“Just had a long night. Couldn’t sleep. Thinking about too many things.” She nodded in understanding. I leaned closer.
“It’s kind of a long story, but hopefully I’ll tell you later.” She nodded again.
“Understood. Here are your messages and these are the files you were looking for. Your father asked to see you when you have a chance, and Violet left this for you.” I dealt with the Violet thing first. It was a note asking if she could meet with me later. Sure. I’d get right on that. I gathered everything up in my arms and dumped it on my desk. Would anyone notice if I pulled my chair in and crawled under my desk and went to sleep? I considered it, but the pile of things I had to deal with called to me and promised me a mental vacation from the Lucah/Ryder situation, even if it was only for a few minutes.
I sat down in my chair and stretched my neck, cringing. And then my phone rang. So it began.
I sent Lucah texts every fifteen minutes. It was probably excessive, but I couldn’t help myself. He responded to each one, saying that there was nothing new to report, he was fine, he didn’t need anything and Tate and April were there, and Ryder was getting his “spirit” back. That was probably a kind way one of the nurses had put it.
At lunch I considered going over, but Lucah assured me I didn’t have to. He texted me five minutes later and said that Sloane had arrived with takeout for everyone and more clothes for Lucah and more coffee.
She was a saint. I took back any bad thing I’d ever said about her. I sent her a message thanking her from the bottom of my heart. She just sent back a smiley face.
Instead of going to the hospital, I took Lilia out to lunch again, but this time I didn’t want to talk about me.
“So, now that I’ve dumped all my personal crap on you, why don’t you dump some on me?” I said after we’d ordered drinks.
She looked at me as if I’d suggested naked mud wrestling.
“Sorry if that came off weird. I’m running on only a little sleep and pure caffeine.” I’d had about six cups by that point, and it was hard to sit still in my chair.
“Yeah, I can tell. Um, everything’s going good, I guess. My neighbors are going through a nasty divorce, every detail of which I am now privy to. It’s a bit like living next to one of those really bad reality shows.”
“That completely sucks.” So we talked about horrible neighbors and ate our soup and salads and she didn’t ask me once why I looked like crap, and hadn’t slept, or what was going on. I should give her a raise.
“Thanks, for this. I really needed to talk about something else today,” I said on the walk back to the office.
“You’re welcome. I know when to keep my mouth shut. I don’t want to get on your bad side if I can help it.” She had in the beginning, which made me feel awful. I apologized for being a bitch at first.
“It’s not a big deal. I think I needed it. I was just so nervous about working at my first real big girl job and I was so worried I was going to screw it up that I never opened my mouth. Another boss might have fired me, or just given up. You didn’t.” The praise made me blush.
I dropped Lilia off at her desk with another secret project (I’d given her quite a few lately) and headed to see if I could catch Dad. He was out to lunch, but Mrs. Andrews told me when he’d be back.
“Is everything all right, dear?” She noticed the poorly-concealed dark circles. Fucking fantastic.
“Sort of.”
“I, ah, overheard that Mr. Lucah Blythe was not going to be in to work today. I just wanted to know if something had happened.” She asked it in a really nice way, but I knew if I told her, it would get back to Dad and I didn’t want that to happen without talking to Lucah about telling him first.
“Things are going to be fine. They were just rough there for a few hours. I’m not sure if Lucah wants me talking about it, so—”
Mrs. Andrews put her hands up to stop me.
“Say no more. It’s completely personal. I didn’t want to pry, I just wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything I could do.”
Not really. It was up to Ryder.
“No, but thank you for the concern. It means a lot to me, and I know it does to Lucah as well.” Between Sloane, Chloe and Marisol being their fabulous selves and Mrs. Andrews and Dad being so nice about Lucah being out, we had all kinds of support that we never asked for. Funny how you never know who’s on your side until you need someone on your side.
“You’re family. You know I think of you as my own daughter.” She was going to make me cry if she kept talking so I just thanked her again and went back to my office so no one would see the tears forming in my eyes.
It took a few more minutes to get myself back together again and I realized I still had to go see Violet. That should be fun.
Her office was down the end of the hallway, on the opposite side as mine. I knocked, since her door was closed, but she called out to me to come in.
I didn’t know what I expected, but her office wasn’t that different from mine. Not too many pictures, or clutter or useless crap that a lot of other people seemed to need around them at all times. She had a few plants, and some generic watercolor prints, but that was about it.
She was typing on her computer, and didn’t look up.
“Hold on one second, I just have to finish this thought.” She typed a few more words and then looked up at me with a smile.
“Hi, Rory.”
“Hi, Violet.” There was another pause as I wondered if I could sit in her extra chair or if I should just stand there because this was just a quick question.
Violet seemed to realize that she hadn’t offered a chair.
“Oh, please, sit down. Sorry about that. I was thinking about something else.” I sat down and she put a smile on her face.
“So, what can I, um, do for you?” It didn’t feel like the right thing to say, but I said it anyway.
“This is kind of embarrassing, actually. I feel absolutely weird asking you about this, and feel free to tell me if this is completely inappropriate, but I just wanted to make sure that Lucah was okay? I noticed he was on this list of absent employees.” Every day, an email was sent around to everyone listing the absent employees, and those that were on vacation. It saved a lot of them from getting massive amounts of email when they weren’t there to check it.
“Oh.” It didn’t seem that . . . inappropriate, I guessed. She probably didn’t have anyone to ask, and she knew I would know the answer.
“He’s fine. Just, um, dealing with some things.” Maybe she could read between the lines. I almost wished she would have told me what she wanted to ask me ahead of time so I could have texted Lucah and asked him if it was okay to tell her. I mean, what was the protocol here? What would he want her to know?
“Say no more. I’m going to guess it involves that brother of his. Ryder was always trouble, even when he was barely a teenager.” She shook her head and rolled her eyes toward the ceiling at the same time. “I’m sure he’s probably told you some of the stories.” Yes, he had. Also, could I go now?
“Anyway, I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t in a car accident or something. We might not be together anymore, obviously, but you never stop caring about someone, even when you break up.” How much caring were we talking about here? I almost wanted to stay and ask her, but I needed to get back to work so this day could be over, so I could go back to the hospital.
“No, he’s fine.” I wasn’t going to elaborate. If Lucah wanted to tell her later on, he could do it himself, but for now, it was not really her business.
“Oh, good. Sorry about this being so weird, but I don’t have his number anymore, and I didn’t know who to ask about it.”
“No, it’s fine. I get it.” Not really.
I left Violet’s office and went back to mine not knowing how I felt. But I went back to work anyway.
Dad never did catch up with me, so I’d have to wait to see him the next day, or call him later. That was probably good, because I could t
alk to Lucah about what I should and should not discuss.
I counted down the minutes until I could leave. I had everything packed and ready to rocket out the door, and I probably would have punched anyone in the face if they’d come to me with a crisis at five minutes to five.
No one did, and I ran out of the office so fast, people probably thought I was on fire. I paid the cabbie extra to get me to the hospital faster, and he did.
I ended up getting too impatient for the elevator, so I ran up the steps, arriving on Ryder’s floor sweaty and out of breath.
What I found when I walked into Ryder’s room was not what I expected. It was pretty much almost exactly as I left it, only this time Lucah was tuning a guitar, April was fussing over Ryder’s pillows and he was minus a few of the IV lines.
And I nearly crashed into Sloane, who had two trays of coffee.
“Best friend,” I said reaching out to take one of the trays from her.
“Hey, I figured you were going to get here around now. How as work?” Never mind that.
“How is he?” She smiled.
“He’s doing much better. He didn’t try to kill himself, we don’t think. He just took too many pills.” That seemed a little bit too convenient an excuse, and I wasn’t buying it, but I would hold off judgment for now.
“Sunshine,” Lucah said, beaming at me. He didn’t look any more rested, but he seemed a lot more cheerful.
“Where did the guitar come from?” I said, handing out the coffee as Lucah got up to give me a kiss.
“Tate brought it. He had one at home and figured we could use a little music.”
“Kill me, please,” Ryder said from his bed.
“Not today,” April said, making sure his one remaining IV line didn’t have any kinks in it.
“How was work, Miss Clarke? Did you miss me?” Only every other millisecond. No, that was a lie. I’d missed him EVERY second.
“It was not as fun without you. How’s everything here?”
“Pretty much what you’re seeing. Nurses have been in and out, checking and testing.”
“Please kill me,” Ryder said again. “If one more person asks me if I’ve pooped today, I’m going to lose it.” It appeared Ryder wasn’t a model patient, but that didn’t surprise me. Men were horrible when they were invalids.
“Hush,” April said. Sloane came in behind me and Ryder’s eyes went immediately to her. Drawn to her. She wasn’t as spruced up and fabulous as last night, but he didn’t seem to care. And she stared back just as much as she handed out coffee.
There weren’t enough chairs, so I sat in Lucah’s lap, April took the other chair and Sloane sat on the edge of Ryder’s bed and absentmindedly rubbed his feet. He closed his eyes and lay back, moving the bed so he was more horizontal.
“Where’s Tate?” I asked as Lucah took my hair down and ran his fingers through it. It was pretty gross since I hadn’t showered, but he didn’t seem to mind.
“He went home to take care of the girls. He’ll be back tonight. We’re going to switch,” April said, sipping her coffee.
“You don’t need to,” Ryder said in a loud voice, his eyes still closed.
“Or we could leave the girls with the neighbors again . . . “ she trailed off, thinking.
“Or you could just leave, seeing as I have enough babysitters already,” Ryder said again, but everyone continued to ignore him.
“Well, you need babysitters,” Lucah said, picking up the guitar and plucking a string that let out a sound of dissonance. “When was the last time you tuned this thing?” He fiddled with the strings and kept tuning.
“This is hell. I must be dead, because this is hell,” Ryder said. Then he opened his eyes and looked at Sloane. She pretended to be watching Lucah, but I could tell she was paying attention.
“Or maybe not,” he said so softly I almost didn’t hear it. Uh huh.
“Why don’t you guys head home for a while? Get a shower in and so forth. Sloane and I can handle things here,” April said and Sloane nodded. It would be nice to have a shower. Maybe Lucah and I could share it and I could give him a little TLC.
“How about it?” I said to Lucah.
“Okay, okay. You’re all going to pressure me into it anyway.” He put the guitar down and got up, putting his arm around me.
“Don’t you dare do anything while I’m gone. I have all the nurses watching you,” Lucah said to Ryder, who didn’t open his eyes.
Ryder remained silent as Lucah and I gathered all of our things. Lucah took my hand as we walked toward the elevator.
“How are you holding up? Did you get any sleep?”
He pushed the button to go down as if it took a lot out of him. Now that we weren’t in the room with Ryder anymore, Lucah was wilting by the second.
“A little bit, but not much. I think I’m too tired to sleep at this point.” I knew what he meant.
“Well, we’ll go home and take a shower and you can take a nap and I’ll make you something to eat. How does that sound?”
“Perfection,” he sighed, closing his eyes. “What did I do before you, Sunshine? I can’t remember and I don’t want to.”
“You survived somehow, I guess. And you didn’t do a bad job of it.” He leaned on me and I thought he was going to fall asleep standing up, but the elevator reached the first floor and his eyes flew open.
“Let’s get you home,” I said, dragging him out of the elevator.
We only meant to spend about an hour at home, but after Lucah fell asleep in the shower, I dragged him out and tipped him onto the bed, where he continued to sleep.
I did a quick clean of the apartment, emptied the dishwasher and blow dried my hair before pulling a frozen pizza out of the freezer and putting it in the oven. Sloane wasn’t conveniently around to make me an elaborate four-course meal. My cooking skills had been crippled by having too many good cooks in my life.
While the pizza cooked, I sat on the couch and closed my eyes for a moment. I thought about climbing in bed next to Lucah, but I figured I’d let him have the bed to himself.
The next time I opened my eyes, the timer was going off and the smell of pizza filled the house. I got up, and stumbled to turn the oven off, but didn’t take the pizza out. I wanted to wait until Lucah was awake.
I went in to check on him and decided not to wake him yet. His wet hair was all over the place, and he was sleeping on his back, which he almost never did unless he was exhausted. I stood beside the bed and pushed some of his hair out of his eyes. He was going to have a hell of a cowlick when he woke up. I had to stop watching him because it made my heart feel like it was going to burst, and I wanted to cry.
I backed out of the room and shut the door, moving back to the couch and turning on the television for a little while.
Two hours later, I heard noises in the bedroom and Lucah emerged, his eyes still squinty with sleep and his hair something else entirely.
“Good morning, my love.” He groped his way toward the couch and collapsed down next to me. He was naked when he’d gone to bed, but he’d put some boxers on before he came out.
“What time is it?”
“Uh, nearly nine.”
“Shit, we should get back.” He tried to get up, but didn’t quite make it.
“It’s okay. Sloane and April and Tate have it. I’ve been texting them.” He nodded.
“Are you hungry? There’s pizza. I didn’t do anything fancy with it, but I’ve been keeping it warm in the oven for you.” His stomach growled as if it had been listening to me.
“Be right back.” I went and got the pizza, cut slices and put them on paper towels because I was too lazy for plates.
“Dinner is served. Do you want something to drink?” He nodded.
“Thank you, this is great.” I grabbed two bottles of water and sat back down with him while we each inhaled our first slice, and then went back for seconds and thirds. I’d never eaten that much pizza in my life. Between the two of us, we finished the entire
thing in less than ten minutes.
“That was the best pizza I’ve ever had,” Lucah said, folding his hands on his stomach and leaning back.
“Food always tastes better when you’re really hungry,” I said, trying to figure out if I could get up from the couch.
“Yes it does. But still. We should probably get back.” He actually made it to his feet this time.
“Um, you might want to put some pants on first. And maybe a shirt,” I said as he pulled me up as well. I’d just thrown a robe on when I got out of the shower, so I had to actually get dressed.
What seemed like hours later, but was only a few minutes, we were dressed and heading back to the hospital.
“Will you stay the entire night again?” I said.
“I think I should, at least until they release him, which will probably be tomorrow. And speaking of that, I need to ask you something. I’ve been thinking about it all day, but I wanted to ask you before we make any final arrangements.” I waited as we rode down the elevator to the first floor.
“And what is that?”
His eyes watched the numbers go down instead of looking at my face. “I, uh, want Ryder to move in with us.”
My jaw hit the floor. Or at least close to it.
“I just don’t think we should send him back where he was, wherever that was. The people he was living with haven’t even bothered to call, or check in on him even though they knew that he was in the hospital. Plus, they’re part of the problem. We talked today, and he told me that he’s been trying to get off drugs for a while now, but they were always high, so it wasn’t the best environment for him to quit in. And I feel partially responsible for what happened. For not being there for him.” I wanted to tell him that it wasn’t his fault, but I didn’t think that was going to get me anywhere. I got over my initial shock pretty damn fast.
“Well, we have an extra bedroom,” I responded, because that was the best thing I could think of to say.
“Are you serious? You’re okay with this?” The elevator opened to the ground floor, and he moved to get out. He was looking at me as if I’d just handed him a check for ten million dollars.
Surrendering to Us (Surrender Saga, Book Two) Page 17