by Claire Adams
“Chloe, baby, you’re awake.”
“Logan?” He smiled, but he had tears in his eyes. I suddenly remembered Kimber saying something about me making him cry. Am I dreaming? Why is he so sad? “Logan, are you okay?” He laughed and squeezed my hand. It hurt, but I didn’t care.
“I’m fine, baby, just fine. Are you okay?”
“I think so. Where are we?”
“Oh, baby, you’re in the hospital. You fell and hit your head.” I closed my eyes to try and remember, but as soon as I did he said, “Chloe!” I pulled them back open and he looked relieved. “I’m sorry, I thought I lost you again.”
“I’m here. I just can’t remember.”
“It’s okay. You don’t have to remember right now. I’m going to get the nurse, okay?”
“You’ll come back?”
“Oh yeah, they couldn’t keep me away.”
I watched him get up and as he left the room a sense of sadness and loss overwhelmed me all at once. I felt afraid and alone, and I thought he wasn’t going to come back. I tried to push myself up again and the pain in my head returned. I reached up to touch it and realized that I had an IV in each arm. What the hell happened to me?
“Here we are, baby,” Logan said as he came through the door with a young, Hispanic girl dressed in pink scrubs.
“Well, hello there. How are you feeling?” the girl asked me.
“Kind of like shit,” I told her honestly. She laughed. Logan was grinning from ear to ear. I had an urge to kiss him and suddenly wished the girl in pink would leave us alone again. Instead, she took a white pen out of her pocket and said,
“I’m going to check your pupils.” She shone a bright light in my eyes that didn’t help my headache at all, and then she had me squeeze her hands and press my feet into her palms. She asked my name and if I knew where I was. I told her in the hospital because that’s what Logan told me, but when she asked me in what city, I had no idea. It was weird to not be able to remember things.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” she asked me. I closed my eyes and after a few seconds I opened them and said, “Wearing my wedding dress.” The girl looked questioningly at Logan. He cleared his throat and his voice sounded shaky as he said, “That was a couple of weeks ago.”
“A couple of weeks? How long have I been here?”
“You hit your head this afternoon, and you were brought in around two p.m. It’s nine now.”
I looked at Logan and then down at his left hand. I pulled my left hand out of the sheet that was covering it and looked at it: no rings on either of our fingers. I closed my eyes again and tried to remember our wedding. It was a blank. There was nothing after the day my mom and Charlotte worked on altering my dress.
“Logan, did we get married? Where’s my ring?” My questions made him suddenly look distressed again.
“Let’s let the nurse finish examining you and then we’ll talk, okay?”
I looked back at the nurse. She was writing something in a chart, my chart I guessed. “I’m going to call the doctor,” she said. “I’ll be back.”
I looked back at Logan. He looked like he didn’t want her to go. As soon as she was gone, I said,
“Logan, what happened? Where’s my ring?”
He came over next to the bed and sat down again. Putting his hands up on the railing of the bed he looked down at me and said, “We didn’t get married, Chloe. You didn’t want to marry me.”
“What? Why? I don’t understand.” I felt anxious suddenly and restless. I wanted to get out of the bed. I felt like the room was too stuffy and I couldn’t breathe. I started pulling at the tubes and wires that bound me up and kept me from moving around freely.
“Don’t pull on those, Chloe,” I heard Logan say. The sound of his voice agitated me further for some reason. I grabbed onto the IV in my left hand and pulled. It slipped out but there was liquid dripping from it and blood oozing from my vein.
“Jesus.” Logan reached across me and pressed a red button on the side of my bed and then he grabbed my left hand as I was trying to dig the other IV out of my right arm.
“Logan, I can’t breathe. I need to get out of here.”
“It’s okay. They’re going to come help you. Try to calm down.”
“No, I have to get out of here.” I was trying to sit up, but Logan was holding me down and I was getting mad. He had his weight on top of me, pressing my shoulders into the bed and he yelled for the nurse.
It was only second later when two of them ran in. I felt one of them press something into my hand where I’d pulled out the IV and the other one was putting something into the IV on my other arm. They were talking to me, but their voices sounded muffled again. I could hear Logan talking, too. He was telling me it was going to be okay.
All I felt was anxiety, like I was crawling out of my skin. I fought with the nurses; I just wanted out. I needed out. But they were stronger than me, or Logan was helping them. I lost track of what was going on and then suddenly, I was sleepy again. I was sucked back down into the darkness and that time while I slept, I dreamt.
Logan was getting married, but not to me. He was marrying his assistant Mel. His ex-wife was at the wedding and she was crying and begging Mel not to marry him. I was just sitting in the audience watching until Kimber suddenly ran into the church in her flower girl dress and started yelling at me, “This is all your fault.” My head hurt and I didn’t want to be there. I started calling for Logan.
“Please take me home, Logan. Please, I don’t want to be here.” He was ignoring me, so I yelled out his name again. That time, I heard his voice. He was saying,
“Shh, baby, it’s going to be okay.”
“Logan?” I realized the voice wasn’t in my dreams and I opened my eyes. The room was filled with light and Logan was there. His eyes were streaked with red and his hair was disheveled. He had dark stubble across his chin and cheeks like he hadn’t shaved in a while. “Logan, am I still in the hospital?”
“Yeah, but you’re going to be okay. The doctor thinks you just have a concussion. You hit your head so hard.”
“What did I hit it on?”
“A tree,” he said. “You fell out of the tree that you and Kimber were sitting in and you hit your head on the way down.”
“A tree? I climbed a tree?”
He smiled. “Yeah, you were being the cool aunt, going after Kimber and trying to explain…things, to her.”
“Things like what?”
“Like why we didn’t get married. You don’t remember still?”
“No. I can’t remember.”
“The doctor said the concussion might cause you to have some short-term memory loss for a while, but you should get it back soon.”
“Logan, why didn’t we get married?”
“Because I betrayed you,” he said. “I hurt you, and you didn’t want to marry me.”
I closed my eyes again, and I was sorry that I did because suddenly it all came rushing back. I wanted my concussion back.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
LOGAN
They kept Chloe for another twelve hours for observation. The family came in and out to see her, but with a lot of effort, I finally convinced them to take the kids to see the lights and to all the activities they had planned.
Chloe wasn’t speaking to me again unless she had to; I guessed that meant she had all her memories back. I did my best to sit quietly in the corner and not hover over her, but it was hard.
When they started talking about discharging her, I knew there was no way she’d be comfortable for eight hours in the car, so I made other arrangements to get her home, and by home, I meant the cottage by the ocean. She might have been pissed about it, but the doctor told me she needed to be somewhere quiet and relaxing, and from what Whitney had told me about the loft she lived in now, that was not it.
“Chloe, for the first few days after you get home, you’ll need some help. I just want you resting, no strenuous activities, no work, no sta
irs, no Christmas shopping.” Chloe looked distressed as the nurse gave her the instructions. The nurse must have noticed because she stopped and asked, “Do you have someone that can help you?”
“Yes,” I answered for her. Chloe looked at me and furrowed her brow. The nurse smiled and went on to tell her when to follow up with her own doctor and how to take her pain medications and when to go back to the emergency room. She handed the paperwork to me when she finished and said,
“I’m just going to take out her IV and she’ll be good to go. Did you bring some clothes for her?”
“Yes.” I pulled her suitcase that Mom brought from the manor over to the side of the bed.
“Good, I’ll help her get dressed while you bring the car around.”
“Um, we’re not going to go by car. I’ll need a wheelchair to take her up to the helipad.” I’d rented a helicopter to take us back to Manhattan. My parents and siblings were sure Chloe wouldn’t like the idea, but there was no way I was sending her home in a car.
“Helipad?” Chloe asked. The nurse looked confused, as well.
“She can’t be in a car for eight hours,” I tried to explain.
“We’re flying…in a helicopter?”
“Yes, it’s totally safe,” I told her. “It’s a medical copter, so you’ll be able to lie down and there will be a nurse on board to monitor you and-”
“Stop! Logan, stop. I’m not an invalid. I can ride home in a car.”
“Actually,” the nurse said, “I don’t think the doctor would be happy to know you’d be in a car for eight hours. The helicopter sounds like a great idea. I wish my fiancé was so thoughtful.” Chloe rolled her eyes when she said that. It must have hurt her head because she immediately winced.
“It’s just to make sure you’re comfortable, Chloe, that’s all.” I didn’t want her thinking I was trying to impress her. I only wanted what was best for her.
She didn’t answer me, but she didn’t argue with me, either. When it was time to go, the nurse went with us up to the roof where the helicopter was already waiting. Chloe tried to pull away from me as I helped her up, but then realized she couldn’t do it herself and let me help her. Once we were inside the copter, I let the nurse fuss over her and I just sat back and tried to enjoy the ride.
It didn’t take us long, only a couple of hours to get to Long Island. When we landed on the compound, Chloe was asleep. The nurse wanted to take her on the stretcher, but I was afraid that would be uncomfortable for her on the cobblestone walkway. I picked her up in my arms instead and carried her down to the cottage. I lay her down on the couch when we got inside and as soon as I let go of her, she opened her eyes.
“Where are we?”
“At the cottage.”
“Oh no!” She pushed herself up, and I saw her grimace.
“Do you need a pain pill?”
“No. I need to go home to my house.”
“No.”
“What do you mean no? You’re not my boss and you’re not my fiancé and you sure as hell aren’t my husband. I want to go home.”
“You can go home in a few days after you see your doctor. That reminds me, you should call now and make an appointment. While you do that, I’ll go start lunch.”
“Logan, you don’t have to do this.”
“Really? If not me then who, Chloe? The doctor said you can’t be alone for a few days. Just let me do this for you and then if you never want to see me again, I will stay out of your life, okay?” She looked like she was thinking it over. At last with resignation in her voice she said,
“Fine, thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me. This is all my fault.” I didn’t wait for her to confirm or deny that. I went into the kitchen and took out two cans of soup and started lunch.
I heard her in the next room first on the phone with her doctor and then with her mom. My mom had kept them updated and Chloe had talked to them on the phone while she was in the hospital and discouraged them from flying back out. I wondered if she’d tell them she was staying here. I doubted it.
When the soup was ready, I carried it out to the table; she was on the phone again. “I’m so sorry about this and so embarrassed. I never call in sick, much less my first week on the job…”
I hadn’t known she’d gotten a new job. She listened quietly for a few seconds and then said, “Thank you so much. I will check back in right after I see the doctor on Thursday. I appreciate that, Bonnie, thank you.”
She hung up the phone and turned to look at me and then the table. “It smells good,” she said.
“Thanks, I just opened a can. Come and get it while it’s hot.” She came over to the table and sat down. I put her bowl and the French bread that I’d heated up in front of her. She thanked me again and started eating. I fixed her a glass of ice water and then I sat down and began eating mine, too. The silence was strange and uncomfortable and finally I said, “So, you got a new job?”
She nodded and took a sip of her water before saying, “I got hired as an analyst at Cooper Investments. I was supposed to start tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry. I mean that you can’t start tomorrow. Congratulations about the job.”
“Thank you, and that’s okay. They were really nice about it.”
“Good.” I ate more of my soup before I asked, “So, how did you end up with Cooper?”
She put her spoon down kind of hard against her bowl. “Well, I had to leave my job with Moreau because of personal matters. I spoke with a recruiter, and he told me Cooper was hiring. I took my résumé and my letters of recommendation and I applied. The interviewed me and as far as I could tell, none of them were thinking of marrying me to stay in the country.”
She stopped and I wasn’t sure if she was waiting for me to say something or thinking about which knife she wanted to throw next. I didn’t say anything. What was I going to say? She had every right to be angry.
Suddenly, she surprised me by saying, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“You have a right to say whatever you want. I hurt you. It’s okay to strike back.”
“You’re helping me. I need to leave the past where it belongs or I won’t ever be able to move on.”
I nodded. “As long as you know how sorry I am for everything.” She nodded and then she continued to eat her soup.
When she was finished, she said, “Thank you, that was good. Would it be okay if I lay down for a while?”
“Of course.” I got up to help her, but once again, she shrugged my arm off hers. I followed her into the bedroom anyways and hovered while she took off her shoes and lay down on top of the comforter. I took the quilt off the rocking chair in the corner and lay it over her. “Get some rest.”
She didn’t say anything to me. She just closed her eyes as I left the room and left her alone. I went back out to clean up the lunch dishes and tried to stop thinking about her only being down the hall and in the bed that we’d made love in not that long ago.
After I cleaned up the kitchen, I made a fire in the fireplace and then sat down on the couch and wondered what to do with myself next. I ended up calling my new assistant to let her know I’d be working from home this week and then going online and ordering way too many Christmas decorations…and a tree.
Chloe slept for a few hours and when she woke up and came out into the living room, I was almost asleep myself. I sat up on the couch as soon as I saw her. She smiled and my heart nearly leapt out of my chest. She caught herself almost as soon as she’d done it and it fell from her face when she remembered that she didn’t like me anymore. “How was your nap?”
“Good.” She sat down in one of the easy chairs near the fire.
“Are you in pain? Can I get you a pain pill?”
“No, I’m okay. Thank you.”
“Water? Juice? Do you want me to make some tea or some coffee?”
“No, thank you.”
“How about-”
“Logan, stop, please.”
“I’m sorry. I’m a pain in the ass, aren’t I?”
She smiled again. “Yes, you are. You know what I’d really like?”
“What’s that?” I asked hopefully. I wanted to do something for her, anything at all. I was pathetic, but I couldn’t help myself. I felt like I owed her so much.
“I’d like to go for a walk on the beach. I’ve been cooped up too much the last two days.”
“I’m not sure if that’s okay. The doctor said no exercise.”
“No strenuous exercise. I’m sure a walk is fine. I promise to let you know if I get tired. Please. I feel like a prisoner.”
“Okay, yeah. I’ll get your coat.”
After we’d both put on our shoes and coat we went out the sliding glass doors and onto the private strip of beach. I wanted so badly to take her hand as we walked, but she was keeping her distance from me, so I left her alone.
The quiet out on the shoreline wasn’t as disturbing as it had been in the house. It was more calming out here with the slow waves rolling in and out as background music. We walked about a mile before she spoke and when she did it, wasn’t to say she was tired but to ask me,
“Why did you show up in Niagara Falls?”
I stopped walking, and she took another step before turning around to face me. This was what I’d been waiting for: my chance to plead my case.
I was looking into her beautiful caramel eyes and for a brief second, I almost forgot what my case was. I found my voice at last and said, “Because I wanted to see you more than anything else in the world.”
She started walking again and I followed her. Another mile or so up the beach she stopped again and said, “Kimber said that you waited all day the day of our wedding in your tux. Did you really think I’d show up, after everything?”
“No, but if you did, I wanted you to know that I was ready to marry you.”
“So, you could get your citizenship?”
“No because I love you. That night at the bar, I’d gone there to tell you the truth. I’m an idiot, and it suddenly dawned on me that evening just how deeply I’d fallen in love with you. I missed it because I’d never really felt it before. I thought of it as a craving or a desire, but the feelings I have for you go so much deeper than that, Chloe.