Does She Love You?

by Rachel Spangler

  “She’s critical but stable. She’s going to need surgery, though. I have to go. Will you come with me?”

  “No,” Davis said forcefully, but when she saw the flash of hurt in Anna’s beautiful blue eyes she softened her tone. “You don’t have to go. Let the doctors take care of her.”

  “She’s bleeding internally, Davis.”

  “You said yourself it’s not life and death. The doctors have it under control. They don’t need you.” Davis argued when she really wanted to add, “I need you.”

  “I can help. I have access to her medical records. I can make this easier.”

  “Easier? On Nic?” She jumped off the couch and began pacing. “Damn it, why does she get it easier after the hell she put us through?”

  “Davis, listen to me. She’s hurt. She’s got a long road ahead, and I’ll never be able to live with myself if I leave her to face this alone.”

  “A long road? What are you talking about here?”

  “Davis. Please—”

  “You’re not just going to sign paperwork, are you? You’re going to stay with her.” She finally spoke the fear that had gripped her chest from the moment she’d answered the phone. “You’re going to leave me for her.”

  “No.” Anna reached for her, but she stepped back.

  “Don’t touch me. Don’t you dare touch me then go to her. You can’t kiss me and then run when she calls. I’ve been through this before, and I can’t do it again.”

  “Davis, please. I’m not leaving you for her. I want you to come with me.”

  “I won’t go back.” She shook her head frantically. This wasn’t rational. Like a frightened child or a hurt animal, she felt the impulse to escape threaten to overpower her. Everything she’d feared had happened. “I just broke free. I just let myself breathe again. I won’t throw myself back into that darkness. Not for her, Anna. Not even for you.”

  Tear’s filled Anna’s eyes, and she bit her bottom lip as she nodded. “Okay. I’m sorry you’re in pain. It breaks my heart, but you’re not the only one hurting here.”

  Davis couldn’t bring herself to reply. She stood stone still in her resolve as Anna walked out the door and long after her footsteps had faded into the night.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Everything hurt. Nic tried to shift her body to relieve some of the pressure, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t move at all. Was she paralyzed? No, if she were paralyzed she wouldn’t be able to feel anything, certainly not the kind of pain she experienced now. Something held her down. Ropes? Or straps? A rock, maybe? That didn’t make sense. What had happened?

  She searched the darkness of her memory but saw only black. There was no light anywhere, which in itself seemed like a sort of memory. Darkness, disorientation, but not stillness. Something had chased her through the dark. She ran.

  No, she drove.

  Now she remembered.

  The car, the voices, but then it wasn’t dark. There had been a white light. Not the proverbial kind, though. Blinding white, jarring and painful. Where did it go? Was it still there? The darkness was lifting now, a gray haze, then shades of pink followed by the low hum of machines or fans. A soft beep, a subtle click.

  Was she still in the car? She wasn’t moving, but maybe a seat belt held her down. Voices whispered to her side. She wasn’t alone. Was someone else in the car? The voice? No, she’d outrun them. This someone didn’t yell. Someone gentle, caring. That made even less sense than being stuck under a rock.

  No one cared about her.

  She had to see through the fog. She had to open her eyes. Her lids felt heavy and covered in sand. She wished she could wipe them, but her hands wouldn’t move. The effort exhausted her, but she had to see who it was.

  Suddenly the white light returned, burning through her slowly opening eyes, bright and sterile. She turned her head to the side what little bit she could, but refused to slip back into the gray haze that offered relief.

  A figure rose beside her. “Nic.”

  The voice was so soft, so soothing, so familiar it burned away the clouds.

  “Nic, it’s Anna. Can you hear me?”

  Anna? Opening her eyes wider, she fought to pull the blurry image into focus.

  “Nic, it’s okay. You had a car accident. We’re at the hospital, but you’re okay.”

  The hospital? She’d wrecked her car. The pain, the lights, the sounds made sense now, but the caring in that voice didn’t.

  “Can you hear me?”

  Nic fought to nod and blinked again, trying to clear her vision.

  Fingers tenderly ran across her forehead, sweeping her hair back and leaving no doubt as to who’d bestowed the touch. “Belle.”

  The name came out rough against her throat, scraping raw against her dry lips and her frayed emotions. Belle was there. Belle had touched her. Belle cared.

  The crush of realizations sent the fog rushing up to consume her again. Relief sprang fast, but unworthiness soon overtook it. She wanted Belle there, she wanted so badly to matter, to mean something to someone, but she didn’t deserve to. The guilt churned like bile in her stomach. She didn’t deserve Belle’s consideration, much less her compassion. The two emotions fought within her, dragging her back into the depths of darkness and pain. She couldn’t even enjoy the soft touch of someone who cared without guilt choking out the light.

  How long had she felt that way? When was the last time she’d experienced joy without remorse? Not in her one-night stands, not at work, not since she’d hurt Annabelle and Davis. Certainly not during the months she strung them both along. She struggled to remember a time before that. Had she been at peace then? The drive, the push to prove herself to her boss, to her naysayers, to Belle. She’d felt victorious, she’d felt needed and strong, even superior, but had she felt pure joy?

  She tried to think of something that brought her joy, something that made her unabashedly happy, something that didn’t carry a hint of insecurity or guilt or responsibility, something she did without expecting anything else from anyone else.

  Maybe the fog or the pain blocked her mind, but she remembered so many times, so many emotions. She hadn’t been miserable or even unhappy, but even the moments she’d cherished held an undercurrent of restlessness. Something in her had always reached for more until she couldn’t think of anything in her life that made her happy.

  Not one thing.

  The thought terrified her, like the realization she couldn’t give any reason why her life mattered. Did she really have nothing to live for? She opened her mouth to tell Belle she was scared, that she felt helpless and worthless, but the words wouldn’t come. She’d slipped too far down until the pain and the haze covered her, choking her emotions and smothering her voice. She had to sit up, she had to crawl or push her way out, but when she tried, a gentle hand on her forehead eased her back.

  “Hush now,” Belle whispered. “Stop fighting and let yourself rest.”

  The words seeped through the cloud until they surrounded her, wrapping her in their meaning like a blanket swaddles a child, soothing in its confinement. Stop fighting and let yourself rest.

  She closed her eyes, and for perhaps the first time in her life, she surrendered.

  *

  Davis still sat on the couch with her head in her hands when the sunlight streaked clean and painfully bright through her windows. She needed to move, but she didn’t dare for fear that if she gave in even one inch, she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from chasing Annabelle. She wanted to go after her so badly she had to clench her fists to keep from reaching for the doorknob. She wasn’t sure which betrayal was worse, Anna’s for leaving or her own heart’s for wanting to go with her. Either way, the ache in her chest only served as a reminder of how little she could trust her own judgment.

  She wouldn’t be a made a fool of again. She wouldn’t run back into Nic’s life. She had to stay strong. She couldn’t get pulled back in, and if Anna didn’t have the same kind of fortitude in the face of the p
ast, everyone was right and they really had nothing between them but Nic.

  The phone rang and she lunged for it, answering in a rush of hope that Anna had called to apologize.

  “Good morning,” Cass said, causing Davis to curse herself, both for hanging onto the hope of Anna’s return to her and for not checking her caller ID.

  “Hey, Cass, now’s not a good time.”

  “So when you answered the phone on the first ring, you were expecting someone else? The lovely and charming Annabelle, perhaps? Did you not manage to say good-bye last night?”

  Her throat thickened with emotion she didn’t want to feel. “No, we definitely ended things.”

  “Why doesn’t that sound good?”

  Her voice cracked. “She went back to Nic.”

  “What?” Cass practically screeched.

  “Don’t act so surprised. You all but said she’d do it eventually.”

  “I said no such thing, and I don’t believe you. She’s too strong, too smart to take her back.”

  Davis hesitated. She didn’t want to go into the details. “Well, maybe she hasn’t taken her back yet.”

  “Uh-huh.” Cass’s skepticism was clear even through the phone. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “She kissed me. And I kissed her. I trusted her, Cass. I wanted her, needed her, but when the hospital called and said Nic was in a car accident—”

  “What?”

  “She left,” Davis said. “She left me to go to her.”

  A pause.

  “And did you go after her?”

  “Did you hear what I said?” Davis snapped. “I opened up to her. I let myself need someone. I practically begged her not to go, and she left. Why should I chase her?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, maybe for all those reasons you listed. You trust her, you want her, you need her, yadda yadda yadda.”

  “Cass, I felt like my heart had been hung out to bleed dry. I can’t subject myself to that.”

  “Okay, but—”

  “Every time Nic calls, Anna will run to her.”

  Cass remained silent for a long moment. “Ah…don’t you think there are extenuating circumstances here?”

  “Nic wasn’t dying, and Anna all but said she’d stay by her side for the recovery.”

  “All but said?”

  “She’s said before that thirteen years of marriage don’t just disappear.”

  “Which they don’t.”

  “Right!”

  “Right…how?”

  Davis blew out a frustrated sigh. “Obviously they have something I can’t compete with, Cass. And as long as Nic’s between us we’re just going to keep hurting each other.”

  “Davis, listen to me a second,” Cass said, her voice forceful. “I don’t want to say ‘I told you so,’ but—”

  “Then don’t.” Davis practically whimpered. This was exactly why she hadn’t wanted to talk to Cass. “It doesn’t make me feel any better to know Nic’s robbed me of hope and trust and a belief in forever all over again.”

  “That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think? And you’re not hearing me.” Cass paused, as if challenging her to argue. When she spoke again, her tone was low, serious. “No one has a lower opinion of what Nic did than I do. But destroying your future—twice—is a lot of power to give her, wouldn’t you say?”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Make me understand.”

  “You don’t know what it felt like to open up to Anna, to touch her, to kiss her.” Davis felt light-headed at the memory. “The part of me I thought was dead came back to life.”

  “Well, obviously Anna didn’t feel good enough to override your hatred of Nic—”

  “What are you talking a—?”

  “Or,” Cass demanded, “or you would’ve gone with her.”

  Time stopped. Davis couldn’t believe she was hearing this.

  “Wait. You’re the one who told me how stupid I’d be to pursue Anna.”

  “Of course it would be stupid to chase Anna when you’re still hung up on Nic.”

  “Anna’s hung up on Nic, not me.”

  “Really? Annabelle’s touch raised you from the metaphorical dead, and you let her go just to spite your ex? That sounds like a pretty big hang-up to me.”

  “Y-you’re not making any sense.”

  “No, darling. I’m making perfect sense, and I’m saying the same thing I’ve said all along, even from your first night with Nic.” Cass sounded exasperated, patient, and coolly logical all at once. “You’ll never have a future with Anna, or anyone else for that matter, until you cut her and me and every one of your sob stories out of the equation completely. Make your own damn decisions for once.”

  Suddenly Anna’s words about how she was done letting other people make decisions for her came rushing back. Anna’d stood up for herself and tried to hold onto her, too. She’d asked her to go along. Anna had held on.

  Davis was the one who’d let go.

  The sense of loss, of damage, of error crushed her.

  *

  Annabelle slept fitfully in a chair for a few hours. Nic hadn’t stirred since opening her eyes earlier. The doctors said she might not be fully awake for days, but her vital signs were as strong as could be expected. She had a row of stitches across her right eyebrow, and her nose and cheek were black with bruises. Internally she hadn’t fared any better. The surgeons had had to place a metal rod in her leg and remove her spleen, but they’d finally stopped the bleeding, at least in the literal sense. Figuratively, Anna feared there would be open wounds for a long time, and not just for Nic.

  God, what had she been doing? Lab work showed her blood-alcohol levels were more than twice the legal limit, and one of the doctors mentioned Nic didn’t appear to have any solid food in her system. Clearly she had been eating, though, because she’d gained twenty pounds since Annabelle had last seen her. She looked again at the outline of Nic’s body under the thin white sheet. It would be easy to focus on the signs of trauma. The bruises and scrapes, or the wires to monitors and IVs, served as a map to all the ways things had gone wrong. However, Annabelle wasn’t squeamish, and she wasn’t naive enough to think a single trauma could so transform the strong, proud, beautiful woman she’d once loved into this shell of a human being.

  The dark circles under pallid skin, the strands of gray in her too-long hair, and the ring of extra weight indicated bad food and inactivity. Maybe a stranger would have missed the signs, and she wished she could ignore them, too, but she knew that body too well not to realize Nic had been slowly killing herself for months.

  The thought hurt.

  Maybe it shouldn’t.

  The idea of Nic destroying herself didn’t bother Davis. Perhaps it shouldn’t tear Annabelle up either, but she couldn’t help what she felt. She couldn’t pretend thirteen years of her life hadn’t happened, and even if she could, she couldn’t stand to see another human being—any other human being—suffer. If she’d come across a crash on her way home, she would’ve taken the victim to the hospital and made sure she received treatment. She’d wonder about her and worry and check in with her. Maybe she wouldn’t spend the night by her bedside, but why would Davis expect her to feel less for Nic than she would a stranger?

  Actually, she knew why. Davis was hurt and scared. Annabelle’s heart broke at the memory of those green eyes clouded with tears. Davis was so strong, so stoic and independent. What must it have cost her to say she needed Anna? And so soon after she’d allowed herself to trust. If anyone understood what a tenuous balance trust could be, it was Annabelle. Maybe Davis was right. Annabelle never could be free of Nic, but not in the way Davis suspected. She didn’t want to erase her past or forget the lessons she’d learned about herself. If only Davis would give her a chance to explain, but the more she tried, the more she hurt her. Maybe the others were right. Maybe they were destined to hurt each other.

  She couldn’t rehash her decisions any more. She’d always end up in the same
place, and she’d decided to stop going in circles months ago. She had to move forward. She had to focus on things she could control. She had to fall back on the numbness and emptiness, survival skills she’d learned to depend on, but she couldn’t shut out the memory of Davis’s mouth against her skin, or the heartbreak in her voice when she’d begged her to stay.

  She’d been able to compartmentalize thirteen years of memories but couldn’t forget two hours in the embrace of a woman she’d known only a few months. It made no sense. Was it all too fresh? Had she been lonelier than she’d let herself admit? Had Davis’s touch awakened something powerful in her body, or was it in her heart?

  Sadness overtook her. She hung her head in her hands and took deep breaths, but the tears came anyway. She hadn’t cried in months, and now sitting in an intensive-care unit, she wasn’t crying for the broken woman in the bed beside her. The tears she shed were for Davis, whose wounds weren’t visible but would likely take longer to heal. She cried for herself and the loss of a hope that had only begun to blossom.

  “Belle?”

  The voice was so soft she wasn’t sure she’d actually heard it.

  “Belle, are you crying?”

  She wiped her eyes as she scooted closer to the bed. “Yes, but don’t worry yourself about that.”

  Nic focused in on her face as if searching for something. “Are you crying over me?”

  “It’s complicated.” She forced a smile. “How are you feeling?”

  “Bad.”

  “I can get the nurse. Maybe they can give you something for the pain.”

  “I don’t think they have anything that will work on this kind of pain, and even if they did, I don’t know if I’d take it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been running from this pain for a while now,” Nic said, between heavy breaths. “Running isn’t getting me anywhere. I deserve to feel it.”

  Annabelle was afraid to admit Nic’s assessment might be true for more than one of them. “No one deserves pain, Nic, not even you.”

  “Maybe I need it, though. I thought being numb was better than pain, but numbness is painful, too.”