“Mace, what’s going on?” a female voice sounded from inside. Looking up, I couldn’t believe my eyes; there was Calista Brennan, Isla’s bitch stepsister, standing in nothing but Mace’s shirt and looking like she’d been fucked thoroughly.
“What the fuck?” I was starting to sober up now. She’d played a part in helping Francheska’s bitches; he knew all of this because I’d told him the plan they’d had.
“It’s not what it looks like,” Mace gasped out from underneath me, trying to catch his breath with my weight on top of him. Good, fucker!
I rose to my knees and slowly got up, using the wall to steady me as I glared at Mace. How else could it look? Oh, shit, Ava!
She was now walking back towards her car, and I could see her shoulders shaking. “You’re an asshole and a piece of fucking shit.” Mace stiffened as I let rip. “And now you’ve lost her. I hope it was worth it, but I doubt it.” I ran after Ava now on slightly more sober legs, catching up with her just as she got into her car.
“I’m done, Ren,” she whispered as she started the engine and began to back out the drive. “Never again.”
Was there something in the water? What the hell was going on just now?
Maya
Luke and I walked around the site, inspecting all of the scaffolding and machinery to make sure it was safe. He’d told me what had happened yesterday, explaining that the photos were Photoshopped and not real. It sounded a bit farfetched to me, but then, this was Francheska, and she was capable of anything, I’d realized. There were no limits, no boundaries; she would do as she pleased even with the restraining order that was being served to her.
We were walking under some low scaffolding when I saw something hanging down and grabbed it. It was a piece of dark material. I wonder where it came from? Turning it over, I saw the word “SURPRISE!” written in white paint.
Luke had just grabbed my arm to pull me out from under the structure when all of a sudden something hit me and everything went blessedly black…
Ren
Waking up this morning feeling like I’d been licking sandpaper all night was not a pleasant thing. I hated the morning after the night before, but today I had a purpose. I was going to fix this once and for all, and Maya was going to move in with me. Why? Because I loved her, and I wanted to experience more moments with her, and with us to-ing and fro-ing between each other’s houses, those experiences weren’t as often as they should have been.
My phone started buzzing beside my head and letting out the most godawful tune…was that the song from Armageddon? When did I do that?
“…’lo?” I answered groggily.
“Ren, it’s Tony.”
Pulling my phone away from my ear, I saw he was calling from Maya’s phone, and instantly I sat upright. “Where is she, Tony?”
So help me God, if that bitch had touched Maya, I would end her.
“There’s been an accident, Ren.” He was crying now, and his words were hard to figure out. “You need to get to the hospital.”
As I jumped out of bed and ran to get some clothes, a million thoughts went through my head. I couldn’t lose the girl that I’d never seen coming and was never going to let go of!
Running through the hospital entrance, I saw Tony sitting on the floor with his back against the wall and his head in his hands.
“What’s happened?” I didn’t even recognize my own voice; I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been this scared.
“Ren,” a deep voice said as a hand landed on my shoulder. Turning around, I saw George, looking like he’d aged ten years since I’d last seen him, and Christie behind him with tears pouring down her face. “Son, there was an accident, and Luke and Maya were hurt.” He stopped, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. “They were under some scaffolding when it collapsed on top of them—” His voice broke, and I could see tears running down his face now.
My legs gave out beneath me and I fell to the floor. Was this it?
“Montgomery and Price families?” Two doctors wearing scrubs with masks around their necks entered the waiting room where we all sat waiting for news. My family and Mace had turned up shortly after I'd got to the hospital and I'd never been more relieved to see my Mom in my life.
“Yes.” George stood up immediately, with Christie beside him wringing her hands. I went to stand beside them with my parents standing behind me, eager for any news that I could get. It had been eight hours since Maya had been taken to surgery, eight hours of waiting and dreading them coming through and telling us that we’d lost the most beautiful girl ever to walk the earth and the amazing guy with a heart of gold.
“You are…?” the doctor on the left asked, looking us all over.
“I’m her uncle and her next of kin on her medical forms, George Montgomery. This is my wife, Christie, and beside her is Maya’s fiancé, so you may release medical details to us.” George referring to me as her fiancé almost broke the control I had on the tears that I was holding back. Would I ever get to call her that?
The doctor on the right came forward, pulling his cap off his head. “Maya sustained some severe injuries,” he started. I could feel my heart beating so hard inside my chest that I was surprised I was still breathing. “She has two breaks to her tibia and a hairline fracture of her fibula. She also has severe bruising around her femur, and her knee was dislocated when she arrived at the hospital. We stabilized her leg with metal plates and cast it, but we will keep a close eye on the bruising and also ensure that the breaks are in alignment.
“She also has severe bruising on her right kidney and had a collapsed lung, which we have fixed and inserted a drain into to ensure that it heals. Four broken ribs, a bad break to her radius—which we have operated on, and she now has a plate holding that bone together.” I couldn’t breathe listening to him listing all of these things wrong with my baby. Knowing that my beautiful girl would be in so much pain was killing me.
“Her shoulder was also dislocated,” the doctor continued, making eye contact with all of us one by one. Surely there couldn’t be any more? Seeing him swallow before taking a deep breath, I knew I was wrong. “Finally, the most worrying injury was the impact on her head. The CT showed a small amount of swelling that we will be monitoring closely. The tests that we carried out, though, showed her reactions are okay and assured us that at this moment in time, there is no issue with her brain. If the swelling continues, though, it might be necessary for us to drill a hole in her skull to allow the pressure to stabilize, but we’ll cross that bridge if we come to it. For now, she is being moved to ICU and is in a critical but stable situation.”
She was stable; that was all I’d needed to hear. And she was reacting normally, so her brain was all right.
“I operated on Luke today,” the other doctor said as he stepped forward.
“Is he okay?” Christie asked, tears running down her face.
Taking a deep breath, the doctor began. “Luke’s right leg was badly broken and required surgery to stabilize. He also has a tear to his right kidney that we are monitoring closely and hope will heal without surgical intervention. Like Miss Price, Luke has broken ribs, one of which pierced his lung. We have fixed this, and again we need to monitor this extremely closely, as patches do not always take the first time. Luke’s head injury is more complex than Maya’s, however.” I heard a sob behind me and saw Isla standing there looking so pale she almost disappeared into the white wall behind her.
George reached back and took her hand, pulling her forward between him and Christie.
“I’m afraid that he had too much swelling, and his test results were not good,” the doctor continued. “At this moment, he has a suspected subtentorial hemorrhage. Should his symptoms get worse or if the pressure in his skull goes up further, then we will have no option but to drill relief holes in his skull. Right now, it is looking likely that we will need to do this, and soon. His reactions to stimuli were not what we would like them to be, and he is currently in a med
ically induced coma. He is also being moved to the ICU, and at this moment we have labeled him critical and stable.” I could hear Christie and Isla sobbing as we all stood unmoving, taking in what the doctors had said.
Walking away from them all, I went and sat in the hall and stared down at my feet, thinking through everything—the first time I saw her in Cooper’s, the first time we spoke, going around to hers that night, our first kiss, and all of the memories that followed it, including what had happened recently.
“She’ll be okay,” my mom whispered, sitting down beside me and putting her arms around me.
“I can’t lose her, Mom.”
“You won’t, honey. You just have to find a way to prove to her that you’re in it for the long haul,” she said in that sagely wisdom that only parents could come out with.
“Yeah, bro, instead of showing her with semen, find a way that actually shows how much you love her,” Cole the fuckface said from beside me. “Holy shit, I wonder if Hallmark does Valentine cards with that shit on? ‘Nothing says I love you more than semen!’ No, no. ‘Show her with semen!’ Wait…” As we all sat there staring at him with our mouths open, because who the fuck said that shit, Mace smacked him around the head, followed by my dad, shutting him up. “Sorry,” he mumbled, realizing his timing and his words were inappropriate.
Mom had made an excellent point, though, and my brain suddenly started throwing ideas at me. She was right, and I thought I knew just how to do it, so I got up and jogged back to where the Montgomerys were sitting, pulling my phone out on the way.
Mace
Waiting for news on Maya and Luke had been torture, especially watching Ava trying to hold it together after she'd arrived. We hadn’t spoken since she’d turned up with Ren last night, and she kept avoiding me every time I tried. I needed to tell her the truth about what she’d seen. I couldn’t take her hurting because of me, especially when it hadn’t been what it had looked like.
Seeing her stand up, I knew I needed to take this chance to make her listen. Walking out after her, I stopped when I saw her talking to a young guy in scrubs, laughing. She was giving him the smile that I used to get before it all became so complicated between us, and I felt like breaking the asshole in half. I saw him pass over a piece of paper and a pen that she wrote something on before passing it back to him, just as I reached them.
“Gonna introduce me to your friend, angel?” Yeah, I was a possessive asshole, but she was mine, regardless of the fact that we couldn’t be together.
She turned to look at me with the look on her face that she gave me all the time now. It was distrust and disgust and made me sick to my stomach.
“Sure. Penn, this is Mace. Mace, this is Penn. Mace is like my big brother,” she said, laughing.
What the fuck? I was like her big brother? What we had together was so far from siblings it was unreal. I’d never thought of her as a sister, even when she and Gia were little pains in my ass, following me everywhere.
“I gotta go, Ava,” Peen said, looking at the time. “I’ll give you a call later, though. See you soon—and nice to meet you, man.”
I waited until he was out of earshot and turned back to the angel standing in front of me. “So, you’re going out with Peen?”
“It’s Penn, asshat.” She rolled her eyes and started walking away from me.
“Dammit, Ava, we need to talk!”
“No, we really don’t.” She spun around and marched up to me sticking her finger in my face. “I’m not interested in listening to one thing that you have to say. Why don’t you go and call your slut?”
She was shaking by the end of it, and I realized the amount of damage I’d done. It didn’t matter that it had been innocent and that I’d been trying to get information out of her, or that I wouldn’t touch her or anyone else when all I wanted was Ava. The fact was I couldn’t have her anyway. I was tainted, a murderer, a piece of shit, and she was too damn good for me.
Giving her one last look, I turned and walked back toward the waiting room, stopping when I got to Ren and his family. The only time I ever felt like a human who was worthy of love was when I was around the Townsends, Gia, or Ava—the rest of the time, I knew exactly what I was.
Seeing Ren so devastated over Maya, though, flipped a switch in me. What if it were Ava where Maya was right now? I wouldn’t have had the chance to show her how much she meant to me or to experience what Ren had. If I didn’t do something soon, I’d never experience it. I needed to do something now and prove to her that I was worthy regardless of the blood on my hands. Colette had told me a couple of weeks ago that you had to fight for happiness in life and that it would be worth it; I was going to fight, and I wasn’t taking any prisoners. Ava was mine.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Maya
I hurt all over. Every time I breathed in, it felt like someone was stabbing me and like I had a sumo wrestler sitting on my chest. How the hell did guys find those 450-pound women sitting on them arousing? Not being able to breathe and feeling like my chest was about to explode wasn’t doing it for me. Then there was the pain in my arm and my leg and oh God my head. I could hear a hissing noise, and every second or so a beep; it was making the pain in my head worse. The beeping was starting to get faster. Couldn’t Ren turn the damn alarm off? He always slept through it, and now it was making my pain worse. Why was I in pain? Just as I tried to open my eyes, I heard the door open, and my arm suddenly felt cold. Then everything went back to black…
That seemed to be how things went for a while: pain, beeping, and then sleep. Now and then I’d hear people talking, but for the life of me I couldn’t make out a thing they were saying or who it was. I sometimes felt someone holding my hand or stroking my hair, or at least I thought I did, but it all seemed to be muddled together.
Right now, things seemed clearer and less painful. After a lot of persuasion, my eyes opened. I really must have been sick, because I could have sworn that I was in a hospital. A slice of bright light hit my eyes and made my head feel like it was going to explode.
“Maya?” It sounded like Ren, but not at the same time. “Oh shit, Maya.” Ehe end was said loudly, making me close my eyes and groan. Why was he torturing me? I felt someone reaching over me, and then footsteps went quickly back to where the light had come from. There was a loud thud as the light hit me again and the voice yelled, “She’s awake, she’s awake…”
I really wished I could punch them right now. Every noise felt like I was being stabbed in the head, and every flinch felt like someone was taking a bat to my body. So I did the only thing I could with the limited movement I had…
“Well, that’s charming,” the voice muttered as I stuck my middle finger in the air and fell back to sleep.
“Maya, baby,” a lovely, deep voice whispered from beside me. “Maya, I have your parents on FaceTime. Open your beautiful eyes and just let them see you, okay? Otherwise, they’re gonna fly here, and you’ll be in big trouble, beautiful.”
That wasn’t an empty threat; I’d once fallen out the window sneaking out to go to a party. After I’d had a cast put on my broken ankle, my dad made me stay up for two days straight so that I got the all-nighter party experience. Cruel bastard!
Blinking my eyes open, I focused for the first time since whatever had happened to me and saw Ren looking down at me with a smile on his face. Leaning down, he kissed me on the forehead. “Thank God, baby.”
“Maya.” I remembered my parents were on the screen, watching, and I turned my face towards where Dad’s voice came from.
“Hey, pumpkin.” My mom’s face came into focus on the screen, and I could see that they both looked exhausted and pale.
“Momma? Daddy?” Was that even my voice? It sounded like an eighty-a-day smoker’s. I was about to say something else when Ren placed a straw on my lips, and I took a sip of cold water. For a second, it brought tears to my eyes when the water hit my mouth and throat; it felt like it was tearing it apart. After a second, though, it c
almed, and I took more and more sips from the straw.
“Slowly, baby, you’ve got to take small sips so you don’t throw up.” I looked at Ren and saw how exhausted he looked.
“Are you sick?” Maybe it was a stupid question, seeing as how I was obviously in a hospital bed, in pain, but he really didn’t look good. Suddenly I remembered being under the scaffolding and it collapsing on top of us. “Oh, Jesus, where’s Luke?”
Strong arms gently wrapped around me as I tried to move out of bed, and my parents yelled at me to stay still.
“I need to see Luke!”
“He’s alright, baby, just sleeping. Once the doctor says it’s fine, we’ll go and visit him so you can see for yourself,” Ren whispered in my ear as my dad bossed me from the phone and Mom begged me to lie down.
“He told me about the photos, Ren. We were talking about it when it all came down.”
His eyes flicked to the phone and back to me, and I got what he was saying—we’d talk about it later.
I managed about five minutes on FaceTime with Mom and Dad before the glare from the screen set my headache off again, leaving Ren to take the orders from them. Revenge would normally have been sweet, but I was in too much pain to enjoy it.
Cole
With Maya finally awake, we could all relax a bit. Luke had stabilized, and they’d stopped the medication keeping him in a coma, and now it was just up to his body to wake him from the natural coma that it was in. His eyes had swollen with the pressure inside his skull, and I’d walked in two days after the accident to find him staring straight ahead. I’d gone up to him and started talking and waving in front of his face; when he hadn’t responded, I’d pressed the red button and waited for the team to arrive. I’d thought maybe he was playing, or the force of the hit to his head had knocked something out of place. Unfortunately, the button I’d pressed apparently meant that resuscitation was required on a patient, so a large team had arrived, none of whom had been happy with me when I’d explained. How was I supposed to know? Four days after that, Maya had woken up and fallen back to sleep after giving me the bird. What was wrong with hospitals that made people so mean?
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