by W Winters
“No! No! I told you all everything!” He’s still pleading when I nod at Jase and he picks up the gag, shoving it back into the man’s mouth. Chaos swarms him, but it dies down easily, settling into hopelessness.
“Him first, I think.” I speak out loud and the three brothers nod in unison. He can’t speak so it makes sense to get rid of him first.
“I have another question,” I mention as the thought hits me. “Who sent her flowers?”
The look Jase gives me is unexpected, but Declan knows what I’m referring to. “Who was it?” I harden my voice, and the man in the middle mentions a single name.
Marcus. He told me that Marcus said she deserved a warning, another beginning to an end.
I do exactly what I pictured when I first saw them here. I don’t use a single item from the line of silver metal. I opt for my fists. It’s brutal and taxing on my body. It takes a lot to beat a man to death. After the first one, I have to take off my shirt; it’s covered in sweat and blood and I’m so damn hot.
Middle man must’ve been speaking the truth because he was still pleading for his life, giving the same information over and over again until his windpipe collapsed under my knuckles.
The man who wrote the note, the one responsible for all the pain my babygirl went through, he goes last and before the second man hit the dirt dead, the bitch was crying, begging me.
Every man will break. Some are easier than others.
All three of them stay, watching and helping me when I ask them to.
I can’t go home when it’s over, since I’m covered in blood and angry. I’m still raw and wound up and the cuts on my hand have worsened and split. Declan takes me back to the estate instead, leaving Carter and Jase to clean up the mess. She’s got work in only an hour anyway. That’s how long it took. I can’t let her see this shit right before she leaves and has normalcy. I can’t drop this burden on her.
Declan’s quiet until we park. “What are you going to do with Laura?” Declan’s question catches me off guard and I don’t like it. He should know better than to even say her name right now.
“What do you mean?” I’m fucking exhausted and I don’t have time to decipher what he’s getting at.
“Last time I asked you, you said you didn’t know.”
What am I going to do with her? “I’ll do right by her. Get her a ring when all this settles.” Declan nods at my simple answer and I find myself doing the same. I’m going to love her. That’s all I can do and it’s what she deserves. I’ll do anything and everything that she wants. It’s an easy answer, but every one of my thoughts stays bottled up. He knows about the ring, he knows she’s mine, and that should be good enough. Everything else is just for me and Laura. It’s only for us.
“And she’s good with that?” The car is still running and the headlights shine into the woods. I focus on the lights.
“I think so.” Declan’s quiet but he’s watching me. I can feel his eyes on me. Swallowing, I tell him, “She leaves when things get rough and this life is rough.” I think about telling him that if she wants to go, away from here, away from this life, I’m out. So I do. I lay it out for him, and he accepts it. As if he saw it coming.
He’s silent, but nods in understanding. His jaw is hard though, his brow pinched.
“So you two are good?” he asks again. Prying and the more he asks, the more I find myself telling.
“I don’t know how to set boundaries with her. Every time I try, it goes wrong, everything falls apart, things get worse.” It’s her running away from me. I don’t know how to stop it. “She can’t leave me. She needs to know that’s not an option.”
It takes a long moment of silence before Declan answers me, “She doesn’t strike me as a woman who likes boundaries.”
“She’s mine. And she needs to understand that.”
He throws his hands up and says, “I didn’t say that she didn’t. Some women… they aren’t submissive.” His grip on the wheel gets a little tighter, his voice a little harder before he leans back, forcing himself to relax.
There’s an edge to him. Declan’s never had a woman he loved, as far as I know. He has needs though and I know he goes to this place, a club of sorts. He has experience in that way. But he doesn’t have experience with loving someone. He doesn’t know Laura at all.
“I like submissive. I need that control, you know.”
“Yeah.”
“You love her, and she’s not submissive—”
“You haven’t seen her in that way,” I cut him off. Laura likes it when I take control. I know she does.
“In the topping from the bottom in bed kind of way? I’m sure I don’t need to see it to know it.”
“I’m sure as fuck not the submissive if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“It doesn’t work like that. I’m just saying, maybe she needs control as much as you do. You two work. I’ve seen it. You love each other. That’s enough, man. You don’t need to force her to agree to boundaries that have hurt her before. It’ll happen when it’s supposed to. Let her have the control she needs, and you might be surprised.”
“I’m just afraid she’s going to leave me.” I speak the honest truth. I’ve had this with her before. It’s the only thing I want. The only thing worth living for. “If I lose her again…” my voice trails off and I have to look away.
“You won’t,” Declan tells me confidently. It’s only then I can meet his gaze. He nods, and adds, “You aren’t going to lose her. You two are meant for each other. Nothing’s going to come between that.”
He sounds so sure, so confident, that I believe him because that’s what I want to do. I want to believe I’ll have her forever.
Laura
“You aren’t supposed to be here,” Aiden says. The amount of irritation he grits out in his comment is enough to make me roll my eyes, which I do since my back is both to him and the door to the back office. “I’m serious, Laura, you shouldn’t be back until you’re given the okay.”
I hear him, but I’m not listening as I shelve the thick binder of medical records.
“It’s a mandatory leave.” His voice hardens when I ignore him, opting to continue exactly what I’m doing instead.
I am needed here and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let him send me away. Melody’s been transferred while she awaits trial. She’s not here anymore, which I’m silently grateful for, but I have paperwork to transfer. Early yesterday morning, I left jail. This morning, I’m back at work. I don’t see the problem, just a striking difference in scenery.
“Laura, are you going to make me call security?” he asks with exasperation and my answer is just the same.
“No. I’m sticking to my schedule.” I guess the saving grace in all of this is that I didn’t miss a shift. I want normalcy and this is the easiest way to get that.
His relief is palpable as he sighs and says, “Please just stay home for the week.”
I turn to him, my ponytail swinging and the tips of my hair tickle my shoulder as I look him in the eyes and tell him, “No. You aren’t calling security and I’m staying.”
“We’re doing an internal investigation, for fuck’s sake,” he practically hisses beneath his breath. The door’s still open and Bethany takes the opportunity to walk in.
Thank the Lord for her. I thought her shift would never start.
“You’re back,” she says brightly, oblivious to Aiden’s irritation and I return her smile, but mine’s thin-lipped and cut off by Aiden.
“No, she’s not.”
“Yes, I am.”
“We need her.” If Aiden sounded exasperated, then Bethany sounds desperate. Grabbing both sides of the threshold to the small room, she leans in and whispers harshly to Aiden, whose hand is currently running down his face. “Cindy isn’t good for a damn thing.”
“I know,” I stress to Bethany, giving Aiden the cold shoulder. “How did she even get through her boards?”
He may be my boss, but I’ll be dam
ned if he’s going to keep me away. Especially given the activity he’s been involved with around here.
“There’s an investiga—”
“Over the woman with only initials?” I question him. “Over her being in here with limited information and files? Or over what happened when she had to have emergency surgery?”
He pales and when he speaks his voice is so dry, he has to swallow and then try again. “This is about you.”
“If you push this, I’ll push too.” It hurts me, truly and deeply to look my boss in the eyes, a man I respect and make that threat. I don’t know what he’s up against, but he doesn’t know what I’m dealing with either. Bethany’s silent and I see her shrink back, but she doesn’t leave. Maybe due to curiosity, maybe she wants to serve as moral support.
“Laura, this isn’t about—”
“I don’t care what it’s about, I’m not leaving.” My throat squeezes and I feel hot all over as I hug the binder to my chest. They can’t make me go. Work is my life and the only thing that makes me feel good right now. “I need to be helping someone,” I plead with him.
“We have to. It’s procedure.”
“Then she doesn’t have to check in,” Bethany pipes up. She looks nervously at me before meeting Aiden’s gaze. “She can be here unofficially. You know we need the help, so as long as it’s not documented…” She leaves the sentence unfinished and the two of us stare at Aiden.
He’s cornered. Figuratively and literally. His answer is a very quickly spoken fine before he leaves. He’s pissed and I get it. Everything around here is falling to hell.
“I’m so glad you’re back,” Bethany says and takes a step in as I stack another binder on top of the one I’ve already placed on the desk. Bethany sits on the edge of it before asking, “Seth all right?”
I nod, my voice suddenly lost. It’s easy to stand up to Aiden, since he doesn’t know everything. Bethany knows it all though. When you call someone early in the morning or late at night, and you lose your shit over the phone, it can be hard to look them in the eye the next morning. That’s what it feels like right now.
“I still haven’t seen him, though.” My voice nearly cracks and I pause my motions, holding a binder that isn’t the right one and slowly but surely, resting my head against the shelf. “He hadn’t come home before I left.” I called her when I woke up alone. I spilled every detail.
Except the part about my heart. And the part about Jean.
I told her enough that she knows I’m not okay. And that Seth and I were fighting. It’s enough for her to understand. There’s so much going on and everything feels like it’s coming to a head.
I want to tell her about my heart, but not yet.
I’m not telling anyone until after the appointment confirms it. I just… I just have to make sure I don’t skip the appointment. Which means Seth’s men will follow me, but at least they’re only following. They won’t know why.
“Did you call him, though?” she asks and I only shake my head, feeling the swoosh of my hair before getting back to the binders.
I don’t answer her question. Instead I confess the conclusion I arrived at after I spilled my guts on the phone to her and sat there alone in a quiet room with nothing to do but think. That’s really what drove me to work. I couldn’t be alone with my thoughts.
“Even if I called him, I don’t know what I would say.”
“Every couple has that moment,” Bethany says with slight dejection. When she shifts on the desk she opens the binder. The telltale creak is the only reason I know she did. “I think getting to that moment is the start of something better. That’s what I think.”
“When did you become an optimist?” I question, pursing my lips when I find the last binder and turn to finally look her in the eyes.
With her hair up in a messy bun, she shrugs. “I like your scrubs though,” she comments and I have to utter a small laugh. We’re wearing matching I love my patients a latte scrubs with little coffee cups all over them.
“You have good taste,” I tell her, closing the binder she was absently fiddling with and placing the third on top.
“I’m glad you’re back. You’re never allowed to leave me again,” Bethany says and pouts. Literally sticking out her bottom lip, which makes me laugh a bit louder than the last time.
“Love you more than coffee,” I tell her, placing a quick kiss on her cheek and slipping out of the room as she moves to find whatever it was that she needed. She calls out to my back, “Me too, but don’t make me prove it.”
It’s nice to smile. It occurs to me that this is the first time I’ve smiled in days when I’m back at the nurses’ station, pulling out the file numbers and testing a pen on a sticky note before opening up the binder to fill out the first bit of information.
“Do you have a pen for the sign-in sheet please?” a feminine voice asks and I peek up. Plastering on a smile, I answer her, “Right here,” and pass her my pen that I know works, opting to grab another.
“Thank you.” With the thinning of her gray hair, the woman’s much older and I think I recognize her as the mother of one of our residents who’s in and out. She’s the mom who smiles to everyone’s face but cries behind closed doors and at the back of empty halls. Even when you find her there, she’ll smile and say she’s all right, when in reality she’s breaking inside.
I know her type and I feel for her.
“Have a good day,” she tells me kindly, setting the pen down and taking in a deep breath as she prepares to go down one of the far halls. They aren’t my residents down that hall. We’re sectioned off but I watch her go, wishing there was a different way. It hurts to feel helpless, even more so when someone you love is in pain or a situation that’s hurting them and they don’t know how to get out.
She wore a dress and rouge for the occasion. Some call that lipstick courage.
I retrieve my pen, since the next one I try doesn’t work and it goes straight to the trash bin under the counter.
The second I drop my gaze to the paperwork, a splash of blond hair catches my eye. The elevators are closing and the woman is off to one side of it, but a familiar chill spreads through me. Recognition mixed with fear and regret flows through my veins.
My lips part as a breath leaves me and I drop the pen, moving to the side of the desk in an attempt to get a better look.
Cami.
I swear it’s Cami.
The doors close before I can fully see her and my deranged self decides to take the stairs, nearly running down the hall to get to the stairwell and therefore her, before she can leave. It’s Cami. That’s my only thought the entire way to the stairs even though I know she’s dead. It can’t be her. It’s not possible, but I feel like it is. I can feel her. As I wrap my hand around the railing, taking each step as quickly as possible, I argue with my sound mind that it’s Cami. There is no logical explanation, but there’s a feeling when someone you know and love deeply comes close to you. You can feel them and it’s her. I know it’s her.
“Excuse me.” I’m breathless as I give the apology, nearly bumping into an orderly as I round the last set and swing myself into the door. I pry it open in just enough time to see her leaving. A gust of wind blows her hair to the side as she slips out of the front doors across the room.
Her name is trapped in the back of my throat as my heart races. Just as the doors close, I call out, “Cami!”
The receptionist stares at me. She’s the only one here and she stands awkwardly as I run past her.
Hustling to get across the reception area, I make my way while avoiding the prying eyes of the receptionist and whatever she’s saying and slam my hands into the door, forcing it open. It’s cold and unforgiving; the leaves have all changed color seemingly overnight. The sky is gray and the parking lot is empty. Wrapping my arms around myself, I walk down the front stairs, searching for her.
I even call out her name again. As I stand there all alone in the cold, I realize it’s the first time I’v
e said her name out loud in years. Years.
There are no people, no cars, no lights or sign that anyone is out here.
It’s like she disappeared.
“Are you all right?” the receptionist asks me from behind.
“Of course,” I answer her with my head lowered and look up one last time down the empty sidewalk and then to the parking lot.
“Do you need me to call security or help?” she offers and I only shake my head. Asking her if she recognized the woman proves she doesn’t. She hadn’t seen her come in and didn’t get a good look at her when she left.
When I get back to the nurses’ station, still feeling the cold blistering my cheeks, I check the log for visitors, and I recognize most of them. There are no new names on the sign-in sheet and no one named Cami.
She was here though; I know she was.
Seth
The front door opens with a soft creak. It could have been silent and Laura still would’ve heard. She’s waiting for me.
“Where were you?” The accusation is out of her mouth before she can even lift her head from the back of the sofa to glare at me.
Guilt-ridden, I close the door behind me and toss the keys onto the entryway table.
“With Jase and Declan.”
She grabs the remote from next to her and taps it against her thigh, an agitated sigh leaving as she does.
“I didn’t mean to be gone so long.” I tell her before she can yell at me, “I felt like shit leaving you here.” I felt like shit there, which is why I took so long. The meds work for pain, but I fell apart the moment I sat down at the estate. Sleep and an IV proved useful for getting me back on my feet. I could have done that here, though. Next time, I will.