“That’s not what I mean.”
“Talk to me.” Her simple statement means so much to me right now since I feel so very alone.
“How did I not know she’s married?”
“What?” I can envision from memory the look that’s probably on her face.
“I got here to the hospital, professed my love for her as she’s lying there, and then her husband’s fist met my face.”
“Oh shit,” she murmurs, those two words expressing what I feel perfectly. “You had no clue?” The shock in her voice fires so many emotions within me because of course I don’t want my sister to be pissed at me for something I had no control over.
“No, Ry. None. And a part of me thinks something is hinky here. Like she took this job to escape him.”
“Tanner…” She draws my name out in disbelief.
“I know, but I fell for her, Ry… and not just because she was there. We fought like cats and dogs at the beginning, but I really fell for her. She challenges me and makes me laugh and is a really good person and… damn…” I sigh because even as I’m telling my sister these things, I know she already hates Beaux for hurting me. “She was so closed off about her past, so adamant that it was bad and you know me, you know what a good instinct I have when it comes to people, so I’m just…” I force myself to stop rambling and try to hear myself through Rylee’s unjaded ears.
“Telling the truth is easy. It’s deceiving someone that’s hard work.” Silence fills the line as her words resonate with me. “Trust your gut, but just don’t be blinded by love when it’s founded on mistruths from the start.”
“When did you get so wise?” It’s my attempt to stop the advice I need but really don’t want to hear.
“The same time you got so handsome,” she says, a line we’ve exchanged a hundred times over the years that brings a small slice of normalcy to me right now when nothing seems normal.
“Ha. So that means forever.”
She laughs, but I can tell she’s trying to do me a favor in doing so, to lighten the mood some so that we hang up on a good note. “Tan?”
“Yeah?”
“I believe that you didn’t know,” she says softly, understanding how important that is to me. “Love you.”
“Love you too.”
Once we hang up, I wander the grounds, unable to sit any longer in a waiting room and unwilling to walk away without some answers. Although I’m not sure how I’m going to get any since I’ve been banned from the third floor. I’ll find a way. Somehow.
Next I buy some coffee from a cart on the grounds but don’t even taste it as I sip it, my mind lost in turbulent thoughts and my chest aching from so much more than the blast. Rylee’s words come back to me occasionally, drag me back to reality when I’d much rather be lost elsewhere. I ignore Rafe’s texts and his apologies that he can’t give me more, and his questions about why I’m so invested when I hated her from the get-go.
I can’t speak with him right now or he’ll see right through my transparent emotions.
At some point night falls and forces me to realize that my nomadic wandering has pushed me to the point of mental and physical exhaustion, my body still recovering and needing to rest. As I trudge toward the main building, I realize for the first time that my doubt is winning out over hope. The whoosh of the entrance doors greets me as I head on autopilot to the elevators to take back my chair in the second-floor waiting room.
A part of me wants to waltz onto the third floor like I don’t give a fuck who’s there and see her again. The idea finds purchase in my mind as more and more people pile on the elevator around me.
“Floor?” an elderly lady asks me since I’ve been pushed on the opposite side of the car from the controls.
“Three, please,” I respond without hesitation, because sometimes you just have to fight for the girl. I was blindsided before, didn’t tell John to go to hell, and right now I’m primed to do just that, because until I hear from Beaux’s lips that she doesn’t want me, I’m not going anywhere.
I exit the elevator car with several other people and walk with them right past the nurses’ station where the same nurse is still on duty. I keep my head down when I approach Beaux’s room, yet I notice a flurry of activity that makes my heart fall because I immediately fear that she has taken a turn for the worse. Not caring about anything but her, I rush to the doorway, only to be met with the sound of her voice.
“Beaux?” Her name falls from my lips, relief mixed with anger, and I must say it loud enough because I catch a very fleeting glimpse of her before John and two other men are in my face with hands on my arms pushing me out of the doorway. “Beaux!” I struggle against them.
“She doesn’t want to see you,” one of the guys says harshly in my ear as they start to pull me away.
“Not until I hear her say it!” I shout, my muscles burning and head pounding, but my resolve is stronger than ever. We’re causing such a scene that staff are starting to come out of other rooms, and a nurse at the station picks up the phone to dial for more security, but I just can’t let this go. “Not until she tells me herself!” I shout, hoping she’ll hear me and call out to me.
“Fine!” John says, which makes the men cease their forceful advance, but their grip on me remains firm. He walks over to me with a fuck-you smile on his lips and fists a hand in my shirt. I try to jerk back from his grip, but the men have too strong a hold on my arms. “You want to hear it yourself? Go right ahead before you’re escorted from the hospital for good.” I match him glare for glare. “Hey, Beaux, do you want to see your lover?” he says toward her open door. All I can see from my position is her feet beneath the sheet, but his mocking tone and his knowing chuckle hit me like a knife in the back.
“No. I don’t care if I ever see him again.”
If John’s words were a knife in my back, Beaux’s soft but steady voice is equivalent to her twisting the knife over and over in the open wound. And that sliver of hope I was hanging on to – that when she woke up, she’d want me, choose me, and not John – dies a quick and horrid death.
I’m escorted from the hospital grounds by the base police after the military clearance I need to do my job effectively is threatened if I don’t go peacefully. I follow their orders without resisting, my head and heart trying to wrap themselves around the fact that the worst part about Beaux’s lying to me isn’t the lies themselves.
No, it’s the fact that after everything the two of us shared, she didn’t think I was worthy enough to warrant her telling the truth.
Chapter 24
“Rafe.” It’s the only greeting I have for him because frankly I don’t want to speak to anybody right now.
“It’s a miracle. You actually called me back.”
“There’s been shit reception since I got back.” I grunt the lie as I look around the chaos in the hotel room.