by Jennifer Ann
“I’m so sorry, son!” The words sound choked and filled with sorrow.
With my arms still at my sides, I blink several times, trying to clear the confusion from my mind. Why the fuck is he apologizing to me?
“Sir?” I ask.
“Nolan filled me in when I got here,” he explains, stepping back with a hand lingering on my shoulder. With his other hand he swipes at each of his wet eyes. “I know you’re in love with my daughter. I know about my grandbaby.” His eyes flicker up to the ceiling for a moment as he collects his breath. “If I weren’t such a shitty father and had the decency to check in on her every now and then, it wouldn’t have taken a flight across the country while she’s fighting for her life to learn about you.”
“I’m the one who should be apologizing, sir. I was there. I shouldn’t have let this happen.”
His eyebrows draw together. “You were beside her when she was hit?”
“I was inside my sister’s beach house. She told me she was going to get a drink. I should’ve gone looking for her sooner.”
The crease between his eyebrows deepens. “You can’t possibly blame yourself over something like that. If you know my Sharlo the way Nolan claimed, then you know damn well she’s got a spirit that can’t be tamed. If you tried to watch over her twenty-four seven, you’d smother her to death.”
“Still—”
“No,” he says firmly, taking a step closer. “You don’t get to carry the burden for what happened. If you and my daughter are in love, then I don’t need to know you to understand you’d do anything to protect her. She’s a very intelligent young woman and wouldn’t have let you in her life after that insolent bastard Richard unless you were worth it. Nolan told me you’re a good man, and he wouldn’t have any reason to lie.” His eyes fill with tears once again and he stutters on a breath. “What happened to my baby girl because of some incompetent fool who got behind the wheel after drinking is not on you, son. Do you understand me?”
The instinct to protect him kicks in when I mirror his pose and give him a hard stare. “She’s going to pull through this.”
He dips his chin as a tear rolls down his cheek. “I’m going to go in and see her, then you and I can spend time getting to know each other.”
This time when he puts his arms around me, I hug him back. As unexpected as it was for him to defend me, the fact that I seem to have his approval is the one thread of hope I have to hold on to in this never-ending, fucked-up nightmare.
“We don’t know how long she’ll be like this,” Evelyn reminds me, crossing her arms under her chest as she stands in the middle of the waiting room. “If you don’t take care of yourself, you won’t be strong enough to stay by her side. You need a good night of sleep and a change of clothes. You’re going to scare people with all that blood on your shirt. And when’s the last time you ate?”
“The cafeteria has food,” I grumble, refusing to budge from my spot on the couch. “I’ll be fine.”
Charlie moves behind her, wrapping her little body in his thick arms. “He’s right, freckles. We can bring him back a change of clothes and some take-out. I wouldn’t leave if I was him either.” He presses a kiss to her temple before saying, “Let’s go. Nolan and your sister are waiting in the car. Everyone’s exhausted.”
Evelyn points a finger my way, eyes narrowed. “Promise you’ll call if you need anything.”
“Can’t, phone’s dead,” I answer, lifting one shoulder.
“We’ll bring you back a charger,” Charlie promises with a bob of his head. He steps at my sister’s side and takes her hand, pulling her toward the exit.
“Go get something to eat!” Evelyn calls over her shoulder. “I mean it, JD!”
When her head whips back around, she almost collides with two somber men wearing cheap suits. “Excuse me,” the taller of the two says to her, flashing a stiff smile.
I watch the men continue on to the nurse’s pod, their matching strides filled with purpose. After a minute, a nurse points beyond them to where I sit and the men turn to look at me. When I realize they must be here because of Sharlo, I bolt to my feet and start for them.
“James Kendall?” the taller man asks. The way his dark hair is buzzed down to almost nothing and he carries himself with still, calculated movements, I peg him as someone who served in the military. When I grunt in reply, he extends his hand. “Detective Coulter. This is my partner, Detective Freeman. We’re with the NYPD.”
“Are you here about my daughter?” Teddy asks, emerging from Sharlo’s room. His red eyes are a brutal reminder of how hard it hit me the first time saw her unconscious, hooked to all those machines.
“Are you Theodore Rockford?” Detective Coulter confirms. When Teddy nods, the detective passes him a thoughtful expression. “We were sorry to hear about your daughter. We were assigned to her case when she was being harassed in Brooklyn Heights.”
“She’s not fucking dead,” I snap.
“Of course not,” Detective Freeman replies. In contrast to his partner, he’s older and soft-spoken with gentle eyes. The good cop. “He meant to say we were sorry to hear she was in a serious accident.”
“Hold on!” Teddy pleads, holding both hands out. “My daughter was being harassed?”
A wave of guilt washes over me. It never occurred to me that I should’ve made Sharlo tell her dad what was happening. “I didn’t know about it until recently,” I tell him.
“Let’s go somewhere a little more private to have this discussion,” Detective Coulter suggests. He turns to the stern-looking nurse still standing behind the counter. “Is there an empty room we could use?”
She points to a room on the opposite side of the wing from Sharlo’s. “Number two is open for the time being.”
I follow the two men alongside Teddy into the empty room. A wavering uncertainty burrows its way inside my chest as I wonder why the men are here. Could the accident have something to do with the person that kept calling her?
Teddy seems equally anxious, refusing to sit as Detective Coulter suggests. “What do you know about the person responsible for harassing my daughter?” he demands.
“We came here this morning to talk to you about Peter Sandeen,” Detective Coulter tells him. “I understand he worked under you when you were the acting CEO of RH-Tech Industries.”
“Christ!” Teddy spits, covering his forehead with a hand and lowering to the empty bed. His fingers and thumb methodically rub at his temples. “What did that bastard do now?”
Detective Coulter glances at his partner before saying, “We have evidence in our possession that proves Mr. Sandeen was the one making anonymous phone calls to you daughter. He was also a confirmed passenger on a flight that would’ve brought him to New York around the time someone broke into her apartment.”
“Someone broke in?” I ask, flexing my fists. “She told me it was just a broken window!”
Teddy springs to his feet, face as red as a tomato. “Where is he? I’ll kill that son of a bitch!”
“I understand you’re upset, but you might want to be careful what you say in our presence,” Detective Freeman suggests in a calming tone. “Maybe you can find comfort in the fact that we have Mr. Sandeen in our custody. He confessed to following your daughter from Brooklyn Heights to her friend’s beach house and hitting her with a rental while under the influence.”
“Why?” I ask, looking back and forth between Teddy and the detectives. “What the fuck was he trying to prove by hurting Sharlo?”
“He’s angry with me,” Teddy answers, rubbing at the back of his neck. He stares at a blank spot on the wall as he continues. “When I switched companies, he lost his job. He lived beyond his means and couldn’t make the mortgage payments on his house. His wife left him and took their three kids. He called me almost every single day after he was let go, begging me to get him a job with my new company. I told him there was nothing to do. When he tried extorting me for money, I tried to make him understand it wasn’t my
decision to let him go, but…fuck!”
“He’s being held on aggravated driving while intoxicated and attempted manslaughter charges,” Detective Coulter explains. “It’ll be amended to voluntary manslaughter if your daughter doesn’t pull through. He’ll be facing up to a lifetime in prison.”
Teddy glances at me with quivering lips. “He was once my friend. He used to come to our house for dinner, for Christ’s sake! I never thought he’d go to this extreme to get back at me!”
The desire to punch something vibrates down my spine, possessing me to the core. I don’t know whether I’m angry at Teddy for not telling someone about the crazy asshole sooner, angry at the detective for insinuating Sharlo may die, or still angry at myself for going back to Minnesota when all this was happening. It’s most likely a combination of all three. All I know is the hallway sways around me when I hit the ground running.
With a chuckle Nolan removes his headgear and steps down from the ring. “Shit, James. You’re a beast—a force to be reckoned with. Between your skills that only keep improving and that fight with Freddie becoming a YouTube sensation, the MMA circuit isn’t going to know what the fuck to do with you.”
Sharlo once called me a beast too. I wipe at the sweat on my face before my fingers settle in the thick hairs lining my jaw. “I should head back.”
“You’re better off here, working things out,” he insists, throwing me an ice-cold bottle of water from a cooler set up beside the ring. “You’re starting to make the nurses nervous the way you stalk around the hospital day and night.”
“I need to be there when she wakes.”
I swear to Christ I’ve said the same thing a hundred times to my sisters. When the doctors took the tube out of Sharlo’s throat and let her breathe on her own, they expected her to wake any moment. That “moment” stretched into days, the days into weeks. The doctors explained it was merely taking time for the swelling to go down and that her brain seemed to be functioning normally. It didn’t make me feel one goddamned bit better to hear that.
Teddy did what he could to work from the hospital until he was required to attend a meeting in London a few days ago. As many times as he tried to get a hold of Sharlo’s mother, she couldn’t be reached by phone or through her family, so I hired Charlie’s personal PI to look into it. So far he hasn’t been able to find a thing on her. It’s like the selfish bitch vanished into thin air.
Sofia was forced to return for her internship two days after the accident and caught a ride to the airport with Braden. Hunter and Angie stuck around a few days longer. Charlie left to finish his tour the day after that. Around a week later, Evelyn decided it was too stressful to be around me and left to join her husband in Kansas City.
Nolan was the only one to stick around and has been sleeping at Charlie and Evelyn’s beach house. At first I worried he felt an obligation to stay, then I started to appreciate the fact that there was someone to help me get through this shit-storm.
I step down from the ring and wipe my face with a towel. The shitty little gym Nolan rents out for a couple of hours each day is stark and cold, not nearly as welcoming as Manny’s, but I don’t have to deal with random dickheads like Freddie Vaughn, and it’s only a ten minute drive to where my entire world remains in the balance. And Nolan’s training helps to harness the anger that rages out of control whenever I think of Peter Sandeen killing my unborn child.
“I’m heading down to the city tomorrow to check in on the bar,” Nolan tells me as he slings his gym bag over his shoulder. “I know you don’t want to leave her and I get it, but you should really consider coming along. Evelyn will be back tomorrow night and could let you know if anything changed. It’d do you some good to break away and catch your breath. I hired a Prince tribute band for Saturday night. Someone with Minnesota roots can’t say no to Prince, right?”
“I have no interest in making Sharlo think I bailed on her for some wannabe.”
Nolan lets out a deep chuckle and shakes his head. “Fair enough. Can’t say I didn’t try. I was just hoping to find an excuse for you to shower and shave, maybe even trim that mop on your head.”
“I know what you’re trying to do,” I tell him as he starts for the door. It’s as close as I’ll get to thanking him. It’s impossible to be thankful for anything these days when the one thing I want is out of my reach.
“I’m bringing dinner later,” Nolan reminds me before slipping out the door.
I shower and change in the gym’s locker room before heading to the hospital on foot. Stepping out into the sweltering summer air does little to slow me down, and I’m by Sharlo’s side in no time.
Mere minutes after I arrive, Carrie, one of the regular nurses, comes strolling in with a bright smile. She’s one of the few who doesn’t annoy me and lets me stay in the room when she’s changing Sharlo’s dressings. She always goes out of her way to be nice to me.
“Good afternoon, James. It must be hot outside. You look…overheated.”
I wipe at my sweaty forehead with the back of my arm before titling my head in Sharlo’s direction. “Any changes?” I ask.
“I’m afraid not.” When she moves in behind me to adjust one of the machines, she squeezes my shoulder. “Her vitals are still strong, though. Your girl is one hell of a fighter.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” I mumble. Taking Sharlo’s hand in mine, I place a kiss on the back of it before stroking her arm. The doctor encouraged me to talk to her as much as possible. Though it felt a little stupid at first to talk to someone who can’t reply, I’ve convinced myself that my voice is going to bring her back and now I can’t shut up. “Hey, little butterfly. Ready for your exercises? By the way, I kicked Nolan’s ass again today. If he tries to tell you any differently, he’s lying through his teeth.”
“God, you’re so sweet,” Carrie tells me, sighing. “I wish I could find a guy that was as loyal as you. Sharlo’s a very lucky lady.”
“I’m the lucky one,” I insist, staring down at Sharlo’s pale lips. “I was stupid enough to walk away from her and she took me back. Once she’s awake, you’ll understand why I won’t make that mistake twice. She’s the greatest thing to ever come into my life.”
“Ugh, you’re going to make me cry,” she mutters while adjusting something on a machine.
All at once I feel Sharlo’s fingers move against mine. I hold my breath as I wait for her to do it again. When she doesn’t, I glance up at Carrie. “She just moved her hand.”
“It could be a nerve ending.” She steps in beside me and places a hand over Sharlo’s forehead. “Sharlo, can you hear me? James is here, waiting for you. Come on, sweetie, open your eyes.”
“Sharlo, please, baby,” I plead, stroking her hand. “Open your eyes, little butterfly.”
My heart slams to a stop when two beautiful blues the shade of the ocean appear.
Chapter 22
SHARLO
I’m deep into the most intense tennis match with Fight Club era Brad Pitt, attempting to distract him with a distastefully short skirt, when I hear my name spoken in a rather dire way. My brain turns to mush as I struggle to open my eyes.
Pain.
There’s so bloody much of it.
Moaning, I attempt to utter the words to express my wild discomfort, but it would seem some wanker stuffed a load of rocks down my gullet. And what’s with my throbbing head?
“Open your eyes, little butterfly.”
My stomach flutters about with the sound of the deep voice. I know that voice. I’m finally able to part my heavy eyelids. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust against a harsh light. A beautiful, large man hovers over me with the most delicious beard. Forget Brad Pitt! The sight of this man has my lady bits doing Olympic-worthy summersaults.
Tears fill his big brown eyes as his lips part. “Jesus Christ, Shar,” he mutters before bending to press his lips against mine. Electric bolts shoot through me with the connection of our mouths. It’s heavenly. His entire body trembl
es as his warm mouth lingers and his grip on my hand tightens. The way he breathes heavily through his nose, it would seem he’s crying. Wouldn’t expect to see someone big enough to bench a school bus break down in such a fashion.
After a beat, his lips trail down to my jaw and his wet face nuzzles the crook of my neck. “Baby, I’m so sorry,” he whispers. “You’re gonna be okay, I promise.” When he repeats the second sentence, it would seem he’s merely convincing himself.
What on earth is happening? Why is this man sorry?
A suspended ceiling and canned lights linger above me. Am I late for class? My eyes catch on a clear bag and several machines at my side. Fear clenches my insides as I press hard against the man’s large hand. I’m in a hospital bed? But what happened? Am I broken? When I move my legs in an attempt to sit upright, my nether regions blaze with excruciating pain.
“It hurts,” I manage, digging my fingers into the back of the man’s hand.
“She’s going to be in a lot of pain,” a woman says. “I’m increasing her drip to make her more comfortable, then I’ll grab the doctor.”
Heart fluttering, I bring my free hand to my mouth, brushing my lips with my fingertips. My suffering seems a small price to pay for the lovely kiss. Perhaps if I told the man once more…
My eyes close again. Soon the beautiful man and the sterile room drift away.
“Her eyes are opening.”
A warm hand squeezes mine. “Sharlo, it’s me. It’s Dad. I’m here, sweetheart. I took a red-eye so I could talk to my girl.”
A slightly gray-haired man comes into view, wearing a rumpled suit. His blood-shot blue eyes evoke misplaced memories of wishes and butterflies flying through the sky.