“Did you kill him too?”
“I did you a favor, doll,” he sneers in my face, and while he’s too busy gloating, I close my hand around the barrel of his gun gently enough that while it’s pressed to my stomach, on its side, he doesn’t realize what I’m doing. “I told Carl he was an idiot for choosing a whore over you, and he laughed. I tried, Avery, I tried to make him see that you were the best choice.”
If we weren’t in such a precarious position, I would laugh myself. Maybe I was the best choice, but I’m grateful that I wasn’t the one Carl made.
“I even got the judge to push back the hearing. All that idiot had to do was bring you back home.”
“This is my home, Uncle Mike.” I try to breathe as steadily as I can to buy myself some time and purchase on his weapon.
“I suppose we all make bad choices. Want to know what mine were?” he asks, blowing a long breath over my face. “I didn’t take care of your father soon enough. It would’ve saved us from all of this. Now my hands are all dirty. Look what he made me do, Avery!” Another hard tug of my hair has me looking up at him again. “Look!”
“You did it all yourself,” I spit back at him, pulling at the firearm in his hand as hard as I can, refusing to let go when he releases my hair and pulls at it too.
We’re in a tug-of-war when the loud shot rings around us, making me jump back as shards of porcelain from one of the basins fly everywhere and water pours onto the floor.
“He should’ve let it go! But he just had to be the hero all the fucking time. It was always the Robert show. Nobody else mattered, only what he wanted.”
“So, you poisoned him. You had him killed like a criminal.” Turning, I step over the shards on the floor. If I can get close enough to the exit, maybe I can find a way of getting away.
“No, I took care of him myself. Like I should have taken care of you instead of sending that useless whore to do a man’s job.” Mike takes a deep breath, shrugging off the visible tension in his shoulders before he takes a step forward and swipes my legs from under me.
The impact rattles all the way up my spine to my head as I land on the wet floor on my ass.
“We all learn from our mistakes, and I’m here to fix mine now.”
“They know it’s all you. The feds have everything.”
“They have jack shit,” he laughs, and my racing heart thunders faster and faster as scorn wickedly tugs at the corners of his lips. “Because it’s not what you know, it’s who you know and what you can leverage over them.”
The door swings open suddenly, and while Mike’s attention is diverted from me, I jam my feet into his knees. The shards on the ground cut into my palms as I fall back into the wall and watch him slip back. His head hits the edge of the shattered basin as his neck snags along the sharp edge, eyes blinking and his mouth gaping open and closed like a fish out of water while blood pours from his neck. His body twitches and limbs convulse as the life floods right out of him.
That’s it.
It all happened so quickly. A split second. That’s all. One last heartbeat.
It’s over.
Except I still can’t find the air I need to live.
A sob breaks from my throat. Hot and raw, it burns as though my lungs are corroding in my chest while I look for a way out of here. There’s only one person I need right now, and nothing will stop me from getting to him.
Nothing will ever stop me from being with him again.
Garrett Dixon is my one and only. The forever and eternity I hoped for all my life. He is my everything.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
AVERY
The steady beeping of the heart monitor is lulling me to sleep when the nurse walks in to check on Garrett again. There hasn’t been any change since he’s been out of surgery. I keep waiting for him to wake up, but the nurse that checked on him at the end of the last shift said it could take a while longer. I’m at a loss for what to do. Half of my heart is lying in the bed in front of me, and the other is back at the ranch with Jo, Charlie, and the kids.
“The doctor will be doing rounds soon,” the nurse tells me when I look up at her expectantly. “He’ll be able to tell you more.”
The reality is that I don’t want to be told anything more; I just want Garrett to wake up. With a sigh, I sit back in my chair and hold on to his hand, giving it a firm squeeze in the hopes that he will respond, but there’s nothing.
“Lung trauma takes a real toll, and the meds are probably overwhelming his system. It’s not unusual for a patient to take a while to wake up after a trauma like this and such a long surgery.” With another check of the stats on the heart monitor, she leaves the glass-walled room.
I’m about to check my phone when it rings. Charlie’s name flashes up at me, and I answer it on the second ring.
“Hey.”
“Hey, Mommy.” Iris yawns down the line before asking, “Where are you? I miss you.”
“I miss you too, baby. Did you feed the dogs this morning?” I ask her, trying to distract her from asking questions.
“I did, and I fed them dinner too. Mark’s friend helped me. Did you know Ben has a metal leg? It’s like a pirate’s peg, only cooler because it looks like a real leg.”
“No, I didn’t know that,” I tell her, listening to the low bark of Ben’s laugh in the background as Charlie yells for the kids to hurry. “Is Charlie taking you to school?”
“No, she said there’s no school today.”
“Can I talk to her, please?”
“Yeah.” I hear her call for Charlie, and before she hands the phone over, she asks, “Is Doc with you?”
Instantly, my stare flits to Garrett. He’s like an angel with his dark golden hair and paled skin. His stubble is a little stained in patches from the blood he coughed up, but still, he’s the most beautiful man I have ever seen. Most beautiful, kindest, smartest, and good. He is so warm that he makes my heart melt. It wouldn’t have softened for anyone else, and I’m certain of it.
“Mommy?”
“Yes, sorry.” My lips tip up at the edges instinctively as though she can see me and it’ll make a difference to how she feels.
“Can I talk to him? He said he was taking me to school today, but he’s not here.”
“And you don’t have school.”
“I miss him too,” she murmurs, and it takes everything in me not to break down.
Swallowing down that briny swell in my throat, I sit straighter and hold on tighter to Garrett’s hand.
Come on, Doc, wake up. I thread my fingers with his and take a long gulp of sterile air.
“I love you, Mommy,” she tells me quietly, and I reply as fast as I can, as though I have no more time left.
“I love you more, Iris. I love you more than you will ever know.”
“More than your last smudge of frosting?”
“So much more, baby.” I can’t help but smile
“I love you more than my last bite of cake.”
Because I know that’s exactly what Garrett would say if he was awake, I tell her, “And Doc loves you more than his last crumb of pie.”
“He said that?”
“He did.”
“Okay,” she sings happily before adding, “Can you tell him I didn’t let Ben read the last part of The Cat in the Hat? I’m waiting for him so he can make the funny voices.”
“I’ll let him know.”
“Bye, Mommy.”
“See you later, sweet girl.” I loathe saying goodbye to her. A part of my weeps for that alone as my chest constricts painfully when she hands the phone to Charlie.
The entire time I fill her in on the situation here, I’m holding my breath, still begging Doc to wake up. My silent supplication goes unanswered, and by the time she finishes filling me in on what the FBI have said they’re doing, I’m practically half-asleep.
The constant beep, beep, beep of the monitor becomes the only thing I can hear before I can wake myself up, and I fall into a black hole
of slumber.
I’m not sure how long I’ve been out when I wake to my hand being squeezed. It takes me a while to get my bearings as I open my eyes to find Charlie beside me in a less comfortable chair.
“I brought you coffee. The real shit you love, a slice of red velvet, and a change of clothes.” Nodding at the over bed table, she pulls it closer and lowers it enough that the breakfast she’s brought me sits in front of my face.
At first the sugar-and-caramel scent is the best I’ve ever smelled, but then it really hits me and I can’t explain how badly it turns my stomach. It doesn’t make sense. It smells so good, but my stomach protests even before I’ve tried it, making me clammy and uncomfortable.
“What the hell?” she calls behind me as I practically climb over her to get to the small bathroom in the opposite corner of the room.
Of course, Charlie doesn’t leave me to spew my guts on my own. Instead, she sits on the bidet that is awkwardly close to the toilet and holds my hair back even though it’s in a messy ponytail. This is a new low for me as I cross my arms over the edge of the toilet seat and lay my head down. Everything is spinning, and I’m so clammy that the scrubs I’m wearing stick to my skin.
“Can I make a suggestion?” she asks, and before I can say anything, she does the most Priscilla thing ever and replies to herself, “Have a shower. Wash the last twenty-four hours away and put them behind you.”
Helping me up, she grabs a small duffel from the floor beside her.
“Wash bag, makeup, and clothes.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she smirks, backing out of the bathroom. “You’re also smelly, and those scrubs…don’t want him waking up and thinking it’s some weird role play or…”
“Eww! Charisma!”
“I know. After all these years, Twilight is rubbing off on me.” With a shrug and lopsided grin, she closes the door as she disappears out of the room.
It doesn’t take long for me to get washed. The shower feels good, and like Charlie suggested, the longer I stand under the warm spray, the lighter I feel. As though the events of the last twenty-four hours really are being washed away.
Stepping out of the small cubicle, I pull the towel sitting at the top of the duffel out and almost fall to my ass with a startle when a hot water bottle falls out. Jo. Only she would think to wrap the towel around a hot water bottle to warm it through. The small gesture warms all the way through me.
It’s all these little details and thoughts that make this place home. That make all the people around us irreplaceable.
When I’m dry and start to get dressed, I pause at the sight of Garrett’s hooded sweater. I rush through getting my underwear and yoga pants on, and before I pull the sweater on, I hug it to my chest, inhaling the scent of the life I adore until my lungs burn with it and my head swims with every eager breath.
There’s nothing better in this world with the exception of Garrett’s embrace and the feel of Iris cradled into me. All those times we spent together, I never once feared this outcome. I don’t know why, but he was always a superhero in my eyes. Something so damn incredible that he must’ve been out of this world.
Slipping the sweatshirt on, I brush through my hair before I knot it up on my head. When I leave the bathroom, the smell of the coffee and cake hit me again, and before I’m sick all over again, I gather both and put them in the trash down the corridor so that Charlie doesn’t notice when she returns. Last thing I want is to seem ungrateful when I am more than appreciative of her friendship and thoughtfulness.
It’s something that keeps nagging me about my friendship with Kayla. For her to do all those things. To betray me with Carl. To help in my father’s demise…and to try to kill me…
I shouldn’t be here right now. That bullet should’ve hurt me. It should’ve ended me. And I don’t know how things got so bad between us, so bad that she would do all those awful things. Maybe I wasn’t as good a friend as I should have been. Perhaps I wasn’t as appreciative and grateful of her as I could have been.
“Something wrong with the coffee and cake?” Charlie asks as I walk away from the trash to find her standing at Garrett’s door with a couple of balloons in her hand—a pink and a blue—and another bigger duffel in her other hand.
“No, I-I…”
With a low laugh, she goes in the room. “Relax, I was just kidding. I didn’t think you were going to have any of it after…” She holds her hand out, wriggling her fingers in the direction of the bathroom.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what? It’s cake and coffee.” The blip of anxiety that was starting to fill my chest eases as I watch her put the helium balloons down on the small table by the windows. “They don’t allow flowers, and they’re all out of Get Well Soon ones, so I thought these would do the job.” Charlie looks up proudly at her purchase, and something niggles at me as I chuckle at it. “I thought the ‘It’s a Boy’ wouldn’t look so weird if it had an ‘It’s a Girl’ to go with it. Brightens up the place, I guess.”
“Sure.”
“What’s wrong? Too much?”
“No.” I keep looking at the bear balloons and thinking over the last few weeks all the way through to today. Shit!
A laugh burst from Charlie’s lips as she stares between me and the balloons. “You were careful, right?”
“Sure.” Except after the conversation we had about the troubles in his marriage, it didn’t seem like something I needed to worry about. Sounds stupid now, but…
“Then why do you look so worried?”
“I’m not,” I lie even though it sours on my tongue.
“Why are you lying?”
“I’m not.”
She bursts out laughing again while I’m about ready to cry. And I don’t know why because it’s not like it’s the worst thing in the world. But it’s another surprise I didn’t see coming, and for once it would be nice for life to allow me to plan for something. To prepare…
“Can I slap him awake yet?” she asks.
“No!” I blurt at her, jumping in her way in case she goes for it anyway. This is Charlie after all.
“It worked with Mark. A good bitch slap never hurt a man.”
“No…” A deep groan comes from behind us followed by a long cough, and it’s all it takes for my floodgates to open.
I’ve never felt so much relief and trepidation all at once as when I turn and bright green eyes blink awake, focusing on me even in their bleary confusion.
“What is it with you Dixon men ruining my fun?” Charlie huffs while squeezing my shoulders from behind.
I’m frozen in awe and a mixture of feelings that completely take me by surprise, and everything goes out of the window. All the things I thought I would say. The things I thought I would do…
None of them matter as he holds me with those eyes I could swim in forever. I am lost to him irrevocably as Charlie whispers, “What you waiting for? It all works out in the end.”
It’s only when she leaves, telling us she’s going to get the nurse, that I say, “That was really stupid. You could’ve died!” I’m not sure when my feet moved, but I’m standing beside him. My entire body is trembling with the fear and anger that were simmering beneath all the other emotions and feelings. “What were you thinking?”
It’s obvious he can’t answer, which only makes it easier to pour out all the worst scenarios that crossed my mind the last eighteen hours. My frustration blurts in a string of muted yells that get more and more teary as his eyes widen and he grasps my hand.
“Worth it,” Garrett rasps, and I cry, “No, stupid. Stupid, stupid, stu—”
I’m crying so hard that I can barely see past my tear-clouded vision. The only thing I can do is hold on tighter and tighter to his hand. The nurse comes in the room, checking his stats while I watch, trying to get myself in check because this is not how I planned to react. I was meant to tell him how much I love him and how grateful I am that he’s alive. Instead, I’ve spew
ed curses and more “stupid” than a grown woman should to express themselves.
Once the nurse leaves, I sit on the edge of his bed. Stroking over one of his forearms with one hand, I hold on to his hand with my other.
“Losing you would be worse than dying,” I whisper as he covers our entwined hands with his other. “Don’t do that again, please. Okay?”
When he doesn’t reply, I meet his gaze, and all I can see is that one tear ghost from the corner of his eye down into his hair. That one lonely tear that crushed me in a way nothing else could.
“Promise me, Garrett. Promise you’ll never risk yourself like that again.”
He makes no sound as he shakes his head and draws in a deep breath that sounds almost more painful than my bruised heart.
“No,” he coughs and then adds, “I protect you. Always.”
“Not like that.”
“Always.” With a hiss, he tries to reach up to cup my face. I can’t bear the frustration pulling on his brow when he can’t, so I lean lower, closer, and bring our twined hands to my lips instead.
Peppering kisses over his knuckles, I tell him, “It’s over now.”
The news tugs a smile from his chapped lips, and while I lick mine, I lower myself so that I can press a kiss to them, the softest kiss I can muster so that I don’t hurt him. But it’s enough that the thought of pulling away cuts through me.
“I love you, honey,” I murmur over his mouth. “I love you so much.”
“So much,” he repeats raggedly as I bring his hand down to my chest and hold it over my heart.
“So, so much, Doc.”
When I pull away, he smiles. “More than—”
“My last smudge of frosting,” I say before he can finish. “The truth is there’s nothing I love more than you.”
“Iris.”
“Nothing more than both of you.”
“More than myself,” he tells me with unshakeable certainty as he holds my stare with his own and the thrumming of my heart in his hand. “Always.”
Endurance: A Salvation Society Novel Page 36