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CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Recovery

I knew I could open my eyes, that I was conscious. I just wasn’t sure that I wanted to face what was waiting for me.

Don’t be such a baby, Melanie Black! I chastised myself. I forced my eyelids open.

Brad was slumped in a chair beside the hospital bed, looking haggard. He must have sensed my gaze, because he looked up from his lap, his grey eyes exhausted. When he saw me looking his eyes widened, and he was at my side in an instant.

He hadn’t shaved or brushed his hair in days. I started to reach my left hand up to touch his stubble, but pain sliced through me. I gasped, and Brad reached under the covers to wind his fingers through mine.

“You were shot, Mel,” Brad explained in a voice that sounded dead. “The police shot … the intruder, but he was close enough that the bullet passed through him and ended up in your shoulder.”

I looked down to where the pain was. My shoulder was wrapped in thick padding. I tried to swallow the lump in my throat, but it wouldn’t go away.

“Mel, I’m so sorry!” Brad’s voice was agonised. “I keep wondering if I hadn’t fought with you, then you wouldn’t have ended up going over there, and then you wouldn’t be stuck in this hospital bed.” His thumb stroked the back of my hand .

I fought to speak around the lump and the dryness in my mouth. “Joel?” I rasped.

Brad sighed through his nose, but he nodded. “He had a concussion from the blow to his head, but he’s recovered pretty well from that.”

“Well, don’t be sorry, Brad. If I hadn’t thought that … well, if you hadn’t argued with me, Joel and Sandra might be dead now.”

Brad looked away from my eyes, staring towards the machines I was hooked up to. “But you would be safe. You wouldn’t be lying here with a hole in your shoulder.”

“But if Joel … if he’d died, I … I love Joel.” The words sighed from my body, like it was a relief for them to finally be out there.

Brad watched me, mouth tight. “Even if he doesn’t love you back?” he asked.

I nodded. “Even if he doesn’t love me back.” I let that thought sink in, and the lump in my throat throbbed.

Brad sighed, his grey eyes meeting my brown ones. “I know, Mel. And I’m sorry. Well, I guess now we both know what it feels like to love someone who doesn’t reciprocate.”

I leaned my head against his arm. “I love you too, Brad. You’re my best friend. That’s never going to change, no matter how many men come and go in my life.”

He snorted. “Yeah, I’ll be the one you know you can always rely on.”

I turned my head and pressed my lips to his arm.

The door opened and Amanda rushed in, stopping dead when she saw me.

“You’re awake,” she said. She looked from me to Brad, and back again, and suddenly she was sobbing, her face quickly getting red and splotchy with tears.

“Oh Mel!” she blubbered, collapsing on the bed, lying down beside me and grabbing my other hand. “I’m so sorry. I don’t … I can’t believe I …”

I looked at her in confusion. “What are you sorry for?” I asked.

She looked up at Brad and my stomach dropped. “Someone better explain what’s going on,” I muttered .

“It’s all my fault! I should have known that he seemed too good to be true.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “What do you mean? Who are you talking about?”

Amanda refused to look at me. “Thomas … it was Thomas.”

Fuck.

The voice that had been horrifyingly familiar, that I couldn’t place, suddenly all meshed in my skull.

“No!” I gasped. “Why? How?”

Amanda shrugged, tears plopping onto the blanket. “I don’t know. No one knows. He’s still in intensive care. They’re not sure when, or if, he’ll wake up.”

“Steve?”

Amanda nodded mutely.

“And Ben?”

Another nod.

“And … Grant?”

Brad intervened. “Amanda, we don’t know any of that for sure. We might never know. He might die before they can question him.”

Amanda shook her head. “I just know it was him! He asked me a heap of questions about you – even before we were dating, that night we met down in Melbourne. I thought he was impressed that I knew a famous person. He was … he was only with me because it meant he could get closer to you …”

A cold shiver ran down my spine.

Brad slipped his hand out of mine and walked around the bed, pulling Amanda up gently, moving her until she sat in the chair he’d vacated. She shrunk into it, shaking, clinging to him.

“Those detectives spent three hours with her,” he explained. I shuddered. I’d had enough experience with police interrogation to know what she’d been through.

A nurse bustled into the room at that point. She glared disapprovingly at Brad and Amanda.

“Alright, I think Melanie has had enough excitement to last her a little while,” she said, coming to the bedside and checking the IV line connected to my right arm. My good arm. My tennis arm .

“Time for you to shoo!”

With a look of apology, Brad gathered Amanda under his arm and drew her, weeping, from the room.

I ate a little after the nurse checked me over and then I slept again. I’d never felt so exhausted in my life.

I woke to the door opening. Groggily I peered over.

Mum took a shuddering breath and came right up to the bed, wrapping her arms around me gently. The way she had when I was little and I’d woken up from a nightmare.

“Mel, oh my beautiful girl,” she whispered against the side of my face. “I’m so sorry.”

I cleared my throat. “Water,” I rasped and she sat up, pouring me some from the jug at my bedside. I drank to give me time to process her being here.

“What are you sorry for?” I asked.

“I’m sorry that I treated you like a disappointment. You never were. When your father died, I … my faith became so much more important to me. And I’m afraid that … I think I let my beliefs tarnish the way I saw you. And then I … I almost lost you too!”

“Mum … I …” I began, but had no idea what I wanted to say.

“I know our relationship is … strained, but sweetie, I’m so proud of you. You’ve grown up to be a strong, capable young woman and you’ve done that without any help from me.”

She smoothed hair off my forehead and gazed down at me, with eyes that were just like my own.

There was a knock on the door. We both looked over, to see my two favourite detectives letting themselves into the room.

“We need a few moments of your time, Miss Black,” Taylor said, looking from me to Mum and back.

I sighed. “I’d better get this over and done with,” I muttered to Mum, who leaned down and kissed my forehead before vacating the room.

I took a deep breath, enduring Taylor’s questions and Coughlin’ s concerned looks, for over an hour. I relived every minute of that dreadful day.

I was exhausted by the time the conversation was over and my shoulder was throbbing with pain. A nurse came in and checked on the machines strapped to my arm and injected something into my IV. I started to feel sleepy almost immediately.

“We’re not going to get much more out of her now,” Taylor grunted to Coughlin. I watched them through half-closed lids.

There was another knock at the door and a uniformed police officer poked her head in.

“He’s awake, Detective Taylor.”

That was all it took to clear the room of police, and I was able to close my eyes and let sleep claim me.

I woke up drenched in sweat and gasping for breath, my shoulder screaming in pain.

The nightmare had been so real. I could smell his cologne as he held my throat. I could feel his sweat dripping on me as he struggled me onto the floor. The agony of the knife was so real as it sunk into my chest. I looked up in shock into Thomas’s smiling face.

It took three days for me to recover enough to be discharged. Three days of pain meds, and sleep, and sporadic visitors. Brad, Mum, Sandra.

Amanda avoided me.

So did Joel.

Brad came to collect me and while we waited for my discharge papers, he told me that Detective Taylor had managed to extract a full confession from Thomas. The murders of Steve and Ben. The attempted murder of Grant. The attack on Sandra, Joel and me, with intent to kill.

“We knew Thomas was at the Australian Open. He heard you and Steve fighting, the morning before Steve was … and something just snapped. He was already targeting Amanda, even before … Steve … because he knew she was close to you. ”

“Well, that worked out perfectly for him, then, didn’t it?

He found out about Ben and Grant, because he was there with us all, when I was pouring my heart out about them.

But I still don’t understand. Why?” I asked in frustration.

Brad turned my hand over in his and traced the lines on my palm with his fingers. It felt nice.

“Who knows what goes on in the head of a psychopath, Mel? He went to insane levels of effort to get close to you, without you realising.” Brad tilted his head to one side, watching me.

I faltered under his gaze and looked down at my arm, at the little Bandaid where the IV had been removed.

He looked at me the way I was sure I looked at Joel.

“We might learn more when the trial gets underway.”

Brad was right. There wasn’t any point in me worrying over it. I’d find out the whole story sooner or later. All I cared about really was that they’d caught him before it had been too late for Joel.

Joel.

The door opened and a nurse came in with papers to sign. I sat up straighter on the bed and reached for the pen. My left arm still hung virtually useless by my side. I was going to need a lot of physio to get back into competition shape.

I added that to the rapidly expanding list of things I needed to speak to Joel about. Along with telling him that I loved him, and yelling at him for not coming to visit me. And asking him if he felt anything for me at all. And getting ready for heartbreak when he let me down.

“I just don’t know what to do, Brad,” I blurted once we were safely in the car and driving through the evening peak hour traffic.

“I really need my best friend right now. And I know that you probably don’t want to hear about it, but you’re the only person I’ve told about …

Joel … and I just need to talk about it. ”

Brad flexed his fingers on the steering wheel, and he wore a little smirk that didn’t reach his eyes.

“Spit it out, Mel.”

“So … you don’t think there’s a future for me and Joel, do you?” I asked timidly .

“Smellie, I don’t know. It’s not really any of my business, is it? What do you think?”

I sighed. “I’m doubtful.”

Brad’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. “But you can’t change the way you feel about him.”

I shook my head.

“Well, I can’t change the way I feel about you.”

I fixed my gaze out the passenger window. I couldn’t look at him while he said these things.

“But Smell, I love you enough that I just want to be a part of your life – whatever part you want me to fill. I’m not going anywhere. Maybe you love Joel enough to just want to be a part of his life too, even if it’s not the part you were hoping for.”

I wasn’t sure that I could swallow my pride enough for that. Not telling him how I felt at all would be better than the humiliation of having it thrust in my face every day that it was unrequited.

“I’m so confused,” I muttered.

Brad chuckled under his breath. “Join the club, Smellie. Life is just one discombobulating event after another.”

I rolled my eyes, surprised that he had managed to make me smile. I nudged him with my good arm. “You know I hate it when you use those big words, Bradley.”

We pulled into my driveway, and the smile I’d finally managed to find lurking inside me slipped from my face. It finally hit me. I’d come very close to being dead. Suddenly I really didn’t want to go inside my apartment, to be properly alone for the first time since it had happened.

Brad must have seen the way my face changed. He stopped the car, but he didn’t cut the engine.

“Are you okay?” he asked, concern seeping into his tone. I stared straight ahead, not wanting Brad to be able to meet my eyes, to see the sudden fear in them. I felt silly and paranoid for being terrified to go into my home, but I couldn’t make the rational side of me overcome the emotional one.

“I can’t do this …” I whispered .

“I can take you away if you want – we can go have dinner somewhere.”

I took a deep, shaky breath. “No, Brad, it’s okay, I’ve got to do it sooner or later.”

“I’ll carry your stuff up for you.”

Inside my apartment almost everything was as I’d left it. Even a ravenously hungry Connor met me at the door.

“I’ll feed him,” Brad offered, heading to the kitchen, where I noticed the mess of Connor’s food had been cleaned up.

“Did you or Amanda come and tidy for me?” I asked.

Brad shook his head. “It was your mum. I came over the morning after, and she was here, mopping your floors. She said she felt like she had to do something useful because she felt so helpless, seeing you unconscious in the hospital.”

Tears welled, but I managed to blink them back. A big chat with Mum was long overdue. We hadn’t talked frankly with each other in … I couldn’t remember when. I could barely remember Dad, I’d been so young when he died. But I’d never even wondered how it had affected Mum over the years.

“You want me to make you a cuppa?” Brad asked.

I shook my head. “I think I just need to have tonight to settle back in. I’ll call you in the morning, okay?”

Brad paused, then nodded, taking my bag through to the bedroom, then heading for the door. “You can call me any time, you know. Middle of the night, I don’t care. If you need me, you call.”

I walked over to him, hugging him as tight as I could with my good arm. “Thanks for everything, Brad. I love you, you know.”

He sighed. “Yeah, I know.”