
    “We’re
taking him to one of our best private facilities. The most high-tech
equipments, even those not yet approved by the government because they were far
too expensive for regular hospitals to have or was too advance.”
    I
could only nod. I felt so helpless. “Dammit, Nat,” I said. “I’m a doctor.  I
can work on him. I just need my tools, my equipment.”
    I
went to check his pulse.  It was faint, and barely there.
    “We
need to get his heart going. We need to shock him,” I said. “He was hit in the
heart,” I cried. How ironic. “I’ve never operated on a heart before, and…”
    It
was a miracle he wasn’t dead…that he had lived this long.
    “I
know,” Nat said. “I saw the wound. I know the anatomy, seen enough corpses to
know where everything is.”
    I
flinched. Nat was not the young teenager who only had to worry about Donovan
Dynamics and going to college anymore. He had grown up, the hard way, and my
heart ached to reach out for him.
    I
grabbed his hand and squeezed it tight. “We’ll pull through, Nat. I know you’re
very worried about Drew, too. We Donovans always pull through.”
    “We
Donovans?” Nat smiled at me.
    “I’m
practically a Donovan,” I said.
    “I
know, Summer,” Nat said.
    “And
you’re what, maybe a Jones?” I hated bringing up the possibility he could’ve
been Aunt Sookie’s abandoned son, but ever since we found Aunt Sookie’s gift to
Nat at his parents’ home in San Francisco, there were doubts in his and
everyone’s mind whether he was a Donovan or a Jones.
    Nat
looked deeply into my eyes, and held my hands. “I’ve been wondering about that
for a while, Summer, but it still didn’t affect the way I had and will always
feel about you.”
    My
stomach jumped. I knew Nat still loved me, despite whether or not we were
blood-related.  But it had been a strong reason why he left me to go to
Afghanistan on the mission that changed everything. 
    “I
looked into it a few years ago,” Nat said.
    I
held my breath. He could be my cousin, which would be so strange after all
these years, yet, in some crazy way, cousins in Shakespeare’s Days, and in the
past got together…only…but I was with Drew, and…
     
    “Summer,”
Nat said, “As much as I wanted to be Aunt Sookie’s child because I loved her so
much like a mother, I’m not.”
    “Aunt
Sookie’s child died before the Donovans could take him home. Caught a bad cold
and died. The Donovans were devastated, thought they were going to have a baby
boy at last after so many years of trying for a child so they adopted me from
an orphanage right away, a baby who  happened to have had Aunt Sookie’s
coloring.” Nat hesitated and said softly, “So you see, I was adopted by the
Donovans, legally and binding. I was not the little boy Aunt Sookie gave birth
to, although she grieved heavily over his death yet still loved me as though I
was him.”
    “You’re
not my cousin; we’re not