by Ava Conway
I reached over to my bedside table and grabbed the cell, flicking it on as I brought it to my ear.
“Hello.”
“Oh, my God, Mia. I’m so glad I caught you.”
“Christy, what’s up?” I said. We had psychology together and had exchanged phone numbers a few weeks ago.
“Mia, it’s Lucy. And . . . and I think Bethany.”
“My roommates?” I sat up in bed and wiped the tears from my cheeks. “What’s going on?”
“There’s been an accident. I think . . . oh, God, Mia, I’m so sorry.”
I shoved on my sandals and grabbed my keys. “Stay right there. I’m coming.”
I raced to the fraternity house and found the place in chaos. Cop cars were everywhere. Drunk students, everywhere. I pushed through the crowd to the yellow crime scene tape, tears flowing down my cheeks.
“What happened?” I yelled. “Lucy! Bethany!”
“There you are,” Christy said as she came up and gave me a hug. “It was awful.”
“What’s going on?”
“There was a fight. Lucy caught Bethany and Kyle having sex in the Den of Pleasure. I think . . . I think she ran them over with the car.”
“Holy shit.” Shock slammed through my body as I remembered Bethany’s plan for tonight. Did she really think she could get away with something like that? I scanned the area, looking for my roommates. I finally found Lucy’s boyfriend’s car a few hundred feet away. It was turned over onto its back and the wheels stood straight up into the air. Emergency workers moved quickly around the car as they pulled a body through the broken driver’s side window. Lucy’s cut and bloody face came into view.
“No,” I whispered as I watched the paramedics perform CPR on my roommate’s body. “No!”
WEEKS LATER, I visited Lucy in the hospital. She was strapped to her bed like some animal and drugged half out of her mind. She looked to be a shell of the woman she was, and so different from the beautiful person I knew.
“It’s all my fault,” she kept saying over and over. But the thing was, it wasn’t her fault. If I had been there, at the party, I could have prevented Bethany from doing something so stupid. If I had had my act together, I could have stopped this tragedy from happening, and Bethany and Kyle would be alive today.
If I never dated Justin, then Kyle never would have met Lucy, and both Lucy and Bethany never would have gone to that party that night. There never would have been such a senseless loss of life.
Seeing Lucy in the hospital had changed me. I realized that while relationships and family were right for some, they weren’t right for me. Relationships brought pain and heartache. It was much better to live life on your own terms and to create a fortress around your heart.
I TOOK A long sip of my bottled water and tried to focus on the computer screen in front of me. I knew I should have been typing in numbers and names of medications, but my focus kept drifting back to two weeks ago when Flynn had kissed me in that large oak on the quad.
For two weeks, he had never been far from my thoughts, but we had avoided each other in person, only saying the barest of necessities so as not to be rude. The truth was that I wasn’t sure how to handle Flynn. I needed to talk to him to finish my project, but the closer I got to him, the more I began to question myself and the choices I had made in my life. He was unsettling, but at the same time exciting. I knew I needed to stay away from him, but I couldn’t help pausing in my day to watch him play Ping-Pong with Nesto, read his book, or chat with Carter or Iris.
The more I watched him, the more I wanted to help him. This was a man who could benefit from my teaching. Over and over again, his caring for others had gotten him into trouble. Not just with his family, but here in the hospital. Nesto was a bad influence, and the incident in the common area with the orderlies would have ended poorly if Elias hadn’t gotten involved. If Flynn could only bury his feelings and his past, I knew that he could beat his demons for good.
In some of my weaker moments, I had read more about Flynn in the hospital database. I focused on his stay at Newton Heights, determined not to dredge up any more of his painful past without talking to him first. I had learned that time and again, he had stood up for the little guy, getting himself into trouble. Like I saw with Nesto on that first day, Flynn wasn’t ashamed of the spotlight. If there was a friend in trouble, he tried to help in any way he could.
The man cared too much, I realized. Instead of focusing on everyone else, he should be focusing on his own needs and trying to get himself better. As I hovered the mouse over his identification number once more, I felt that, with the proper direction, Flynn could make great strides in his healing and gain a new sense of direction. With a focus and sense of purpose, he’d be eligible to leave Newton Heights.
Pressing my lips together, I gave into the temptation and pressed the link once more. After a few minutes of skimming, I found an incident report dated about three months after he had arrived at Newton Heights. I read the report, frowning at the lack of detail. One afternoon, a patient named Victoria was reading a book in the common area. Flynn sat next to her and started talking. Victoria started screaming and calling him a demon. She had to be sedated.
How odd. I knew that Flynn could be intimidating sometimes, but it didn’t seem right that someone would be so frightened of him. What did he do to earn such a harsh reaction from a patient?
There was a link at the end of the report. I clicked on it and learned that after that incident, Victoria was so scared of Flynn that she asked to be moved to another hospital. She cried and carried on so much whenever he entered a room that Dr. Polanski felt that his presence was hindering her healing. She had no choice but to grant Victoria her request.
I rubbed my fingers over my lips as I thought of Flynn and our kiss in the courtyard. He was a good man, I could feel it. I wasn’t sure what had happened with Victoria, but it had to have been some misunderstanding. I knew deep down that I could help him. Flynn was like me in so many ways, he was almost like a personal challenge. If I could help him reenter society during my stay at Newton Heights, it would go a long way to building my résumé. My adviser would be impressed, especially since his specialty was dealing with people’s anger management issues. As head of the psych department, he could open doors for me in the academic world and help me gain more visibility for my unconventional method of treatment. Dr. Polanski would be so grateful that she’d offer me a residency at the hospital. My future would be planned out and I would be well on my way to a successful career.
Yes, helping Flynn could do a lot to help me further my career. I just had to show him how much better life was when you isolated yourself from your pain and strengthened the walls around your heart.
Closing the incident report, I turned to a fresh page in my notebook and started to plan.
WHEN I ARRIVED at work the next day, I was giddy like a kid on Christmas morning. On my desk I had found my new staff uniform—my petite size had come in—and took a detour to the bathroom to try it on. I had always looked good in white, but this uniform’s harsh angles made it too tight in the chest and too constricting around my hips. Everywhere else was baggy, suggesting that the next size up would look more like a pillowcase than a uniform on me.
While the uniform wasn’t as wonderful as I had expected, I didn’t let it sour my mood. I searched Flynn out, hoping to get an early start on my plan. I didn’t find him in any of the usual places, and after an hour of searching, I had begun to lose hope.
“You look lost,” Elias said as he approached me in the hall. “Nice threads, by the way.”
“Thanks. I am lost, kind of.” I chewed my bottom lip and glanced around at the other patients in the hall. “Have you seen Flynn around this morning?”
“He’s in the gym,” Elias said.
“The gym?”
“Yeah, he says that the physical activity helps him think.” Elias tilted his head to the side. “He seemed to be working extra hard this morning, so he mus
t be trying to work something out in his head. Johnson is with him.”
“Oh, thanks.” After getting directions to the gym, I made my way through the crowded halls to the workout area on the floor. As I stepped inside the room, I was hit by the smell of plastic and sweat. The place certainly smelled like a gym, but seemed to be more of a scaled-down version of what people went to outside of the institution. There were a couple of weight machines but no free weights. A small track and an elliptical but no treadmills. The equipment looked dusty and worn. I wondered who on earth would want to work out in such a dingy place.
Johnson was sitting on one of the leg machines, but instead of using it, he was reading a Popular Mechanics magazine. When I entered the room, he got off the machine and strode toward me.
“You didn’t show up again last night,” he observed.
“Sorry, I was busy.” Ever since the confrontation in the common area, Johnson had been trying to get me to go to that biker bar with him. I had managed to put him off, but I was running out of excuses.
“Tonight then.”
I glanced over Johnson’s shoulder at Flynn, who was doing chin-ups on a long metal bar that was fixed firmly to the wall. His biceps bulged as he pulled himself up, and sweat beaded on his brow. The man looked positively breathtaking as he concentrated on his reps. Desire snaked through my system, reminding me of our kiss on the roof. I thought about what it would feel like to be kissed by him again, to have his rock-hard body pinning me against the wall. He looked so powerful, so deadly.
“Mia?” Johnson asked as he slid his finger under the collar of my blouse, drawing my attention back to him. “You’re coming tonight, right?”
I stepped back from his touch, suddenly uncomfortable. “No, thanks. I don’t drink.” It was a lie, but I couldn’t think of anything better under such short notice.
“Come on,” Johnson said. “Just for a little while.”
“The lady said that she doesn’t drink,” Flynn said as he jumped down from the bar and strode over to where we stood.
Johnson frowned. “Are you done here, McKenna? It’s getting close to rec therapy time.”
Flynn glanced at me. “Sure, I’m done.” He took a towel from the rack and wiped his brow. “Coming to rec, Mia?”
“Yes.” After one more glance at Johnson’s frustrated expression, I hurried out the door to the gym and followed Flynn down the hall, wondering what had just happened. I felt as if I were in the middle of some sort of macho power struggle, one where Flynn just claimed his territory.
As we walked, I thought about how Lacey’s relationship with Steve had changed her, and how my father’s suicide put my mother in virtual isolation, where she constantly worried that her children would follow the same path as their father.
Relationships bring only pain. And in the case with Flynn, it could ruin my future. As I hurried after the former boxer, anger seemed to radiate off him in waves, and I realized that we needed to have an open talk about what happened in the tree. Things were too weird between us, and it would do neither of us any good if there was all of this tension whenever we were together.
Yes, we needed to talk, but unfortunately I didn’t know the right words to say to get things back to the way they were. Part of me wasn’t even certain if we could go back. So much had happened between us. I had to try, however. My internship depended on it.
THIRTEEN
“FLYNN, SLOW down,” I said as I tried to keep up with him. “You’re going too fast.”
Flynn rounded the corner and pulled up short, causing me to bump into his chest. He gripped my arms and spun us until my back was against the wall. I took in a large breath as that gorgeous, crooked nose pressed close to mine.
“What’s going on with you and Johnson?”
“What? Nothing.” I searched his face and shivered at the anger I saw in his gaze.
“Are you sure? Because he certainly seems to think that there’s potential.”
I shrank back against the wall in disgust. “Ew, no. There’s nothing going on.”
“You didn’t kiss him?”
“No, of course not.” I shifted my gaze to his lips, remembering how his mouth felt against my own. “The only person I kissed around here was you.”
After a long, tense moment, he eased his grip and leaned back. “And I’m not going to apologize for that.” He started walking again, and I chased after him. After we passed several doors, I caught up and grabbed his elbow.
“You have to realize that I could never be your girlfriend.”
He stopped walking and frowned. “I never asked you to be my girlfriend.” He yanked his arm from my grip and continued down the hall.
Damn, stubborn male. I hurried to catch up. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it to come out like that.”
“Yes, you did.” He stopped walking and turned to face me. “You don’t want to date someone who is brain-damaged.”
“That’s not it at all.” I let out a long breath. “I work here. Romantic relationships with patients aren’t allowed.”
“It didn’t seem to stop you in the oak tree.” He glanced down at my new clothes. “You can put on a new uniform, but it doesn’t change who you are inside.”
Ouch. I spread my hands over my neatly pressed jacket, suddenly self-conscious of the new clothes. “That’s a little harsh, isn’t it?”
“If the shoe fits, sweetheart . . . ”
I considered him a moment before speaking. His response to Johnson asking me out seemed rather intense given the circumstances. He had no claim over me and acknowledged that he didn’t want us dating. If all of this was true, then it made no sense that he was so upset.
“What’s really going on here, Flynn?”
He cracked his knuckles, stalling for time. I got the feeling that he was choosing his words carefully. “Just . . . stay away from Johnson. He’s bad news.”
He didn’t have to tell me that. My skin crawled whenever that orderly walked into the room.
“I have no plans to do anything with Johnson—and I can’t do anything with you, either. I’m here as a professional, Flynn. Starting a relationship could get messy.”
“Life is messy, Mia.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Look, I know that what happened out in the quad made you uncomfortable, but life is uncomfortable.” He offered me a seductive smile. “If you aren’t shaken up every once in a while, then you aren’t really living.”
He started to walk away, and I began to panic. I didn’t want things to be so messed up between us, so I blurted out the first thing that came to my mind.
“Was it messy with Victoria?” I asked.
Flynn turned back to face me. His eyes darkened as he fisted his hands. “What do you know about Victoria?”
I shrugged and tried to appear nonchalant, but something in his gaze unnerved me. He looked so feral, so angry.
“I know that she was scared of you,” I guessed.
“Yeah. So?” He took a step forward and stopped himself. “I’m dangerous.”
I glanced around and noticed that we were the only people standing in the hallway. “I noticed she . . .” I cleared my throat as I began to understand Victoria’s fear. Flynn had this commanding presence. He radiated testosterone and strength. Now all of that energy was directed at me and I couldn’t help but be a little wary myself.
“She requested to be transferred to a different hospital.” I took a step away from him and felt the hard hospital wall press into my back. “She said that you frightened her and that she feared for her life.”
“Is that what my file says?” He took cautious steps forward, closing the distance between us. His stride was confident, purposeful.
I shrugged and averted my gaze. There was so much hurt and pain in his features. I couldn’t keep looking at them.
“Yes.”
He continued to close the distance between us. “What else does my file say?”
Part of me didn’t want to know about his relationship with Vict
oria. It was a private matter and I was afraid of what I might learn about Flynn. I had to keep pressing, however. Not only for my own sanity, but because I felt that this incident was a turning point for him. I had to know what happened if I wanted to help him heal.
I steeled my emotions, and I forced myself to looking into his eyes when I spoke. “You were close,” I guessed.
“Go on,” he said when I didn’t continue.
“Then something happened.”
“Yeah?” he prompted.
“Then . . . then one day she started screaming whenever you came around. Said that you were a demon or something.”
He pressed his lips together, as if trying to hold back some surge of emotion. “It wasn’t just me—it was all men. I had no idea why she was so afraid.” He turned to go.
“I want to know what really happened.”
He stopped and glanced at me. “Do you?”
I nodded. “The report was incomplete. There were so much missing.”
“I’m sure.” He turned to face me.
“Victoria was your friend,” I started.
He let out a long breath, as if resigning himself to something. “We had become . . . close. At least as close as two people could get in a place like this. She didn’t like being on the floor, so we’d frequently sneak away together. She always seemed happier when we were away from the staff.”
“Did you . . . did you take her up in the oak tree?”
Flynn’s smile was sad. “She would have liked it, but no. I didn’t discover the tree until after Jayden and Lucy left. We’d go to the teaching hospital, or down into the laundry area. She liked the smell of clean clothes . . .” His voice trailed off, and an uneasy feeling settled in my chest.
“You seemed to like her a lot.” I thought about our adventure in the oak tree. I was glad that he never took Victoria there—it would have marred the memory in some way. I considered that tree special, that moment special. I didn’t want to think that he had brought other girls there before me.