Page 37 of Daring Wicked Love (Wicked Dade #2)

I couldn’t remember why I chose to ring Elliott of all people, or even calling him for that matter. Nor did I remember when he arrived outside Dr. Moorehead’s office and drove me across the city to the hospital.

I didn’t remember giving the details to the hospital receptionist or what the police officers said to me when we sprinted through the doors.

The waiting room was a blur. The aseptic smell bleached the insides of my nose — a smell I knew would stay with me forever. I barely registered Hank crying on one of the plastic seats, his voice cracking as he kept calling my name, begging for my forgiveness.

It was as if I were moving in slow motion.

My limbs were no longer attached to my own body. My mind floated somewhere above me, watching me run down the white halls, ignoring Elliott’s pleas to wait for him — to let him go first.

I knew he was trying to protect me, to shield me from what I already knew in my gut. But it was too late. There was no escaping the pain that was about to tear my heart apart and reshape it beyond recognition.

Finally, my life was worth fighting for, worth living, and now my world was never going to be the same...

“Hi, Daddy.”

Those two little words slammed me in the chest, and I could do nothing but crumple.

My knees collided with the cold, hard floor beside her hospital gurney.

My body felt foreign, too heavy to move, yet too light to be grounded.

I was too numb to cry, too in shock to process anything other than taking my daughter’s hand in mine and feeling her pulse for myself.

I counted each beat of her blood coursing through her veins over and over.

Shallow cuts lined her face, bruises already started to color her pale skin, while a nurse worked with a doctor to wrap her left foot in bandages.

“A hairline fracture.”

“Bruising but nothing internal.”

“Lucky to be alive.”

The words floated in one ear and trickled out the other. All I could focus on was my little girl, her smile as the nurse let her pick the color of her dressings, and how I could still feel each beat of her pulse in my numb touch.

She was alive.

She was safe.

“Frederic.” Elliott’s hand squeezed my shoulder. “I spoke to the doctor in charge of Penny; she needs to chat to you whenever you’re ready. Her leg seems to have gotten the worst of it, but she’s going to be okay.”

I nodded though I barely heard what he was saying. My thoughts were still in a thick fog. Getting to my feet, I turned to look at my brother. “Where’s…” Was that my voice? Why did it sound so far away? “Where is she?”

Elliott’s brow creased, his glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose. “She’s in the room next door. But before you go in, you should know…”

Giving Penelope’s hand a squeeze, I started to make a move to the room next door.

“Frederic, wait,” Elliott urged.

One second, he grabbed my arm to stop me from walking away, the next, I shoved him directly into the wall behind him. My brother winced as his glasses toppled off his nose to the ground with a dull clink that I knew was a lens shattering.

Elliott’s eyes flashed in utter shock for a brief second before that sickening sight of pity took its place.

Something like guilt tried to push through the numbness seeping into my bone marrow.

But I refused to stop and feel it.

Leaving him behind, I sprinted into the room next to Penelope’s and barely held back the vomit surging through my throat into my mouth.

Orla turned her head, a tube under her bloodied nose. “Is Pen okay?”

I ran my hands over my face, feeling the roughness of exhaustion and the strain of trying to hold it all together. I looked down at her, watched the rise and fall of her chest — relief wash over me like a crashing tide.

They’re okay.

Both my girls, the lights of my life, are okay.

They didn’t leave me.

“She’s fine. A few bumps and scrapes, but she’ll be okay. The doctors said she’ll be home in no time,” I assured both of us, nearing the bed. “What about you, Pixie?”

Orla exhaled deeply. “What about Hank? Is he okay? He hit his head quite badly off the steering wheel.”

“Everyone is fine. I promise,” I said. “But what about you? Are you okay?”

She didn’t answer me, her teeth chewing on her cracked open lip.

“Where are you hurt, Orla?”

She rolled her head back to stare up at the white-paneled ceiling as fresh tears trickled from the corners of her eyes. “My right arm.”

Lying at her side, her arm was wrapped tightly in gauze and dressings. My attention instantly dropped to the tips of her fingers poking out from between the dressings, and the startling fact they were an odd shade of blue.

Her brows knitted together tightly as she choked back a sob. “I can’t move my right hand. They hope it’s only temporary, but they said I might have permanent nerve damage.”

Staring at her lifeless fingers, I struggled to think of the right words to say to make any of this better.

Orla closed her eyes tightly. “When the car crashed, I needed to keep Pen safe, so I threw myself over her. But then my arm got trapped and the metal from the door…”

Ignoring whatever rule hospitals had about getting into bed with patients, I climbed into the gurney beside her. “It’s okay, I got you.” I pulled her into my arms, tucking her as tightly as I could into me. “You protected our girl; you kept her safe.”

She nodded weakly, her tears soaking into my shirt. “I’m so sorry, Frederic.”

Time stood still. “Why are you sorry?”

“Because it was my idea to go to the art shop. If we had just stayed in the house, none of this would have happened.”

She was kidding, right?

Please tell me she is joking.

Shaking my head, I gently took her chin and forced her to look at me. “Don’t do that. This is not your fault, none of it, you hear me?” When she nodded weakly, I exhaled deeply. “I’m going to need to hear you say it, Orla.”

Her voice was barely a whisper, her gaze turning downward. “It wasn’t my fault.”

“Louder,” I urged, the desperation creeping into my own voice. I needed to hear it—needed her to believe it.

Her throat bobbed. “This wasn’t my fault.”

“Again.”

“This…” Her voice cracked. “This wasn’t my fault.”

“ Bon. ” I placed a kiss atop her head. “Everything is going to be okay. Penelope’s safe, and you’re safe. That is all that matters to me.”

“What if…” Her voice trailed off as she stared down at her injured arm. “What if the doctor is right and I can’t ever paint again? My dreams… My life…”

The thought hit me like a punch to the gut, but I pushed it aside for her sake. I needed to be the strong one right now. “Then we will find you a new doctor, one who has solutions.”

“I don’t think there is a solution for this.”

“We will find one,” I promised. “I am going to go speak to the doctors right now. I want to hear their plans to help you, and then I will be right back.”

As I made my way out of the room, and the second the door clicked shut behind me, the numbness I’d been holding on to cracked wide open.

Every single ounce of pain rushed onto me at once.

The hallway stretching before me started to close in around me.

The vomit I’d been fighting so hard to keep down surged up my throat with a force I couldn’t attempt to try and stop it.

I didn’t have time to reach the nearby trash can before it all came rushing out, coating the floor, burning my throat and chest with every retching heave.

I’d been so close.

So painfully, terrifyingly close to losing everything.

I retched again, until my stomach felt like it was being shredded from the inside, until my lungs felt like they were on the verge of bursting into flames, until I couldn’t tell where the pain in my body ended and the pain in my heart began.

When Elliott appeared, I half expected him to hit me or shove me into a wall for good measure for what I did to him and his now broken glasses. And part of me would have welcomed it, would have begged him to sucker punch me in the jaw — anything to stop the current pain ripping its way through me.

But Elliott didn’t do that.

Instead, he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around my shoulders. My body went rigid, every muscle fighting against him as he pulled me into him, tightening his hold on me.

“I got you, brother,” he said. “I got you.”

And that was all it took.

For the first time since my maman died, I broke apart, completely unravelling into a mess of strangled sobs right there in my brother’s arms.