Both girls giggled.
At the kitchen doorway, he paused and called, “I’m coming in! You better be dressed.”
There was a stretch of silence, followed by a series of hushed whispers, then Lily’s voice calling his name.
“Is it safe?” he asked.
“Of course it’s safe,” Sloan muttered. “The girls are awake.”
And yet, when Cole walked into the room, there was a dark flush on Lily’s face, her lips were wet and swollen and her clothes looked like they’d been pulled together in a rush. Sloan just looked irritated, which was normal whenever Cole interrupted their make out sessions.
“Get a room, you two,” he teased.
“This is a room.” Sloan answered as he always did. “How was work?”
Cole rolled his eyes. “Long. Tedious. Normal. You?”
Sloan shrugged his wide shoulders. “About the same.”
After the death of their mother, Sloan had taken it upon himself to buy out a dying moving company with whatever was left of the insurance money after he’d bought the house. While he didn’t rake in the big bucks, he made a good living, but moving wasn’t something Cole was ever good at. Hard, manual labor, sweating, and lifting and bending made him shudder. He was more of a sit and work type of person, which was why, when Sloan had offered him a place in his company, Cole had refused, to which he had a feeling Sloan was secretly relieved.
Spatula in hand, Lily ventured to the stove and began stirring whatever was boiling there. “Is no one going to ask how my day was?”
Cole dumped himself into one of the chairs at the table. “How was your day, Lil?”
She smiled. “It was fine. Thank you for asking.”
Sloan went over to possibly help. Cole wasn’t sure, but his hands found their way on Lily’s hips instead and the two forgot all about him as Sloan went on to nuzzle the curve of her neck.
“You know, you two really know how to bring a guy down,” he said, only half teasing. “I mean, not all of us have women we can freely grope, and no, that wasn’t a request to find me someone.”
With a giggle that had nothing to do with Cole’s statement, but the fact that Sloan had been nibbling on her ear, Lily pulled away from her husband and turned to face him.
“You need to find someone,” she told him. “There are tons of girls in town.”
Yes, but he didn’t want a ton of girls. He wanted one girl. Unfortunately for him, she didn’t want him.
“I’m done with girls,” he stated simply. “I’m swearing off them forever.”
Lily scowled at him. “That’s ridiculous. You can’t swear off women.”
“Sure I can. I already have a kid so I don’t even need to worry about someone not carrying on my lineage.”
The look on Lily’s face told him he was an idiot. “You are not serious. What about sex?”
Cole snorted. “Unlike you two who fuck like bunnies on crack every chance you get, I can wait, or if I really need to, I can take matters into my own hands, or I can—”
“Okay, oh my god, stop!” Lily covered her ears. “That is a disturbing visual. Thanks.”
Cole shrugged. “You asked.”
Shaking her head, she went back to stirring. “You need someone, Cole. You’re twenty-five years old. You can’t be alone for the rest of your life. I mean, yes, Beth left you, but that doesn’t mean you can just swear off women forever.”
“She didn’t just leave me, Lily,” he muttered, feeling his good mood literally drain out of him. “I asked her to marry me and she all but passed out, and it wasn’t out of joy. I honestly didn’t think a person could turn that shade of green.”
“Okay, so she’s not the marrying sort, but that doesn’t mean—”
“I don’t have anything to give anyone else, Lil. Everything I had, I gave her, and she never gave any of it back.”
Lily turned, her brown eyes unusually bright. “Oh Cole…”
He looked away. “I’m not going to put myself through that again.”
Thankfully, Lily knew when to drop a topic. Discussions about Beth were shoved back into the closet, possibly for another day, and the subject turned to the new batch of photos Lily’d taken earlier that morning. They talked about her small photography business that was mostly big online and the new picture Calla had drawn in school that was pinned to the fridge along with all the others. When it was time to eat, Cole helped set the table, got the girls to wash their hands, and joined his family in eating supper. Most of the conversation was kept up by Willa and Calla telling everyone about all the things they did that day. Cole didn’t know what it was, but he could sit there for hours and hear those two chatter on. He loved hearing their stories, no matter how big, or small, or horribly embellished they may have been.
After supper, he bundled the two up and drove them into town for ice cream. He made sure they took their time, knowing full well his brother and Lily would need at least an hour to finish whatever they’d started before he’d arrived.
Sure enough, the moment they stepped into the house—to which Cole made sure to make as much noise as possible—the two were still breathless, disheveled, and grinning like lunatics.
Cole shook his head at them. “You two need help.”
Lightly smacking his arm, Lily turned to the girls. “Time to wash up and then bed.”
Their groans filled the house as the three of them went through the motions of putting the girls to bed. Hair and teeth were brushed, pajamas were donned, and both crawled into Calla’s bed so Cole could read them a story.
Willa passed out first, her head on Cole’s abdomen, her tiny, four year old body twisted at an odd angle that couldn’t have been comfortable. Cole called for Sloan, doing his best not to be too loud. Sloan must have been in the bedroom across the hall; he appeared almost immediately and scooped Willa up into his arms. He carried her to her bed across the room and gently tucked her in. He smoothed her hair off her face and kissed her cheek before moving back to Calla’s bed.
“Good night, love,” he murmured, bending down and kissing her on the nose.
Calla wiggled deeper under her pink blankets. “Night, Uncle.” She turned sleepy eyes towards Cole. “Night, Daddy.”
Cole bent at the waist, slipped one arm around her and nuzzled the side of his daughter’s face. “Love you, baby. Goodnight.”
Sloan was gone when Cole slipped off the bed and moved to Willa’s bed. He kissed the side of her head, tucked the blankets more securely around her and left the room, shutting the door quietly behind him.
Lily and Sloan were in the living room, bathed solely by the warm, golden light of the lamp. The two were entwined in each other. Lily had her face tucked beneath Sloan’s chin as he moved them slowly to whatever music only the two of them could hear. He murmured something into the top of her head and she lifted her face to his. Her mouth moved, and even though Cole couldn’t hear the words, he knew what they were; love you, too.
Irritation that had nothing to do with them flared through him. His temper edged him towards the door, careful not to disturb them.
“Cole.” Lily’s voice caught him mid escape. “Are you leaving?”
Careful to keep his face impassive, Cole turned. “Yeah, I have work to finish for tomorrow.”
Such a lie, but they didn’t need to know that.
She broke away from his brother and moved towards him. Her arms lifted and anchored around his shoulders. She hugged him tight.
“Love you.”
He squeezed her back. “You too.”
He pulled away, gave Sloan a brief nod goodbye before turning on his heels and leaving the house.
Frigid night air greeted him, forcing him to zip up his coat all the way to his throat. His breath came out in a fan of white as he fished into his pockets for his keys. They jingled loudly in the silence. His hands shook as he wedged the key into the lock and threw himself into the crisp, cold leather. He grunted his displeasure as the chill seeped through his pa
nts and froze his balls.
He had just turned onto the main road when his phone buzzed in his pocket. Shooting the numbers on his dashboard a glance, he frowned as he dug his phone out. With both eyes on the road, he hit talk and mashed the device against his ear.
“Hello?”
There was a moment of silence as though, by answering, he’d somehow surprised the other person. Then a soft, female voice filled his ears.
“Mr. McClain?”
Bemused, Cole nodded, even though the other person couldn’t see him. “Yes?”
There was another pause.
“Cole McClain?” the voice verified.
“Yes. Who is this?”
Something rustled in the background. It sounded like papers. Something else beeped noisily and a voice echoed through a loudspeaker. Cole recognized all those sounds from when his mother was in the hospital, just before she died. It was a sound that had haunted him for months before she died and even long after. It was the reason he never went to hospitals, why he couldn’t even watch a show with doctors. It was the sound of his own personal hell and it was filling all his senses.
“Who is this?” he asked again.
The woman returned after a full heartbeat. “This is Vancouver General Hospital. We have a patient who was admitted earlier today. You are listed as her emergency contact.”
His heart plummeted, falling like a chunk of ice into his writhing gut. Automatically, his mind reminded him that he just left Sloan and Lily. They were fine. The girls were fine. Nevertheless, his fingers tightened on the wheel.
Unable to think straight, let alone drive, Cole pulled onto the shoulder of the road, his entire body trembling uncontrollably. There was a strange metallic tang in his mouth and he couldn’t seem to catch his breath.
“Who … who is it?”
“Bethany Doan.”
Chapter Two ~ Beth
The doctors promised that the pain would eventually fade. They weren’t so sure about the scars. The burns, they told her, were extensive and odds were that there would be minor scarring.
Beth didn’t know what that meant. About ninety percent of her arms were mummified, along with her legs and her sides. How could she possibly walk away from that with only minor scarring? At least the fire hadn’t touched her face and had only singed parts of her hair; she could feel the ends crackle where they flaked off onto the flat hospital pillow. Yet, the worst part of it all was her inability to eat her green jello, and, while she had no real love for the stuff, she was starving. The thin slivers of turkey, gravy, and mashed potatoes they’d given her nearly six hours earlier were long gone and had barely scratched the surface of her hunger, and they refused to bring her anything else. One sour-faced nurse had actually told her to wait until breakfast, which would have been fine if the wait period hadn’t been in the double digits.
“Bastards,” she mumbled to the dark, quiet room, eyeing the tiny plastic cup.
The single, florescent bulb above her head flickered over the smooth, glossy surface, giving the taunting substance an almost ethereal glow. A plastic spoon lay next to it, a sick mockery of her disability. Her bandages, while each finger was individually wrapped, went from shoulder to fingertips, making movement nearly impossible. Picking up a spoon seemed like an infinitely unmanageable task when moving her arms at all pierced her through with unimaginable pain. So she sat there, having a silent showdown with her food, wondering if she could somehow bring it to her mouth with the powers of her mind.
The hospital was quiet. It hummed with the familiar echo of machines, the buzz of lights dying, and the occasional cough from somewhere down the hall. She was too used to that sound, albeit, it was usually broken by the wail of new born babies, but all hospital floors were blessed with the same brand of near silence in the wee hours of the morning. Four AM, to be exact.
The morphine the doctor had prescribed against her will had run out hours ago. The nice nurse, before her shift had ended, had smiled kindly and told her to just ring the front if she needed more. But Beth hadn’t. She wouldn’t. While it had served its purpose while she was too helpless to stop them, she wouldn’t willingly inject herself with the stuff. She had seen what it did to people who became too dependent on their numbing relief. She wouldn’t let it add her name to its list of victims.
So she sat in the still night, having a face-off with a cup of jello while the pain screamed through her. The skin beneath the bandages throbbed with a heat that made her want to forever sit submerged in a tub of ice water. A very large part of her wanted to call the nurse down with bags of ice, or cooling pads like the ones they’d used when she’d first come in to dull some of the throbbing. But she didn’t. Not because she was too tough to let pain hold her down, but because a part of her felt like she deserved it. While the fire hadn’t been her fault, everything about it screamed retribution for the things she’d done, things she would never forgive herself for.
Gingerly, she reclined, gritting her teeth against the chafe of tender skin against itchy fabric until she had her head on the pillow and her arms down straight at her sides. The jello was ignored.
She closed her eyes and willed her mind to overlook the discomfort and shut down for a few hours.
The dream started as it always did with him stroking her face with rough fingertips. The warmth of his skin felt substantially hot against the curve of her cheek. The air around him thrummed with the scent of sandalwood and soap. Clean. He always smelled so clean, and safe. It wasn’t surprising at all that he would be there, comforting her as he used to. It was also how Beth knew it was a dream, because those fingers hadn’t touched her in years. Too many years.
“Beth?” His low murmur washed over her, a calming balm over her injuries.
She whimpered, needing him to touch her more … everywhere.
Bits of crispy hair was brushed away. A palm rested over her cheek.
“Beth!”
Stop yelling! She wanted to snap at him. But something in the tone had changed. The vibration of it was crisper, louder, no longer the fuzzy echo that usually accompanied a dream.
Her eyelids fluttered open. The world swam a blinding white of spilled milk. The blur made her blink and squint as a dark shape hovered over her.
Dr. Patterson.
She thought of the resident on-call doctor before the haze of sleep could fully lift. She opened her mouth to tell him she was fine and to go away for a few more hours, when his features slowly swayed into place. Dominating blue eyes bore down at her from a face blessed with sharp cheekbones and a strong jaw. Hair that she remembered as mussed and unruly was sheered short, darkening the normally pale strands. Full, generous lips were set in a grim line that mirrored the concern reflecting in his eyes.
Beth’s breath caught. She tried to blink, but her mind feared the image would go away if she did. Part of her wondered if one of the nurses had drugged her up again. It was the only explanation why he would be there, standing over her hospital bed in rumpled clothes and a day’s worth of growth darkening his jaw.
“Cole?”
Something in his face softened. It wasn’t his eyes, but maybe the lines around them. His nostrils flared with his deep inhale.
“How are you?”
Beth tried to push up. The effort had her elbows grinding into the stiff mattress. The burn as tender skin tore beneath the bandages sent her back against the pillow with a cry of pain. The spot throbbed, a new and louder injury that refused to be muffled.
“What is it?”
Cole’s hands reached for her and she didn’t know what was worse, nearly getting burned to death, or the possibility of getting touched by him.
He didn’t touch her. His hands came close, mere inches, but they curled into fists instead and dropped down to his sides. Beth told herself the feeling deep in her chest was relief.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded through the tight clench of her teeth.
“The hospital called me,” he said, watching her.
“I’m apparently your emergency contact.”
Beth mentally kicked herself.
It hadn’t occurred to her to change that after she left. It hadn’t occurred to her that she would need to; she had never been hospitalized for anything and the whole thing had been mostly as a precaution, something she’d scribbled down years ago when she filed her nursing forms. When she had switched from Willow Creek Memorial to Vancouver General, and they’d asked her if everything on her form was still correct, she had said yes, because she had completely forgotten that part.
“I’m sorry,” she said for lack of anything better. “They shouldn’t have done that. I’ll get them to take you off.”
He nodded, the motion slow and tense. Somehow it only fueled the pressure thickening the oxygen around them. Despite the reasonably normal size of the room, she felt suddenly claustrophobic and wished he would leave.
He remained, somber and filled with careful scrutiny. He seemed so focused, like he were trying to pull every thought from her head. The idea was unnerving, made more intimidating by the fact that there had been a time he could almost read her mind just by looking at her.
“Why did you come?” she blurted before she could hold the question back.
Nothing on his face changed, not a muscle. “They told me you were in the hospital,” he said, as though that explained everything. “What was I supposed to do?”
Not come, she thought to say.
She hefted herself up a second time, careful not to put any pressure on her arms when she did so. “You didn’t have to.”
“I know.”
Someone had taken away the table with her jello. It had been pushed to the wall next to the door, as far away from her as humanly possible. And there was a tray on it.
Food!
Her stomach moaned longingly. Memories of her hunger had not faded since the previous night. If anything, they seemed adamant and angry.
Cole shifted, reminding her he was still there. She jerked her gaze away from her breakfast to focus on the man moving away from the bed. For a split second, her heart plummeted when she realized he was headed for the door. Just as quickly, she scolded herself for caring—hadn’t she wanted him to leave? But her mental battle was momentarily white-flagged when he didn’t leave. Instead, he was pushing the table over to the bed.
Bye-Bye Baby Page 2
