Hard Limit

by Meredith Wild

  “You were shot.”

  I closed my eyes and reached for the memories. Everything was so blurry, but slowly, like the room, the last memories of my conscious mind came into focus.

  The restaurant. The shots and the screaming. Blood. God, there’d been so much blood. Richard’s too.

  Richard was hurt…or worse.

  “Is Richard okay?”

  Hesitation swam in Blake’s eyes. He shook his head. “He didn’t make it.”

  Oh, no. I couldn’t believe it. We’d spoken. Contentious as it was, I couldn’t believe he was dead. Blake tucked a hair behind my ear, moving a tube that blew cold unwelcome oxygen into my nostrils. I wrinkled my nose and went to pull them out.

  Blake stopped me, replacing its position. “No, keep that.”

  “I don’t want them.”

  “Christ, Erica. You’ve been shot three times. Can you please leave it? At least until the doctor comes.”

  I relaxed back into the pillow, giving up the fight and feeling the small surge of energy that had woken me vanish. I was exhausted, but I didn’t want to leave Blake yet.

  “Sorry,” I muttered.

  He sighed softly. “Are you in pain? I can call the nurse.”

  I did a mental scan of my body. The pain in my abdomen was more localized than I remembered, but I still had no idea where I’d been hurt. Heaven help me, that man. He was the one who’d taken the shots. I closed my eyes and tried to remember his face. Dark hair and dark eyes. Shadowed as he was, I couldn’t make much of him out. But his presence, his build, and the way he dressed had set him apart in my mind. He wasn’t another suit, a young professional on the streets.

  “The man who shot me. He…”

  “He’s dead, baby,” Blake said.

  My eyes flew open. “The police shot him?”

  “No.” He rubbed the stubble that covered his jaw. “It was Daniel.”

  My heart stopped. “Daniel?”

  “After you and I hung up, he called me in a panic. He said you were in danger and needed to know where you were. I didn’t want to tell him obviously. I wanted to get you myself but he insisted. He was…frantic. Somehow he knew whatever was about to go down. He showed up a few minutes before me. He pulled his bodyguard’s firearm and shot the man dead a few seconds after he opened fire on you.”

  Then suddenly I remembered. The tweed cap. The muscled man who reminded me of Connor when I’d first seen him. I touched my trembling fingertips to my mouth. “I remember him.”

  I looked to Blake’s concerned expression.

  “I saw him when I was with Daniel, a long time ago. This seedy bar in Southie called O’Neill’s. He was manning the door. He seemed to know Daniel. That was him. I remember.”

  He shook his head. “Why would he want to hurt you?”

  “I have no idea. But Richard…” I frowned, trying to remember our conversation. He’d had something on Daniel. Something that spooked me enough to want to leave suddenly.

  “Richard wanted me to talk about Daniel, to reveal what I knew about him. He suspected him of being involved in Mark’s death. Richard said it was my last chance to tell the truth. He was going to meet with someone from that neighborhood who was going to tell him everything he didn’t know about Mark’s death.”

  “Do you think he knew you were going to be there?”

  “Maybe. Richard might have told him.”

  Blake stood up and began pacing a small path beside the bed. He pinched his lower lip between his fingers. “The press has been quiet other than saying that Daniel shot him. I wonder how much they really know.”

  A nurse entered the room, and a tall man with short brown hair dressed in a white doctor’s coat followed behind.

  “Look who’s awake.” The nurse patted one of my feet through the blanket and checked my chart.

  The doctor followed, an optimistic smile on his face despite the fact that I’d clearly had better days.

  “I’m Dr. Angus.”

  He sat in a stool and rolled up beside me. Blake stood back while the nurse bustled around the other side, taking my vitals. She jotted them down while the doctor inspected the bandages under my gown. I focused on the bare white ceiling. I wasn’t entirely ready to see what had happened to my body. I was still grateful to be alive, to have Blake with me. I wasn’t sure how much more I could handle.

  “Everything looks good. The surgery went well, and I think these will heal just fine.”

  I met his eyes once I was covered again.

  “Surgery?”

  “One of the bullets passed through, but we had to remove two of them and try to repair some of the damage.”

  Damage. The word reverberated in my already foggy brain.

  “Damage?”

  The optimism in his eyes dimmed a bit and he shifted his gaze to Blake. “You should rest a little more. You’ve been through the wringer. I’ll be doing rounds again tomorrow morning, and we can discuss it more then.”

  “No, I want to know now.” I tried to shift upwards in bed, but a sharp jolt of pain stopped me from going any farther. “Ouch.”

  The nurse found a beige cord beside me and pressed it a couple times. “Press this for pain, honey.”

  “Thank you,” I mumbled, hating how restricted I was in this bed.

  A moment later, the nurse had disappeared, leaving a growing air of tension in her absence.

  “Perhaps we could chat a moment alone.” He looked questioningly to Blake and then back to me.

  “No, you can say anything. Blake is my fiancé,” I insisted.

  The doctor coughed quietly and stared down at his clasped hands. He drew in a breath and made eye contact again.

  “All right then. One of the bullets skimmed your side here, but passed through, as I said.” He placed his hand over my left side, and the heat radiated down to the place where I registered a faint pain. “And then two shots entered your abdomen. There was some damage to your reproductive organs.”

  All the air left my lungs. Silence hung in the air, like we were all standing there frozen in time.

  “What does that mean?” A surge of panic flowed through my veins. My breathing became rapid and tears formed in my eyes.

  He glanced to Blake again, whose face showed no emotion. “We repaired the damaged tissue of your uterus. That should heal in time, but we were not able to repair the rest. Your ovary was lost.” His lips wrinkled into a sympathetic line. “I’m very sorry, Erica.”

  “What about…” I swallowed hard, trying to form the words. Words we’d never even said as a couple, yet here we were in front of a stranger who was threatening all of it. “Does this mean I can’t have children?”

  “You will probably want to consult with someone who specializes in these things, but if you had plans to conceive… well, it’s not impossible, but it may not be easy. You have one ovary now and the damage to the uterus could affect implantation and carrying a pregnancy to term. Only time will tell.”

  With the exception of my heavy breathing, silence stretched over what felt like several seconds. I couldn’t speak, and Blake’s eyes never left the doctor. I wanted him to look at me. But I was terrified that he would and of what I would see there.

  The doctor finally spoke. “Do you have questions for me?”

  No. I shook my head. The doctor squeezed my hand gently before he left, saying something to Blake that I couldn’t focus on. My thoughts were swimming. Tightness formed in my throat. I pressed the button on the beige cord a couple more times. I wanted to feel numb. There was too much pain. Suddenly it had all become unbearable.

  Blake caught my hand, caressing his thumb again around the place where the IV connected to my vein. He lowered his lips to my skin, pressing softly. He didn’t speak. He simply caressed my hand lightly. His jaw was tight, his full lips drawn up even tighter.

  “Blake. I’m sorry.” He couldn’t know how sorry I was.

  When he finally looked up, his eyes were misted. He blinked and cast them dow
n again quickly. A painful sob wanted to burst out of my chest, but I held onto it, afraid to unleash it. Why? All I could ask myself was why, and there was only silence to answer me.

  Blake shifted beside me. Reaching into his pocket, he retrieved my ring. Sparkles danced off the band of beautifully cut diamonds. I glanced down at my pale bruised hand. They must have taken it off for the surgeries. For all my wounded nakedness under the gown, I suddenly felt bare without it.

  He caught my fingers and slipped the band carefully over my knuckle. I closed my eyes and let the tears roll down my cheeks. Warm lips pressed against the skin above the ring, the same place he’d kissed the same day he asked me to be his wife, reminding me of our promise.

  * * *

  Blake doted on me for weeks. We hadn’t talked about the doctor’s words, and a part of me wondered if Blake was trying to pretend like he hadn’t said them at all. Perhaps he was only trying to help me heal. I played along, pretending my injuries—all of them—would heal and we could go back to our lives. Pick up the pieces of our lives.

  I sipped my tea, my thoughts blanked out by the television blaring in front of me. I startled at a knock. Blake looked up from his laptop and went to the door.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  I sat up carefully, peering over the top of the couch. Daniel stood tall in the doorway, seemingly undeterred by Blake’s threatening posture. “I came to see Erica,” he said calmly.

  A tense moment passed between them before I spoke. “It’s okay, Blake. Come in.” The part of my mind that was used to doing whatever it pleased wanted to stand up and greet him, but I was still couch-bound. At least Blake insisted I was. I wanted to move around, but he restricted me to mandatory movements only.

  Daniel came into the living room and sat on the opposite couch. I shut off the noise of the TV. I had a thousand questions. The news had been extremely vague, and I hadn’t wanted to reach out to Daniel and raise suspicions. I worried that his visit wasn’t a good idea now, but I desperately wanted to know what this all meant. I needed to know why someone would want to kill me, and why Richard had lost his life because of it.

  What had really happened that day? I silently implored Daniel as his gaze skirted around the room.

  “Do you want something to drink?” I asked weakly, not sure how to break the ice.

  He eyed the wet bar at the other side of the room but shook his head. “No. Thank you.”

  I had many questions, but one burned in my mind. “Who was he?”

  He looked down at his folded hands, but didn’t answer.

  “I recognized him. He worked at O’Neill’s. That day we went there.”

  “He worked for me.”

  I nodded slowly, fingering the knot in the blanket over my lap.

  “He was trying to blackmail me. He wanted money to stay quiet about Mark’s death.”

  “He knew the truth?”

  He nodded.

  “Why did he know?”

  He lifted his gaze to mine. “Why do you think?”

  I swallowed hard. God.

  Blake came around and sat beside me. He leveled a dead stare at Daniel.

  Daniel cleared his throat and began. “He heard about you in the press. When he found out you were my daughter and linked to my campaign, he must have figured you were pretty important to me. He threatened to come after you if I didn’t pay him off.”

  “And you wouldn’t.”

  “I would have. If I’d thought that would be the end of it. I was hoping for a more permanent solution, but by the time I figured out what he was up to, all I could do was try to get to you before he did.”

  I closed my eyes against the burning behind them. “And Richard. Was that…an accident?”

  “Maybe he thought he was Blake, or maybe he was simply too close to you. Someone important to you would presumably be important to me.”

  “It’s all so terrible. I still can’t believe it. It’s like a dream. One that I’ll wake up from and it’ll be that day, before everything happened. I just stood there, waiting for him to do it. I couldn’t figure out who he was, but I knew his face.”

  Daniel sat in silence, his lips pressed tightly together.

  “Well, we came around to the permanent solution anyway. The police matched a print from Mark’s apartment to him. He used the same weapon against you as he used to kill Mark. He wasn’t as bright as he was ambitious. Unfortunately for him, fortunately for me. The case is finally closed. They’ll be announcing it any day now.”

  Emotion flooded through me. The relief was unmistakable. Could it really be over? It seemed impossible, but I couldn’t imagine going through any more of this.

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “It’s done. I promise you. My lawyers are taking a much-needed vacation. The police shouldn’t bother you anymore. Neither should the reporters.”

  Thank God.

  “How are you feeling otherwise?”

  I opened my eyes, and a new kind of pain shot through me, a pain far deeper than the physical pain that had slowed me down the past couple weeks. Blake’s hand tightened around mine. My free hand rested over my belly, that wasteland where I could have held a life. That possibility was now just a number, a slim chance that anything could be normal. I swallowed the tears that would come every time I thought about it.

  “You should go.” Blake said quietly, but firmly. “She doesn’t need any upset right now.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, but my voice cracked.

  “It’s not. This is his fucking fault. Look at what this has done to you.”

  A tear fell slowly down my cheek. “Stop, please.”

  Daniel frowned, fresh concern awash on his features. I didn’t have the physical or emotional strength to keep them from tearing each other apart if they stayed in the same room. I gave Blake a pleading look.

  “Blake, can you give us a minute?”

  His eyes narrowed as his gaze slid back over to Daniel. He looked back to me, his expression softening only slightly. He rose and retreated to the kitchen.

  “What happened, Erica?”

  “I’m fine. It’s just. Um, it might be hard… Having kids, I guess, will be a challenge now. There was some damage there.”

  “Jesus.” For the first time I saw genuine fear in Daniel’s eyes. He seemed pale as he looked me over. “Erica, my God, I’m sorry. I’ve made such a mess of this. I wanted…”

  His head fell into his hands. He rose abruptly, went to the wet bar, and poured himself a drink. He drained it quickly and poured another. He stared into the glass. The answers weren’t there. I wanted to tell him I’d already checked. I’d thought my way all through the bad news the doctor had given me. I could stack up the regrets and rewrite history, but nothing would change the damage that had been done.

  My life was a mess. At least we had that in common.

  “What are you going to do about the governor’s race?”

  He gulped down another mouthful of Blake’s expensive scotch and exhaled. “Fuck, I don’t know. There’re only a couple weeks left. What more can I do? There’s more news about the shooting than the campaign at this point.”

  “I could try to help.”

  His eyes widened, that glimpse of fear there again. “No.”

  “I know I haven’t been very supportive,” I said.

  “You’ve had good reason not to be. And now you have an even better reason. You shouldn’t be anywhere near my campaign or me.”

  I wilted. “I literally don’t have anything else to do. The business is gone. I’m stuck here.” I didn’t want to go down the list of everything that had led to the utter wreckage of my life in its current state.

  He came closer, sitting beside me on the couch. “What happened to the business?”

  “It sort of got sold out from under me. It’s a long story, but suffice to say, I now have lots of spare time on my hands. I could help if you wanted me to.”

  “You should be resting, an
d I want you far away from all of this.” He caught my hand. “I want you far away from me too.” He let me go, sliding his hand away as if the touch burned him.

  “Daniel.”

  “I’ve done enough damage. Every time I think I’m taking care of a problem, three more crop up. I’ve brought nothing but terror to your life since you found me, Erica.”

  He stood, avoiding my eyes.

  “This is done now. The investigation is closed. We can sever ties. You don’t need to worry about me bothering you anymore. I’ll leave you alone. Hopefully the only time you’ll see me is in the news, and even then… Fuck, I don’t know.” He shoved a hand through his graying hair. “Nothing makes sense right now.”

  Fresh tears formed in my eyes. “Why are you saying that?”

  “Because it needs to be said. Because this is why… This is why I left your mother.” His blue eyes blazed into me, emotion igniting there that I’d never seen before. “You’ve seen glimpses, but you have no idea what it’s like to have this life. You had no way of knowing that finding me would bring you this far down into it, but I warned her too. I told her we couldn’t be happy that way. Erica…” He rubbed his forehead, doing nothing to resolve the grimace there. “I wanted to be with Patty. I swear on my life, I loved your mother. I wanted to marry her and be a family, but I had no choice. You can’t understand it, but I have no choice. It’s all laid out, and for all the years it took to get here… Christ, here we are. Here I am. No better off, really. And you’re not safe around me.”

  He stared into the now empty glass. I didn’t know what to say to him. I couldn’t argue that my life had turned into a life-threatening shit storm since I’d found him, but the thought of him leaving and never coming back was slowly devastating me.

  Before I could argue, he took a step toward me. He leaned down and kissed the top of my head, where my hair met my forehead. He lingered there a moment and began to speak in a whisper.

  “You’re my daughter. My only child. I love you, but it’s time for me to go now.”

  He stepped back with eyes cast down. He left the apartment as quickly as he’d come, leaving me in stunned silence.