by Jewel, Bella
The door swings open, and I shove past Hayden and crouch by Ace’s side, bringing us to eye level. I put my hands on her knees. “Baby?”
Her eyes flutter, acknowledging she heard me, but she doesn’t open them. “I’m okay, I promise,” she rasps quietly. “My head just … hurts a bit. I need a painkiller.”
“Pain meds are comin’, babe. We’ll get you sorted.”
She swallows. “I crashed the GTO. Damn cop clipped my back end.”
I file that information away, knowing it will go in Rossiter’s investigative report. It’s not looking good for Howard’s career. “Fuckers.”
Ace nods her agreement and winces from the pain. “Fuckers,” she whispers like a little injured warrior. “What about Marchetti?”
“Arrested,” I say with satisfaction as I take her hand, giving it light squeeze. “The ambulance will be here soon. We’ll get you out of here.”
“Don’t need … an … ambulance.”
“You don’t get a say.”
“Stubborn … donkey.”
She’s trying to make me laugh, but it just makes me want to cry because my woman is the one injured and trapped inside a jail cell, and she’s the one trying to comfort me, even if it is just with cheeky insults. “I’m so sorry, babe.” The words sound trite and useless. Apologies don’t fix anything, especially not this. Not this.
“Don’t … apologise. I’ve got it handled because I got you.” Her eyes blink open and land on me. Their colour is dull and worn, indicating her high level of pain, but they’re still beautiful. I want to wake up to those eyes every single day. The realisation makes my heart pound because this isn’t just love, this is forever. “Turns out I’m … stronger than I thought.” She takes a deep shaky breath. “Jail is a piece of cake.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Arcadia
I open my eyes, turning my head on the hospital bed. Bad move. It feels like someone’s driving a jackhammer through my skull. My accident caused a bleed to the brain, something that can apparently be serious, but mine doesn’t require surgery. After a consult with the neurosurgeon on call, we were told the bleed would heal on its own. I touch a hand to my forehead. It’s bandaged. I have no idea what kind of mess lies beneath it.
Kelly’s behemoth body is crammed in the chair by my bed, his head resting on his hand. He appears to be sleeping despite the uncomfortable position, but the sheets rustle when I shift slightly and his eyes blink open, bleary.
“Where’s Echo?” I whisper.
“I sent her home to get some sleep,” he replies, his voice croaky. “You okay? You need somethin’?”
“Drugs. Lots and lots of drugs.”
“You got it, babe.” He straightens, putting hands behind his head and stretching out his wide chest. He groans as veins pop and joints crack. It’s hard to not appreciate the sight, even with my head being crushed inside a hydraulic press.
He rises to his feet and presses the buzzer for the nurse before checking his watch. “It’s 5:00 a.m.”
“Are you sure?” My eyes flick to the window. The blinds aren’t fully closed, and I can see through the slats. “It’s still dark out.”
“I’m sure.” Kelly shoves the watch in my face.
It’s actually five minutes past. Dammit. “Maybe wait until six.”
“Nice try, Chunks, but it’s not fair on your family to wait any longer to call them. I promised you I’d wait until at least five, but no longer.”
“Whatever.”
“Don’t whatever me.”
“Well, you can’t keep calling me Chunks. It’s so … unsexy. I want you to think me beautiful,” I say with a pout, which is ridiculous because I’m lying in a hospital bed with my face smashed in and a bandage covering my forehead. There’s no hope for me now.
Kelly is in the process of tugging his phone from his back pocket. My comment makes him pause and look at me. “Babe. Your beauty isn’t in how you look. It’s in how you stood outside of Fix that night where I met you. You turned to look at me with lust in your eyes, which at the time I thought was for me but it was really for Romero’s Charger.” He keeps talking, not giving me the chance to correct him and say it was lust for them both. “It’s in how you found out I was a Sentinel and gave me a chance anyway because you looked deeper and saw somethin’ inside of me that I don’t even see myself. It’s in how you flung that old bra across the room the first night we fucked because you were worried I would think it was hideous, which it was, but all I cared about was what was underneath it.” My cheeks burn. He saw that? Of course I never did try to recover it, probably because I was hoping it would spontaneously combust. “It’s in how you include me in your family, involving me in Racer’s greenhouse build and taking me to Sunday dinner, despite it being a shit storm, which we knew it would be, but you did it anyway because I mattered to you. It’s in how you attended my brother’s wedding with me, wearing a silver dress so sinful I spent the entire night at half-mast, and when you turned around and waltzed inside the docks of Sydney, coming out with a goddamn Bugatti. It’s in how you’re lookin’ at me right now like I still mean somethin’ to you, despite the fact that I failed and you ended up inside a cell like I promised you wouldn’t. It’s in how—”
I cut him off, taking his hand and squeezing it. “You didn’t fail me. I was barely in that cell for ten minutes, and I handled it.”
“You shouldn’t have had to handle it for even a second, let alone for ten minutes.”
“But I did, and it’s because I knew you had my back. It’s because I knew you would move heaven and earth to get me out. And you did. You punched Miles Howard in the face. In front of the chief superintendent no less. My only regret is that I didn’t see it.”
Kelly shrugs like it was nothing, but I can see he’s pleased. He likes knowing that I know he has my back. “I can always re-enact it for you.”
I chuckle and my head pounds, making me wince. “Maybe when I’m feeling better.”
Kelly returns the squeeze of my hand and lets go. “Now stop trying to distract me from callin’ your parents.”
“I’m not trying to distract you, but I honestly think I’m hungry,” I lie. If I ate right now, I’d hurl it across my hospital bed, only reinforcing my horrible nickname, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take. “Maybe we could eat something first and call them later?”
He shakes his head and turns his back, moving to the window to make his call. I poke out my tongue because I can be very immature when I feel like crap and don’t get my way. “I can see you,” he says, putting the phone to his ear. He’s looking at me through the reflection in the window.
“I know.”
My dad is usually Snoop Dogg in a crisis. He goes preternaturally calm. It’s almost eerie. I remember one time Mason and I stole two golf carts at school late on a Sunday night, the ones they keep on site for use during sporting activities. We’d been arguing about speed versus skill, and being the cocky young girl I was, I challenged him to a race through the front parking lot and down through the bush track along the edge of our school grounds. Mason won. He may have rolled his cart in a ditch, but he was able to get out and right it and still beat me, even with an ankle sprain. I may, or may not, have a hit a parked bus. It was never proven, though the bruises and scratched up skin was obvious. We were caught by a passing motorist, who conveniently happened to know my dad and subsequently called him and told him what we were up to.
Dad came down and collected us, tossed the bikes we’d ridden to the school in the back of his wagon without saying a word, and drove us home, also without saying a word, which made it worse because when they don’t yell at you, you have to sit there freaking out, stress levels building while you wait for the axe to fall.
It fell when we got home. Dad made us sit down at eleven that night and write two thousand words each on defensive driving techniques. That was that.
Then there was the time Mason shot at me with a nerf gun. The “bullets” were on
ly foam, but they had suction caps at the end of each one. It literally shot out of the plastic barrel and attached itself to my eyeball. I screamed the house down while Mason threw his nerf gun in a panic and ran. Dad simply came in, detached the offending projectile, swiped Mason’s nerf gun from the floor, and threw it in the trash.
But then Mason got shot, and I had to make the call. Dad came in acting stoic like he usually does, but I didn’t miss the way his hands trembled on the takeout coffee in his hand as we sat in the waiting room. It doesn’t seem like much—a hand tremble—but it was huge. It was definitely the equivalent of him losing his shit. It reminded me that he was vulnerable, that even though he appeared calm each and every time we pushed him to his parental limits, he was actually a bundle of worry on the inside.
But where Dad shows the bare minimum of emotion, Mum wears her heart on her sleeve. She shares her feelings. She’ll be the one sitting beside you at the train station, telling you about her day, even though you don’t know her, but she’ll do it in a way that makes you actually listen because she makes you feel comfortable with her genuine nature. Mum is the one that hugs us a little tighter before bed at night, gives us an extra kiss, remembers every special occasion, birthday, and every tooth we lost. That’s how I knew she’d adore Kelly. Her mission is to always heal and fix people, to rebuild what others have tried to destroy.
“Lydia,” he says. “It’s Kelly.”
Mum has answered the phone. She says something I can’t hear.
“Everything’s fine. Ace is fine, but she’s had a bit of a bump to the head.” My heart expands in my chest. He’s downplaying it, mindful of making my parents panic, and I love him for that. “I’ve brought her to the hospital.”
She speaks.
“Westmead,” he answers.
He’s quiet for a bit while she responds.
“We can explain more when you get here,” he says and pauses. “Yep. Will do. See you soon.”
Kelly hangs up, turning around and tucking his phone away. “They’re on their way.”
The thought of having to explain everything knots my belly. My dad will do more than just suffer a hand tremble. He’ll probably add an eye twitch just to mix things up. Mum is likely to go rogue. People who wear their heart on their sleeves can be unpredictable.
Kelly must see everything written on my face because he says something pretty damn amazing. “I’ll talk to them.”
“Come here.” I crook a finger at him. He comes over to my bed. “Closer.” Kelly brings his face in close, his lips a bare inch from mine. “Closer,” I whisper.
He ducks his head, his mouth pressing to mine in a lingering chaste kiss. He draws away, being mindful of my injury, but I’m not having it. I slide a hand around the nape of his neck, pulling him in for another one, holding my mouth to his until I’m satisfied. Then I sigh, because even the slightest kiss is everything. I settle back against my pillows saying, “Thank you, Kelly. But I’ll talk to them. It’s my issue to deal with.”
“It’s our issue,” he lectures, just as the nurse arrives in response to Kelly buzzing for my pain medication. “We’ll talk to them together.”
“Stubborn donkey,” I say, my lips twitching.
“Call me donkey one more time and you’ll be Chunks for life.”
“Donkey,” I whisper because I just can’t help myself. Don’t ever taunt me. I’ll rise to the bait and make everything that much harder for myself.
“You’ve gone and done it now.”
I widen my eyes. “Ooohh, I’m scared.”
In the end we don’t talk to them together. Not because Kelly changed his mind and left me to handle it alone but because my nurse arrives. He’s ever so lovely and obliging after checking my chart and my vitals, by giving me enough codeine to fell an elephant. I’m dragged into unconsciousness, blissful and ignorant in sleep as my parents arrive.
The sun is well up in the sky when I open my eyes and see them both hovering by my bedside. Mum looks like she tore out of the house straight from bed. Her hair is puffy on one side and her shirt is rumpled. Dad looks his usual self. I do a quick scan of my room. No Kelly. He might have left to give them a private moment. Or gone to pee. Or get coffee. I have no idea. I’m hoping it’s the latter because my head is in a fog.
“Oh, love,” Mum says, her expression hurt and kind all at once. “You should have told us.”
I blink. “Told you what?”
Dad is further down the bed and places a hand on my shin. It’s not trembling but the gesture alone is huge. “About the Marchetti chap. Kelly says he’s been arrested? And Miles coming out of the woodwork after all this time when we thought all that was done with.” Dad shakes his head. “That little shit needs a come to Jesus talk with my fist.”
Kelly told them everything rather than wait for me to wake, only it’s clear he didn’t tell them quite everything. The man of the hour walks in the room holding a tray of takeout coffee. Bless him. “Kelly already did that,” I say, smug, looking at Kelly as he sets the coffee down on the side unit by my bed. My gaze shifts back to Dad. “And not only does he have a contact in the AFP, his contact has contacts. Big ones. Ones that got Miles suspended while they investigate the whole thing.”
“He had it comin’,” Kelly mutters, far too modest of his heroic efforts as he hands a coffee each to my mum and dad.
“Owe you big for that, son,” my dad says to him, and my chin wobbles a little because he’s never called any of my past boyfriends son. I’ve only ever had two, but still. My dad has embraced him wholeheartedly with a single word, and I can’t even with that.
Kelly jerks slightly at the use of son. It jars him, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. After what happened with his own family, maybe getting involved deep in mine might be too much? I tuck it to the side to think on later.
“How are you feeling?” Mum asks in a change of subject, which I’m grateful for because I’m starting to get a bit emotional. She touches her fingers to the edge of my bandage. “The nurse came in while you were snoring and said they wanted to do another head CT to confirm the bleed is going down. They reassured us that if it wasn’t, you’d be getting worse, not better, but…” her brows draw together “…you aren’t looking so hot.”
I give my mother a fixed stare. “I wasn’t snoring.”
“Whatever you say, love,” she says in a dubious tone.
I take offence. “I wasn’t.”
“You weren’t snoring, Chunks,” Kelly intervenes as he finds the device by my bed and presses it. My bed starts to rise, bringing me to a seated position. “Your mum was just teasing you.”
I frown at my mother. Hard. And I’m not going to lie, it hurts my head, but I do it anyway. “That’s really uncool, Mum.” Kelly hands me my coffee. I pause to take it, muttering a “thanks” before continuing. “I just crashed a GTO and got arrested and hospitalised, and you think it’s okay to make a joke?”
“Chunks?” my mother echoes, ignoring my reprimand.
“She throws up a lot,” he tells her.
“One time!” I burst out, again, because I know we’ve had this conversation before. “And I’m Chunks for life.”
“Three,” he says, raising his brows at me while I take a sip of my coffee and burn my tongue. “The night you called me a fucking Sentinel and stole the Dodge Charger. Then there was the time you were down with the flu for an entire week and threw up on everything and everyone.” His voice lowers distinctly, and I know it’s because he hates saying it. “And in your cell.”
“Well, you called me a thieving whore.”
Kelly winces. “Maybe we shouldn’t be airing our dirty laundry in front of your parents.”
They both appear utterly fascinated.
“You started it,” I mutter. “Donkey.”
“Chunks.”
“Donkey.”
Kelly’s lips twitch, and I want to pull the sheets up and over my face because I can’t believe the immature
levels he makes me sink to. It’s like I’m ten and fighting with my brother all over again.
“Where’s Mason?” I ask Mum, going for another subject change.
“You still aren’t speaking? He’s back in Melbourne.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know, and it makes my heart heavy because these are the things I used to know back when he talked to me. We shared everything. Now he’s living at Racer’s house and I have no idea if he ever plans on returning. It’s obvious he’s still hurting. “Does he know?”
“It’s probably best to wait until he gets back on Saturday. In fact…” Mum perks up a bit “…why don’t we try family dinner again?”
“Mum, the last one was a disaster.”
“Well this one won’t be,” she says. Her voice is firm, but I can tell she doesn’t believe a word coming out of her own mouth because she doesn’t blink when she says it. I don’t believe her either. Mason finding out about my list of cars with Marchetti? He will lose his shit. He won’t talk to me for the rest of his natural life. Maybe we shouldn’t tell him at all.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Kelly
Loud banging comes from the front door of Ace’s parents’ home. It’s Sunday night and family dinner. Lydia’s in the kitchen already making a second batch of Jamie Oliver’s mulled pear and ginger cocktails because Ace’s dad, Ron, has downed two already. Ace watched him do it with increasing agitation, so I’m assuming her dad doesn’t normally drink much. I can’t blame him, though. These cocktails are the shit. There’s a poached half-pear in each, a cinnamon stick, and a liberal dash of rum. The good kind of rum too, not the kind that you’d see Ace buying from the store.
Ron has been commandeered by Lydia to help make more because Ace has been relegated to the couch and told not to move a muscle. Despite the bruising around her eyes deepening, the bleeding went down quickly, and she’s been acting her usual self since, though I know she isn’t. She’s still processing the events of the past week. She needs time, and I won’t lie, she needs me too. She also needs her brother, which is why we’re all here, again, for round two.