by Hannah Ford
WHAT HE ACCEPTS (What He Wants, Book Twenty-Six)
Hannah Ford
Contents
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WHAT HE ACCEPTS
WHAT HE ACCEPTS
Copyright © 2017 by Hannah Ford
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WHAT HE ACCEPTS
(WHAT HE WANTS, BOOK TWENTY-SIX)
WHAT HE ACCEPTS
(WHAT HE WANTS, BOOK TWENTY-SIX)
CHARLOTTE
“You have to stop him.” The words were rough and ragged, like the person saying them was just getting over a cold.
I pulled back and looked at her face.
Clementine.
She was so beautiful. Or, rather, she’d been so beautiful. I remembered the first time I’d met her, how intimidating she’d been, how poised and perfect. Now her flawless skin was marred with bruises, and her full lips were cracked and split around the edges.
Not to mention her eye. The missing eye that was just a bloody hole. I tried not to look at it, to keep my gaze trained on her mouth.
“Who?” I demanded. “Professor Worthington?”
Clementine’s one good eye began to roll back into her head, and I grabbed her shoulders and shook her, trying to keep her conscious. “Who, Clementine? Who needs to be stopped?”
“Rainier,” she said. Or at least, that’s what I thought she said. It was hard to hear her with the scratchiness of her voice, and with Noah pulling me away from her, his hands tight around my shoulders.
“Jesus, Charlotte,” he said, hustling me a few feet away until we were standing next to exposed brick side of the building on the corner.
“Who’s Rainier?” I asked.
“I have no fucking idea.” Noah was livid, I could tell. “And when I tell you to do something, Charlotte, dammit, you do it.”
I didn’t bother asking him what exactly he’d told me to do that I’d disobeyed him about. It could have been a million things – not staying in the car, squirming out of his grasp, etc. etc.
Instead, I studied his face, wondering if he really had no idea who Rainier was, or if he trying to protect me the way he’d done in the past. But if there was one thing Noah Cutler wasn’t, it was a liar.
He’d never lied to me. In fact, his brutal honesty sometimes bordered on cruelty, since he seemingly had no problem letting me know when he didn’t want to tell me something, or when he couldn’t give me what I needed.
There was no pretense with him, just honesty.
“She said we need to stop Rainier,” I insisted.
“Charlotte, she’s in and out of consciousness,” he said. “She doesn’t know what the fuck she’s saying. Stay here and do not move. Do you understand me?” His dark eyes searched my face, and I nodded.
“Charlotte.”
“Yes, I understand. I’m not going anywhere.” Now that the adrenaline of the moment had started to fade, I was beginning to lose my moxie. I was cold – the night was cool and dark, and I was dressed in just Noah’s t-shirt and my yoga pants.
I watched as the guard who’d been in the car with me stood over Clementine, as Noah checked her pulse and her breathing.
“Her pulse is there, but it’s thready,” Noah said. “And her breathing’s shallow.”
Clementine moaned then, coming back to consciousness as the sound of an ambulance began to echo down the street, the wail of its sirens getting louder and more intense as it approached us.
I watched as two paramedics jumped out, both of them dressed in dark navy uniforms.
“What happened to her?” one of them asked, looking at Noah with suspicion.
“She was dumped from the back of a car.” Noah sounded impatient, like he couldn’t believe the gall of someone asking what happened when Clementine was obviously in need of medical attention. “A black Lincoln.”
“Did you see who did it?” the second paramedic asked. “License plate or anything like that?”
“No.” Noah turned to me. “Charlotte?”
“No” I shook my head. I’d seen the car, but not who’d done it, or the license plate. “I didn’t see anything but the car.”
“Should we call anyone for her?” the paramedic asked. He was loading Clementine up onto a stretcher, helped by the other one, who’d been silent up until this point. They showed no reaction as Clementine moaned and writhed in pain.
“Her family is…” Noah trailed off, as if it didn’t matter. “I will meet you at the hospital.”
“St. Joe’s is closest.”
“Is she in immediate danger?” Noah demanded.
“No,” the paramedic admitted. “’Course, there’s no way to know for sure, she could have internal injuries, but for right now, she’s probably –”
“Take her to Columbia Presbyterian,” Noah said.
The paramedic gave him a look, one that made it clear that he thought St. Joe’s was fine, that it was overkill to drive to Columbia, but Noah gave him a withering look and the guy finally shrugged.
Once the ambulance had taken off, sirens blaring, Noah turned to the security guard. “Take the car back underground,” he said, his tone curt.
“Sir—”
“Now.”
He would be fired, it was clear.
“You’re not hurt?” Noah asked, his eyes scanning my body, his hands cupping my chin, his thumbs running over my cheeks.
“No.” I shook my head. “No, I’m not hurt.”
“Jesus, Charlotte, you’re barely dressed.” He pulled me toward him, and even though he was wearing just a t-shirt and shorts, his body was warm, and I pressed my cheek against his chest.
He sighed, and I could tell his mind was working. He needed to go to the hospital with Clementine, or at least, he wanted to. It was obvious from what he’d said that she had no family. I wasn’t sure if Noah’s reasons for wanting to go to the hospital had to do with him wanting to be there for Clementine, or more because he wanted to find out who’d done this to her.
After I realized she’d been the one to file the complaint against me at school, I’d kind of dropped the issue. Not because I’d wanted to, but because there’d just been so much more going on. It had seemed insignificant up until now.
“I shouldn’t have brought you out here,” Noah said.
“Noah, it’s not your fault.” I pulled back from him, but he wouldn’t look at me. “Noah.”
Finally he turned his gaze to me, and I reached up to touch his face, but he grabbed my wrists, not allowing it.
“Come on,” he said, putting his arm around me and leading me back to our apartment. “You’ll come to the hospital with me.”
It was the dead of night when we walked into the emergency room, but inside, there was a flurry of activity.
Nurses and doctors bustled around, machines beeped, and the waiting room was filled with coughing kids and adults who looked to be in various stages of discomfort.
The hospital smell – antiseptic and people and med
icine and flowers – hit me, and anxiety squeezed my stomach.
I hated hospitals.
They always reminded me of my dad, and they also reminded me of the night Noah had been stabbed at Force, the night he’d almost died.
Noah held my hand as we walked up to the admitting desk.
“I’m looking for a patient,” he barked, and gave the front desk person Clementine’s information. The poor nurse tried to tell Noah that the doctors were still working on Clementine, and that he wouldn’t be let back unless he was immediate family, but Noah began rattling off some kind of legal jargon about how that was a completely illegal policy according to the laws of the State of New York and did she want to risk her license over this and blah blah blah until the nurse got flustered.
He was an imposing figure, Noah. He’d thrown on a sweater, a pair of dark jeans, and a leather jacket before we’d left for the hospital, and with his large frame and broad shoulders, he looked exactly like what he was – a supremely confident man who was used to getting what he wanted. Not to mention he was ridiculously good-looking -- that alone was enough to intimidate someone into giving him what he wanted, which I’d seen on numerous occasions.
Sure enough, a few moments later, we were allowed back to see Clementine.
She was in a bay of the ER, her room cordoned off with a sliding glass door.
I braced myself as we got closer, expecting to see her as I’d left her – all bruised and broken, her eye a red pulpy mess, her body limp and unconscious.
But the reality was somehow almost worse.
Doctors surrounded Clementine’s bed, all of them barking orders at the nurses who also surrounded her.
There were wires everywhere, attaching Clementine to IVs and monitors. The monitors beeped rapidly, as if they were all competing with each other for the doctors’ attention.
Clementine herself seemed agitated. She was grabbing at the wires, thrashing around on the bed. Her eye had been covered with a thick piece of gauze held in place by medical tape, and she was trying to tear it off.
“Push two milligrams of lorazepam,” one of the doctors barked, and a nurse loaded the drug into Clementine’s IV.
It seemed to calm Clementine a little bit, and she slumped over on the bed and moaned.
Noah stepped in front of me then, blocking me from seeing anything else.
He glanced around, to his left, where the end of the hall made a T with another hallway. There were restrooms down there, and what looked like a mini waiting area. There was a drinking fountain attached to the wall, and a couple of uncomfortable-looking plastic chairs on either side of a vending machine. A hospital security guard leaned against the wall, a gun and a walkie-talkie strapped to his hip.
“Go wait down there,” Noah ordered.
“No way.” I shook my head. “I’m not leaving.”
“Charlotte, the only reason I brought you here was because I couldn’t leave you home alone. It’s not safe in that room.”
“I’m not a child, Noah.”
“Then stop acting like one.”
“You’re being –”
He stepped closer to me, his eyes dark, his posture foreboding. “Look, we have no idea who did this to her, what they want, or where they are. You need to be as far away from her as possible.”
I sighed and bit my lip. I knew Noah had a point.
Whoever had hurt Clementine was still out there somewhere. But a voice in my head – one that I hated existed, one that gave credence to the ashamed, petty part of my heart – grew louder, demanding to be acknowledged. It was a horrible voice, one that reminded me that Noah had never completely admitted that Clementine had been the one who’d filed the complaint against me at Middleton, that maybe he didn’t really believe she was the one who’d done it.
“I’m staying here,” I insisted.
Noah’s eyes blazed as he began to speak, and then he saw something on my face and decided to change course. “Charlotte.”
“Noah,” I shot back.
“Please tell me this is not because you think I want to speak with her privately.”
“Don’t you? I mean, that’s literally what you just said.”
“Yes, I want to talk to her privately, but only so I can keep you safe.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “And you promise to tell me whatever she says? You promise to tell me exactly what she tells you?”
His jaw tightened. “You know I can’t promise that.”
“Why not?”
“Because.”
“Because is not an answer.”
“Charlotte, this behavior is completely unacceptable.”
“It’s not unacceptable.” I shook my head. “It’s completely warranted. There’s not much danger in me being here at the hospital and going in there and talking to her, hearing what she said happened. There’s no reason to shut me out of that.”
“It’s not your decision.”
“Yes, it is.”
“For fuck’s sake, Charlotte!” He took a small step toward me, and for a moment I thought he was going to pick me up and carry me down the hall. Not throw me over his shoulder like he’d been known to do the past when I’d defied him – no, he wouldn’t do that while I was pregnant, I knew that – but I was pretty sure he’d pick me up the way he’d done earlier, his hands sliding under my knees, forcing them to bend as he pulled me to him.
I was spared from finding out if Noah was crazy enough to do that by a doctor coming out of Clementine’s room.
“Who does this woman belong to?” he demanded, talking about Clementine.
Noah’s jaw tightened. “She doesn’t belong to anyone,” he said, as if the idea of a woman belonging to someone was insane, even though he’d just been acting like he owned me and had been doing that since the day he’d met me. “I’m her--”
“He’s her ex-boyfriend,” I cut in. It was meant to be helpful, to show the doctor that Noah was more than just a random friend, but it came out sounding petty and mean-spirited.
The doctor gave a sigh of his own. He had glasses and salt and pepper hair, and the tan skin of a man who’d recently been away from the operating room and out golfing somewhere sunny, and wished he were back there.
Noah’s shoulders squared and he didn’t look at me, not acknowledging the smart comment I’d made. “Is she going to be okay?”
The doctor stared at him blankly. “Is she going to be okay? She’s missing an eye.”
“Yes, I understand that,” Noah said, sounding annoyed. “I’m not fucking blind. I was the one who found her.”
“We both did,” I chirped up again, sounding like a sidekick in a buddy comedy or the annoying little sister no one paid attention to. But I wasn’t going to take the chance that the doctor was going to give information to Noah and not me.
“She’s been assaulted.” The doctor cast a suspicious glance at Noah. “Do you know what happened to her?”
“No.” Noah offered no other information, instead staring the doctor down until the doctor finally looked away.
“She was thrown out of a car like that, “ I said. A sick feeling settled in my stomach as I remembered Clementine’s body hitting the sidewalk, how limp her limbs were. I remembered the place where her eye was, the raw red socket just…empty. My head got woozy, and I took in a long slow breath.
“Is. She. Going. To. Be. Okay?” Noah’s hands twitched at his side, and I put my hand on his arm, trying to calm him.
“She’ll need surgery on her eye,” the doctor said. “We’re waiting for a consult with the eye surgeon. She’s sedated now, but it looks like the rest of it is just bruises and lacerations.”
“We’ll see her now,” Noah said, intentionally not forming it as a question.
The doctor hesitated. “She’s been given a sedative.”
“Is she conscious?” Noah pressed.
“Yes.”
“Then we can see her.”
The doctor was about to say no again, I could t
ell, but then his cell phone started ringing. He looked down, then closed his eyes for a brief moment, like he couldn’t believe what new crisis now waited for him. “Fine. I’ll be back in five minutes. That’s all you get.”
He hurried off down the hall.
Noah started into the room, and I followed him.
Clementine was lying on the bed, her face turned toward the wall. She was dressed in a blue and white hospital gown, and part of her head had been shaved so they could stitch a deep laceration near her ear.
She turned when she heard us coming in, and I hung back as Noah approached her bed.
“Noah,” she breathed, her voice cracking.
“Clementine.” He stared down at her, and I watched carefully, feeling almost as if I were intruding on an intimate moment.
“Are you in pain?” Noah asked, his voice sharp, as if he were going to demand she get pain relief if she needed it.
Clementine frowned, as if she wasn’t sure and was thinking about it. “No,” she decided finally. “They gave me a pain pump.” She slid her gaze up to one of the wires that was connected to her arm.
“Who did this to you?” Noah asked.
She looked away.
“Clementine.” His voice was a command now, and I wondered if it was the same voice he’d used on her when she was his sub, if it would still have the desired effect. “Look at me.”
She turned to look at him.
“Noah,” she moaned. “God, Noah.” Her hand went to the bandage on her eye, and Noah reached over and took her hand, moved it away.
“Shh,” he said. “Shhh, it’s fine, they’re going to have a surgeon take care of it.”
Clementine whimpered again, but Noah’s words seemed to calm her.
“Who did this?” Noah demanded again. “You need to tell me.”
“I can’t,” she said, and now her voice sounded scratchy again.
“Why not?”