by M. O'Keefe
This woman was going to make things okay.
Next to her was a police officer with a camera. A man Annie recognized. It took her a second for the pieces to click together, but then she realized he was the blond police officer from the library.
“Grant!” The name sprang from her lips.
Everyone in the hallway looked at her.
The black woman looked between Annie and Grant. “You two know each other?”
“We’ve met,” Grant said, giving Annie a nod. All business. None of that puppy-dog eager flirtation from a few weeks ago. “At the library.”
He didn’t say anything about asking her out, and she didn’t, either.
“I’m Angela Roberts,” the woman said, coming to a stop a few feet from them. Annie could feel Dylan’s apprehension. His prickly unease. He glared at Grant and Grant glared right back. “Chief investigator for the District Attorney’s office. Glad to see you’re awake. How are you feeling?”
“A little foggy, but okay.”
“You feel up to answering a few questions?”
“Not until her lawyer gets here,” Dylan said.
“It’s fine,” Annie said. She would have said anything to cut the tension in the hallway. She would have cartwheeled down it naked to get Dylan and Grant out of this hallway. “We can get—”
“No.” Angela shook her head, her smile wide and effective. “Mr. Daniels is right. You should have your lawyer.”
That seemed terribly ominous and she must have blanched, because Grant gave her a comforting smile. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s going to be all right.”
People had been saying that to her all night and it really wasn’t working out that way.
Within a few minutes, a short black man in a sleek suit with intense eyes behind glasses came up behind Dylan.
“I’m Annie McKay’s lawyer, Terrence Marshall. I didn’t realize the District Attorney’s office was already involved.”
“I am called in on a lot of domestic abuse situations,” Angela said.
Terrence nodded. “Perhaps we can do this where my client will be more comfortable.”
There was no place on this earth where Annie would be comfortable with any of this.
“Go,” Dylan said. “The cop is right—everything is going to be okay.”
Everyone was going into her hospital room. A cop. Two lawyers. One of them hers. They were all going in there and she needed to go, too. But she couldn’t get herself to move.
“Annie?” Dylan said.
“What?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
She wished it were different. For his sake. Maybe for her own. But his words pushed her forward, gave her the strength to put one foot in front of the other and walk into the terrifying unknown.
DYLAN
Leave? Not look back?
Forget about her?
Did she honestly think that was possible?
It was the shock. The concussion. She wasn’t thinking clearly. Because if she were, she would know there was no way I could just…walk away.
I sat back down in the molded plastic chair outside her room. I had just enough experience with the law to know what they were going to do. The questions they would ask about the gun. About the night she ran away. About the nature of her marriage. The nature of her relationship with me. And for her, all of those questions would be hard to answer.
In the world I grew up in, those guys, the cops and the lawyers—they were the bad guys. The ones not to be trusted. But I didn’t lie to them about Annie and me. Because I knew that when they asked her, she’d tell the truth.
The door opened a few seconds later and my head snapped up, like a hunting dog on a scent. But it wasn’t Annie coming out.
It was Pops.
Once upon a time he was the scariest person in my life. Well, perhaps the second. Mom had him beat some days.
But right now he was just a tired old man. A gray smudge against the brown door behind him. He was shorter than I remembered. Smaller. Balder.
Last time I saw him was in jail. Max and I had just gotten arrested for illegal street racing and a bunch of other shit. He came to Duval to tell me Mom had left, for good this time, moved out to Arizona with her sister who hated us and that I needed to take the rap so Max wouldn’t get tried as an adult.
When I got out four years later, having paid in full for my sins and the very worst of his, he’d vanished.
I never saw him again. Not even after I was rich. Not even after the fire.
He just lived in that fucking trailer park. And I paid people to keep an eye on him.
That was the extent of us.
“What are you doing out here?” he asked. “You should go to your room. You look like you’re about to fall over.”
I said nothing.
Pops looked into the room through the window, craning his neck like he couldn’t quite see what he wanted to see. “I hate that Hero Cop.”
“You hate cops period.”
“True.” Pops backed away from the window, leaning against the wall. “She’s not doing so well.”
“Yeah, well, she killed a man tonight. Song and dance might be expecting too much.”
“Someone should throw her a goddamn party for putting that animal down.”
“She’s not like you. Or me.” This wasn’t something she was going to be able to just shake off. Shove to the side and pretend like it never happened. That kind of denial was a Daniels specialty. “You should go home.”
Pops’s laugh was dark. “Really bothers you that she likes me, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, well, you haven’t known her long enough to ruin her life.”
“Son—”
“Go,” I said slowly and clearly.
After a long moment he nodded. “I’ll be around,” he said. “If she needs me—”
“She won’t,” I told him and he shuffled down the hallway. A beaten dog.
Walking past Pops, coming toward me, was the nurse who’d been on my case ever since I took a seat out here. She looked like a strong wind could blow her over, but she was tough.
She reminded me of Annie. Of Margaret, too, in the way she kept yelling at me.
“Mr. Daniels?” She stopped next to my chair, her hands on her hips. “I really must insist you go back to your room.”
“I’m fine.”
“Your wound would say otherwise,” she snapped.
I glanced down to see a red blotch on the green hospital gown. I’d bled through the bandage.
“You’ve already lost a lot of blood,” the nurse was saying. “We need to get you stitched back up.”
“Just a minute.” I could hear the rumble of voices behind Annie’s door. Mostly Angela, with Annie’s quieter voice answering. But every once in a while there was the authoritative snap of Terrence doing his job.
“Mr. Daniels—”
“In. A. Minute.”
The nurse had the good sense to leave.
The door opened and Terrence came out with that blond cop that I didn’t like. Hero Cop gave me one unreadable look and then headed down to the nurses’ station.
“What the hell are you doing out here,” Terrence demanded, his sharp eyes narrowed.
“Everything okay in there?” I asked.
“Better than it is out here. You’re bleeding all over the place.”
Hero Cop came back with the nurse who was pissed at me and she gave me a sour look before going into the room.
“What’s she doing?” I asked. The world was getting a little fuzzy at the edges.
“A witness for photographs.” Terrence stuck out a hand and I ignored him. Annie was getting photographed right now. She was going to shrug off that gown and reveal her bruised body to their eyes, the sharp glare of a camera.
It was all I could do not to beat down that door and stand between her and their eyes.
“You know you’re not going to help her bleeding to death outside her door.” Hero Cop cros
sed his arms over his chest. He had a thing for Annie, I could feel it. He was trying not to show it, but his eyes followed her everywhere. And he was throwing me some serious aggression.
“Yeah, you’d like it if I left,” I said.
Hero Cop nodded. “You’re right. I would. She’s a sweet girl and she’s got no business getting mixed up with you and your family.”
I lurched to my feet.
“Come on, man.” Terrence got in my way. “I’m gonna get testosterone poisoning out here and you’re going to bleed out.”
I let Terrence turn me around and lead me to my room, but I could feel Hero Cop’s eyes boring holes in my back.
Terrence closed the door behind us. “Maybe you don’t want to get into it with the local law enforcement.”
“Maybe,” I said with zero intention of stepping back.
He pulled the blinds over my window.
“You gonna tuck me in, too?” I asked, climbing into my bed.
“You don’t pay me enough,” he said. He reached out and hit the call button for the nurse. He hit it a couple of times. “You don’t pay me enough for this shit right here, either. Why are you so hell-bent on dying for this woman?”
My eyelids closed despite all my efforts to keep them open. I’d do anything for her. Go to any length to make her safe.
“You met her,” I whispered.
That was all it took for me.
I didn’t know what this was, this thing we had between us. But it was powerful. And compelling. And both of us had spilled blood over it.
I’d walk into hell for Annie.
ANNIE
That night, hours after the police and the doctors left, Annie startled awake, the dream that woke her gone before she could hold on to it. Moonlight fell across her bed from the windows. She could tell by the silence and the stillness in the room that she was alone.
What time is it?
She rolled to her side to look for a clock on the table, but there was only a cellphone. It wasn’t hers from before. That one was probably still in the trailer, or smashed underfoot in the parking area in the trailer park.
This must be Ben’s, she thought.
She jiggled it, hoping for a clock readout.
10:08.
But there was a text, too.
DYLAN: Annie, plz call me
All the breath sighed out of her lungs. Dylan had bought her another phone.
In the dark and the hush, the sounds of the hospital muted through the door of her room, she wished she could pretend it was just a few weeks ago. And she was Layla in the trailer park. And he was in his mysterious house on a mountaintop. And she would call him and make herself come to the sound of his voice.
It had been so simple.
But you were lying, she reminded herself. You were lying and scared and on the run.
Things were awful now, but at least the truth was out. At least she wasn’t running anymore.
This was awful, no doubt about it. But it had to get better.
She’d told Dylan to leave. To forget her. But right now, she was so glad he didn’t.
She picked up the phone, curled up on her side, and called Dylan.
Through the hallway or perhaps the thin walls she heard the echo of another phone ringing. He was here. Three doors down.
“Hello?” he said, his voice rough with sleep.
“Hi.”
“You okay?”
She closed her eyes, squeezed them shut.
“Annie?”
“Can I skip that question?” she asked. “Just…just until I have a concrete answer.”
“I can wait for that,” he said.
“You bought me a new phone,” she said.
“I did. Had a nurse put it beside your bed.”
She heard his breath. In. Out.
“Thank you.”
“I’m glad you used it.”
Across the room, illuminated by icy white moonlight, there was a painting of a bunch of rabbits in a warren, deep under the ground. They were curled up together, a furry lump, washed out in the moonlight. All together. No one alone.
Dylan’s voice made her feel that way. Not alone.
“I shot Hoyt in the leg. He bled out,” she said.
“I heard.”
“I killed my husband.”
She tried out the words, felt them in her mouth. Tasted their bitterness.
“That’s one way of looking at it.”
“There’s another way?” If there was, Annie was keenly interested in hearing it.
“You saved your own life. You probably saved my life.”
She turned the phone away so he wouldn’t hear her shuddery, panicky breath.
“Thank you,” he said. “For what you did.”
She shook her head, denying his thanks, even though he couldn’t see it. “I should feel worse, shouldn’t I? I killed a man. He had a life. A soul. He was a kid once. Innocent, once. Someone at some point must have loved him.”
“You put down a violent sociopath. You did the world a favor.”
“But that wasn’t all he was? Right?”
“In that moment, it was all that mattered.”
Breathing. In. Out.
Her thoughts, her mind, everything was twisted; there was no clear thread to follow. It all ended in the same knot.
How do I move on from this?
“I stopped thinking he’d come for me,” she said. “I was feeling safe. I was feeling…happy.”
You made me happy. Even that little bit that we had made me happy. Happier than I’d ever been.
“Are you scared of me?” His low voice broke under the words as if they were too heavy to carry. “I mean, last night and then today in the hallway. You seemed…scared. Of me.”
She didn’t know how to tell him what exactly she was scared of. The combination of the two of them that in so many ways terrified her.
But him alone…
“No. I’m not scared of you.”
“I mean…I know what Ben must have told you about me. About prison.”
“You survived, Dylan,” she said. “I’m not scared of that.”
“But you’re scared of something,” he said.
“I watched you beating up Hoyt and I liked it, I was attracted to it. Attracted to you doing it.” She thought of his brutal body and remembered the pleasure it gave her. “I felt in those minutes more cared for than I had in my entire life.”
“And that scared you?” He didn’t get it. She could tell.
“Yes. Because that’s really scary. It’s terrifying. I am scared of me. Of who I am right now. Of what I’ve become.”
“Annie, you’re a survivor. And if you can admire that in me, you can admire it in yourself.”
Suddenly, that was a thought she could follow out and away from the knot in her brain. That was a comfort she could use.
“You’re going to be happy again,” Dylan said “I swear it. We can…we can get through this. You and me. I promise.”
“We barely know each other, Dylan,” she said. “We lied to each other for two months. I nearly got you killed. Why would you promise that?”
“Because you said you wanted to come back and I said I wanted you to.”
“It can’t be that simple. Not anymore.”
“It is. For me it is. It’s you and me. That simple.”
Before she could think twice, or second-guess or tally up the potential disasters, she turned off her phone and slipped out of her bed. Her feet were bare against the cold floor as she crossed the wide blocks of moonlight and short bars of shadow to her door.
Three rooms down the door was cracked, and she really hoped she didn’t have the wrong room as she pushed open that door.
But it was Dylan on the bed, staring down at his phone. The moonlight falling across his face. His scars.
She must have made some sound because he looked up at her. Concern and relief all across his beautiful face. And doubt. And fear. And worry.
Everything she felt was reflected in him and it comforted her. Like that painting. It made her feel less alone.
He put his phone down, and as if he’d read her mind, he pulled back the covers on his bed and shifted to the side to make room for her. Because he knew. He knew what she needed.
Him close to her.
She lurched toward him, threw herself across the divide, up into his bed, the sheets warm from his body.
He covered her with the blanket and she turned, pressing the whole of herself against him. His solid frame, filled out with muscle, hard under her cheek. Against her hands. His skin was hot and she could feel his heart beating against her palm, where it cupped his neck. It was an awkward, sideways hug. His elbow against her sore ribs. His shoulder beneath her lips.
“Baby…” Slowly, carefully, he turned until her chest, battered and sore, rested flat against his, equally battered and sore. And his arms, those wide hands, they covered her back, urged her impossibly closer to him. His breath whistled past her ear, lifting her hair and sending a distant quake through her body.
It wasn’t sexual. She wasn’t sure when those feelings would come back. If they could. But this was more than enough. This was all she could handle.
Not so frozen after all, she melted against him in seconds. Let him hold her because he could.
He was strong and steady and warm, and she breathed him in so hard she could taste him. In the back of her throat and on the tip of her tongue, she tasted Dylan. She put her head right there in his neck and wrapped her arms around his waist.
They were both careful. With their bodies. With the strength of everything they felt—with the whole of each other—they were careful.
ANNIE
“Has…has anyone seen the older man that came in with me?” Annie asked the nice nurse pushing her in an unnecessary wheelchair toward the front door.
“Ben?” the nurse asked.
“Yes,” Annie said, glancing back at her, though because of the angle she really only saw up the nurse’s nose. She’d been in the hospital two days, they kept her longer because of the concussion and Ben hadn’t come back. Not once. “Has he been around?”