"You can handle it," she whispered to me. "I'll be waiting right outside. You need to check on him."
I nodded. She was right. I let out one last breath, and then pushed aside the curtain across the open door and stepped into the room.
Richard lay on the bed, the machines beeping softly behind him as they monitored his heart rate and blood pressure. I nearly gasped as I saw his face; one eye was swollen almost entirely shut, and bruises and cuts marked both cheeks. In between the darkening patches of bruises, his skin looked horribly pale, and bandages wrapped around the single arm that was visible above the covers.
"Richard," I whispered as my heart cried out in pain at the sight of him.
He didn't respond. He was still unconscious, his body likely still trying to recover from the initial shock of the trauma. I moved in closer, sinking down into the chair beside his bed as I reached out to gently hold the fingers of his battered hand in my own.
As I touched his flushed, hot skin, Richard's eyes fluttered. "My fault," he moaned softly, the words hoarse as they slipped out through his cut, scraped lips.
"What?" He was conscious? I leaned in closer, rubbing his knuckles with my fingers.
"I did it. All my fault. They died from me." His eyes were still closed, and his voice sounded dreamy, delirious.
Was he talking about the crash? Had there been someone else in the accident, someone who had been hurt or killed by the impact? "Who died, Richard?"
For a long minute, he didn't speak, and I thought that he might have lapsed into a deeper sleep. "The men," he finally whispered, turning his head slightly towards me. "My men. I led them into the ambush. They died because of me. I tried to save them, but I couldn't – and I chose that path, didn't scout ahead. My fault."
I blinked. "Richard, you never told me this."
But he didn't say anything in response to me. Maybe he didn't even realize that I was there at all, he just thought that he was talking to himself. He groaned, turned a little, his hand slipping out of mine.
I sank back down into the chair beside his bed. I set my purse on the floor, just looking at Richard. I felt my eyes starting to slip down, but suddenly, he spoke again.
"I hear them," he blurted out, louder than before. "They tell me they know, it's my fault. They tell me the truth. All my fault."
I couldn't say anything to him, didn't know how to respond. A minute later, Richard's breathing again slowed, the beeping of his heart rate monitor dropping down to a steadier and more sedate rhythm. He slept, and I sat in the chair next to him, just watching, not thinking. I listened to the hypnotic beeping of the monitor until my own eyelids grew heavy and dropped down, bringing darkness.
Chapter Twenty-One
LINDA
*
I spent almost every free minute of the next week at the hospital, at Richard's side.
He woke up the next morning, even as I still slept in my clothes from last night. He couldn't speak, his throat swollen shut, but he reached out with one hand and bumped against me, waking me. I woke up and held his hand, reassuring him that everything was going to be okay, until he lapsed back into unconsciousness.
I learned more details about his accident from the doctors as they bustled in to check on him. He'd been drinking before he climbed behind the wheel; his blood alcohol concentration at the scene of the accident was well over the legal limit. He'd lost control due to his impaired reflexes and the newly fallen snow, and his car slid off the road and collided with a light post on the side of the road.
I couldn't spend every minute at his side; I needed to leave during my consulting hours, work with my other clients. I even managed to bring another couple veterans in, agreeing to several weekly one-hour sessions. During those times, as I listened to the veterans tell me about their experiences, I managed to briefly keep Richard out of my mind – but it returned to him as soon as they left the office.
Aside from going home to change clothes and shower, I stayed at Richard's side as much as possible. He slept for most of the first two days of his stay, but then managed to stay awake for longer, grimacing as he explored the extent of his new injuries. He hadn't broken anything in the crash, thankfully, but some of the cuts and scrapes were deep, and covered large areas of his body.
"You'll have some new scars, Mr. Stone," one of the nurses cheerfully remarked as she changed some of his bandages. "But you should be able to go home and continue your recovery by the end of the week, if you keep healing at this rate."
Richard didn't answer, but I felt his eyes on me. "Don't worry," I told him as the nurse headed out of the hospital room. "I'm here." I reached out and took his hand, feeling his fingers tighten around mine.
He finally asked me on the fourth day. "Why?" he croaked out, as I checked on the scrapes on his forehead. "Why are you here?"
I reached over and picked up his cup of water, tilting it gently to his lips so that he could take a sip. "I'm watching out for you," I told him softly, setting the cup back on his bedside table. I leaned forward, kissing him gently on the forehead. I felt the heat of his skin as it pressed against my lips. "Relax. Focus on getting better."
Callie stopped by a few times, although I suspected that she was there more to check up on me than on Richard. She brought me sandwiches, glanced curiously at Richard, but never stuck around long enough to speak with him directly. Richard sometimes opened his eyes and watched her come in to check on me, but he never spoke to her, as best I could tell.
It took a week, but the doctors finally cleared Richard to go home. He wasn't able to drive, even if he hadn't totaled his car, so I gave him a ride back to the Stone mansion. I packed a suitcase full of clothes, toiletries, and other stuff that I might need, and then moved my things into an empty bedroom next door to his. The two bedrooms were connected by a door, which I left open so that I could come in if he called out for me.
Slowly, tentatively, Richard began to recover. He couldn't walk more than a dozen steps when he was first released from the hospital, and I pushed him out to my car in a wheelchair. He nearly fell as he ascended the stairs up to his room, and I brought his food up to him on a tray from the downstairs kitchen for the first few days that he was at home, largely confined to his bed.
"How long?" he asked me one day, as I sat beside him and watched him slowly, carefully lift a soup spoon to his lips.
"How long is what?"
"You staying," he said, and then coughed before he could say anything else. "How long are you going to stay?"
I didn't have a definite answer. "Until you've recovered," I told him, bending forward to kiss him again. Even now, with his injuries still apparent on his face, I felt a little swell in my heart as I leaned in and caught a whiff of his scent, heard him breathing. "However long it takes."
He frowned at my words, looking like he wanted to ask more, but the frown lines smoothed as he felt my lips brush against him. He didn't ask another question, just settling back and closing his eyes.
By a few days later, Richard could get up from his bed, walk for short distances. He still struggled to handle the grand stairs that led down to the first floor, and I kept on bringing his meals upstairs to him. He could climb up and make it to the bathroom, and I found him walking up and down the upstairs hallway a few times, face set in a grim line as he focused on not falling.
I wondered if he ever considered hiring a nurse, a live-in caregiver to stay at his mansion and care for him. He certainly wouldn't have any issue affording the cost. He didn't need to keep relying on me, and he still seemed to act sometimes as if he expected me to leave him, jerking up in his bed and calling out. He'd stop as soon as I came into his room, and that haunted look in his eyes would fade away. I'd come and put my arms around him, kiss and hold him, and he'd sink back down in the bed and fall back asleep.
Maybe he just didn't want to spend the money on himself, I thought. I remembered how, when he took me out to a fancy restaurant earlier on in our relationship, he confessed that he d
idn't like spending money on himself. Perhaps that was why he didn't make any inquiries about hiring a live-in nurse.
Sometimes, I didn't go back to my own room, instead just staying with Richard. In his bedroom, his massive bed sometimes seemed to swallow him up; I guessed that he'd lost some muscle mass from inactivity during his recovery. I'd lay down on the huge bed beside him, just offering the comfort of my presence. Sometimes, he'd reach out and lay his arm gently across me, but he never made any sexual moves towards me.
Strangely, this gentle, almost scared level of affection, as if he was scared to hurt me if he tried anything, made me feel even more connected to him. I'd rest a hand on his arm or his leg and just gently stroke my fingers back and forth, feeling his pulse beneath my fingertips, tracing little nonsensical patterns on his skin. Sometimes, he'd do the same, his fingers moving with incredible gentleness over my arm or across my back between my shoulder blades.
Sebastian popped in occasionally, although I rarely crossed paths with him. Every now and then, I'd come back into the kitchen to clean up after cooking a meal and I'd find him leaning up against the counter, eating leftover soup directly out of the pot with a spoon.
"Not able to find the soup bowls?" I asked him once, leaning against the doorway as I watched him.
His eyebrows waggled at me from beneath his shaggy hair, and he didn't look the least bit embarrassed that I'd caught him. "Just doing my part to save the environment. Don't wash a dish, save a fish, all that bullshit."
"Have you come up to check on your brother at all since his accident?" I asked, putting the other dishes in the sink and running the water to rinse them before transferring them to the dishwasher.
He shrugged. "I'm not really one for the family love, one big happy group, all that stuff. We're a military family. That usually means tough love, proud and silent, not with a lot of touchy feely bullshit."
"Wow." I shook my head at him. "That's pretty cold. He's still your brother, and you ought to go up and at least tell him that you're glad that he's alive."
"Yeah, whatever." Sebastian didn't say anything else, up until I stepped closer and grabbed his arm. He looked down at me in surprise. "What, you mean now?"
"No time like the present." I held onto his arm and marched him upstairs, up to the entrance to Richard's room. "Go on, go in."
He stuck out his tongue at me, but then entered the room readily enough. "Hey, bro," he greeted Richard as he approached the bed. "How are things? Pretty fucked up?"
I grimaced, but Richard sat up in bed. He'd largely recovered by this point, although he still had a few bandages here and there to cover up some of the deeper cuts that were still healing. "Not as bad as it was," he answered. "But thanks for the kind words, dick."
"Whoa, don't go believing that my heart has grown three sizes larger suddenly, or anything like that." Sebastian turned and glanced back over his shoulder at me. "Your wife dragged me in here."
I almost expected Richard to object to his brother referring to me as his wife, but he just glanced obliquely at me for a moment before returning his attention back to Sebastian. "Well, I appreciate it." He reached up and scratched at his stubble, his eyes once again drifting back to me. "And I appreciate her."
Sebastian rolled his eyes and left, but I remained. Again, that warmth flooded into my chest, like I'd just slowly lowered myself down into a steaming hot tub. I smiled at him – and Richard smiled back at me, a slow smile that warmed his whole face, crinkling the skin around his eyes and emphasizing his laugh lines.
He had a strong face, I thought to myself. Even as he got older, that was the kind of face that would remain handsome. The kind of face where, if he was his best self, I could easily fall in love.
A little part of me, as I lay awake in my own bed next door to Richard's that evening, wondered if staying here was a mistake. Was this just a failure to let go of this relationship and move on? Was I keeping myself trapped in the past?
Richard and I hadn't worked out, previously. I knew that, knew that breaking up with him had been the right move. I never meant for him to get in an accident, but I didn't hold myself accountable. He had needed help, and I hadn't been the right one to provide it – especially if he refused to open up to me.
But now, I was still here, still helping him – and I could feel that rope of attraction once again pulling us closer together. I felt its tug every time that I looked at him, and I suspected that it also tugged at his heart when he looked at me.
He'd never mentioned those words that he said during his time in the hospital. I didn't know if he remembered speaking them; he'd been delirious, all but unconscious. I didn't tell him about them, but when I lay awake at night, sometimes, I'd turn them over inside my mind.
He truly believed that he had been responsible for the deaths of his men. That was the missing piece, the bit that he'd never told me before during our psychiatric sessions. That explained his inner guilt, why those voices whispered so harshly to him at night.
Still in bed, I sat up. I couldn't name the force that compelled me, but I slid out of bed, padding on bare feet across to the door that separated Richard's room from my own. I opened it, moving across the shadowed interior of his bedroom over to his bed.
I lifted his covers and slid in beside the man. I thought he might be asleep, but as my body bumped against his beneath the great sea of covers, he turned towards me, wrapping his arms around me.
I snuggled in against him, just letting him hold me. I felt the slight rasp of his stubble against the back of my neck, his warm breath against my hair. His arm, still big and strong and protective, draped over me, gently bumping against my chest through the thin fabric of my night shirt.
Falling in love for someone not because of who they are, but because of who they could become. What a curious thought.
I closed my eyes, and immediately drifted off to sleep in his embrace.
Chapter Twenty-Two
RICHARD
*
She came back to me.
Somehow, through some miracle, she came back to me. That was my saving thought, all that I clung to as I struggled to fight off the pain in my hospital bed. Whenever it hovered on the verge of overwhelming me, I'd force my one good eye open, rolling it to look at the chair beside my bed.
Every time, Linda was there.
She helped me move back home when the doctors finally pronounced me free to leave the hospital, pushing me to her car in a wheelchair. I hated feeling like an invalid, but I barely had the energy to speak, much less walk on my own. She supported my arm as I struggled up the stairs, tucked me into my bed. She brought me food, which I realized only after a few days that she prepared for me in the kitchen and carried upstairs to me.
And when I finally managed to ask her why she was doing this, why she was helping me, she just told me that she was watching out for me, kissed me on the forehead. Even after she left to bring the dirty dishes back downstairs, I still felt the heat of her lips as they pressed so lightly against me.
I almost suspected that this was a dream, some sort of long coma brought on by the car accident. In the real world, I lay dying in a hospital bed, totally alone. But here, I had Linda, the last spark of light in my life.
I wasn't going to lose that spark.
Every part of me hurt, and even the slightest movements tired me out. I was exhausted just struggling across my bedroom to reach the bathroom! Sometimes, Linda had to help me. I always expected to feel shamefully embarrassed at needing her help, but she never commented on it. She just helped me and smiled, and my heart sang a little louder whenever I looked at her.
I asked her how long she would stay. She never gave a direct answer for that question, either. "As long as it takes," was the best that I got from her, but it came with another kiss. I didn't care about the non-answer. I would take her for as long as she would stay.
Day by day, I slowly improved. At first, I could barely walk across my bedroom, but I kept on pushing myself. I rememb
ered the physical therapy that I had to perform as I recovered from the aftermath of the RPG explosion, at the end of my fourth tour of duty overseas. This felt worse, almost. I'd haul myself along, panting and fighting desperately against the growing weakness in my limbs.
But my strength slowly but surely came back to me. A week later, I could walk the entire length of the second floor hallway without needing to stop and catch my breath. Admittedly, I only walked in a slow shuffle, but I still made it.
Sebastian stopped by my room, once, although he immediately decried that Linda sent him up here, ordered him to act like a good younger brother. He clearly didn't know what that meant, but he patted me awkwardly on the shoulder, muttered that he was glad I hadn't killed myself like an idiot. I just smiled at him, enjoying how uncomfortable this situation made him feel.
That night, I was nearly asleep when I felt the covers shift. I held my breath as Linda moved into the bed beside me, sliding over until she bumped ever so lightly against me. My arm fell across her, and I listened to her breathing slow and deepen as she curled up against me, the little spoon beside my body. I lay there for a long time, not falling asleep, not wanting that moment to ever end.
It was that night, awake in the darkness as Linda slumbered beside me, that I truly realized that I loved her.
I'd always expected that realization to hit me like a lightning bolt, electrifying and burning away everything else. To be in love with someone! Shouldn't that be overwhelming, so fiery and passionate that it made every other emotion feel shallow and pale in comparison?
But it wasn't that way for me. In the darkness, I suddenly knew that I loved Linda – and everything else just made sense. Suddenly, the whole world seemed to click in place, like I'd gone my whole life without glasses and then finally tried a pair that put everything into perfect focus.
I loved her. I loved her with all my heart, and wanted her to be mine forever.
I didn't say anything, not that night. What could I say to her? Could I just wake her up and tell her that I suddenly had these feelings towards her? What if she didn't reciprocate, what if she decided that she needed to leave me again?
For Love of Valor: A Bad Boy Military Romance Page 14
