Veda knew she couldn’t. She couldn’t risk hurting him again. If she was going to get him back and make it work, she knew she had to wait until their baby was in the clear. She'd have to wait until she’d done the inner work to better herself. To be the woman she knew he deserved. To ensure that she never hurt him so badly again.
So she let another silence fall.
She watched him drink it in.
Without another word, Gage turned back to the window, away from her, crossing his arms while dropping his face into his hand, his shoulders hunching softly.
With one last look at the engagement ring on the desk, biting back tears, Veda opened the door and left the office.
19
“This is ridiculous. I’ve got a patient in incredible pain right now.” Veda nearly screamed as the Ez-Meds machine before her trembled, groaned, and complained—the lights even flickered—but still didn’t dispense the drug she’d requested five minutes earlier.
“Give me my…” Veda stepped back, bumping into the nurse waiting in line behind her, lifted her foot and kicked the machine. “Fucking drugs!”
The machine slid a fraction of an inch. Violence was apparently all the inspiration that piece of crap needed because, seconds after her kick, the lidocaine and fentanyl containers came tumbled into the retrieval slot.
“Ridiculous,” a voice grumbled from behind.
“Someone is going to drop dead!”
“Fucking Blackwater…”
That last voice had the good sense to remain low and mumbled, knowing Gage could be lurking around any corner.
Veda muttered her own gripes as she stomped out of the new pharmacy, drugs in hand. The line had grown so long it curved out the door and down the hallway, filled with scowling doctors and nurses.
Even as she cursed under her breath, Veda’s complaints weren’t nearly as heartfelt as theirs. Not after the hour she’d spent with Gage in his office the day before.
She drew in a breath when her heart clenched at the memory of him taking her against the door, and then the floor. She was both bothered and thankful that he was off that day. Bothered because she couldn’t talk to him about what the sex had meant, and thankful because she was terrified to talk to him about what the sex had meant. Terrified of him looking her in the eye and saying it had meant nothing. That it had been a one-time thing. A foolish loss of control. A mistake.
Veda was snapped from her thoughts when Coco bopped up next to her in the hallway, the pigtail curl in her high ponytail bouncing.
“Where are you headed in such a hurry?” Coco followed Veda around a corner.
“Code Clemens in room 5,” Veda answered.
Coco bounced up and down with a whoop, a smile lighting up her face, fists clenched. “Yes! My favorite. Coming with you.”
“She’s been in labor for 18 hours,” Veda warned, as they blasted through the double doors of the obstetrics ward. “Word on the street is her aim is impeccable. Make sure to keep your head down—”
An ear-splitting scream sounded from room 5.
“Get out!”
A doctor barreled out of the room, white lab coat flying behind him as he crashed into the hallway wall, shielding his head with his hands. A bottle of water soared out after him, colliding with the wall mere inches above his head. He raced away just as a tube of deodorant came careening out next, missing him by an inch and shattering against the wall.
“Yes! Code Clemens never disappoints!” Coco beamed.
Code Clemens was hospital code for Roger Clemens, renowned MLB pitcher, a moniker bestowed upon women in labor who’d passed on the epidural and had become savage in light of their enormous pain, and who weren’t shy about hurling dangerous objects at the heads of anyone who pissed them off.
The woman in room 5 was clearly not going to disappoint. Her growls drifted into the hallway, and several objects were scattered on the floor outside her room, forcing Veda and Coco to kick them out of their path as they approached.
In her excitement, Coco took up a jog, beating Veda to the room, entering with her signature smile and bopping ponytail.
The brunette woman heaving from the delivery bed—belly protruding, feet propped up on stirrups, teeth bared and forehead gleaming with sweat—did not return Coco’s smile. Her fingers tightened around the handles of her bed, and her hazel eyes caught fire.
“Do you have the drugs?” she snarled at Coco, furiously sucking in each breath.
Coco sputtered, appearing to have realized she’d made a grave mistake, and shook her head rapidly, unable to answer out loud.
The woman wasted no time shoving her hand into the duffle bag next to her, seizing a make-up compact and hurling it at Coco with a howl.
Coco yelped and bent down, narrowly avoiding the compact as it soared over her head, smashed into the hallway wall, and sent beige foundation raining down all over the floor.
The woman’s face caught fire. “Get the fuck out!”
Coco barreled out of the room, biting back a laugh the whole way.
Veda watched her go, shaking her head as Coco disappeared around the corner before stepping into the doorway of room 5. She drank in the sight that met her, eyebrows raised and fighting a smile. The doctors in the room shared a knowing look with Veda. Most of the furniture had been moved away from the bed. The side tables, the stools, and the vital monitors. They’d even removed the telephone that was usually bolted to the wall next to the bed, as well as the medical tools that usually hung from the rack above it.
A middle-aged Asian man widened his eyes at Veda from where he was crouched in the far corner of the room, arms cradled around his body.
Veda held up her hands in surrender. “Don’t shoot, Mrs. Green.”
Mrs. Green clenched her teeth. “Do you have… the drugs?”
Veda lifted the two bottles she’d just wrestled out of the Ez-Meds machine. “I come bearing drugs.”
Mrs. Green cried out in relief, and then she burst into tears, sobbing as she reached for Veda with clawed hands. She clenched and unclenched her clawed fingers in an attempt to will her closer, but only made Veda worry that those claws might somehow end up around her neck.
Knowing the drugs in her hand would spare her life, Veda approached the bed with a small smile, her smile ebbing to nervous laugher when Mrs. Green immediately snatched the neckline of her scrub top into two fists.
Mrs. Green tear-stained cheeks trembled. “I tried. I tried to do the right thing for my baby. I tried. But I can’t do it.”
Veda allowed herself to be manhandled while she unwrapped the tools she’d need to put this poor woman out of her misery. “You made it eighteen whole hours, my love. You fought harder for your baby than most women do in the first ten minutes. You deserve a medal. Now, let’s not waste any more time. Why don’t you go ahead and turn your back to me with your legs over the edge of the bed—”
“It won’t hurt him right?” Mrs. Green’s eyes widened.
“Absolutely not.”
“You promise?”
Veda flashed back to the first lesson she’d learned in medical school. Never make promises. Still, “I promise,” spilled from her lips before she could stop it.
“Okay.” Mrs. Green released Veda’s top and wrapped her quaking fingers around her wrists instead. “Okay…”
“I need you to swing your legs onto the other side of the bed and bend forward for me, okay?” Veda looked to the Asian man still huddled in the corner, his face frozen in fear. “Maybe Dad can come a little closer and help prop you up? Give you a little support?”
Mr. Green looked at Veda like she must be out of her mind. Like Jesus could come back, demand he move closer, and he’d still refuse to move from his safe cocoon in the wall. Veda couldn’t imagine how many objects had come soaring at his head over the last eighteen hours.
Still, when Mrs. Green swung her legs over the edge of the bed and reached for Mr. Green, with the same claws she’d used on Veda minutes earlier, begging
for him, something in Mr. Green broke.
With a face that begged for mercy, he pushed away from the wall and gingerly went to her. He took her hands and instantly winced at the death grip that would surely give The Hulk a run for his money.
“Can you walk us through it?” Mr. Green asked Veda, holding Mrs. Green’s eyes.
“Sure,” Veda said, as she began making the injections. “I’m giving her a combination of lidocaine and fentanyl. I’m administering the opioid first, just to help decrease the required dose of the local anesthetic.”
“And one more time, in English?” the husband teased, dragging the first laugh from Mrs. Green in hours.
And, a moment later, Mrs. Green’s shoulders collapsed. Her sighs filled the room instead of her screams. The death grip on her husband’s hands eased.
“There we go,” Veda said, softly. “Much better, right?”
“I’m so sorry, baby,” Mrs. Green wept to her husband. “It just hurt so much. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.”
“But I broke your grandmother’s chain when I ripped it from your neck.”
“There’ll be other chains.”
“They had to give you stitches for the gash I made on your arm.”
“I’m a soldier.”
Her voice hitched. “Do you still want to be married to me?”
“Of course I do. I love you.”
Veda’s eyebrows pinched, and when tears filled her eyes, she lowered them. As the husband and wife whispered words of love and forgiveness, all Veda could do was pray that Gage could forgive her even half as easily.
She prayed he could forgive her for believing he could ever hurt her. Forgive her for breaking his heart. Forgive her, because he loved her too much not to.
She drew in a sharp breath and finished up, fighting not to cry in front of her patient and her co-workers as she came to the realization that she might not be allowed to have this. She might not be allowed to have a loving man to hold her hands while she was in labor. To whisper his forgiveness for making his life hell for eighteen straight hours. To assure her that, come hell or high water, he would love her no matter what.
She might not have that.
And she’d have no one to blame but herself.
Every bone in her body yearned to repair what she’d broken. She’d do anything. She’d do anything to make it right with Gage so they could have a moment even half as beautiful as the one she was witnessing right them.
She made a silent vow to herself. A silent promise to mend his heart. To restore the heart, she’d shattered.
She just had figure to out how.
20
“I can’t get that photo out of my head.” Veda met Hope’s eyes across her living room couch later that night. “I’ve been having nightmares about it. About what a terrible mistake I’ve made. How much pain he must’ve been in. How my baby might suffer. Raised in a single parent home thanks to me.”
The last of the cameras they’d swiped from Jax’s house were scattered between them. Several contained more photos from the party. A few had more photos of the jigsaw sneakers. But none that showed ten’s face. It was as if Jax had scoured his own cameras and removed pictures himself—any picture that showed the man wearing those jigsaw sneakers.
Hope tossed a camera down between them with a sigh, rolling her eyes. “You gotta stop beating yourself up, V. All the signs pointed to Gage being ten. It was almost without a doubt.”
Veda dropped her own camera in the pile, letting it clatter as she jammed a finger at Hope. “‘Almost.’ That’s the word that sinks me. That’s the word that makes me a complete monster for putting him through this. He has turned that hospital upside down because of me. People have lost their jobs because of me. Because of ‘almost’.”
“What were you supposed to do?” Hope lifted her shoulders high. “He purchased the sneakers ten was wearing. He’s the only person in Shadow Rock who purchased them. If we hadn’t lifted these cameras and found the truth, you’d have gone the rest of your life believing he was ten, and you wouldn’t have been wrong to believe it.”
Veda laid her forehead in her hand, pressing her eyes shut.
“What were you supposed to think?” Hope asked. “The answer was clear as day, right there under your nose.”
“But it was the wrong answer. And now I’ve skewered him for no reason. He actually used that word. Skewered. He said he felt like I’d tied a noose around his neck.”
“Honestly, V? Regardless whether or not he was ten… I don’t know how you could be with someone that was ever in a position to make you believe—for even a second—that he could’ve been. I don’t know how you could be with someone who’s good friends with the other nine…”
Veda swallowed the lump in her throat, shrugging. “I love him.”
Hope’s eyes fell with a sigh, and she curled her jean-clad legs under her body.
“I love him… and I felt it. From the day I met him, I felt like he was different from them. And I was right. He is different. He’s not ten, and now I’ve destroyed our relationship because I didn’t trust him. I’ve skewered the man who was going to be my husband. The man who threw his family and his trust fund away to be with me. The man who’s shown me nothing but love and respect. The father of my unborn child. I’ve skewered him. And I have no idea how to fix it.”
“Maybe it isn’t meant to be fixed,” Hope said. “Maybe you were only meant to come back home, finish what you started, and leave. Love was never a part of your original plan, was it? Where’s the Veda Vandyke who came here with her eyes on the prize, huh? Where’s that Veda Vandyke, man?”
Veda’s eyes danced, floating away in the distance, and she shook her head, reclaiming Hope’s eyes. “Gone.”
Hope scoffed.
“She’s gone, Hope. She’s changed… Into the Veda you see right now. The Veda who’s pregnant, and alone, and wants nothing more than to fix what she’s so gigantically broken with a really, really good man.”
“Do you realize what a mistake it was to let yourself fall for him in the first place? Do you understand that Jax Murphy would’ve never come after you if Celeste hadn’t sicked him on you like the drooling dog he was? That we would’ve never had to kill him? That we’d be watching him strut around town, ball-less, if you’d never started a relationship with Gage at all?”
“Well, guess what, Hope? It’s too late. I started the relationship. I started it, and now I love him. I miss him. I need him. I want him… I want him to be in our baby’s life. I want to get married. I…” Veda stunned herself when tears filled her eyes. “I want to be happy.”
That seemed to defuse Hope, her shoulders and eyes both shrinking at once. She leaned one arm on the back of the couch, making her black crop top rise and reveal her belly ring as she licked her purple lips. “Shit, man…”
“I can’t believe what I’ve done.” A tear raced down Veda’s cheek. She slapped it away. “The way he looked at me after we had sex yesterday. The way he turned his back to me. He can’t even talk to me. There’s just this huge, unspoken vat of fury, and confusion, and resentment between us…” It hit Veda that her relationship might not be fixable, and she gasped sharply.
“Hey, he footed your grandma’s hospital stay, right? She dodged a massive medical bill at his expense. I don’t think any man would go so far out of his way if there weren’t at least a tiny chance of fixing it.”
Veda rolled her teary eyes in embarrassment. “I’m sorry for laying this all on you. You took Jax out. The police are after you. You have better shit to worry about.”
“The police are after both of us, so I guess we’re two peas in a pod. Might have to flee at any moment. Thelma and Louise style.”
“If you think I’m letting you take me over the edge of a cliff the way you did Jax—and in a Ford Thunderbird no less—you’ve lost your damn mind.”
Hope chortled, face lighting up when Veda’s laughter rang out, visibly relieved that she w
as making Veda feel a little better.
“God, I hated the end of that movie,” Veda grumbled.
“How the fuck could you hate the ending of Thelma and Louise?” Hope looked horrified, shifting on the couch, leaning closer while holding her palms out. “I mean, at surface level, I get how you could hate it, okay? On the surface… they look like two unhinged women who decided to take their own lives. But it was so much more than that, V. It was about them taking back their power. Just like you’re taking back yours.”
“I see what you’re saying, but no. That’s not how our story’s going to end. At least I hope not.”
“It’s been two weeks since I took that animal out. If I were going to get caught, it would’ve happened already.”
“How many people have you killed?” Veda’s eyes gleamed when Hope threw her head back with a cackle. “I’m serious. Because there’s no way you’re this calm. Not on the first kill.”
Hope’s head fell forward, fighting laughter for several moments before collecting herself, sighing heavily and avoiding Veda’s eyes with a shrug of one shoulder.
Veda chuckled. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. I’m not sorry he’s dead. If he were still alive, he’d be hard at work making my life hell right now. He’d have already blown my cover.”
“Let’s just hope Shadow Rock PD continues dropping the ball so you can make it all the way to ten, whoever he is.” Hope nodded at her. “Speaking of… The fuck’s taking so long with Brock Nailer?”
“I told you. Gage replaced the pharmacists with automated machines. Can’t get my hands on the drug I need, and the batch Jake ordered online turned out to be bogus. I’m paralyzed until I figure out how to get my hands on it.”
“You will.” Hope leaned forward, seizing a sucker from the bag of Blow Pops on the coffee table. She opened one and took it between her lips, speaking around the stick. “Haven’t seen you eat one of these in forever. A full bag of Blow Pops? In your apartment? Unheard of.”
Yearn (Revenge Book 4) Page 16