“No.” I blinked my eyes to get the sleep out. “You’re safe.”
His face instantly relaxed.
“Thank God. Your momma is a force to be reckoned with, Kat Atwater.”
“I heard.”
He strode in and made his way over to the vase that was perched nearby. Hale didn’t look like he knew what to think, or do, and started fiddling with the arrangement. After pulling the card and reading it, he managed to turn around and face me.
“Looks like you got my flowers after all. I figured your momma tossed ‘em in the trash after she kicked me out.”
“She wouldn’t do that.”
“Ain’t never seen her that mad before.”
I didn’t know what else to say. Flowers couldn’t make up for what happened, or how he’d left me waiting that day. I wanted to tell him that, to scream it maybe, so it would get through that thick skull of his, but he slid into the threadbare visitor’s chair and took my hand in his own before I could.
“So…you don’t look too bad, girl.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
“You got banged up a little.” He pulled a stray hair away from my face and looked at the stitches underneath. “Not too bad at all. Still as pretty as ever.”
His hand was warm and his voice had become that soft, easy one that I usually found hard to resist. It felt like ages since I last heard it.
“They say when you’re gonna get out?” he asked.
“Maybe tomorrow. Probably later, though. Doctor hasn’t come by yet this morning.”
He nodded, and swept his thumb over the top of my hand in a gentle motion. “Listen baby, about what happened…”
“Hale,” I said, letting out a deep sigh before I continued, “I don’t want to talk about it. I’m too tired and drugged up.”
“You know I was gonna to come pick you up.”
That was when I realized; Hale wasn’t asking about what happened to me. He was already trying to dig himself out of what he’d done wrong. The morphine blur which had kept me sedated gave way to razor-sharp anger.
“It’s always something, Hale,” I snapped. “You always act like you care about me when it’s already too late. And this time…this was the worst. How could you?”
“Kat…I…I love you. You know I do. I didn’t mean for this to happen. How could I have-”
“Why’d you even come here?” I asked, and pulled my hand away quickly. He wasn’t going to apologize or sweet-talk his way out of this. “To tell me you’re sorry for ditching me? You had to have known how this was going to go.”
“I wanted to see you. I was worried.”
“I…I don’t believe you,” I said. Tears were welling up in the corners of my eyes. “You should have been there, Hale. I had to take that bus…you…you forgot about me.”
“Kat, I didn’t…”
I turned away from him and stared at the window. Thin beams of light shone through in wide, golden rays. The new day had dawned.
“My parents will be back soon. You should go.”
“Oh, come on. Give me a chance, Kat. I came all the way down here to see you.”
“You got all the chances I’m willing to give you, Hale.”
“Don’t be like that. I’m trying to say I’m sorry, girl.”
He tried to wrap his long arms around me, but I shook him off. “Just go, Hale! I don’t wanna see you. Go off and play with your dumb friends. Get drunk and stupid, or whatever it is you do when I’m not around.”
“What do you mean? I can’t talk to my girl? You gonna kick me out of here like your Momma did?”
“It means we’re through. And I ain’t your girl.”
For a moment, he looked like he wanted to say something else and just stood there with a hurt expression. I rolled over and let the tears come, not caring if anyone else heard. Part of me hardly believed what had happened between us after being together so long. The other part knew it had been coming for a long time. How could it be real? He’d hurt me, more than the accident had, worse than I ever thought anyone could.
Suddenly, I was thinking back to high school. Things had been so much simpler then. Falling in love with Hale had been easy. It started with sweet, little things like flirty compliments about my smile or thoughtful gifts without occasion. The gentle way he brushed my hair out of my eyes and behind my ear or seemed beside himself with joy whenever I was around. He was surprising back then, and romantic. He always wanted to spend time with me. Everyone thought we belonged together. So did I.
But he’d changed. It was so slow at first that I hardly noticed it. In the beginning, I chalked it up as the typical bickering that all couples must endure. As things got worse, I was willing to see past the things he did…for us. At least, that’s what I convinced myself I was doing. The truth was, I was blinded by more than just all the good things he’d been back then – I was afraid of being alone.
By the time the tears were gone, my room was empty again.
Six
I rummaged through my things, hoping to find the old locket my grandmother had given me when something suddenly reconnected in my brain and I remembered that I had given it to Shane.
In truth, even though I could still see his face after he pulled me out of the burning wreckage, my memory of the accident had taken a serious jolt and everything from then was coming back slowly. I’d told him something…and felt him lifting my head…the rest was mostly a blur for a while. Eventually, most of it came back to me.
Recalling in full was both a blessing and a curse.
It was Shane I thought about while watching the news reports that evening. The man from the news said the bus swerved to avoid some sort of obstacle in the road, probably an animal or debris blown about in the high wind. The driver lost control and ran up onto the shoulder, overcorrected, and then the bus hydroplaned nearly two hundred feet before the back wheels caught traction on the shoulder and the whole thing flipped. He said it was a tragic disaster, which was really nothing more than words on a teleprompter to the newsman giving telling the story.
At first the reports only gave the numbers. I had no way of knowing if Shane had lived or not. For all I knew, he was already gravely injured when he managed to pull me out. After the news cycled again in the morning, they began to release the names of those who perished.
“Angela Ashton, twenty eight. George Ashton, thirty. Ray Engel, forty four…” the reporter droned out the names somberly in alphabetical order. A photograph was shown of the person that died to accompany each one. Some of the faces looked familiar, passing glances I recalled from that day. Others I was sure I’d never seen before.
“Five passengers survived the accident, one of the worst on record for Jones County. Three of them are still in critical condition.” Once the reporter concluded, I switched off the television and sat in stunned silence.
To my relief, Shane was not on the list of those killed. Twenty-two people in all, including the driver, had perished. I shuddered to think how close I’d come to being one of them. Most were from the large group we’d picked up in Raleigh. I continued to listen each day, hoping to hear Shane’s name or see his face on the screen. In that time, neither came, and I was eventually discharged. The locket, and the man that saved my life, seemed lost to me.
I wasn’t going to give up hope. He was still out there. Alive. Maybe he would find me. Once I was better and I could leave mother for a while, if he still hadn’t…well, I’d go looking for him myself. I wanted to thank him for what he did, and maybe even take him up on his offer for a night out on the town.
At the end of the third day, after getting fed up with the bland food and the infernal beeping of the machines all night long, I had to admit I was ready to leave the hospital sooner than they wanted me to go. It was like pulling teeth to get the doctor to sign for my release. I think he finally did it because he was getting tired of being yelled at by mother.
For eight grueling days after that, I didn’t do much else besides res
t, punctuated by bumbling trips around the house on crutches. The doctor gave me a brace, with express instructions not to take it off until the staples were removed. I must have looked pretty strange hobbling around like that. It felt like pure freedom the day Daddy took me to the outpatient center on the edge of town and they took out everything and the brace came off. Finally, I could bend my knee again.
A little over three weeks after the accident, things were starting to get back to normal. Well, as normal as things got around the Atwater house.
“Kat, go on and sit down, child,” Mother chastised me from her position manning the enormous old stove in our kitchen. The thing had cooked thousands of meals since they had gotten it installed in the late sixties and it was built strong enough to withstand a nuclear explosion. “If you don’t stay off that leg, it ain’t never gonna heal up right!”
She had on her apron, which really wasn’t much more than a piece of oft-bleached canvas that was even older than the stove. That particular accessory had been worn by her mother, and her mother before. The strings were tied in a knot around the back and hung down over her backside. They’d probably been that way for forty or more years; trying to untangle them would be pointless.
Still, she wasn’t one to go about unmanaged like that knot in her apron - Her mostly-white hair, which had been a golden, honey-blonde twenty some years ago, was curled up and looking neat from a recent trip to the salon. The simple, floral dress she’d picked up in the mid-nineties during a winter sale at fancy store in Wilmington hugged her narrow hips and swished to and fro under the apron as she busily worked the kitchen. She still had on a pair of white flats that she’d been wearing since church let out. They looked terribly uncomfortable and clicked on the wooden floor with each step, but she wouldn’t take them off her feet until the entire family settled down later in the evening.
Mother was just like that. She never traded comfort for appearances. A person that had never met her would have absolutely no idea that she was fighting cancer and that’s the way she wanted it.
I sauntered up beside her and placed a warm bowl of mashed potatoes on the counter. “My leg doesn’t even hurt anymore, Momma. The doctor took the staples out weeks ago. See?” I twisted my leg around and showed off my scar. It was still not completely finished healing, but the ugly red line had already receded to a pinkish-white hue. Although I never thought it would be classified as a “cute” by anyone, I was glad that it wasn’t any worse. She turned away from the frying meat in her cast iron skillet and gave it and me a cursory glance.
“That don’t matter, young lady. You ought not to be cruising around here like that so soon after having surgery.”
“Says the woman that also just had surgery,” I shot back at her with a laugh. “Look at you sashaying around in here. Come on and let me finish cooking that stuff. You’re the one that should be taking things easy.”
She really should have been. Mother had started her chemotherapy treatments before I even got back home from the hospital and they were starting to take their toll. Daddy drove her in to the cancer clinic and sat with her five days a week and they were gone for hours at a time. She’d barely touched more than a few morsels of food for days and her already petite frame was becoming increasingly thin. I could tell she was getting tired, but I knew she wouldn’t slow down a bit until she had no other choice.
“I ain’t never taken anything easy young lady, and I ain’t fixing to start anytime soon. Supper will be done in a bit and I aim to finish cooking it without you all up under my feet. Go on and take you a seat in the parlor till I call.”
The parlor - that’s what she called the living room. When I asked her why she didn’t just call it that a long time ago, I was told to hush. I figured she just liked making it seem fancier than it was.
“Hey Lil’ Bit,” Father said from behind his Sunday paper as I walked in from the narrow hallway outside the kitchen. He had both feet kicked up in the recliner and was enjoying his one day of rest for the week. A pair of bifocals rested on the end of his nose. “Did the old bat give you the boot again?”
“What did you just call me, George Theodore Atwater?!” resounded loudly from the kitchen.
“Nothin’ dear!” He smiled and folded up the paper before raising one hand and whispering over to me, “She’s got ears like one though, don’t she?”
“You better be careful, Daddy. You know she’s going to get you one of these days.” I said and scrunched down on the end of the sofa. They were always teasing each other like that. “Momma sure wouldn’t take that kind of fooling from anyone else without clocking them one upside the head with her frying pan. She might get tired of it one day, you never know.”
“Oh, she knows I’m only kiddin’ round. ‘Sides, she likes it.”
“Says you.” I said while looking out the front windows and into the yard. “Where’s Abby? I haven’t seen her all day.”
“Miss Highlander and her daughter drove up with a vanload of girls and picked her up this morning. Your sister is supposed to be at a study session with her friends at their house,” father said. “I ‘spect she’s doing anything but studying, though. You know how that is.”
“Oh yeah. You get a bunch of teenage girls in one room and the last thing they want to talk about is history, or math, or schoolwork. They’re gossiping about something, probably boys. I was the same way when I was thirteen.”
“Too old for dolls, too young for a father to get some gol’ darn rest and stop worryin’. I ain’t so bad with her as I was with you, though. I reckon I had all my heart attacks and sleepless nights ten years ago when you was still a teeny-bopper. Best thing I can do now is trust that she’s got a good head on her shoulders and knows to stay out of trouble.”
I fondly remembered the way I’d been as a teenager and offered, “Try to tell her what to do, and she’ll just do the opposite.”
“Them boys know I got a shotgun,” he said with a chuckle.
“Yeah, they probably heard about it from their older brothers, Daddy. Did you really have to pull that ol’ gun out of the cabinet and polish the barrel every time a boy came over to take me out?”
He nodded sternly. “Sure did. A little fear does wonders on young men that want to date one of my daughters.”
I rubbed my thigh near the healing incision. It was still achy and sore. Not much longer, I hoped, and the pain would go away.
“How’s that leg?” Father asked, and folded the paper over to the next page. “All healed up enough to drive your Momma to the clinic tomorrow?”
“I think so.”
“Good. Dale and Francis have been a big help on the farm over the last couple weeks, but I’ve gotta get back out there ‘fore the fall harvest. Probably even hire them kids from down the road to help out with it this year when the time comes.”
“Mr. Johnson’s boys? Last time I saw them they were still learning how to ride a bike. Have they really gotten that big?” I asked and Daddy nodded his head.
“Sure have. They came over early spring and asked for some chores to earn some spendin’ money. I told ‘em to clean out Ruby and Zip’s stable and they did a right fine job of it.”
I thought about our horses. How long had it been since I even saw them, much less had a ride? Taking Zip for a gallop around the meadow was one of my favorite things to do after I got home from high school or when I came home for visits during college. He was a fully grown stallion by now.
“Nice to have good help ‘round here,” father said lazily and finished off his glass of tea. “Paid ‘em both ten dollars for their trouble. You shoulda seen ‘em race outta here to go spend it. Why, ten dollars was more than I made in a month pullin’ tobacco when I was that age. Now, you can’t even fill up a tank of gas with it!”
“Maybe tomorrow, after I get back home with Momma, I’ll go see if Zip wants to run around the field a bit.”
Daddy gave a heavy nod and said, “Oh, I suspect he will. I swear that horse has been missing you
, darlin’. Hain’t acted the same since you left for school. Ruby’s just as dumb as ever, though. Damn horse still goes left when I pull ‘er right.”
“She’s headed for the glue factory,” I said, echoing one of Daddy’s favorite, not-actually-serious expressions about the old mare. That got another quick laugh out of him.
“Dang right. I couldn’t do it, though. I’ve had that horse for twenty some odd years, and for some reason, she sure does love your momma. Obeys for her. She’d give me more hell than the devil if I ever did somethin’ like that to her.”
“When was the last time Momma took out Ruby?”
He pushed up his glasses and lifted his chin. “Oh, been a good while, Lil’ Bit. Maybe back this spring, but I don’t rightly recall. She tol’ me she aims to get out for another ride on the old girl as soon as she’s all better.”
“She’s determined not to let this slow her down,” I said.
“Nothin’ slows her down. The car could have four flat tires and she’d still make it to church on time. That’s just how she is.”
“I know. Just don’t let her push herself too hard, Daddy.”
I crossed my bum leg underneath the other one. It was getting tiring to look at.
“I’ll do my best. There’s somethin’ else you should probably know about,” Daddy said uncomfortably and shifted in his chair. “I was gon’ wait till after supper but I guess now’s as good a time as any.”
“What?”
“Had somebody else call me up the other day, lookin’ for work. He don’t know much about farmin’, and ain’t the most reliable sort, but he’s got some skill as a mechanic.”
At first, his words glossed over me. A second later, I realized who he was talking about and asked, with a ill feeling in my gut, “Wait a minute…are you talking about Hale Ellis?”
He nodded slowly, keeping his eyes on me. “I am. And I hired him, at least for the pre-harvest that is. My ol’ tractor is in a state and the rest of the equipment needs serious maintenance.”
Ultimate Alphas: Bad Boys and Good Lovers (The Naughty List Romance Bundles) Page 16
