Trusting Xavier
Page 5
“Is that why you spent so much time with me? Because of my injuries?”
“No,” he said as he handed her a tissue.
She swiped at her cheeks and sniffled. “Then why?”
“I was looking for answers,” he said quietly, the hum of the heater kicking on the only sound in the room.
“Did you find them?” she asked.
He glanced away, his heart heavy with questions. “No. Sometimes the answers take more than a lifetime to find.”
She nodded as though she understood exactly what he was talking about, and maybe she did. Her eyelids grew heavy, her blinks slower, as exhaustion closed in, and he took that as his cue to head for the door.
“Doc?” she said before he could reach for the handle. “Thank you for fighting so hard for me even when I couldn’t fight for myself.”
He had medical knowledge and the capacity to think quickly which allowed him to patch the human body, nothing more. Everything else was one hundred percent her. With his hand on the light switch, he gave her a brief smile. “If you hadn’t been a fighter, you wouldn’t be here.”
Her lips curved in a grin, and for a brief second, he caught a glimpse of the warrior inside. A peek into her soul that took his breath away and made him want to know her. Not just her medical history, not just her injuries, but the woman who’d ended up here where they had to teach women to stop thinking of themselves as victims, but as survivors.
But no one had to teach Laramie a thing. She’d never settle for being called a victim. She had an S for survivor carved on her heart.
“Doc? Leave them on. I’ve been in the dark long enough,” she said, rolling onto her side and taking Harmony’s hand once again.
Chapter 6
Xavier needed some damn perspective, and he needed it fast. He did the only thing he knew to do and arranged his schedule so he could not only go home for the first time in forty-three days, but so he could take a few days off entirely.
Entering his condo, he took a deep breath the way he used to, waiting for that familiar feeling of home to settle inside him, but all he picked up was the stale scent of disuse masked by citrus cleaner from the service that stopped in weekly to take care of the place.
He glanced around at the black cabinets broken up by stainless-steel appliances, gray marble floors, and the wall of windows looking out over Long Beach and struggled to feel something, anything. The condo greeted him with stifling silence that made him itch to do find a way to infuse life back into the place. Instead, his eyes noticed everything missing. There were no pictures hitched to the fridge with magnets by the kids at New Hope. Lola wasn’t there to check in on him and flit about making him comfortable or give him hell when he ignored her calls. There were no teenagers to go one on one with on the basketball court.
Worse, he didn’t tell Laramie or Harmony he was leaving.
They weren’t his family. Hell, Harmony wasn’t even technically his patient, and Laramie had been out of the woods for some time.
He made sure to arrange her rehab before he left so she’d be focused on getting up and moving again anyway. They certainly didn’t need him there for that. After their talk in the middle of the night, the determination in her eyes, he figured it was only a matter of days before she was stubbornly walking laps on their indoor track to the point of exhaustion just so she could beat the statistics on muscle loss from her time stuck in bed.
“Who are you trying to convince?” he muttered, walking in the direction of his bedroom. Dropping his bag, he headed for the bathroom.
Setting the water to one degree under scalding, he peeled off his clothes and climbed in under the strong spray. Water sluiced over his head, his face, and down his body and feet for at least twenty minutes, but it did nothing to wash away the truth.
He cared too much. He’d gotten too close. And there was no way to take a step back without hurting.
He’d spent forty-two of his forty-three days at New Hope with a woman in a medically induced coma, and in doing so, he’d opened a chasm straight through his heart, clear into his past that had him thinking about doing all kinds of crazy things like getting to know Laramie better and spending time with Harmony, but worse than that, he wanted to take out old pictures and dabble in old memories that could only bring him searing pain.
He needed a fucking therapist. Or liquor. Maybe just liquor.
Steam billowed through the bathroom as he wrapped himself in a towel and headed for his liquor cabinet. Vodka, gin, whiskey, scotch, none of them open because he didn’t even know how to do drinking right.
Scotch. He’d go with scotch. Tearing the paper away from the neck of the bottle, he grabbed a glass and filled it halfway. “Here goes nothing,” he muttered and took a sip.
Warmth filled his throat and belly which was about the only thing that convinced him to take another sip. He’d never been a drinker and never would have even had liquor if he hadn’t had a grocery service stock his place when he first moved in. He’d had to fill out a questionnaire as to just what he was looking for. He’d read through the first five options before he completely lost patience and selected the premium package which meant they stocked his liquor cabinet for entertaining.
Like he entertained. He’d never even had company and preferred to do his socializing at a hospital where being a doctor meant keeping people at a professional distance. It meant protecting his heart from the torrent of anguish sitting in his past.
He tossed back the last of the liquor and refilled the glass. The setting sun over the water had him looking at the clock. Six forty-seven. Laramie had finished dinner and might even be taking another walk around the ICU. Harmony was probably getting bathed and in pajamas to settle in next to her mother for the night.
And he was here, trying to drink enough to forget them both. To forget the history they resurrected for him by just existing.
To forget Sarah and Morgan.
He hissed and took another drink. The sun danced in his vision, and he knew just what was happening. The world was getting wavy, and he was getting drunk on an empty stomach. Good. He needed to numb the pain for what he was about to do. For what he shouldn’t do because it could only lead to heartache and might just crush him where he stood.
Chugging back the rich liquid that he could no longer taste, he slammed the glass down on the granite counter and flinched at the resounding echo. The anger bubbled up, and a sneer formed on his lips.
One foot in front of the other, his heart knocked behind his ribs, the explosive beats reverberating in his skull. Holding on to the wall, he stopped, weaved on his feet while he waited for his bedroom door to come into focus, then continued on, through the door, past his bed, into the closet, dropping to his knees in front of the narrow door that led to an unfinished nook.
Popping the latches, he slid the door away and stared at the box.
His life, everything that had ever meant anything to him, had been reduced to a banker’s box. Tearing off the lid, he closed his eyes and took one final breath before reaching in. His fingers wrapped around a sealed plastic bag with Morgan’s favorite stuffed animal, her quilt patched owl. She’d carried it with her everywhere, even dragging it into the tub with her a couple times so they ended up staying up late with her while they ran a dryer cycle just to get it dry enough that she could clutch it to her as she slept without soaking her nightgown.
He’d never opened the bag. When he’d packed it away, he remembered taking one last smell of it, that hint of baby shampoo and cherry Chapstick bringing her to life even as her heart had been still for thirteen days. Convinced he’d never want to smell it again, but also panicked at letting go of the last thing that felt like holding his little girl, he’d sealed it and told himself one day, one more time, he’d have her in his arms.
Not today. Not while liquor shot through his bloodstream. He’d open it when he could remember every last second of that first breath he’d take. Setting it aside, he reached for the photo album, somethin
Pulling out his favorite, Morgan on his shoulders grinning with her slushie melting into his government issued, short-cropped hair. He’d been on leave for two months. A whole two months over the summer where he spent every day with his little girl, taking her horseback riding at the local stables, teaching her to swim in his favorite lake as a kid, and roasting hot dogs and s’mores by the open fire in the backyard.
He’d had all the time in the world with his daughter. Sarah had made herself scarce, maybe was a little distant, but they didn’t argue. For the first time in years, there were no harsh words and angry whispers that they tried to keep Morgan from hearing.
Because she had already left him. She hadn’t said the word, but later he’d find out the truth. That when he went back on a mission, she spent even more time with her boyfriend on the side, this time, telling their daughter that they’d never live with Daddy again. That he wasn’t coming back to be a family with them.
Her little voice cracked over the phone when he’d called home and she’d asked him why he didn’t want them anymore. Her mother had weaponized his job and used it to break his little girl’s heart. The phone had gone dead, and he’d spent three hours trying to get through. Sarah finally picked up just in time for him to hear the venomous words spewing from her new boyfriend’s mouth. To hear his daughter’s muffled cries from the back seat just seconds before the sound of Sarah’s scream pierced the night and the crunch of metal and shattering of glass ripped through the receiver.
He couldn’t hang up. A faint pop and hiss faded away to nothing.
Silence.
No more screaming.
No more of Morgan’s cries.
No more life.
He’d listened as his wife and daughter died on the other end of the line, and dammit it all to hell, he didn’t know if he could ever forgive Sarah for that.
Or himself.
He’d given his life to the SEALs, and that commitment ripped his other commitments to shreds, leaving him an empty shell of a life. Tormented by anger and pain, he had no way to release it all so he burned every last bit of energy in medical school.
He’d never have a wife or child again, but he’d have this. This career. This ability to save lives. And with New Hope, he had the power to bring families back from the brink of death, the way he never had the power to with his own.
A tear spattered on his shaking hand. Another landed on the picture, on Morgan’s cheek. Visions of her, of what she must have looked like sitting in the back of that car, terror-stricken, but trusting the adults around her to make it okay.
Only he hadn’t been there to make it all okay.
Just scoop his fucking heart out already and take it because surely the pain couldn’t be any worse than this prison he’d been in for the past ten years. He didn’t deserve to have it beating in his chest anyway. Not when Morgan’s no longer did.
Chapter 7
Laramie breathed a sigh of relief, easing herself into the chair in the corner of the room. The same chair she found the doc sitting in a couple nights before.
Her thigh muscles quivered, well, what was left of them. She dug the heel of her hand into her flesh from the top of her leg to her knee, sliding back and forth to ease the twitching.
“You did great. Ten laps around the hospital wing is no easy feat for your second day out of bed,” Angela, her new physical therapist, said while adjusting her IV.
“Thanks,” Laramie said, glancing up at the bag of fluids as it rocked on the metal hook. “I know you’re not my nurse, but is there any chance you can find out when they can take this thing out?”
Angela gave her an understanding, gentle smile. “The final decision on that will be up to Dr. Thorne.”
“Convenient, but Dr. Thorne hasn’t been here.” Saying his name so formally felt weird on her lips. She couldn’t explain it, but something tethered them together somehow. It went beyond gratitude, beyond being grateful for what he did for her daughter. Somehow, and it didn’t make sense, but what connected them seemed to be something within him that she hadn’t been privy to yet. She’d had every intention of feeling that connection out, but then he’d disappeared.
“He’ll be back on duty tomorrow morning. In the meantime, I can check with Dr. Keith. He might be willing to make the determination. Just a warning though, Dr. Thorne has the final say in just about everything here,” Angela said, handing her a cup of ice water.
“I’d appreciate it because I’d kill for a shower right now,” she said, tucking her damp, sweaty hair behind her ear.
“Why, honey, you don’t have to wait for the IV to come out for that. You just sit tight, and I’ll get with your nurses so they can set it all up.”
“Thank you,” she whispered past stupid tears. Why did something as simple as being able to take a shower wreak havoc with her emotions? She’d never been a huge crier. She just didn’t work that way. Oh, tears threatened, but they usually didn’t fall. Unless she was angry. Then she couldn’t get a grip on them which only made her rage cry even harder in a vicious cycle of loathing and embarrassment.
Maybe the head injury dislodged those stubborn emotions. And if that was the case, more tears would be on the horizon.
“Angela?” she called before she could open the door and leave. “What’s the deal with Dr. Thorne anyway?”
She tilted her head, her eyebrows knit with confusion. “What do you mean?”
“Does he usually stay at the hospital for long periods of time to keep an eye on his patients?”
“Well, no,” she began, glancing away as though lost in thought. “I can’t say that I’ve ever seen him take up residence here for a patient.”
“Take up residence?”
“He’s been living in one of the apartments so he could be close. He’s never done that before, but we have the space so it hasn’t been an issue.”
“Isn’t the fact that he moved in weird to everybody?”
“Well, now that you mention it, maybe a little, but you know, your case was the worst we’ve had yet, and he’s so very dedicated, and since he doesn’t have a family at home waiting, I guess he just figured why not? Now, you just sit tight, and we’ll get you ready for a shower.”
No family at home. Okay, so some people took a while to go that route, but he was older. Not old, but definitely forty. He had those etched features of someone who had done some living, and he’d had the time to not only become a doctor, but to practice enough that qualified for a job heading up a whole hospital.
He checked off some of the most common boxes for women. Tall, handsome, fit, and maybe not one of the boxes, but…soft hands.
At thirty, every hand she’d held up to that point had been rough to a degree. And the men, they’d all held on a little too tight…something she didn’t realize was a bad thing until it was far too late. When she was young and stupid, it was easy to dismiss that quality as passion, or desperation, both of which made her feel wanted.
Neither inspired stirrings of love, respect, and a sense of being cherished.
Now she knew just what it all meant. Possession. And she’d never be possessed by any man ever again.
She’d thought she had gotten out when she was put in the Witsec program, but no…this was proof that not even they could keep her safe. She needed to get strong, and she needed to blow the case up. This time she wouldn’t rely on the government or law enforcement because as near as she could tell, they were all dirty.
Get strong and get Harmony settled with someone she could trust. Then she had one more move to make to blow the whole dirty operation right out of the water.
“I heard someone would like to take a shower,” nurse Deidre said as she popped into the room with a pile of white towels with a toiletry kit balancing on top.
“I want to take all the showers,” Laramie said with a laugh.
“Well, it’s no wonder since it’s been so long. We can only do so much while you’re under sedation. Let’s get you going. I’ll be on standby, so if you need any assistance I can jump in,” Deidre said as she set the towels down and offered a hand up. “Lucas dropped by and brought some of Chloe’s favorite shampoo and conditioner, thinking you might like that over the kind we provide.”
“Thank you to Chloe. I only met her for ten minutes, but I adore her already,” Laramie said with a laugh as she gingerly made her way to the bathroom.
Deidre made sure the sprayer was aimed more toward the wall and turned the water on. “She knows just what you’re going through. Lean on her if you need someone. She’s the perfect ally to have.”
“Ally? Why do you say that?”
“Because she knows how to put her foot down and get these men to listen to her. You haven’t met them all yet, but the men who own and operate this facility, they’re all former SEALs.” Deidre closed the door and lowered her voice. “They’re strong and they’re honorable, but the best part, each of them has a woman to balance their testosterone, shall we say. I imagine you’ll meet all of them soon enough. Chloe’s brother is one. And of course Lucas. I guess you could say she manages two in a way. Dr. Thorne is even a former SEAL.”
“Wait. What?” Laramie said, laying her hand on Deidre’s arm.
“Hard to picture isn’t it? I had trouble myself until I happened to spy on him at the gun range. When he takes that white coat off and trades his shirt and tie for a black T-shirt? Well, let’s just say, if I were twenty years younger and not happily married, I would be making a move on that.”
Laramie burst out laughing as she peeled her shirt off. “Why, Deidre, you are one saucy lady.”
“Don’t I know it. Now I’m going to step out and let you have a bit of privacy. I won’t close the door all the way, and I’ll be right outside if you need me.”
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