by Mari Carr
She started to shake her head, then groaned at the piercing pain the movement provoked. “Just dial it and give it to me.” She dug deep for the strength to keep her voice steady. If she didn’t play this right, Hunter wouldn’t be the only man deserting the show and flying to the hospital.
A siren sounded in the distance. She was running out of time.
“Where the hell are you?” Les asked when he answered.
“Fender bender.”
“Are you okay?”
“Is that Ailis?” she heard Hunter ask in the background. “What happened?”
“Tell him nothing is wrong. I was in too big a hurry to get back and tapped the bumper of the guy in front of me,” she lied. “He’s insisting we wait for the police and we still need to exchange insurance information. Tell Hunter I might not make it there in time to see him go on.”
Les didn’t sound completely convinced when he said, “Okay, I will.”
“Good.” The ambulance was there, the siren screeching. “There are the cops. Gotta go,” she said, disconnecting the phone before Les could question her any further.
Paul gave her a look she couldn’t define, a pretty good mix of horrified and surprised. “Wow. Cool liar, Ailis. Didn’t know you had that in you.”
Of course, he didn’t. Paul thought she was too boring, too predictable, too much of a good girl to ever be untruthful.
But she didn’t have a chance to call him out for it or to tell him to go away. She was surrounded by three EMTs, while two cops had arrived and were trying to get the crowd to disperse.
Paul was quick to point out he was a doctor and tell them about his own quick assessment of her injuries, which she had to admit were probably correct. Her hip seemed to have absorbed the real blow. The rest of her aches and pains were less severe and due to her brief journey across the hood of a car and her none-too-gentle splash to the pavement.
She didn’t remember hitting her head, but she must have, to have blacked out the way she had. It would also explain the pain and sensitivity to any light.
The EMTs secured her to a backboard, then strapped her to the gurney. She was about to ask for her purse when Paul climbed into the ambulance.
“You don’t have to come with me.”
“Don’t be silly,” he said, dismissing her words as if they were nothing. She was about to insist, but he pulled her phone back out of her purse. “You got a text while the EMTs were checking you out.”
“From who?”
“Les. He said he knows you were lying and that you better have a damn good reason for it.”
“Shit.” Then she glanced at the EMT. “How long do you think this whole trip is going to take? Is it really necessary?”
The more time passed, the better she started to feel. If she ignored the blinding headache and excruciating pain in her hip.
“Seriously? You just got hit by a car, lady. Once you go through x-rays and see the doctor, the cops are going to want to question you. You’ve got hours to go, so why don’t you try and relax?”
“I don’t suppose I could convince you guys to make a stop by the Baltimore Soundstage. It would only take an hour or two.”
The man chuckled. “You got tickets to February Stars? Man, rough break. Who you rooting for? I think Rory Summit is going to take the whole thing.”
She closed her eyes, grateful for the man’s attempts at distracting her. “You’re crazy. Hunter Maxwell will be the last man standing.”
Once they arrived at the hospital, Ailis’s patience was stretched thin. Probably because nothing had gone quickly. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but she was becoming testier and more impatient by the minute.
Everything had played out exactly like the EMT had told her. She’d endured the x-rays and the exam with Paul hovering nearby, conferring with the doctor, as if he was her personal physician or something. It didn’t help that Paul was friends with the doctor, and he recalled that he and Ailis had dated.
The cops had just left after a brief interview. It wasn’t like she had anything to say. She hadn’t seen the car coming, nor could she describe the driver or the vehicle. And while she had this nagging suspicion her accident wasn’t really an accident, she didn’t admit that to the cops because she didn’t want them leaving her and heading over to the Soundstage to start questioning people there—Hunter included—about her injuries in the hit-and-run they didn’t know about.
She glanced at the clock hanging in the room. Dammit. It was later than she’d realized. The competition would be over by now, the finalists revealed. She prayed to God Hunter had made it to the next round.
“Where’s my phone?” she asked once the cops were gone.
Paul hesitated to give it to her. She’d told him no less than half a dozen times he could leave, but the bastard wouldn’t budge.
Now that everything was over and done with, she really needed to let Hunter know she was okay.
“Give me my phone.”
He sighed but handed it over.
There were twenty-seven text messages, twelve missed calls, and eight voicemails in total. Four texts were from Les asking where she was and two from Padraig—who was working the pub and completely in the dark about her whereabouts—asking her who had won because the wi-fi had gone down just minutes before the big announcement.
The other twenty-one texts—as well as all the calls and voicemails—were from Hunter, and she could map his entire emotional journey through them. He’d started out worried about her tardiness to the show and then about the fender bender. That had turned to elation when he’d apparently performed the best set of his career. Then she got the nervous, waiting-for-the-results, where-the-hell-are-you strand of messages. The best one had been the “I’m in the finale!” text.
But that happiness had been brief, giving way to pure fear as his last seven messages and two voicemails were pleas for her to contact him and let him know she was okay.
She immediately dialed his number.
“Ailis!” he shouted into the phone. “Thank God. Where the hell are you? I’m at the pub and no one even knew you weren’t at the show.”
“Hunter, I don’t want you to get upset.” Even as she said it, she knew he was going to lose his shit when she told him what had happened and that she’d lied.
His voice went dangerously low. “Where the fuck are you?”
“Mercy Medical.”
“The hospital? Are you fucking kidding me?!” He yelled so loud she pulled the phone away from her ear.
Paul chuckled, something that only made things worse.
“Who’s there with you?” Hunter asked.
There was no way she was having that conversation with him on the phone. “Can you just come get me? I think I talked them out of making me spend the night.”
“Talked them out of it? Jesus. I’m on my way. Don’t move.”
She laughed even though he’d already hung up. Yeah. If she’d had any control over her whereabouts tonight, she would have limped into the Soundstage hours ago.
“He’s on his way. You can leave now.”
“I don’t mind staying until—”
“I swear to God, Paul, if you don’t get the fuck out, I’m going to call those cops back and tell them you were the one driving the car just so they’ll arrest you and get you the hell away from me.”
“You know, I’m just here because I was worried about you.”
She sighed. As much as the man annoyed her, she could tell he was being sincere. “I know. I appreciate everything you did for me today. I really do. But I’m fine now. Hunter is on his way.”
“You really care about him, don’t you?”
She nodded.
“I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I do.”
He left without saying goodbye, but she wasn’t alone for long. Hunter must have broken every speed limit set forth by the city of Baltimore to get there as quickly as he had.
“Ailis.” He rushed to
ward the bed. She was sitting up, grateful for the painkillers the doctor had prescribed. The throbbing in her hip was now just a dull thud, and while her head still ached, it wasn’t the blinding, piercing pain she’d suffered from earlier.
“You’re in the finale,” she said, reaching out to hug him.
He stopped a few feet short of her outstretched arms. “You lied.”
“I didn’t want you to miss the show.”
“You were hit by a fucking car, Ailis.”
She winced. “Who told you?”
“Paul was waiting for me outside.”
Her temper snapped. “Oh my God, he’s an asshole! I told him to leave.”
Hunter’s voice went instantly calm, something that worried her more than his initial anger. “If he was an asshole, he would have left you on that sidewalk. I’m glad he stayed with you. At least you weren’t alone.”
“I know you’re upset with me, but if you’ll just listen to my reasons for—”
“No. I already know your reasons. You don’t need to run through them for me. What I need you to do is listen to what I have to say.”
She bit her lower lip nervously. “Hunter—” she started.
“Goddammit, Ailis. Be quiet.”
She giggled. “No one’s ever told me to do that before.” She hadn’t really meant to make the joke, but she was tired and achy and she just wanted him to take her home, crawl into bed with her and hold her until she fell asleep.
Hunter grinned, even though she knew he was still upset. He sobered up quickly. “No show, no contest, nothing. Nothing is more important to me than you. Do you understand that?”
It had been a long, painful, horrible day, and despite it all, she’d never shed a tear.
Until then.
She started to swipe her eyes, not wanting to let them fall, but Hunter was there first, his hands cupping her cheeks tenderly as he bent down to give her a soft kiss.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “So sorry.”
“It’s okay, mouse. It’s my fault for not making that clear before now. For letting you pretend this is less than it is. I know you’re scared, but we gotta find a way to move you beyond that, because I hate that you’ve been here without me all damn night.”
“You’d already made it clear.”
“What?”
“None of this is your fault. I don’t want you to say that. I don’t even want you to think that. I know how you feel about me.”
He tugged her into his arms, keeping the embrace loose, gentle, unwilling to hurt her. “I’m so damn glad you’re okay. When I think about how much worse this could have been, I go nuts.”
“I’m alright. Honest. Bumps and bruises. Doctor said I can go home.”
He pulled away and studied her face as if trying to decide if she was lying.
She cataloged her injuries in hopes of setting his mind at ease. “My head hurts and you’re really not going to like the look of the bruise on my hip, but nothing’s broken or bleeding, I promise.”
Hunter sighed. “Okay.”
Time for some distraction. “Who’s in the finale with you?”
“Rory.”
Ailis wasn’t surprised, but that outcome didn’t really solve the mystery of who was endangering the other contestants in hopes of winning. “I still don’t think it’s her behind all of this.”
Hunter shrugged, unconvinced. “She’s the only one who knows for sure that our relationship goes beyond the realm of musician and agent. She’d know that if anything happened to you, I’d rush to your side, show or not.”
“Maybe so, but her winning a place in the finale doesn’t automatically make her the guilty party. We didn’t behave as expected. You didn’t get called away to come to the hospital. You still went onstage. So that means Wes and Robbie are suspects in my mind too.”
“Yeah. By the way, that reminds me,” Hunter reached for her phone on the bedside table, “call Les. He’s freaking out.”
“Which means my parents are freaking out.”
“And your family. I’d just walked into Pat’s Pub with Les, looking for you, when you called me. You’ve got some ’splaining to do, Lucy,” he said in a dead-on impersonation of Ricky Ricardo.
She would have laughed if she wasn’t feeling so guilty about making her family worry. She scrolled through her lists of contacts and called Tris. If everyone was at the bar, he’d be the best one to spread the news. He had this big, booming voice that meant he could answer everyone’s questions in one fell swoop without instigating a game of telephone, where the facts became more fiction with each retelling.
“I’ll see about getting you sprung from the joint while you take care of that. Make sure they know you’re going home with me tonight. I’m not taking you back to the dorm.”
“Okay.”
After she explained what happened to Tris, and answered the four hundred and seventy-two questions shouted out by her cousins, aunts, uncles and Pop Pop, she called her parents to assure them she was fine and that Hunter would be taking care of her tonight.
Then she called Les and apologized. Of everyone she’d spoken to since the accident, he was the only one who seemed to understand why she’d lied. She wasn’t sure, but she thought the man sounded downright proud of her actions, which drove home two things—what she’d done was wrong and she was born to be a manager.
“Everything’s taken care of on my end,” Hunter said as he walked back into her room. “How about yours?”
She nodded, then looked at his coffee-stained T-shirt. “Please tell me you weren’t wearing that onstage.”
He chuckled. “Nope. Paid a guy in the crowd twenty bucks to let me borrow his shirt for the show. We switched back after.”
Hunter helped her change from the hospital gown they’d forced her to put on and back into her street clothes. He winced when he saw her hip, and again when he spotted the dirt on her clothing from her rough tumble to the curb.
He wrapped his arm around her shoulders as they walked to the car.
“Find it hard to believe Paul’s presence at the accident was a coincidence,” he said after they’d gotten in and he’d started driving them home.
“Ran into him out on the street. He’d been coming to your place to talk to me.”
Hunter frowned. “About what?”
Now that the adrenaline from the accident and the stress of facing Hunter had drained out, Ailis struggled to keep her eyes open. It had been a long day.
“He apologized for last week, warned me you and I were a bad match, said he regretted breaking up with me, and told me he’s leaving Rhonda.”
“Jesus. Try not to drop all the bombs at once, A.”
She grinned. “No bombs there. None of it matters to me. I’m exactly where I want to be right now.”
He wiggled his eyebrows. “Is that right?”
“Bigger and better, remember?”
Hunter reached over and took her hand, giving it a friendly squeeze. “Not tonight. Tonight’s going to be slower and softer. All you’re getting is a hot bath and some gentle cuddling.”
“I really like the sound of that,” she said sleepily.
“Close your eyes and rest, mouse. We’ll be home soon.”
While his apartment wasn’t really her home, the word still felt right. Simply because Hunter would be there.
Home.
10
Ailis laughed as she and Hunter entered the bar and the place erupted in applause. Pop Pop had decided to host a party for the two remaining finalists the night before the competition.
Rory had clearly arrived earlier and was surrounded by more than a fair number of supporters. Despite Hunter’s concerns that Rory could be the one instigating the “accidents and threats,” Ailis refused to believe the woman was guilty.
That feeling grew when Rory spotted them and smiled. She peeled herself away from the crowd to come over and greet them.
“Hard to believe we were joking about the finale just a few wee
ks ago and now here we are,” she said, lifting her beer to Hunter in an unspoken toast.
He nodded. “As I recall, you were mixed up about the outcome.”
Rory rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “Guess we’ll see who was mixed up tomorrow night. I just wanted to take a minute before everything goes crazy with the finale to say it’s been a pleasure competing against you. You’re an amazing musician, Hunter, and I seriously hope we have a chance to perform together sometime.”
Hunter reached out to shake her hand. “I’d love to play with you, Rory. Been a huge fan of yours for years. Still have quite a few Road Rebels songs in my playlist.”
Ailis noticed Rory’s smile faded a bit when Hunter mentioned her former band. She’d mentioned they’d split up after a breakup between her and the guitarist, Eddie. Ailis couldn’t help but wonder if Rory was nursing a broken heart or if she missed her band. Going solo wasn’t an easy thing. Ailis could remember her dad telling her how hard it had been to split from The Universe. She believed that was true now, as she saw his over-the-top excitement about the reunion tour.
“Hey, Hunter!” Tris called out from the bar. “Come grab this Guinness I poured for you before it gets warm.”
Hunter walked away, leaving Ailis alone with Rory.
“You doing okay?” Rory asked. “I was worried when I heard about the hit-and-run.”
“I’m fine. My skin sort of looks like some tie-dye experiment gone horribly wrong, given all the different shades of bruising, but the soreness is gone.”
“I’m glad. I was just talking to Les about it today. I still can’t figure out if the man was warning me to be careful or telling me he was on to me.”
Ailis laughed. “That sounds like Les.”
“So he really doesn’t have a clue who’s behind any of it?”
“No,” Ailis sighed. “My uncle Aaron is a Baltimore cop, and he’s been investigating, but no leads so far. Everything has been so random. I think it’s hard to conclusively tie any of it together.”
“At least Leah got her dog back,” Rory said.
