False Start (Mavericks #1)

by Julianna Marley

  “Liv, baby,” he whispered, grabbing her limp hand inside his, helping Ross put pressure on her head to stop the bleeding. “Liv, baby, can you hear me?”

  All he needed was a groan, or a squeeze of her hand, something, and anything to let him know that she was okay. Gently picking her head up, he placed it in his lap wrapping his arms around her to warm her cool body.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he whispered, kissing her temple rocking her back and forth gently. “I’m here.”

  Panicking, Chelsea draped another suit jacket over her.

  “The ambulance is here.”

  The sounds of sirens echoing around them, everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. Cradling her in his arms, he rested his lips against her ear hoping like hell she could hear him.

  “I need you to stay with me, Star. Do you hear me? You need to fight, baby. We need you.” He grabbed her tighter, feeling her faint breath on his cheek. “I need you.”

  Kissing her head, he felt hands on his back pushing him out of the way as the paramedics lifted her out of his strong grip. Every movement felt mechanical as he moved back allowing them to quickly secure a neck brace, rolling her onto a stretcher. Wires and cords were thrown around as the four medics screamed making it almost impossible to keep up while they sped the stretcher towards the back of the truck.

  “I’m going with her,” Jax demanded, keeping up with the stretcher. A medic stopped him before realizing who he was.

  Nodding curtly the medic ran towards the front of the ambulance. Waiting for them to secure her body with straps, he noticed Vanessa out of the corner of his eye glued against the brick wall crying.

  “You,” Jax said through gritted teeth, taking two small strides before he was looking down at her, her head pushed even further against the wall. He didn’t know for sure if Vanessa was to blame, but by the look of shock on her face, he had an idea she was involved.

  “I swear to God Vanessa, if you had anything to do with this,” he said deadly calm, feeling arms pushing him away.

  “Jax,” Trevor urged, pointing towards the ambulance. “Go! I’ll handle this.”

  The ride to the hospital felt like hours as he crouched down beside the stretcher holding Liv’s hand frantically stroking her wedding band under his fingers as the medics tracked down vitals, phoning the hospital. Pulling up to the Emergency Room entrance, the crew flew out of the truck with the stretcher faster than he could jump up. Keeping up with the crew as they flew through a set of sliding doors, he held Liv’s hand, the harsh fluorescent lights above highlighting the blood now drying down her pale face.

  “Female. Hit by a car. Possible head trauma,” the young medic yelled at the doctor who came running towards them. Throwing on her stethoscope, she placed it to Liv’s chest.

  “Hypotension,” she said out loud, another nurse running on the other side of the stretcher ripping the bottom of Liv’s dress with her bare hands, revealing an open wound on her leg. Instantly hating himself for not finding where all the blood was coming from earlier, his heart slammed against his ribs.

  “We’re losing a lot of blood,” another nurse assessed, putting pressure on the wound. Trying to keep up, doctors and nurses pushing him out of the way, they ran through another set of double doors, the stretcher flying past him.

  “We’ll take it from here,” the doctor said, holding her arm out. Keeping him from making sure his wife was still alive? Hell no. He was not leaving her side. He was not going to leave her alone and afraid.

  “Like hell, that’s my wife!” he yelled, pushing through the petite doctor towards the doors.

  “Sir, if I have to call security then I can’t guarantee you’ll get to see your wife once she’s stabilized,” she urged, holding onto Jax’s arm, a strong grip for such a tiny woman.

  “Let us do our job. We’ll do everything we can,” she promised, before disappearing through the doors.

  Everything inside of him froze as the past twenty minutes flipped through his mind. His wife. The love of his life and the mother of his children was fighting for her life and there wasn’t a fucking thing he could do about it. He should have been by her side all night. Not allowing her to be alone and anywhere near Vanessa. Especially not in a dark alley. Anger and fear burning, he ripped his hair with his hands. Screaming, he punched his fist against the cement wall not feeling a thing. Leaning back against the wall, he fell to the linoleum floor. How could he let this happen?

  Hanging his head, he rested his hands on his knees as unfamiliar tears flooded with no intentions of stopping, hearing panicked voices filling the small area.

  “Jax.” Chelsea fell to the floor wrapping her arms around him. Hearing Charlotte yell at a nurse, he felt Trevor’s hand cup his shoulder, lingering sobs filling the room. He was numb.

  “This is all my fault,” he whispered, not looking up. The doctor had said they would do all they could do, but he couldn’t think about her not pulling through. She had to pull through.

  “This is not your fault,” Chelsea cried into his shoulder, his body feeling heavy.

  Yes it was. He had let her slip away again. Only this time, his wife’s blood was on his hands.

  24

  “What do you mean you can’t give me an update?” Chelsea’s yells broke the silence, snapping Jax’s attention back from the mindless task of watching the boats in the marina sway back and forth from the waiting room window. “It’s been over two hours!”

  Glancing at the nurse’s desk beside the set of doors where Liv had been taken exactly one hundred and thirty-five minutes ago, he shoved his hands deeper inside his pockets. He couldn’t blame her. Chelsea was restless, like the rest of them. Wrapping an arm around her waist, Trevor pulled her away from the innocent nurse, forcing her down into a gray chair. Aside from attempting to get news or constructing another scheme to get behind the doors, the room was silent. Morbidly quiet enough to still hear his heart slamming inside his ears and Shay shifting restlessly in his seat idly thumbing his phone.

  Resting her head on Charlotte’s shoulder, Whitney occupied the entire box of tissues as Charlotte readjusted the ice bag on Myles’s busted knuckles after pulling the driver who had hit Liv out of the car and beating the crap out of him. They had brought the bastard in about ten minutes after Liv and it had taken all three of his teammates to hold him back before he kept the kid from taking another breath.

  Listening to the story he told the cops, the Charleston college student decided to take a little joy ride completely stoned, taking an illegal shortcut through the alley of the Mill mansion. Swearing that Liv had come out of nowhere, the force of hitting her spun his car out of control. The little shit sustaining nothing more than a concussion and a black eye and split lip to match, courtesy of Myles.

  Meanwhile, his wife was fighting for her life and in a sense, she was fighting for both of their lives. He couldn’t live in this world without her. The morbid thought turning his stomach. He had spent the past two hours silently praying to his mother, something he had never done before; asking her to see Liv through this. He never imagined his mother watching over him and his family, but he also had never been staring out the fifth floor window inside Memorial Hospital while his wife fought to stay alive.

  Standing beside him, Trevor joined in the monotonous task of following the smooth push and pull of the harbor water. Silently offering him a flat coffee, he refused, digging his hands deeper into his pockets.

  “Something was off with her tonight,” he finally spoke, not taking his eyes off the lights reflecting off the boats bobbing above the water. “I saw it the moment she looked at me.”

  He assumed she had just been purposely avoiding him, but he should have known better. The more he watched her, the more he remembered her anxiousness. The body shaking, the labored breathing.

  “There was nothing-"”

  Holding up his hand, he stopped Trevor. He didn’t want to hear how this wasn’t his fault and how he couldn’t have stopped it from hap
pening because the truth was, he could have. If he had pushed harder and refused to let her run off when she first saw him by the staircase, none of this would have happened. No, this was his doing. And now Liv was paying the price.

  “Why don’t you go clean up?” Trevor suggested, nodding towards the bathroom. “When we get news, you’ll want to see her and all that blood all over you might frighten her,” he said, pointing to the blood stains on his dress shirt.

  Squeezing his shoulder tighter, Trevor stopped Chelsea from pacing around the small room.

  Passing Ross on the way to the bathroom staring down at the floor, shaking his knee quickly, Jax pushed open the door to the sterile bathroom, leaning against the base of the sink.

  How could he let this happen?

  Looking back at his reflection under the florescent lights, he was disgusted. He was supposed to keep her safe, but all he had done was put her in harm’s way. Pumping soap into his palms, he let the warm water run over his hands, the dry blood disappearing into the sink.

  His wife’s blood.

  Splashing water on his face, he wiped it with a paper towel, looking back into the mirror. He was no better than his old man. His father had killed his mother with his greed. A father who was supposed to protect his family, put them first, but instead had destroyed it. And against his best efforts, Jax had allowed the same. He should never have come back.

  Digging his fingers into the flat surface of the sink, he gagged past the need to be sick. Spitting into the sink, his adrenaline surged or finally relaxed, he wasn’t sure which as brutal thoughts of Liv lying motionless in his arms flashed in his head. Spitting a few more times, he inhaled another breath, unbuttoning his white dress shirt covered with red stains from her head wound, throwing it in the trash. His undershirt was still stained a bit, but not enough to alarm her when he got to see her.

  And he needed to see her. Needed to see her breathe and to hear her voice and make sure a hundred times over that she was alive and well and that she knew how much he loved her. How sorry he was. For everything.

  Making a direct line for the nurse’s station, he was tired of waiting. If he didn’t hear anything in the next two minutes, he was busting through those doors himself. Without having a chance to intimidate another innocent nurse, the petite doctor whom had refused to let him inside the emergency room earlier came out the doors.

  “Mr. Monaghan?” she asked, taken aback by everyone jumping from their seats all at once. Rushing past them he stopped in front of the doctor, towering over her.

  “Is she okay?” he spat, only then realizing that he wasn’t fully prepared if she were to say no.

  “Allow me to formally introduce myself. I am Dr. Mancini and I’m overlooking your wife’s treatment.” She gave him a smile shaking his hand. “Alivia is stable.”

  A rush of air left his body, feeling the weight of the world lift from his shoulders, everyone else sighing in relief.

  She was okay.

  She was a fighter.

  She was going to pull through this.

  He’d make sure of it.

  “Our initial concern when she was brought in was internal bleeding,” Dr. Mancini explained.

  Not moving a muscle, he listened to every word she said.

  “A lot of times in situations of vehicle impact there is damage we cannot visibly see. With how low her blood pressure had dropped and how unstable breathing was, it was grounds for being our first priority. The good news is, there is no internal bleeding, but she did get roughed up,” she informed, looking down at her clipboard and stack of papers.

  “She has two broken ribs, both on her right side, which we are assuming is from the impact of the car.”

  She motioned on her own rib cage as Jax’s chest tightened. He had sustained more broken ribs than he could recall after taking hits from three hundred pound defensive ends and he knew the pain well. It was a pain he didn’t want his wife to have to endure. But if that was the extent of her injuries, he had to be thankful.

  “Our concern now, which we will be monitoring her closely for is head trauma.” The doctor cleared her throat, his heart stopping.

  Head trauma?

  “It appears Alivia smacked her head on the ground pretty hard after she was hit, causing her skull to swell. Now it sounds more frightening than it is,” she placed her hand in front of her for reassurance. “It’s very common with a shock to the skull, but we are going to watch her closely and based on her vitals and responsiveness, I have faith that her recovery will go smoothly.”

  Feeling as if his legs were about to give out for the third time that night, he wiped his mouth in frustration. He needed to see her. Now.

  “She needed four stitches on her forehead from the hit to the ground and another nine on her leg. A fairly large piece of glass from the headlight was the cause of that.”

  His heart was racing. Liv was stitched up in two places with broken ribs and a swollen skull and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. He couldn’t take her pain away, couldn’t rewind and make sure she never went into the alley alone. It should have been him in that hospital bed, not her.

  “I will say this,” Dr. Mancini said, looking at him and everyone crowded around her. “She’s very lucky that she was hit at the angle that she was because by the injuries and the police report, it seems as if she fell into the side of the car,” she said, using her hands to demonstrate.

  “And was not hit directly head on, which I am positive would have led to a very different outcome.”

  Shaking his head, he felt his stomach drop at the certainty in her voice.

  “But we are confident that she will make a full recovery, it will just take some time for the wounds and the ribs to heal and for the skull to come down a bit from the swelling. She will need help and support,” she said, looking around the room, smiling quickly. “But I can see she already has that.”

  “When can I see her?” Jax asked, nearly cutting her off. He needed to be with Liv. Needed to see for himself that she was alright.

  “Yes,” her smile slipped and he knew he couldn’t stand it if they told him he had to wait any longer to see her. “She is awake and was able to answer a few questions for the officers.” She flipped through her papers again. “She requested to see a Mr. Warren?”

  The room fell silent as the ringing inside his ears from earlier began again. After all that had happened, after almost losing her and her almost losing her life, she was still shutting him out.

  “Me?” Ross asked. “But-” he trailed off, pointing at Jax.

  “She asked to see Mr. Warren and that’s the only person I am allowed to give access to at this time,” she said, placing the clipboard back under her arm. “Mr. Monaghan, please double check with the nurses to make sure all of your contact information is correct.” She pointed towards the nurse’s desk. “So that we can keep you posted on Alivia’s progress.”

  Shaking his head Ross stood beside him. “Jax, you should be the one-”

  “She wants you.”

  Gritting his teeth, he stared straight ahead at the hallway he had imagined walking down for the past two hours.

  “Oh,” Dr. Mancini said, pulling her hand out of the deep pockets of her white coat, handing him a fistful of diamonds. “I thought maybe you would want to hold on to that for her.” She placed the necklace he had given her to wear on her special night into his hands. “Looks expensive.”

  Handing the nurse behind the desk a few papers, she pulled her id badge from her pocket. “Mr. Warren?”

  Hesitating a moment, Ross stared at him. “Jax?”

  “Just go,” he ordered.

  Ross followed the doctor through the doors that he so desperately wanted to be on the other side of. His eyes set on the back of Ross’s jacket, he watched him take another step closer to Liv, as another piece of him shattered.

  * * *

  Staring up at the white ceiling, Alivia listened to the sound of the heart monitor beeping while it d
rowned out the muted voices in the hallway. After being told she was hit by a car, she had expected to be in more pain, but she wasn’t, which she assumed was the heavy pain medication doing their job. Leaving her wondering what kind of pain awaited her once the feel good drugs wore off.

  When she had opened her eyes earlier, she felt nothing but doctors and nurses adjusting her. Convinced she was having some sort of dream, or maybe a nightmare, she watched white coats and blue scrubs rush around her through heavily blurred eyelids. The last thing she could remember was standing in the alley yelling at Vanessa and the car headlights coming towards them. Holding a chunk of her hair in her hands, she remembered Vanessa letting go quickly, a hit, and everything after that a complete blank.

  The police had informed her that the driver was taking a joy ride while high which made her angry as hell. Who would be that irresponsible? The doctor couldn’t stress enough how lucky she was as she brought her up to speed on what her injuries entailed, while some nurses commented that Jax had come in the ambulance with her and there was a group of people populating the waiting room whom she assumed were her friends. But for as numb as she was, she also felt guilty having everyone sitting around and worrying about her. Full well knowing that if it had been any of them laying in this bed, she’d be a mess. She had requested a wheelchair, seeing if it would be alright to roll her out to assure them that she was okay, but when the nurse laughed at her saying they were watching her head carefully and advised against moving her ribs, she had a feeling she was going to be in the bed longer than she originally thought.

  She didn’t want anyone worrying about her, least of all Jax. Gosh she wanted to see him, but as she watched another nurse take her vitals and check a bandage on her head once more, she realized that she had to move on. She almost died from another nervous breakdown brought on by her pent up emotions and fears, almost leaving her daughters without a mother. Of course that wasn’t Jax’s fault. None of this was his fault, it was her blame to own. If she would have taken the support when everyone reached out to her and allowed Jax to at least shed some light on his reasons for leaving again, then she never would have been sent into a tailspin, knowing full well that a breakdown would be imminent. But no, she was stubborn and thought she could do it all on her own.