She’s Mine Now

by Parker, Weston

  His jaw was covered in so many grazes and purple bruises that I couldn’t be sure, but I had a feeling it had slackened. “What the fuck? Who called them?”

  “The hospital. It’s policy.” I shrugged again. “Enjoy your last few days of freedom. There’s almost certainly an arrest in your future.”

  I pushed away from the window and strode toward the door, turning around with my hand on the handle. “You can use the call button if you need something. Someone will probably be by eventually. Provided they have a minute to spare.”

  “You should have just let me die,” he groaned, no doubt also feeling the effects of the alcohol now that the sun had made its appearance in his room. “Why would you let me live just so I can be arrested?”

  “There’s no easy way out of this life, Craig.” I twisted the knob on the door and yanked it open. “Be a man and grow up already. All this shit you’ve been pulling is pathetic.”

  Letting the door slam shut behind me, I inhaled deeply once I was out of his room. It still smelled like shit in there.

  The police would be by again every day until Craig was ready to be discharged. Later today, they would be coming to take his statement. One sniff at the fumes in there, and I doubted they would need to ask many questions.

  As much as I didn’t revel in the misery of others, in this one instance, I decided it would be okay to not feel sorry for the guy at all. The healing process was going to be a painful bitch. It would require extensive therapy that I sure as shit wouldn’t be providing, and he might or might not have done permanent damage to more than one part of him.

  I’d never asked April point blank but I was sure he’d been arrested in the past. If this wasn’t his first conviction, he might also be facing prison time. Hell, even if it was, he might end up behind bars.

  Since I hadn’t been there when the police had arrived last night, I didn’t have many details about the accident. If someone else had been injured, he might as well become acquainted with the size of that room. A much smaller one would be waiting for him.

  I couldn’t say I’d been shocked to receive the message from the surgeon informing me of the police’s visit. He’d reeked of alcohol while we’d treated him. I just hadn’t been sure if he’d consumed it or if he’d had several bottles of bourbon dumped over his head before the accident.

  Consumption had been my first guess, of course, but that wasn’t the kind of thing I was at liberty to guess out loud. Drunk driving was a serious offense, but more especially so when there had been an accident. If push came to shove and I had to testify against him, I couldn’t have been overheard talking about how drunk he was before we’d even done the blood tests.

  I sighed just thinking about all the different possibilities of the capacity in which I might be called to testify against him. As Adi’s doctor or his, as her therapist or April’s boyfriend. Or at this point, ex-boyfriend is probably more accurate.

  My phone had been ringing and beeping off the hook again, just like it did every day, but none of those calls or messages had been from her. I hadn’t been expecting to hear from her last night, but I’d kind of wondered if maybe she’d be ready to talk by this morning.

  As it turned out, saving her ex-husband was something she evidently needed more than fourteen or so hours to get over. But I got it. Adi meant everything to her, and as desperate as I was to keep them in my life, she was even more desperate to get Craig out of theirs.

  I didn’t blame her for it, nor did I judge her for the way she’d reacted yesterday. I just really wished she’d speak to me about it. With the arrest for drunk driving coming, there was even less of a chance of Craig getting custody than there had been before.

  Moreover, Adi’s father wouldn’t be dead. But if time was what she wanted, time was what I would give her. I hated the thought of so much as a day away from her, but I had made my decision. Now it was time for her to make hers.

  In the meantime, there were other pieces of the puzzle I could get in place. Hunter was in our office when I got back to the therapy department.

  He looked up from the computer when I walked in and gave me a hesitant grin. “You don’t look like a man who just murdered someone.”

  “That’s because I didn’t.” I went to sit in the chair he usually occupied and let my hands hang between my knees, bringing my eyes up to his. “But it’s time for us to make our practice our priority. I didn’t only receive news about Craig this morning. I also heard back from the board. They’re prepared to offer us a deal. So are you ready to leave?”

  “Whenever you are,” he said, a weight suddenly seeming to lift from his shoulders. “Talk to me. What are they offering us?”

  Chapter 34

  APRIL

  What is that annoying thing tickling my nose? It took my subconscious a second to catch up to the fact that it felt exactly like Katie’s old, annoying way of waking me up.

  I groaned and tried to flip over on my side, but my boobs hit the leather upholstery of her couch instead of my bed. Cursing myself for not taking Adi and going home after dinner, I rolled over and cracked open an eye.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  Katie was fully dressed already, looking as impeccable as always with her hair pulled into a low bun at the nape of her neck and clad in a pressed white dress. She peered down at me with a steaming mug of coffee perched between her manicured fingers.

  “You got out of telling me what in the world happened yesterday because Adi was awake, and then once she was asleep, you were just too deathly tired to utter a single darn word.”

  I flung my arm over my eyes dramatically. “So you thought it was better to wake me up to talk about it now? What time is it?”

  “Just after five.” She shrugged. “You’ve had enough sleep. If you’re super nice to me, I might even go fix you a cup of coffee before I make you spill the beans.”

  “In all honesty, I’m surprised you waited this long.” I let out a long breath as the events of the day before came crashing into me. “So please will you get me some coffee while I just go brush my teeth and stuff?”

  “It’s a testament to how often you stay here that you even keep a toothbrush here,” she said before turning to head toward her kitchen. “Make sure that never changes, okay? No matter what, I don’t want to lose our sleepovers when we only started having them again after Luna fell in love.”

  “That’s not true. We just didn’t have them so often before, but we’ve always had them.” I realized that I didn’t have it in me to keep arguing with her. “We won’t lose them again though. Why would we?”

  “Oh, you know.” She flicked her hand as she paused in the doorway. “Just now that you’re seeing a guy. Please buy different toothbrushes for his place and leave those ones here. I’ve grown used to seeing them all over my bathroom.”

  “Oh, ha,” I replied humorlessly. “Very funny. I don’t think you have to worry about that.”

  When I got back to the living room, she was seated in her armchair and my coffee was standing on a coaster on her table. I climbed onto the couch I also preferred to sleep on when we stayed over here, and I pulled my blanket over my knees.

  As I leaned over to get my caffeine fix, I felt like I’d aged ten years overnight. My back ached, my hip felt like it was cracked, and my neck was so stiff I could barely turn it.

  “Jesus Christ,” I muttered. “He’s going to be the cause of my death one of these days.”

  Katie frowned at me. “Who? Chris?” Her face fell and her nose scrunched up. “Eww, don’t tell me you’re moving like that because of whatever acrobatics you two were up to before you came over here last night.”

  “Definitely not.” Although I kind of wished that were the case. “I was talking about Craig actually.”

  “You slept with Craig?” she whispered furiously, confusion darkening her eyes before she tore them away from me to look down the hall to where Adi was sleeping. “What were you thinking, April? Why?”

  “
I didn’t sleep with him,” I hissed. “Is she awake? Why are we whispering?”

  My sister cleared her throat and sat back. “If it’s not that, we don’t need to whisper. It was just either a whisper-yell or a yell-yell, if that was what you had done.”

  “It wasn’t. Fuck.” I set my coffee down to drag both hands through my hair. “You scared me.”

  “Well, you scared me yesterday and you made me wait until now to find out what happened. Enough is enough. What the heck was going on inside that hospital? Don’t tell me it was work because I already know it wasn’t.”

  “It wasn’t,” I admitted, letting my head drop back against the couch and staring at the black flecks in her ceiling. “Craig got into an accident. He wasn’t wearing a helmet. It was bad.”

  Her back shot ramrod straight and some coffee spilled, rolling down the side of her mug. She didn’t even seem to notice, which was very unlike her. “Is he okay? How bad?”

  “Bad enough that Chris had to ask me if he could resuscitate him or if he had anything in place saying they weren’t allowed to.”

  “Holy flying antelope.” Her eyes grew wide and her lips parted. She gave them a quick swipe with her tongue before her gaze darted back toward Adi’s room. “What did you say? Please tell me you didn’t do what I think I would’ve done.”

  “I did,” I said before closing my eyes for the next part of my confession. “I mean, I didn’t tell them they couldn’t resuscitate him. I just asked Chris not to if it came to that.”

  “Make that flying flipping elephants instead of antelope.” I opened my eyes just in time to see her scooting to the edge of her seat. More coffee sloshed out, but she still didn’t notice. “Did it come to that? Is Craig alive?”

  “He’s alive. Chris saved him.”

  Her shoulders visibly relaxed. “You asked him to let Craig go and he didn’t do it?”

  I nodded. “I didn’t exactly ask him. There were no words, but he knew what I was thinking.”

  Katie sat back again, the most satisfied smile on her lips. “I wasn’t sure about Chris before, but I am now.”

  “What?” I gaped at her. “It could all have been over. We wouldn’t have had to worry about Adi with him or about him coming after her or hurting her ever again.” There were about ten more points on the tip of my tongue, but Katie had heard them all before.

  She simply smiled wider. “Yes, it could have. But it wouldn’t have been right.”

  “Why not?” I blew on the surface of my coffee before testing a small sip.

  My sister sighed but she also still looked way too smug for my liking. “He had a job to do, and he did it.”

  “Yeah, but why would that make you like him even more? That’s ridiculous.”

  She shook her head, a sad light entering her eyes I wasn’t sure I’d seen before. “Nope, it makes me like him even more because he became a doctor to save lives, and he did exactly that when it was hardest.”

  “He saved the life of a man who’d have ended mine in a heartbeat given the opportunity.”

  “I wasn’t only talking about Craig’s life. He saved yours too when he saved Craig’s—and Adi’s. You should be with Chris right now, April. What are you even doing here?”

  “How did he save our lives?” I jabbed my free hand toward the bedrooms and lowered my voice. “He saved a man who’s trying to take that little girl in there away from me. I know his job is to save lives, but did he really have to save that life?”

  “Yes,” she said firmly. “What’s really going on here? You can’t honestly be mad because he didn’t let a man die?”

  “I am, but…” My brows pulled together as I squeezed my eyes shut once more. “I’m also just really embarrassed that I asked him to do that. And guilty. There’s a ton of guilt too.”

  She waved her fingers with a flourish as she pursed her lips. “Listen, if he can’t take a request like that from you under the circumstances, he’s not the right guy for you anyway.”

  “That’s what Cyrus and Luna said too.”

  “See? Everyone who really knows you knows you didn’t mean it. I’m sure he knows it too. You’d never have been able to live with yourself if he had done it, sis.” She leveled me with a look that meant business. “If you feel this bad about him not doing it, can you even begin to imagine how you would’ve felt if he had done it?”

  “No.” I lifted the blanket to my chest and snuggled underneath it like it was a shield that could hide me from all the worries in the world. “Even though I know I shouldn’t be mad at him for it and even though I know he probably didn’t take me seriously, I am still mad. I just don’t know what to do or how to get over this.”

  “You don’t get over it.” She rolled her eyes at me. “You go to Chris, you talk to him about it, and you two get through it as a couple.”

  “How, though?” I’d never been very good at the couple stuff in general.

  The love, light, forgiveness, and all that? I sucked at it. Then again, I hadn’t had very many chances to practice forgiveness in the past. None of my relationships had ever made it to the point where we really had to forgive each other for something. It was usually over before then.

  I sure know how to pick ‘em.

  “I think it’s easy enough for you to work through this,” she said. “It’s a really simple question if you think about it. If Adi ever asks you about any of this, would you be proud of Chris for what happened, or would you have been proud of what could have happened?”

  “Well, when you put it like that,” I murmured, already feeling some of the anger melting out of me. If Chris had done what I’d asked, what I’d thought I wanted in the heat of that moment, I wouldn’t have been able to look my daughter in the eyes again.

  I would never have been able to talk to her about honesty, fairness, or integrity with a clear conscience ever again. Whenever there was a lesson to be learned about any of those things, which would be often, I would have had to lie.

  Eventually, I wouldn’t even have been able to keep track of all the lies. They would’ve eaten me up from the inside out and I’d never have been able to be proud of myself or of Chris ever again.

  I’d fallen for him because he was different than any other man I’d met before. If he’d done what I’d asked of him, he wouldn’t have been different. He’d have been worse than all of them put together.

  What he’d given me by ignoring my request had been a gift, a chance to win this fucking court battle once and for all, and to do it with my head held high and my soul intact.

  “You’re right,” I said, pushing the blanket off my knees. “He did save our lives too. You’re also right about me needing to see him. Are you busy today?”

  “I have a shoot to get to, but Adi can go with me.” She grinned but then waved her fingers in front of her nose. “You’d better go have a shower before you leave. While you’re at it, go grab some clean clothes out of my closet too. I’m related to you and I wouldn’t take you back if you look and smell like that.”

  A shout of laughter left me. I suddenly felt like I’d been carrying around a elephant on my chest and the damn thing had finally moved.

  Despite all of that, I couldn’t quite imagine myself showing up to win him back while wearing anything my sister owned. “Thanks, but I think I’ll get dressed at home. If this goes well, you might not want me wearing anything of yours.”

  She paled but then burst out laughing too before waving me off. “Welcome back, my little lunatic. It’s good to finally see you laughing again. When you get him back, I think it’s time to introduce him to the family. I have a feeling he’s going to be around for a while.”

  Chapter 35

  CHRIS

  “I still can’t believe you didn’t tell me you’d ordered a sign,” I said as we walked up the stairs to our building. “Are you sure you don’t want to tell me the name that’s on it?”

  “Nope.” He grinned, fishing the keys out of his pocket before unlocking the front doors.
“I ordered it last night and the guy should be here any minute now. The reason I didn’t tell you is because you’d had a rough day and I wanted it to be a surprise. Waiting a few minutes longer to find out the name won’t kill you.”

  “It might,” I grumbled as the door swung open.

  Hunter walked in first, planting his hands on his hips as he surveyed the space from what was now our reception area.

  We had come a long way with the renovations, but there was still a lot to be done before we would be able to open. In the meantime, we would be splitting our time between here and the hospital.

  “You’re sure you rescheduled with all our patients for this morning, right?” I asked, following him inside.

  After I’d told him that it was time to make the practice our priority, he’d beamed at me and then told me he had news. We had our first couple of sessions, but he’d cleared the rest of our day so we could be here when the sign got delivered.

  He’d also promised that he’d stocked up on beer. Once the sign was up, we planned on having one to celebrate. Day drinking wasn’t really my thing, but I figured the occasion merited one damn beer. Even if I was doubtful that whatever name would be on the sign would be the one we stuck with.

  He turned to face me with a shake of his head. “Of course, I contacted all the patients. Who do you take me for?”

  “Someone who’s very excited about his express order and may well have skipped one or two names on our list.”

  “I didn’t skip anyone.” He let out a long-suffering sigh, but humor lit his eyes. “Now, are you ready to find out what our name is going to be?”

  I looked over my shoulder to see a delivery van pulling up outside. Apprehension rolled through me, but I gave him a tight nod. “Sure. Let’s see what you’ve come up with this time.”

  We walked to the curb, but Hunter motioned for me to stay back while he signed for the order. A man who was almost as big as he was heaved a package out of the bag and handed it over, causing Hunter to slump a bit before he adjusted to the weight.