“It’s okay,” the looming shadow said. “It’s me.”
“I thought…you’d…left.” Dang, her throat hurt.
“I’m pissed, Shayne. I’m not gonna front. Seriously, frickin’ pissed.” He dropped down into the chair. “But I’m not leaving.” He didn’t clarify or quantify the statement. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Matt went home with—”
“X, I know. I talked to him a little while ago.” He rubbed his face. “Go back to sleep.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“But—”
His fingers ran through his hair. “If you don’t shut up right now, I’ll leave until you’re out cold. Your choice.”
“I’m shutting…up now.” She coughed a bit.
“Do you need a drink?”
She only nodded, not taking the chance of the question being a trick one.
He smiled. “Good girl.” Bracing his hands on the armrests, he lifted his big body out of the chair. He kissed her cheek, a tender press of his lips to her tender wounds. “Go to sleep. I’ll be here in the morning.”
True to his word, she woke the next morning to find Ricky asleep in the chair, his head and shoulders resting on her bed, his hand on her leg. She didn’t know what the future held for them, but was pretty sure some serious mending needed to happen. Dammit, she was all out of duct tape and chewing gum. But, she did have some household twine and bailing wire.
With a single finger, she traced over the tattoos on his forearm. He’d told her the stories of some of them, but not all. Not yet.
The door opened and the nurse bumbled in with her breakfast. Ricky sat up with a jerk. He rubbed at his eyes. Shayne smiled. He didn’t. She frowned. His face shifted into neutral.
Shayne didn’t pay much attention to the nurse as she settled the breakfast on the rolling tray over her lap. The only thing on her mind: Ricky.
She so badly wanted to climb into a DeLorean, put the pedal to the floor and hit her eighty-eight miles an hour. After the flash and she skidded to a stop, she’d tell Ricky everything. From the very beginning. Okay, maybe not the very beginning. Damn X to hell, her brother had been right.
Her mistake, no matter how good her intentions, may have cost her the man she loved. Cost her their marriage.
After the nurse left the room on her squeaky white shoes, Ricky cleared his throat. She prepared for battle. Actually, she readied herself for surrender.
“Ricky, I—”
“Yeah, um, I’m gonna take off.” He stood, lifted his arm up and bent it behind his back. “Grab a shower and check on Matt.”
“Okay.” Not wanting to fall apart, she locked her jaw and her emotions. “Will you—”
“According to the doctor, you’re set to be discharged later today. As long as all your tests come back okay.” He walked toward the door. Her heart clenched. He paused, turned around. Almost. “I’ll be back to take you home if that’s where you still want to go.” He blinked a couple of times. And left.
***
Good hell, he’d really like his mancard back!
Ricky ran the back of his hand over his eyes. He’d turned into a damned pussy! She’d done this to him. Kane always said women lived to bring men to their knees. Ricky’d called him a hater. Now, he had to agree.
Shayne had most definitely brought him to his knees. Hell, forget his knees, he wanted to curl up in a ball and cry like a baby. His wife, his very reason for living, refused to talk to him. He’d asked her so many damn times what was wrong. He’d felt the distance. And that single day roadtrip had turned into a freakin’ jaunt around the world.
Walking through the hallways of the hospital, he wanted to take off on a sprint. Unfortunately, every little old lady in all of Nevada felt the need to try out her new cane or insist she could wheel her chair her “own damn self”.
Ricky got off the elevator and took the straight shot out the front doors. The other side of this effed up coin just happened to be twelve years old and even more messed up in the head.
Last night on the phone, Matt sounded just as confused as he should be. Ricky wanted to step in and do the dad thing, offer comfort he didn’t feel, but he wasn’t sure where things stood. The two were attached already. Ricky couldn’t bear to lose Matt. He was pretty damned sure Matt felt the same way.
Some things, though, were out of their control. Shayne called the shots on this little merry-go-round.
Grateful for the solitude of his truck, he cranked the radio and allowed Pitbull to dull his senses, his feelings. He lost himself in the thump, cranking the tunes so loud he’d be surprised if he didn’t hop home instead of drive.
He turned onto the pavers of his driveway and frowned at the cars. Dammit, couldn’t they understand he wanted to be alone? He didn’t need Mason’s calm reason or Kane’s I-told-you-so or Xavier’s give-her-time.
He reached up to hit the garage door opener, then eased into his spot. He turned off the radio, itching to scream to fill the silence. His frayed seams were ready to come apart. Last thing he needed was to lose it in front of those three guys.
The garage door opened and Matt stuck his head out. He smiled, a big ass grin that had Ricky’s chest tightening. Matt waved. Ricky returned the gesture, reached for the door and got out.
“Hey.” Matt came out to greet him with a weird hug, like he wanted the contact, but didn’t quite know how to pull it off. He stepped back, all awkward teenager. “I thought I heard the door go up. Mom okay?”
“Yeah, she’s…okay.” That’s what the tests said anyway. “I really need a shower and wanted to clean up the place so your mom can…” He couldn’t say the words. He wasn’t sure whether or not Shayne still considered this her home. Besides, after what happened here, he wouldn’t be surprised if she took her son and left.
The train came. The whistle blew. And he couldn’t get his car off the damn track.
You know what? Screw this! He’d done nothing wrong. He’d been a damn good husband for the whole freakin’ three months they’d been man and wife. He’d been a great father to Matt and if she left, it’d be her frickin’ loss!
So why’d his chest feel like it caved in on itself?
He followed Matt inside. He’d not been home since leaving to go to the movies…
Wow, it seemed like forever ago.
In hearing the police talk about it, he’d expected destruction, devastation, a big ass mess. The kitchen, however, was spotless.
Zzzzt! Zzzt! Zzzzzt!
“What the hell?”
Matt rolled his eyes. “Kane loves that thing.”
Ricky double-timed it into the family room to see his buddy grinning like a fool, screw gun in hand. He looked up. “Oh, hey man.” He put the gun to good use. “We could have had the glass replaced, but then I wouldn’t have gotten to use this thing.” He held the gun up, using the Zzt! Zzt. Zzzzt! to punctuate his sentence.
Mason chuckled from where he rolled up the area rug in front of the television. “Hey, X!”
“Yeah,” came from the bedroom.
“You give me a hand out here?”
“Be right there.”
Ricky did a ridiculous jump/leap thing that made him feel like an idiot, especially when Mason frowned. “Nope. We got this.”
“I can put my own damn house back together.”
Kane’s hand on his shoulder caused him to jump. “You got more important things to concentrate on. Where’s your lady?”
“He came home to take a shower,” Matt put in helpfully.
“Frankie’s just finishing up in there.” X strolled into the room. “Whatcha need, James?”
Mason grabbed the end of the huge roll and Xavier hefted the other end into the air. The two guys headed outside with it.
Ricky’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He fished it out. Just frickin’ perfect! “Hello?”
“You self-absorbed asshole! Mama is beside herself! She had to hear about w
hat went down with Shayne on the news!”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think—”
“That’s the problem, you never do.”
Something inside Ricky snapped. Like an enormous tree struck by lightning. “Get off my ass. Okay? Yeah, I probably shoulda called Mama.”
“No probably about it.”
“But I’ve been a little busy takin’ care of my wife. Who was nearly killed. By intruders. Who wanted my son. So excuse the hell outta me, if I had a lapse in who I shoulda called.”
Long, long pause. “She’s worried.”
“So am I.” He hung up. Dealing with his brother right now would only end up in alotta words better left sealed up in his internal vault.
Besides, as he looked around his house, he had his family around him. He loved his mother and his brother, but these people standing in his house right now they loved him. Unconditionally. When the shit hit the fan.
Forget the proverbial, they’d cleaned up his house, put the physical part of his life back together.
Frankie came out of the master bedroom, carrying a bucket and a mop. “Oh, hey, Ricky.”
Kane rushed over and took the stuff from her. “Laundry room?”
She nodded. “Yeah, thanks.” She waited a few moments before asking, “You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You frontin’?”
“Yeah.”
Before he knew it’d happened, Frankie had him wrapped in a hug. Her rock hard, pregnancy bump pressed into his abdomen, making it hard to breathe. But he held onto her. His eyes burned. He blinked, fanning her with his lashes. And still he held on. She didn’t loosen her hold even a bit. He got the impression he could have hugged her forever and she’d have been okay with it. X, on the other hand, would probably have voiced a bit of opposition.
He stepped back. “Thank you.”
“Sometimes that’s all a person needs to get their feet back on the ground.”
“True that.” He scanned his house, humility choking him. “You shouldn’t have called the guys.”
“We didn’t.”
“How…?”
Frankie shrugged. “They saw it on the news and called X. Grayson called with a heads-up. Jane did a great job covering the story.”
“Jane covers sports, not homicidal maniacs.”
Frankie laughed, putting Ricky at ease for the first time in… Damn, he couldn’t remember when. His eyes were drawn to the open bedroom doorway. Weariness weakened his body. Mentally and physically he was flat-out exhausted. Going into his bedroom wouldn’t make his sleepy-sleepy any better either.
“You wanna do that part alone or would you like me to hold your hand?”
He was just about to tell her where she could stick her hand-holding when she threaded her fingers through his. “Come on, it’s not so bad now that we’ve got all the water cleaned up.” She tugged gently. “Luckily it didn’t get on the carpet. They said it didn’t get over the top of the tub. Only about half full actually.”
Frankie spoke in the soft clinical voice she used at the stadium. He wanted to kiss her. And yeah, X would probably have something to say about that, too.
“Matthias called the plumber—”
“Plumber?”
They walked through the door of the bedroom and his lungs seized. She squeezed his hand. “The EMT’s had to break the faucet. They turned off the water to the tub, so there wasn’t water damage.”
The bedroom didn’t look any different. A little anti-climactic, actually. He’d expected the kind of chaos going on in his head. And the bathroom, with the exception of the broken faucet and the damp floor, had been set to rights.
That’s what they’d done for him. For her. For all of them. Evidence still existed, but the Band-Aids were in place. “Thank you.”
“You’d probably like some privacy. Maybe a shower?”
The corners of his lips tilted with a smile he didn’t feel. “Yeah, I could use a shower.”
Frankie was quiet for a while, doing a whole lot of not looking at him and not leaving.
“Just say it, Doc.”
She sighed, pinned him with a concerned look. “She was afraid of hurting you. That’s why she didn’t tell you. She didn’t want you to go through the agony of knowing what happened to her. And she really didn’t want Matt to ever find out.”
“She lied.”
“No.” Frankie shook her head. “She just didn’t tell you. There’s a difference, Ricky. She didn’t tell you to spare you the hurt of knowing she’d been violently beaten and raped. And she didn’t want Matt to know he’d been the result of that violation.”
Ricky’s teeth ground together until his jaw hurt.
“There is a difference.”
“Yeah, well that difference nearly got her killed.”
“Nearly. That’s the keyword in that statement.” Frankie put her hands on her hips. “You gotta decide, are you gonna walk out of her life?”
“No!”
“Does she know that?”
Like a slap, he focused. He blinked against the emotion filling his eyes. Ah, hell. He’d been so wrapped up on the shit in his head, he’d not given much thought to what might be rattling around in hers. Instead, he’d released his fear and anger by yelling at her. Then leaving her alone.
What an ass he was.
After a quick shower and a some fresh clothes, he said goodbye to his nearest and dearest and went back to the hospital. He had some serious apologies to offer. He hit up his mother. And got voicemail. He frowned. He looked down at the screen on his phone. All her concern and his brother’s pissed off, and she’d not called him.
He shook his head. It didn’t really matter. He should have called her as soon as he knew Shayne was okay.
Shoulda, coulda, woulda.
He pulled into the parking lot, jogged into the hospital and up to Shayne’s room. Voices from inside stopped him in his tracks. He couldn’t hear what they said, but he recognized both of them as the two most important women in his life.
That was why his mother hadn’t answered her phone.
He pushed the door open and quietly stepped inside.
His mother stopped midsentence. She smiled. Behind her dark eyes he saw concern…and love. She hopped up and speedwalked right up to him—to cuff him upside the head. “I was so worried. You should have called me.”
“You’re right.”
“You’re a good boy.” She hugged him tight. Even though he had her by nearly a foot, she still had a way of making him feel like a little boy. She patted his back, then held onto his arms as she eased away. “I came to see you guys as soon as I heard. I guess I just missed you.”
“You didn’t come to the house.” The pieces of his puzzle started coming together.
She laughed softly, much like when he was three and had said something absolutely ridiculous. “I knew you wouldn’t be there.”
And the final piece clicked in tight. Just like the people putting his house in order, his mother offered her love and support by…just being his mom.
***
The man who returned to Shayne’s room wasn’t the same one who’d left. When Ricky left, she assumed he wouldn’t be back. Now, though, he wore the kind of fatigue a week long nap couldn’t cure.
But, exhausted or not, her husband had come back.
Elena glanced over her shoulder and smiled at Shayne. “I’m going to head home. Do you need anything before I go?”
Shayne shook her head as Ricky said, “No, thanks though.”
Elena shifted on her feet, leaning forward and rocking back. Shayne opened her arms. Elena practically threw herself across the room and carefully drew Shayne into a hug.
“Thanks for coming.”
Ricky looked like a kid who’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Elena strode up to her son. “I love you, mijo.”
“Love you, too, mamacita.”
She cupped his cheeks in her hands. “You call me if you need anything. Got it?
”
“Got it.”
She kissed his cheeks. “Take care of her.”
Shayne didn’t miss his non-response. Ricky was quiet until the door closed fully. “How long was she here?”
“Like she said, she got here right after you left.” She attempted a smile, but winced as it pulled at her split lip. “I’m a little surprised you didn’t run into her on the elevator.”
No humor existed in his heavy footsteps as he came toward the bed. He sat on the edge, although he didn’t touch her. Before either of them could say anything, the door opened and the doctor entered, chart in hand. “You ready to go home?
“Very much.”
He smiled, flipped through a few papers and nodded, tucking her chart under his arm. “Okay, here’s the deal, your latest x-ray showed your lungs are clear. However, they’re compromised. You need to be very careful, even the common cold can cause complications.”
“For how long?”
“The rest of your life.” His lips went tight. “You’ll have to see your primary care physician as soon as possible and have them monitor you.”
“Her sister-in-law is a doctor,” Ricky told the doctor.
He nodded. “I know Frankie. She’s a great doctor, but knows bones better than lungs.”
“I’ll call and make an appointment right now if it means I can go home.” The thought of going home didn’t frighten her the way she’d worried it might. She looked forward to getting on with her life. No secrets.
The doctor smiled, tipped his head in a nod. “That’s not necessary. I’ll prepare your discharge papers and the nurse will bring them in a little bit.”
“Thank you.” She sank back against the pillows.
Ricky stood and followed the doctor to the door. “Thanks, Doc.” As soon as they were alone, Ricky’s shoulders rose and fell, his chest expanded then deflated. “Do you want to go home?”
“Yes.”
He turned. His Adam’s apple bobbed. With slow steps, he came back to her bed, sat down on the edge and looked completely ruined. “To my home?”
“No, to our home.” She slowly inched her hand toward his, giving him ample opportunity to move away. Upon contact, she grabbed on tight. “I love you, Ricky.”
Lucky 13 (Deadlines & Diamonds) Page 23