by Eden Rose
Is this woman fucking with me? Seriously. She’s about as smart as a rock. “Yeah. Is there someone else here that could help me?” I’m growing impatient and I can’t help but sense that the time is moving faster than I had allowed myself to take in here.
My intentions are to surprise Keeley with something beautiful so every time she looked at it, she would see me. Yeah, the necklace is pretty, but it’s not exactly what I want her to have.
Growing up, like I have said before, I didn’t have money, so now that I do, I like to keep it. However, with Keeley, I like her to know that I can support her.
Oh my fucking god. I have turned into one of those love struck teenagers where I’m thinking crazy shit.
The woman staggers back more but then gains her composure while pasting a fake smile on her face. “I’m sorry about that. What kind of gift are you looking for?”
*
Thirty minutes later, I’m walking out of the jewelers with an invoice for a few different things; I couldn’t decide what to get her so I got a couple of things. Hell, you never know when you are going to be feeling generous or something.
A strange pang hit my stomach and I felt as if the air came rushing out of my stomach. I don’t know where the hell that came from, but I have had the wind knocked out of me before, and it feels similar to what I’m feeling now.
Keeley.
Without hesitation, I’m running to my car and dialing her number on my phone. It goes straight to voicemail. I try it again. Same thing. What the hell? I make it to my car in just a few seconds and then I’m starting it.
I activate the Bluetooth on my phone so I’m able to concentrate on driving and trying to get her on the phone. “Call Cupcake!” I demand to my steering wheel.
“Hey, it’s Keeley!”
Didn’t even ring. I stab at the screen to shut it off and drive over to her house. I can feel the panic start to rise in my stomach and I can’t help but feel as if I’m about to throw up.
The drive there is over before I know it but the fact that the road is blocked by cop cars and ambulances are enough to make me panic ever more.
What the hell is going on?
Flashbacks of what happened before flash through my mind. Oh shit. What if something happened to her? They said she passed out the last time, I’m wondering if she did that again. I don’t think she would because she seemed all right when I had seen her earlier.
I jump out of my car and run towards the officer that is directing everyone around the house. “Officer, what is going on?”
“Sir, I’m going to need to ask you to step aside please.”
“No, you don’t understand!”
“Wyatt!” A voice yells and then I turn my head to see Olivia and Shana standing in front of the house. It was Shana that said my name so I look at her and wait for her to explain.
When she doesn’t say anything, I stalk past the office and straight to Keeley’s friends. “What happened? Please tell me.”
“She was shot. Someone ransacked her house and she got caught in the line of fire or something.”
My heart begins to slow down to the point where I think it’s almost about to stop. Shot. She was shot. Someone shot Keeley and I wasn’t here to protect her. Someone shot my beautiful girl.
“Step aside please!” An angry voice to the left of me calls out. I look around me and see two men wheeling out a covered body.
My knees give out from beneath me and I feel like my vision is getting cloudy. “No! No! Are you serious? No!” I call over and over again. “Please, baby. Please, no! God damn it!”
Olivia is on my left side and she slaps me clean across the face. However, the words that she’s saying don’t register until she says: “That wasn’t Keeley. Keeley’s at the hospital.”
“What happened?”
“We don’t know. We are still waiting for information. I do know that she got served divorce papers today,” Shana says with finality.
“Good. Then she can be done with this fucker,” I murmur more to myself than to any of them.
Quickly, before I lose my shit, I jump back in my car and drive to the local hospital that is down the street from where we are. It’s only a five-minute drive but it feels as if I have been in the car forever.
I park my car in the front of the lot and run to the automatic front doors. A strange sense of Deja vu floods over me as thoughts of my previous trip to the hospital goes through my brain. Only this time, I’m hoping that I won’t have to deal with Jerry.
“I need to see Keeley Johnson,” I demand to the administrator at the front of the hospital.
The pretty, but older woman, with the blonde hair looks me up and down and I hope that she doesn’t recognize me. The last thing that I need is a bunch of cameras in here and taking pictures of us.
With a slightly wrinkled smile, she points through the doors and then upwards. “Miss Johnson is on the emergency floor which is through that door and up the stairs. She isn’t in a room yet, but she should be shortly.”
“Will I be able to see her?”
The woman looks up at me with her small green eyes and smiles at me. “Yeah, you should be able to see her as soon as she’s done in surgery.”
After hearing that she’s in surgery, I follow the directions to the emergency floor and then walk over to the nurse’s station. Granted, I know that they probably don’t have any other information for me than what I had just received, I’m desperate for some.
“Hi, I’m looking for Keeley Johnson.” Saying her last name is like a stab to the heart. It should be mine. Hell, everything that she is should be connected to me in every way humanly possible.
Again, the woman’s fingers run over the keys of the computer and then looks up at me. If I wasn’t so dead set on checking on Keeley, I would have noticed that the woman was attractive. Her skin is the color of mocha and her hair is a mix of all different colors in intricate braids. She’s about my age with a pretty smile and straight teeth.
“Sir, your wife is in surgery and we will let you know as soon as she’s out.”
I take that as my cue to sit down. I take my desperate ass to the waiting room and take a seat. Even though the seats are uncomfortable, I manage to get semi-situated.
I lean my head back against the wall and close my eyes trying to calm my breath. My breathing is erratic and it’s making me stress and have too much anxiety.
In the back of my mind, I fully register that I need to calm down, but I can’t help it. We are finally at a place where we could be together and I’m not letting anyone ruin it for us.
The bulge from Keeley’s present in my jeans, is digging into my leg and I dig through my pocket to grab it out. Even though I am trying to be as unobservant as possible, I crack open the box and take a look at the three-carat diamond ring that I have for her.
Tears well in my eyes as I think about how beautiful the ring would have looked on her finger and how happy she would have been to see it. I bet you she would have had said yes when I proposed to her.
In my years of getting out of the ghetto, I never expected that I would have bought a thirty-thousand-dollar ring for a woman. Much less a woman that is technically already married. But I did.
“Family for Keeley Johnson?” An older male doctor asks with a clipboard in his hand.
I stand up and walk over to him while sticking my hand out to shake his hand. It’s the polite thing to do. “I’m Wyatt. What’s going on with her?” I ask as calmly as possible. The tears are rolling down my cheeks unchecked, I don’t give a shit if you tell me I’m not a man for crying.
Fuck off. That’s my girl in the room.
“I’m Doctor Phillips and I have completed the operation on Keeley. She is very lucky.”
My heart starts to beat less as my breathing cools down. “You mean… She’s okay?” I need verbal confirmation that she’s okay. I won’t take medical jargon or whatever it’s called until I know for sure.
His balding head tips up
to look at me through her wrinkled eyes. “Yes, sir. She is alive but the next couple of weeks are extremely critical. We will need to keep her here in order to make sure she’s healing physically and emotionally. She’s in her room right now if you want to go take a look.”
“Wait,” I call to the doctor as he turns his back from me. “What happened to her?”
Chapter 24
Keeley
Is it possible for my head to bang like this? The left side of my body is killing me. I feel as if I were thrown into the wood chipper and I can’t move it. My arm feels as if it weighs a thousand pounds and even the hair on my arm hurts me.
Gingerly, I crack my eye lid open and then slam them shut as the fluorescent and stale lighting of where I am seeps through my sooty eyelashes.
My fingers twitch gently at the side and I try hard to take a deep breath in order to calm myself down. I feel trapped in this uncomfortable bed and it’s scaring me. Fear and unfamiliarity of the room that I am in has me gagging from the pressure.
What the hell happened?
“Cupcake?” Is whispered off to the side of my hearing.
I spin my head carefully to take a look at Wyatt who looks about how I feel. Like shit. But he’s still the most beautiful man I have ever seen in my life.
“Hi,” I whisper to him and he smiles a soft smirk that doesn’t reach his eyes. My fingers itch to touch him to let him know that I’m happy that he’s here but I can’t make them move. It’s extremely frustrating.
Wyatt drags those long fingers across the arm that is bandaged to my torso and then kisses me through the wrappings. “I’m so happy you are awake. You have been asleep for over a week and I have missed you so much.” His voice sounds tired, defeated and happy all at the same time about me being awake. His eyes look darker than ever and I wonder when the last time he slept was.
I wince over hearing the pain that is in his voice and I wish I could comfort him in some way. “I’m here now…” I murmur and then shudder a little from trying to remember what happened and why I am here.
“I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry that I wasn’t there for you.”
“Don’t,” I reply sternly. The predicament that I am in will be made worse if he is feeling guilty over it. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Against my own efforts, I feel my eyes close as sleep wedges through my mind. I once read that the mind needs sleep in order to prepare itself for healing. I don’t know if that’s the truth or not, but I’m willing to try anything right now.
He brushes his fingers through my snarly hair and I groan from him catching my hair in between his fingers. “Shit, I’m sorry. I will get a nurse to take you to get a shower.”
“No!” I yell out more than I wanted to. The truth is, I don’t want him to leave me. If he leaves me then I will be alone and that is the last thing that I want to do.
“Are you okay?”
I lightly shake my head and then wince at the movement. There’s a slight feeling in my gut that if I answer that question, I’m going to start crying. And once I start, there’s no stopping. I don’t want to cry in front of him. It’s bad enough that he probably thinks I’m trouble for the amount of shit that is going on in my life. Jesus. “Please don’t ask me that.”
He kisses my cheek and then says: “Whoever did this to you, is going to die. They will not live through this. I promise you that I will make them pay.”
Tears begin to leak out of my eyes and I look him over. He looks tired as if he hasn’t slept in a few days; but he’s still beautiful. He’s so beautiful. I feel like I look like a mess. A straight up nasty ass mess. “Stop,” I murmur.
“I will get a nurse.”
I watch as his tall body leaves the room and then I hear the footsteps of a few people. A nurse comes in dressed in multi-colored scrubs with a tired expression on her face.
“Hello, Keeley. How are you?”
“Hurt.”
She makes a clucking noise in her wrinkled mouth and then looks over to Wyatt. “Should we ask him to leave so I could talk to you?”
Wyatt shakes his head to make it known that he’s not wanting to leave. “No, it’s okay,” I say and he comes over to the side of the bed where my hand isn’t wrapped. The light pressure of his hand on my arm is actually calming.
My head is banging as if someone is practicing the drums in it and my hand is shaking from the pain. The whole left side of my body is in so much pain that it’s unbearable.
“My name is Tina and I have been assigned to your care the past few days. I must say, your friend hasn’t left your side,” she points to Wyatt. And then over to the side that has a cot resting against it. “However, he has pissed off the night nurse because he demanded he sleep with you.”
He places his lips on my forehead and whispers the three words that make me melt every time I hear them from him. I blush all the way through my body.
My eyes hold Tina’s as I urge her to continue what she has to say. I don’t want to hear anymore but I have a feeling that it’s important. The pain is too real. I don’t need to know how I got to be in so much pain, but I do know that it needs to stop.
“Think, baby, think about what happened. I want to make sure that you get the best treatment that you need in order to get better.”
My hand that is free grabs Wyatt’s arm and I squeeze it tightly. I shake my head and then close my eyes. “I’m tired.”
The pain that I am in is horrifying. The logistics as to how I got shot are not as important as the pain. It’s such a strong pain that thinking about what had happened isn’t going to help me at all. All it will do is create more pain for me.
“Okay, we will let you get some rest. I will be back soon to check on your vitals,” Tina informs me and then leaves my room.
Wyatt is kissing my face over and over again repeatedly while I cry silently. “I’m in so much pain. Please, make it stop.”
“I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry that I wasn’t there.”
My eyes open and even through the moisture that is coming through them, I still see the grief and agony that is reflected in my man’s face. “It’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. If you say you did again, I will kick your ass.”
His face shoots back a little and his sexy Adam’s apple sticks out more from the movement. “I just feel so bad. I should have been with you.”
“So you could be in the bed next to me? No, Wyatt. I need you to tell me what happened. Please. I have a feeling that the cops are going to be coming soon. I need to know what happened so I can prepare my statement.”
Even talking is a chore and I swallow a lot in order to get enough saliva to speak to him. I don’t know what’s wrong with my throat, but it feels as if someone has squeezed it too tightly.
My vision starts to get blurry and I can’t make out Wyatt’s face anymore. I begin to panic and draw in deep breaths in order to fix whatever is happening. Nothing is working.
“I… I… Can’t… Breathe!” I manage to struggle out.
Chapter 25
Wyatt
“I… I… Can’t… Breathe!” She mumbles out with panic lacing her voice and I know that she’s scared.
Her cheeks turn blue and her lips form a straight line across her beautiful face. “Shh, baby. It’s okay. You are just having a panic attack,” I brush my hand over her hair, but she shakes her head violently.
“No!”
I could just imagine how I look right now after she yelled that. I thought for sure she wouldn’t be in the mood to be yelling about anything much less telling me no.
“Nurse!” I yell from where I’m standing. I have her hand pressed in between mine and looking at her face makes me want to cry. She looks scared out of her mind and it’s freaking me out more than anything.
I can hear the running of sneakered feet as they come flying through the room. “What is going on?” The nurse asks and pushes me aside.
Of course ,I don’t move out of her way so sh
e puts her hand on my hand and squeezes gently. “I need to be able to talk to her and check her vitals in order to see what’s going on. Please move over there.”
With much annoyance, I do as asked. I sit in the chair off to the side and watch the nurse as she checks over Keeley. There is several machines that are beeping and blinging with random colored lights that only heighten my anxiety.
After what feels like hours, I stand up and walk over to the nurse again. The beeping has ceased but one of the machines is still flashing green. “What’s going on? What is happening to my girl?”
The nurse slips her stethoscope around her neck and looks over at me. “Due to the high stress of the situation, it is very common for gunshot victims to have panic attacks.”
A doctor comes strolling in with a clipboard and a tablet in his hands. I watch over on the sidelines as he confirms what the nurse had just said to me and he nods his head. He pulls a shot out of his lab coat and preps Keeley’s lifeless arm.
Her whole body is lifeless but the look of sheer horror on her face is what makes me worried the most. Keeley’s eyes are bugging out of her head and her lips are in a tight line. There is no color in her face as she watches frantically as the doctor preps to give her a shot.
About a minute later he looks over at me and nods his head to the side. I walk over to him and place my hands on my hips out of frustration.
“Do you know what happened to this young lady?”
I gulp air quickly into my mouth and hope it spreads through my body before I freak out. “No. Someone broke in and shot her. That’s all I know.”
The doctor nods his head and then says to me: “I don’t recommend her going back to that house. I don’t recommend her being in any high stress environment until we can get her blood pressure down. She’s so stressed that she was on the verge of a stroke.”
My heart feels as if it’s about to explode. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“No,” he says calmly. “Can she stay some place where she will feel safe?”
I know what he’s asking me. He’s asking me if I know what happened and if it were my fault. “Don’t worry, doctor. I will make sure she feels safe because she is.”
