“No, it’s okay,” she said after a minute. “I’ll drive myself. I’m okay.” And she wondered if God could hear the lies she told out loud too.
Strange, Ash thought as she pulled onto Main Street a few minutes later. She didn’t think it had poured this hard all summer. Sure, maybe a quick shower here and there, but nothing so violent. Nothing that made her think that Paradise itself, its streets and its homes along with the people inside them, might be swept off the map. Her fingers shook against the steering wheel. Her stomach churned. She’d had to ask J.T. for directions to the hospital, and even though she’d written them down, she made two wrong turns and had to double back.
“Eddie’s been in an accident…”
Again and again she heard the words of his father, the tears bubbling in his voice, the control the man fought to keep. My God. The Wests had already lost one son. How could they go through it all again?
She braked hard and swerved to avoid a car abandoned in the middle of the road. Breath hissed through her teeth, and she fought for calm. Read the directions. Focus on one thing at a time. Okay, a turn at the blinking yellow light by the highway. A treacherous drive along aptly named River Street. A right turn by the Dairy Dome. Ash started counting breaths, to remind herself to inhale. Another half-mile, and the modest brick building that housed South County Medical Center rose up from the fog. Finally.
She steered into the visitors’ lot. Only one other vehicle occupied a spot, a brown pick-up truck with a dent in one side. She ran for the ER doors, which slid open as she approached. In the foyer stood an orderly. He looked her way but didn’t speak. She headed for the desk. No one there.
“Hello?” She rapped on the glass divider. After a minute a receptionist appeared, with a sweater pulled tight across her chest. For the first time, Ash realized the room was freezing, with the AC up full blast. She wrapped her arms around herself.
“Eddie West?” The words turned her tongue thick in her mouth. She tried to ask something else but couldn’t.
The woman glanced at a chart. “You family?”
Ash shook her head.
“Can’t tell you anything. Privacy laws.”
She backed away. Had they taken him upstairs, to another room? To surgery? She looked around the waiting area for his father. Not a soul.
“He’s asking for you…”
That meant he was okay, right? He wouldn’t be talking, or coherent, if he were really that hurt. Without seeing the walls around her, she moved through the waiting room on unsteady legs. In the far corner, she sank onto a blue plastic chair. Two magazines, their covers torn off, lay on a table beside her, and a coffee pot burped in the corner. Otherwise, the place was empty. No emergencies tonight, apparently, except for Eddie. How lucky for everyone else.
Ash closed her eyes. Mistake.
Eddie’s mouth on hers, his hands roaming her body, sprang to life behind her lids like it was a motion picture with a viewing audience of one. She stared at the clock above the door instead. Five o’clock. Five-oh-five. Barely the other side of afternoon. On any other day, they’d be sitting on the porch roof talking baseball. They’d be making fun of the neighbors, watching the street, telling stories. They’d be living.
She thought back to their Fourth of July party, counting the days. Two. Four. Five. Five days ago, Eddie and Ash had danced around the porch roof. Later that night, he’d kissed her. And by the next morning, she knew she loved him, somewhere in the back of her mind where the thought was so new it hadn’t even opened its eyes.
She tried to glance through a magazine, but the words and pictures blurred. She looked back at the clock and counted the erratic clicks of its old-fashioned hands. The telephone rang. A nurse walked into the waiting room on rubbery white feet, passing Ash without a glance as she pushed her way through the swinging glass door into the area beyond. Into the area, Ash assumed, where they looked patients over, treated their wounds, decided the next and best course of action.
Triage, she thought after a minute. That was the word, the way they decided who was examined first. The one who bled the most got the bandages. But what about injuries that went below the skin? What if you couldn’t see how badly you’d broken your heart until it was too late?
“Are you Ashton?” It was a woman’s voice, quiet and shaky.
She looked up and saw Eddie’s blue eyes. Her heart lurched. “Mrs. West?”
“Irene.” The graying brunette sat in the chair beside Ash. She balanced on the edge as if she might jump up again at any moment.
“How is he?”
“They’re not sure. He was thrown…” Her last word broke on a sob. A man approached them, and as Ash stood to shake the hand he offered, she saw an older version of Eddie, with the same strong jaw and the same solid stature.
“Malcolm West. Thanks for coming.”
She nodded, not sure what she was supposed to say. I live upstairs from your son? I think I might have fallen in love with him? I’ve lied to him about everything important since the day we met?
“They’re doing some more tests,” Eddie’s father said after a minute. He sank into the seat beside his wife and took her hand. “They want to make sure there wasn’t any damage to…ah…his brain.”
Irene burst into tears and fell against her husband’s shoulder.
Ash looked away from them, down at her lap. Black spots circled in front of her eyes, and the room grew hot. Had they turned off the AC? She had to pinch the skin on her arm to keep from passing out.
I shouldn’t be here. It’s too private, too fragile, too awkward. I don’t even know them. I barely know Eddie. She shifted in the chair, meaning to get up, go outside, find some fresh air, when something poked her in the leg. She looked down and saw the bulge in her pocket. The ring. Colin’s ring. Colin’s offer.
For a minute or two, Ash sat perfectly still. This is it, the moment I have to choose. Life with someone she knew, or life with someone she’d only just met. A life that was predictable, that followed rules she knew, or a life with twists and turns she couldn’t begin to predict. She ran her fingers across the lump in her pocket and felt the edges of the ring, the smooth circle of the band.
Choosing Colin means I get the marriage I always wanted. I get the comfortable life in Boston. I get the partner my family approves of.
Choosing Eddie means no guarantees. It means taking a chance, holding my breath, and jumping into the deep end. It means starting all over again with someone brand new.
She stole another glance at Eddie’s parents. If she said no to Colin, there was no promise Eddie would even know her face when he woke up. Ash stood. “I’m…I’ll…would you excuse me?” She reached for her cell phone. “I have to make a phone call.”
Irene sniffled and looked at her hands, folded like a broken bird in her lap. Malcolm nodded and tried to smile, but the expression slipped away before it reached his eyes.
Five thirty, the clock now read. Ash found a spot beneath the overhang outside where a weak signal came in. She scrolled down the saved numbers. For a minute she thought about calling Jen, but what good would that do? She couldn’t ask her best friend to hop into her car and drive a hundred miles, not on a night like tonight. And not to save Ash from something she needed to figure out by herself.
She stopped halfway down her list and stared at the digits she knew by heart. It’s the right choice. The only choice. She dialed and waited for Colin to answer.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Cal?” Eddie lurched up from unconsciousness. He looked at the door, the last place he’d seen his kid brother. Nothing. No one. Not even a flesh-and-blood doctor or nurse.
His head swam. Everything hurt, tenfold. He rolled his head on the pillow. The bike. The rain. And he'd forgotten the damn helmet. He ran one hand over his thigh and touched gauze. After a minute, he realized his right arm was bounded tightly to his chest. It ached like hell. His hair felt matted against his forehead. Did I break an arm? Hit face first? He had no rec
ollection of the accident, no idea how hard he’d hit or how far he’d been thrown.
The room remained empty, and he wondered if they’d moved him up from the ER. He glanced around. Looked like every other damn room in this place, and he’d spent enough time in the hospital to know. The bed next to him was unmade, the hall outside empty. He leaned up on one elbow and caught a glimpse of a sign for the elevator. So he was upstairs. Second floor. That meant his parents were probably wandering the halls somewhere close by. He was surprised Mom wasn’t sitting bedside, waiting for him to wake up.
Or maybe she'd figured she couldn’t wait like that again. Not after last time.
Tears filled Eddie’s eyes, pain he thought he’d gotten rid of long ago. He pressed the first two fingers of his right hand against his breastbone, a gesture from the months after the accident. A superstition. He’d once thought that the hollowness there would go away, that one day when he checked, it would have filled again with something like life. Each day when he woke, for almost a year, he checked for some sign of recovery. Each day his fingers fell away without finding one. After awhile, he realized they never would. Like a bum ankle, or a scar that stretched the length of your jaw line, some pain you carried around with you forever.
But tonight it wasn't there. Surprised, he closed his eyes and checked again. That awful emptiness, that bone-deep ache that had greeted him each morning for the last three years, had disappeared. Maybe the accident had shaken it loose. Maybe grief had run its course. Or maybe he’d finally met someone who cast light on him again.
He reached for the call button. Cal was right. He had to let Ash know how he felt. She’s the reason I didn’t roll over and die. She had to be. Nothing else had changed in Paradise this summer, except for her coming here.
Eddie only hoped it wasn’t too late to tell her that.
* * *
“Thanks for meeting me here.”
Colin ducked under the overhang. Rain dripped onto the back of his neck and soaked his shirt. “No problem.”
Ash crossed her arms over her chest and shivered.
“How’s your friend?”
She shook her head, not trusting herself to guess.
“Ash.” He took hold of her arms and pulled her close.
She blinked away tears. Fitting herself against Colin’s chest, the way she had so many times before, felt right. It felt familiar. She knew his rough spots and his edges. She knew the way he slept with one leg outside the covers and the way he ordered his eggs in the morning. She knew the feeling of his arm around her when they stood for pictures. And as if the pages of her life had suddenly opened in front of her, Ash saw the next forty years with Colin. She saw a lavish wedding, a house in the suburbs, children, a dog, and vacations to Europe.
She saw TV interviews and reporters. Elections and sound bites. She saw Congressional balls and fund-raising banquets. She saw her own law practice grow and then fade as she gave it up to support her husband’s presidential hopes. She saw all the things she wasn’t sure she wanted.
“You made a decision.” He whispered the words into her hair, a statement rather than a question.
Ash nodded into the soft fabric of his shirt. Even without looking at her, he knew.
“You’re in love with him.” Another statement.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Colin pulled away from her and squeezed her hand. “It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I screwed up. Waited too long.” He glanced over his shoulder, at the parking lot, the sky, the tops of the buildings that marked downtown Paradise. When he looked back at her again, a careful mask had dropped into place.
She reached into her pocket. “Here.”
Colin nodded as he slipped the ring into the folds of his palm.
“It’s beautiful,” she said. “But for someone else. You belong with someone else.” Her chest lifted and felt lighter even as she said the words.
“I guess I’ll see you around,” Colin said. He scratched his jaw. “Back in the city, maybe. If you go home.”
“I’ll be there,” Ash said and meant it. She watched as he got into his car and pulled away without looking back.
Yes, she needed to go back to Boston. But not now. Not right away. There was something she had to do here in Paradise first.
* * *
“Don’t cry, Ma.” Eddie patted her hand. “I’m gonna be fine. Doc said.”
Irene West drew a deep breath. Tears traced a familiar path down both cheeks. Behind her, Eddie’s father stood with his back to the room, looking out onto an evening that had finally cleared.
“Goddamn fool.” The man spoke to the window, but Eddie heard his anger, loud and clear. “Didn’t learn a damn thing from your brother’s death, huh? Thought maybe you’d be better off in the ground beside him?”
“Dad, I—” What was he supposed to say? He hadn’t gone out looking for the accident to happen. He hadn’t planned it, for Christ’s sake. Eddie looked at his mother, who continued to weep, and wondered if the tears were for him or for Cal.
Ash had never known him. Eddie was startled to feel relief rather than regret. She'd never cried for him. Never compared Eddie to Cal. And she was the one person in Paradise who didn’t see the kid brother he'd killed every time she looked at him.
It was, he realized suddenly, one more reason he’d fallen for her.
“I’m not him. I’m not Cal.” He paused. “And I’m not dead.”
His father turned. For a long moment, he stared at his son. “Your friend’s here.”
Eddie frowned. “Frank?”
“The woman. The one you kept asking for. Ashton.”
The name struck Eddie square in the heart. “I asked for her?” Impossible. He would have remembered. He would have felt her name on his tongue.
His mother managed a weak smile. “A couple of times. The nurse on duty knew who she was. Told us to call the restaurant.”
“And she came?” Even after I acted like a jerk, ran away like I was twelve years old?
His father nodded. “She’s been here a while.”
Irene turned. “But she’s…” She pressed her lips together and shook her head at her husband.
“What?” Eddie caught the look that passed between them.
Suddenly he knew. The machine monitoring his blood pressure beeped a couple of times. Colin. She’s here with Colin. Of course. Again he saw the guy down on one knee. Eddie coughed. Well, it made sense that he’d come to the hospital with Ash. He probably gave her a ride, held her hand in consolation while she did her duty and checked on her neighbor.
“Do you want me to see if she’s still downstairs?” Eddie’s father moved toward the door. “I’m sure she’d like to see you.”
Eddie yanked up the thin blanket that had bunched around his knees. All he really wanted to do now was sleep. He felt like an idiot, calling out some woman’s name while he was delirious with pain. Especially when the woman in question had shown up at the hospital with another guy.
“Nah. Don’t bother. You can tell her thanks, but she can go on home.” It was better that way. Better for both of them, if they never saw each other again.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“He’s upstairs. Room 214.”
Ash stood in the waiting room, where Malcolm West had found her pacing and biting her bottom lip. “He’s okay?”
“He will be.” The man smiled for the first time since she’d arrived at the hospital. “He’s pretty banged up. Suffered a concussion, a broken ankle, and a dislocated collarbone. Lost a lotta skin, too, but the doc says he’ll be fine. He's very lucky.”
Ash wiped her hands on her shorts. Looking down, she realized she still wore her work clothes and still had her hair up in an unwashed ponytail.
“…said he didn’t want to see you,” Eddie’s father finished saying.
“He…what?” Eddie didn’t want to see her? But he’d asked for her. He’d wanted her to come to the hospital. Hadn’t he?
“But I think that’s the drugs talking.” Malcolm led Ash toward the elevators. “I know my son.” His voice turned gruff. “Maybe not as well as I oughta. But I know you mean something to him.” The elevator doors slid open, and they stepped inside. “I knew from the look on his face when his mother told him you were down here with someone else.”
“You…” You weren’t supposed to see that, she finished silently.
He cocked his head and looked at her for a moment. “You’re the senator’s daughter, aren’t you?”
She nodded. No reason to hide anymore.
“He’s a good man, got caught in a bad spot,” Malcolm said. “You can tell ‘im I said that. Hope he doesn’t let it keep him down.”
Ash smiled at the kindness in the man’s words. “I don’t think he will. We Kirks are pretty tough when we need to be.” The elevator doors creaked open, and she could see room 214 to her right.
The older man’s hand rested on her shoulder for a moment as they stepped into the hall. “He looks a little rough right now. Just so you know.”
“He’s awake?”
Eddie’s mother slipped out of the room and came toward them. “He’s drowsy,” she said in response to Ash’s question. “But yes. He’s awake.”
Ash left them standing in the hallway and forced herself to walk toward Eddie’s room. With one hand, she knocked, pushed open the door, and stepped inside.
Oh, Eddie.
For a moment she couldn’t speak. She could barely draw a full breath. Someone had cut off the T-shirt he’d been wearing, and he sat up against the pillows with a bare chest and scrapes along his chin. One foot looked lumpy under the sheets. The edges of a purple bruise puffed out around one eye, and his right arm lay strapped in a sling across his chest.
But it was him. It was Eddie, whole and alive and looking at her with something in his gaze she couldn’t quite read. Anger? Relief? Happiness? Affection?
Neither one spoke. He’s still angry. And he had every right to be. Between her father waking them up and her ex-boyfriend reappearing with a marriage proposal, she imagined that, quite possibly, Eddie wouldn’t want anything to do with her again.
The Promise of Paradise Page 17
