by Jo Raven
Since when is her hair so long it touches her shoulders? She looks… thinner, somehow. And sad.
Still the most gorgeous girl in the world.
“Hi Kaden,” she says, waving with a wiggle of her fingers and shooting me a tiny, unsure smile. “How are you?”
Oh fuck yeah, something’s definitely wrong.
But what?
Chapter Eight
Hailey
I can’t believe I’m standing here, in front of Kaden.
Can’t believe I’m seeing his face again. Even banged up as he is, he makes my heart race and my palms sweat.
He makes my blood sing and my mouth smile.
How does he do it? All he has to do is look at me with that light in his eyes. For a while, he made me feel like the most important person in the world. More than my parents ever did. More than anyone ever has.
And when I lost him, I thought I was going to die from sorrow.
He’s looking at me like that now. Like I’m the only light in the room. Like he’s drinking me in and can’t stop, like he can’t see anyone and anything else but me.
Oh yeah, this is much harder than I thought it would be. And I have only just arrived.
“Hay,” he says, his rough voice caressing my pet name. “Come here.”
I approach the bed as if in a dream, my purse slipping off my shoulder and falling to the floor with a soft thud. His head is wrapped with white gauze, a big pad pressed to one side, over his ear. His blond hair is falling in greasy strands around his face, and his beard has grown longer, but it’s him, and I can’t even…
When he opens his arms, I just fall in them, forgetting for a second that he’s hurt in my need to wrap myself around him.
God, I missed this. Missed him. His skin is cold from the hospital air-conditioning, but his heart beats steadily under my ear, and under the stench of drugs, he smells of Kaden: the scent of warm, sexy man with a hint of leather and engine oil.
“Kade,” I mumble against his chest, and his strong arms are wrapped so hard around me my bones are creaking. “God.”
I can’t find the words. It hits me how close he came to dying, and I want to bawl like a baby.
Apparently I’m not over him.
Yeah, not that much of a newsflash, I know. This guy has a habit of tearing down all my self-imposed subterfuges and illusions, laying me naked.
No barriers.
Which is really a problem when a barrier is what you need between yourself and your handsome ex.
Between your desire and your rational mind.
Between today and yesterday. All the yesterdays.
How do you move on when your sexy past keeps catching up with you? I did wish for a miracle, didn’t I?
I didn’t wish for him to be hurt, though. Or for my new-found, delicate equilibrium to be shaken and broken to pieces again.
Then again… who said miracles are always perfect? I guess they just get the job done.
So I should just shut up and take whatever time I have with this man. Forget about yesterday, and about tomorrow, and for once just live for today.
“You okay, baby?” he asks. He hasn’t let me go since I arrived, practically growling at the nurses when they tell us visiting hours are over until they leave. “You seem sad.”
I’m half-sprawled over him on the narrow bed. He says he has no injuries other than his head, but I asked a nurse just to make sure. She said that his ribcage is bruised and one knee banged up but otherwise he’s fine.
Except for his skull, which is thankfully thick enough it didn’t break when he slipped on a slick of oil in the car workshop where he works and cracked it on the floor. They don’t know how long he’d been unconscious when they found him, and it seems this version of Kaden is not as confused as the one I’d have met had I come two days ago.
At least now he remembers his own name and what year it is.
Jesus.
So I cling a little bit more tightly to him, and he growls deep in his chest. It’s different from the menacing growl he keeps directing at the poor nurses.
No, this sounds more like… a purr? Like he’s a content big cat, a lion, with his big paw around my back.
I keep feeling the urge to scratch behind his ears – or rather down his muscular chest, down that happy trail leading into his briefs…
…and I should stop this thought right there, because I’m not getting anywhere near that happy trail or his briefs, and not only because he’s wearing one of those awful blue hospital gowns and he’s laid out with a bad concussion.
Nope.
Me and Kaden naked? Not happening. Bad idea.
But my mind keeps wandering where my hands can’t.
My mind is out of control and should get spanked.
Which brings me back to memories of Kaden spanking me and how good it felt to be under his hands, at his mercy, in his control, that my body reacts without permission, my thighs clenching with an ache nobody else has been able to satisfy like he did.
Dammit. Yeah, I am totally out of control, and all I’ve done is see him, exchange a few words with him and place my head on his chest.
Living in an illusion where we’re still together, where our epic row never happened. Where he cares for me and never cheated.
Where I never found those photos and messages on his phone, where I ignored the fact he rarely took me to his apartment, and I lived in blissful ignorance and amazing sex-filled nights with him.
But no matter how beautiful a dream is, sooner or later, you wake up.
“You look sad,” Kaden says for the hundredth time, pointing the spoon at me and an accusing look. He’s been eating some soup and Jell-O the hospital staff brought him.
“I’m not sad.”
“Where were you? You were not here.”
And I shouldn’t feel guilty. He isn’t accusing me. He doesn’t sound angry, just… worried. A bit sad himself.
He keeps asking me that, and I keep replying I’m fine, but he forgets. He keeps asking if I’m okay, when he’s the one hurt.
But okay that’s not entirely true. He hurt me, too, and I bet he can see it on my face. I’ve never had much of a poker face, and from the start he was able to read me like an open book.
The problem is, he keeps forgetting the lies I’m telling him, about everything being fine.
“Hailey.” He strokes my back, his voice rumbling in his chest under my ear. “What’s wrong? Why won’t you tell me? Why won’t anyone tell me?”
“You hit your head,” I whisper, horrified that I’m once more caught on the cusp of tears. “You slipped—”
“Not what’s wrong with me, dammit. I know I hit my head.” He lifts a hand to the bandage wrapped around his head. “I mean with us. What’s wrong with us?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit.” His voice cracks on that one word.
I lift my head and take a good look at him. His eyes are closed, his brow furrowed, his jaw tight. He looks like he’s in pain, which he probably is, despite the medication they’ve given him.
“I missed you,” I tell him, and I hope he hears the truth in my voice. If I can’t tell him everything, and can’t lie either, then I’ll have to lie by omission.
He blinks, as if having trouble focusing on my face. “You did?”
“Yes.”
“Why? I’ve been right here, all along.”
My throat closes up. He makes it sound so simple. So perfect. Makes me feel like a heel for walking out.
Remember what happened, I tell myself. It wasn’t like that. Remember the facts.
He cheated. You left before he hurt you worse. You ended it on your terms this time, unlike last time. It’s what saved your sanity.
But now here I am, questioning my sanity and my decisions.
Bad, bad idea, being here, with his pale green eyes on me, and on top of that raw sexiness this unexpected air of vulnerability and hurt that tugs at my heartstrings…
Dear God, I’m falling for him all
over again, and this can only end badly for me.
Chapter Nine
Kaden
She says we’re fine.
But she’s hiding something.
She seems okay. No bruises I can see, and she moves without pain. If she was in the accident with me, then she got off light, and that’s fucking great.
The accident…I can’t remember what happened. I hit my head.
I lift my hand to the bandage.
How…? What sort of accident was I in? Fuck, I’m sure someone told me what happened, but I can’t… can’t remember.
I rub at my forehead harder, wishing I could jab a stick into my brain and jumpstart it. Oil the engine. Do something to jog my sluggish memory.
Her small hand on my face startles me. She’s sitting on the bed, leaning so close I could kiss her. “It’s all right,” she whispers, and all I can see is her lips, soft and warm.
Hey, she’s my girl, right?
So I lean right in and kiss her, tasting her mouth, cupping the back of her head in my hand, pulling her closer to me. Fuck, I missed her taste, sweet and sexy.
Feels like years since I last kissed her.
So weird.
Even weirder though is that she breaks away with a cry, pushing me away, and jumping off my bed.
“I can’t do this,” she whispers, tears rolling down her cheeks, and runs out of the room.
If I had my suspicions before, now I know without the shade of a doubt that something’s definitely one hundred percent fucking wrong, and I need to find out what it is so that I can fix it.
And make my girl smile again.
Time passes. Nurses come in and go out. The pain in my head increases, then ebbs.
Hailey doesn’t come back.
I try sitting up but I’m so damn dizzy I throw up and then the nurses bustle in again and tuck me back into bed.
So fucking tired. “Where’s Hailey?” I ask them, but they shake their heads at me and tsk and check my IV and the darkness closes over me before I get an answer, dammit.
I float away on a flood of blackness, an oil slick that slithers under my body, writhing like a plague of rats, carrying me on their backs.
This is hell.
Where’s Hailey? I try to call out her name but my voice is gone, my throat clogged with fur, with nails, with tails. I’m choking, on words I should have spoken, promises I should have made, calls I should have put through to her.
Come back, Hailey.
Where did she go?
Why did she miss me?
Why do I miss her so fucking much? It’s as if she’s been away from me for far too long. But she was here a second ago.
An hour ago.
A week ago.
Months.
I’m sinking under, going deep, so deep I can’t breathe, I can’t see the surface, and all I want, all I need is her hand on my face, her head on my chest.
How can I get her back?
“He’s been asking for you,” a voice says from somewhere on my left, and I struggle to wake up. It’s like wading through quicksand. It keeps sucking me back down. “In his sleep.”
“I only came to say goodbye,” she replies.
Hailey.
The sound of her voice jolts me like an electric current, and I open my eyes. “Hay,” I rasp, my voice like broken glass.
I reach for her, but she seems too far away. I try to sit up but my head is too heavy to lift. Goddammit! Groaning, I try to roll on my side, push myself up so that I can swing my legs off the bed and—
“Jesus, Kaden, don’t!” Hailey hurries around the bed and puts a firm hand on my chest, keeping me still.
Damn, I have to be really bad off if Hailey can keep me pinned down like this.
“Don’t. Go.” My throat burns, raw as if I’ve been yelling in my sleep.
Maybe I have. I remember yelling for her.
She sits on the bed, her pretty mouth downturned, her eyes red. Has she been crying? “I have to go, Kade.”
“But why? Go where?” I don’t understand. My head really fucking hurts and my heart is booming so hard I might break a rib. “Hay. Talk to me, dammit.”
She flinches and turns her face away from me.
Shit, I didn’t mean it to come out like that, but hell, I’m at my wits’ end here. “Just… talk to me? Please?”
I fucking hate how miserable she looks. I put my hand on her leg and she sighs, her chestnut hair falling in her dark eyes. I itch to stroke it back, tuck it behind her ears, like I did before…
Before what?
“It’s… never mind.” She rubs a hand over her mouth and I remember its taste. “I, uh. I’ll come by again tomorrow, okay? Let you rest.”
“I don’t need to fucking—” I grind my teeth and swallow my anger. She’s not the cause of it. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“Nothing, I… Nothing you can do about it, Kade.” She glances at me, a quick look from under her long lashes, as if checking that I’m accepting what she says. “Everything will be fine.”
Not that everything is fine. But that it will be. What does she mean?
But I don’t ask again, and I don’t curse, because I don’t want that scared look in her eyes again, and I don’t want her to go.
I don’t want her to leave. I need her here, with me. My nightmare still has a chokehold on me, and I can’t breathe unless I can see her and touch her and know she’s okay.
And if that doesn’t classify me as a certifiable crazy person, then I don’t know what does.
Chapter Ten
Hailey
This guy will be the death of me. He’s breaking my heart all over again, and he has barely spoken a few sentences since I arrived. But the way he says my name, the way he holds on to me and asks me to stay, the way he asks what’s wrong… That’s the Kaden I knew and loved. The man I fell in love with, head over heels.
The guy I’ve been trying to forget.
How long can this charade last? How long can I pretend I’m fine, that we are fine?
Remember he’s not well, I remind myself. This isn’t about you, Hailey, it’s about him. No matter what, I’d never want any harm coming to him, and if being here is what it takes…
Though I still don’t know how long it will take. I have my life back in Chicago.
You mean Mags? A treacherous little voice whispers in the back of my mind. Or Trent who’s been harassing you day and night?
Or… did you mean your photography? Because you have your camera right here, and the guy who’s been starring in all the photos you picked. You could make new photos. The ones you’re missing for your exhibition.
And get his consent to use them.
Sounds like a plan.
Fine, then. I look at him again, fighting against the magnetic pull of his gaze with all I have, and nod. “I’ll stay.”
The relief washing over his face is real. The smile tugging at his full mouth is real. He’s real, solid and warm beside me, and what I feel for him sure is real. It wouldn’t hurt so much otherwise.
It’s killing me that everything else is fake.
A nurse brings in a cot for “Mr. Hansen’s fiancée” and it makes me wonder what Kaden’s brother told them about me.
What else, I mean. I’ve never been Kaden’s fiancée. He never seemed interested in making our relationship official in any way. I met his brother purely by chance. They dropped in to visit without warning, not knowing anything about me.
I guess he never really took me seriously. I should have heeded the signs. Not my first rodeo, after all.
Don’t know why I thought I could trust him.
Then again…he’s so frigging gorgeous it’s easy to see why I let my defenses down. Yikes. I lie down on my cot with its starchy sheets and its smell of antiseptic and watch him sleep. Even exhausted and banged up as he is, he looks too hot to be legal. His beard glints silver in the lowlight of the bedside lamp, his hair like gold, and relaxed in sleep, his face is beautiful. The stron
g lines of his jaw and nose, the fair crescents of his lashes, his soft mouth.
I’d reach for my camera, but I don’t want to make noise and wake him up. The docs said he’ll need lots of sleep in the next days and weeks. They don’t like that he still can’t remember stuff.
Like me and him and all that happened.
But they are quite happy with his balance and focus, even if it seems way off to me. They think he’ll be okay with lots of rest.
And they asked if I could stay for a few days. Until he remembers. Because he’s calmer when I’m around, apparently, and that helps the healing process.
Yeah, I’d already decided that, so here I am.
Staring at his handsome face and wondering how I’ll survive this craziness.
Just a few more days, Hailey, I tell myself as I force my eyes shut and chase after sleep. You can do this. You can be around him and not break down, not tell him the truth before he remembers and not slap his rugged, handsome face.
Then if he gets angry with you for playing this game, just leave. Don’t let it destroy you.
Don’t fall for him again.
But I’m afraid it’s already too late.
Kaden’s sleep is restless. It doesn’t help that my cot is as comfortable as a plank of wood. He groans so loudly at some point that I get up to check on him, worried about him.
Is this normal? He sounds like he’s in agony.
He’s not moving, but his back is arched, tendons standing out in his neck. His lips are peeled back, his teeth bared. Looks like one hell of a nightmare, and my heart squeezes in my chest.
I hate seeing him suffer.
Shouldn’t I like watching him suffer after everything?
What’s wrong with me?
Why do I still care?
I carefully put a hand on his shoulder, debate shaking him and decide against it. I’m pretty sure a person with a concussion doesn’t need his brain rattled any more than it already is.
So I just squeeze the rock-hard muscle of his shoulder, take a deep breath and start talking to him. “Kaden. Kade! Wake up. Come on. It’s just a dream. Everything’s okay, I promise. Just wake up. Open your eyes for me. It’s me, Hailey. You know me. Come on, look at me.”