by A. Aubry
“I don’t want anything to happen to you, Jackson. I would die if anything happened to you because of me,” I whispered as I wrapped my arms around his torso.
“Nothin’ is going to happen. We will be safe, I promise,” he kissed my temple and held me tight.
Oh, I hope to god he was right.
Chapter Eighteen
Two days had passed, and it had been radio silence from Tony. Jackson and I had moved into the penthouse that our realtor found for us, and she wasn’t lying when she said it had top of the line security. I felt like I was in a fortress with how much security the place had. According to Jackson, no one on the security team had seen Tony show up at the team’s spring training. I had skipped going the past few days out of the fear of seeing Tony.
But today, I needed to see Jackson. Watching him do his thing took the edge off for me, knowing he was safe made me calmer. I took an Uber to the facility where they trained and took my usual seat. Jackson waved to me when he saw me, and I blew him a kiss. This was exactly how our days in Florida were supposed to go. Jackson was up to bat and I cheered with some of the other fans that were there to watch the team. On the third pitch, Jackson hit it up and over the fence, and I jumped up and cheered as he ran the bases with his teammates. When he made it back to home base, he jogged over to me and I gave him a quick kiss before handing him his water bottle that he had asked me to fill for him.
When I sat back down my phone chimed and I looked at the most recent text message. I expected it to be from Alexandria whom I had been texting back and forth with while she was working but that expectation was crushed when I saw the unknown number. Opening the text message, it was a picture of the kiss that Jackson and I had shared only moments before. I looked around in every direction but everywhere was empty. I put my hand over my heart and took deep breaths. There was no way that Tony could get in here undetected, security guards were on the lookout for him. Jackson caught my eye and I could tell he was silently asking me if I was okay. I gave him a weak smile and held up my phone. He knew exactly what that meant.
The rest of practice went smoothly with no other messages from the unknown number. That didn’t mean that I wasn’t suspicious of every person I saw that came and went from where I was sitting. Jackson went and took a shower after his coach ended practice and I waited for him. Security was still supposed to be in the building because of an event that was taking place in a few hours, so I felt safe enough to stay and wait. As soon as Jackson was out of the locker room with his duffle bag over his shoulder, his free arm came around my shoulders and tugged me close to him.
“He finally sent a new message?” He asked as he led me out into the parking lot.
“Yeah…I think he was here today, Jackson. The picture he sent was a picture of the kiss I gave you after you got that home run.” I put my arm around his waist as we walked.
“Maybe he’s got someone doin’ his dirty work for him. The security team here is pretty damn bright, they wouldn’t miss him if he tried to come in,” Jackson assured me.
“I hope you’re right. It just scared the shit out of me,” I sighed.
“As it should Maddie Girl,” the one voice I never wanted to hear ever again said from behind me and Jackson.
We quickly spun around and there was the man that I had been running from for over two years. Except, rather than his usual dark brown locks, his hair was dyed to a dirty blonde and was cut far shorter than I had ever seen it. My breath caught in my throat at the sight of the solid black gun that was being pointed in Jackson’s direction.
“Tony, put the gun down,” I demanded with a shaky voice.
“No, I don’t think I will, baby,” Tony sneered.
I swallowed hard and looked at Jackson who was stock still but looked as calm as a fucking cucumber. How the hell was he not freaking out right now? I was ready to start screaming and running in circles I was so scared.
“I’m—I’m not your baby anymore,” I said with less confidence than I wanted.
“Of course, you are. I have been worried sick about you for two years. One day, I go to work, and everything is perfectly normal. A few hours later I come home, and my girlfriend is missing. Gone without a note or even a goodbye.”
“Because you abused her,” Jackson spoke up.
Tony laughed, “Oh, I would never hurt my sweet Maddie Girl.”
“You slapped her and shoved her around as though she was nothin’,” Jackson moved me behind him, but I held onto his arm.
“Is that the story you are telling people? You know if I ever did anything it was because you didn’t follow the rules, Madeline. You had to be taught that if you didn’t follow the rules, there would be consequences,” Tony adjusted his arm, the gun pointing directly at Jackson. I didn’t know exactly what part of his body it was pointed at, but I knew gunshots were no joke.
“You don’t treat a lady that way. You don’t hurt them, you cherish them,” Jackson spat.
“Is that what you’re doing there, Jackson Ryder? Cherishing my woman?”
“I’m not your woman!” I yelled.
“That’s right, you married this sorry excuse for a man. His first wife cheated on him and got pregnant with another man’s baby…probably because he didn’t satisfy her.”
“Or maybe because she was a whore,” I mumbled under my breath and Jackson looked over his shoulder at me and winked at my response.
“You were supposed to marry me, Madeline. Don’t you remember that? A few days before you left, I proposed to you and you said that I had to ask your parents for their permission before you could accept. That was what I did on my way home that day. And then I come home to find you gone. I called your mother and she said she had no idea where you could have gone.”
“No, Tony. I told you that I couldn’t marry you. I don’t know what type of drugs you have been doing but I never said anything about how I would marry you if you got their permission. My parents hated you, my mother helped me run away. There was no way we were ever going to be together.”
Tony tried to point the gun at me, but Jackson was in the way, “She’s not worth protecting there, Jackson. She doesn’t follow the rules that you set. She’s a poor excuse for a partner.”
“She is worth protectin’. She is my wife and I love her. I’ve never had any problems with the way that she is and if you think so poorly of her, then maybe you shouldn’t be comin’ after her,” Jackson fumed.
“That’s just the thing, she is mine. You don’t just walk out on someone and expect them to get the picture. I’ve been trying to find her for two years so that I could get her back into my arms,” Tony’s voice was menacing, and it sent a shiver down my back.
Yeah, back into his arms so he could beat me.
“Well, Tony, it’s not goin’ to be today.”
“Actually, I think it might.”
A gun shot rang off and Jackson fell back against me. I screamed and eased Jackson to the ground. Just then two security guards ran out of the building, getting the gun away from Tony and slamming him up against the wall. I looked down at Jackson as blood was soaking through his shirt, a small round hole was made several inches under his right shoulder. I dropped to my knees and put pressure against the wound.
“Jackson, baby, stay with me,” I begged.
He looked up at me, his breathing already sounding off, “Madeline, I love you.”
“No, Jackson, you can tell me that when you’re all better. Please…I can’t lose you,” I cried.
“Mad…tell me you love me.”
My bottom lip quivered as Jackson’s left arm raised and he put his hand on my cheek, “Please, Mad…”
“I love you, Jackson Ryder…I’m over the moon for you…”
His eyes closed, and his hand fell down onto his torso, “Jackson? Jackson! Wake up!”
The security guard that I knew as Scott ran over to us as I tried to shake Jackson’s left arm, begging him to come back.
“I need a bus in the w
est parking lot!” Scott yelled into his walkie talkie.
Someone responded, and he reached across Jackson and put pressure on the wound. I could hear Tony laughing as the other guard was putting him in handcuffs. I sobbed as I ran my hand through Jackson’s hair as I told him that I loved him hoping that it would bring him back to me. The ambulance appeared quickly and loaded Jackson onto a stretcher. They took off so quickly that I wasn’t even allowed to get in the back with them. The last thing I heard was one of the EMT’s yelling that he needed the defibrillator and I collapsed onto the ground.
My Jackson was gone…
You know how in movies when something major or scary happens to the main character and they are all like ‘I was so cold’ and you say, ‘what a crock of shit’? Yeah, I was one of those people until today. I couldn’t get warm, I felt like all of the warmth and happiness was sucked out of me the second I saw how much blood was pouring out of my husband. Scott had driven me as fast as he could to the hospital and when we got there, they said that Jackson was in surgery. I guess that could be taken as a good sign because that meant that he was still alive. But there was always the possibility of something going wrong as well.
“Maddie, you need to eat somethin’,” Shelby said softly from beside me.
We could call it fate that Shelby was in town visiting her boyfriend Brian, who was at spring training for the Red Sox. She made the calls to their father and stepmother before calling my parents to tell them what happened. If I was being honest…I hadn’t spoken since the doctor had told me that Jackson had gone into cardiac arrest on the way to the hospital and that they had to use the defibrillator on him. He lost a lot of blood as well and everybody knew that that was not a good thing.
I shook my head and waved away a sandwich she had gotten for me at the cafeteria before pulling the blanket the nurses had given me around me tighter. Apparently, when someone suffers even the trauma of seeing someone being shot, they could go into shock. So, the first thing that the nurses did was wrap me in a warm blanket before doing any other checks. I was still wearing my clothes that were soaked in Jackson’s blood, but I couldn’t bring myself to even think about changing.
“Come on, Jackson would want you to be eatin’,” Shelby encouraged.
I looked over at her and pursed my lips unable to keep my tears at bay that I had been fighting off. They trickled down my cheeks and I buried my face in my blanket. Jackson had been in surgery for the last three hours and since the first talk that I had with the doctor, I hadn’t heard a single thing. Shelby wrapped her arms around me and held me as I cried. I had never felt as miserable as I did at that specific moment.
“Shelby! Madeline!” Janette’s voice cut through the quiet waiting room.
Shelby got up quickly and hugged her stepmother before hugging her father. I got up and continued to sob as Janette threw her arms around me and rubbed my back. Shelby had told my parents that I didn’t want them to worry about coming down here until we knew exactly what was going on. I couldn’t take a room full of people pitying me because my husband was dying a few rooms away.
Janette gasped when she caught sight of my clothes, “We need to get you changed, Maddie.”
“She won’t leave, Janette. I’ve tried gettin’ her to change her clothes and eat or drink. She hasn’t spoken in hours,” Shelby said from beside her father.
Janette looked at me, “Madeline, sweetheart, how about we see if the hospital will give you some scrubs? That way you won’t be in these dirty clothes. Would that be okay?”
Taking her idea into consideration, I finally nodded. It probably didn’t look good to be sitting in a waiting room drenched in someone else’s blood. I was getting some weird looks from a couple who had come in not that long before Chase and Janette arrived. Janette led me to the nurses’ station and asked for a spare set of scrubs. The nurse happily handed over a pair of blue scrubs and pointed to a bathroom behind us that I could change in. She even gave me a plastic bag that was usually given to those in surgery to put my dirty clothes in.
I went into the bathroom and stripped out of my dirty clothes. Taking a few wet paper towels, I wiped the blood that had soaked through my shirt and onto my skin away. When I looked in the mirror, I didn’t even recognize myself. I was far paler than I was this morning, which was unusual because we had spent the entirety of last week in the sun on our honeymoon and we had been taking walks every night along the beach. I came back out into the waiting room with my belongings bag in my hand and set it underneath my chair.
Chase hugged me and let me take my seat again. Shelby sat on one side of me holding my left hand while Janette sat on my other and held my right. I should have just said I love you to Jackson right away after he said it…I should never have let him get dragged into this shit with Tony. But even though Tony was now behind bars, it didn’t make me feel any better. He stole the one thing that really mattered to me, he took away my husband.
A few hours later, yet another doctor walked into the room in search of the family that he needed to talk to. This had been the routine for several hours and every time that they were looking for someone, it wasn’t me. So, when they called out Ryder the first time, I didn’t even process that they were saying my last name until Shelby nudged me and stood up. The doctor came over to us just as I stood up as well.
“Jackson is just getting out of surgery. We got the bullet out, it was lodged in some of the tissue, but it came out nicely. It did just miss a few of the arteries that are in that area of the body so that explains why he had so much bleeding. We did give him a blood transfusion while he was in surgery due to how much blood was lost before he was brought in and during surgery,” the doctor explained.
“What about his heart…is he going to be okay?” I asked softly.
“We attributed that to the loss of blood when the ambulance got to him. All throughout surgery his heartrate remained strong and that is a good sign. Jackson will need to be monitored for a few weeks but other than that, I don’t see why Jackson will not make a full recovery. His body just needs some time to process what’s going on, so you just need to give him time.”
“Can I see him?” I questioned.
“For now, only one person at a time should be in the room. But as soon as he is settled into his room, I will send a nurse down here to get you,” the doctor gave me a small smile before turning around and heading back out the way he came.
I turned around and hugged Shelby. Our hug quickly turned into a group hug as Chase and Janette joined in. Jackson was going to be okay, at least, the doctor believed he would make a full recovery. I would never let him put himself in harms way for me like that ever again, I would not allow it. With this good news, I finally ate the sandwich that Shelby had been trying to get me to eat. Almost as soon as I finished, the nurse came in and told me I could follow her to Jackson’s room.
When she left us alone, I moved a chair to Jackson’s bedside and took his hand in mine, “Jackson, I’m here. You made it through surgery. God, I was so scared. I can’t lose you, you are my world.”
The soft beeping from the machine kept me calm. It told me that he was still with me. The warmth of his hand in mine was exactly what I needed. I watched the steady rise and fall of his chest and focused on every inch of his face. Thanks to this injury caused by Tony, Jackson’s baseball season was probably going to be on hold for quite a while. I shouldn’t have been having the selfish feelings about it that I was. Injury meant more time together, it shouldn’t have made me happy, but it did. Jackson had spent many days and nights taking care of me, now it was my turn to take care of him.
I felt a slight pressure on my head and then it was gone. It felt like someone was playing with my hair and it sort of weirded me out. My eyes weren’t open, and I had probably been asleep for all of five minutes. My eyes opened lazily, taking in the fact that the room was now mostly dark except for a few overhead lights on in the room. Correction, I had probably been asleep for more than five min
utes. It was light out when I closed my eyes for just a few moments and now it was dark. How great. That was when I saw an arm lift again and felt fingers through my hair. That was odd.
“It’s about time you woke up, sleepin’ beauty,” Jackson’s soft voice said.
I shot up quickly in my seat and his arm fell back down onto the bed. Taking in every second, I realized that Jackson’s eyes were open, and his smile was wide. I screamed and jumped up from my chair, wrapping my arms around his neck and hugging him tightly.
“Easy, Madeline, easy,” Jackson took a sharp breath of air before putting his hand on my back.
“I’m so sorry…” I could feel my bottom lip trembling.
“It’s okay, you just have to steer clear of that arm for a little while,” Jackson smiled.
“No, Jackson, I’m not sorry about that…I mean…yes I am sorry about hurting you just now…but I’m sorry about how it happened. I’m sorry that Tony shot you while you were just trying to protect me and I’m sorry—"
Jackson cut me off with a kiss.
“What was that for?” I quietly laughed.
“Because I have been wantin’ to do that since I woke up and saw you sleepin’ at my bedside,” his nose ran along mine.
“Oh, Jackson. I was terrified that I was going to lose you. When you passed out, god, I was begging you to come back.”
“If I remember correctly, you were bein’ stubborn and wouldn’t say that you loved me right away.”
“I had to keep you talking. I needed to keep you awake until help could come, and I failed.”
“You told me you loved me. I wouldn’t call that a failure.”
“I love you. I love you. I love you,” I said quickly before kissing him several times.
Jackson chuckled and ran his hand up and down my back, “I’m sorry that you had to be so scared, Madeline.”