Nashville - Boxed Set Series - Part One, Two, Three and Four (A New Adult Contemporary Romance)

by Inglath Cooper

  “You’re wearing pajamas,” I say, my voice low and hoarse.

  Thomas jerks his gaze from the window, staring at me as if he’s sure he’d imagined my speaking. He shakes his head and then, “Beats the heck out of that sissy nightgown you’re wearin’. Wait ‘til you get up and go to the bathroom. I’ve decided the budget cuts around here must not have included fabric for the backside.”

  I feel myself start to smile, but then I remember why I’m here, why he’s here. Everything comes crashing in, and my smile dissolves. My thoughts freeze altogether because I don’t know which one to let in first.

  Thomas reaches over and takes my hand, “You made it, buddy. I sure am glad.”

  We look at each other for several long moments. I see him processing what I’m processing. Tears start to leak from the corners of his eyes. He wipes them away. “For a while there you had me thinking you weren’t going to.”

  I’ve never seen Thomas come even close to crying, and the sight of it shakes me. “What day is it?” I ask.

  “Today’s Friday. You’ve been this way for two weeks.”

  At first I can’t make sense of that. “Like what?” I ask.

  “In a coma. They couldn’t tell us if you were ever going to wake up.”

  I raise a hand to the bandages on my chest. My thoughts don’t seem to be in any particular order. I try to place what happened to put me here, to put Thomas here, but it’s just out of reach.

  “You don’t remember, do you?” Thomas says.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Maybe I oughta let the doctors talk to you first.” Thomas rolls the chair toward the door of the room. “They’ve been waiting for you to wake up. I’ll be right back, okay?”

  “Thomas, wait,” I call out, my throat parched and dry.

  But he’s gone, and I try to force my thoughts into some kind of order, but they’re slippery and hard to grasp.

  He wheels back in, a pretty woman in a white coat right behind him. She stops at the side of the bed, looking at me with a pleased smile.

  “You’re back,” she says. “We’re so happy to see it. How do you feel?”

  I touch my temples. “Fairly bad headache,” I say.

  “That’s to be expected.”

  “What. . .why am I here?”

  “Do you remember anything about what happened?” she asks, her voice soft.

  I grapple for the answer, but it remains just out of reach.

  “There was a shooting,” she says. “You were shot. I’ll be honest, you’re very lucky to be here at all.”

  I glance at Thomas and see that he agrees with her. I notice his bandages again, and it occurs to me that I haven’t asked what happened to him.

  “Were you shot, too?”

  “Yeah,” he says.

  “Where were we?”

  “It was after the concert at Case’s party.”

  “Just you and me?” I ask.

  Thomas is silent for a moment and then shakes his head.

  “Who else?”

  The doctor takes a step back and says, “I’ll let you two talk for a couple of minutes. I’ll be back with the other doctors involved in your care. We’d like to check you out, okay?”

  I nod and say thank you, before looking back at Thomas, waiting for him to answer.

  “Case and Beck,” he says quietly.

  “Are they okay?”

  “Case should be all right.”

  I wait for him to include Beck in the statement, but he doesn’t.

  “What about Beck?”

  Thomas glances out the window, his grip on the arms of the wheelchair tightening until his knuckles are white.

  “He didn’t make it, Holden.”

  I try hard to process what he just said, but it won’t compute. How could that be? It doesn’t make any sense. Beck, dead? No sooner have the words made their way through my consciousness than her name races in right behind them. “CeCe.” I say, fear instantly flooding through me.

  “She’s okay,” he says.

  The relief hits me so hard that I go weak beneath its weight. I want to ask him where she is, why she’s not here. I can’t. My head is pounding. I close my eyes tight to block out the pain.

  I don’t even realize I’m crying until I look at Thomas’s face and see that he is as well.

  “It’s gonna be all right, man,” he says, putting his hand on my shoulder and squeezing hard.

  I hear the raw edges in his voice, and I know that he’s not sure whether there’s any truth at all to what he has just said.

  ♪

  48

  CeCe

  For the next five days, I don’t get out of bed except when Mama runs me a hot bath at night and insists that I get in.

  She waits in my room just outside the bathroom door as if she’s afraid I might do something unexpected. Fall or maybe hurt myself intentionally. She brings me food on a tray at regularly spaced intervals, refusing to let me get away with not eating at least something that’s on the plate.

  But I have no desire to eat. All I want is to sleep.

  Sleep is the only thing that lets me block out all the stuff I don’t want to think about. Can’t bring myself to think about. The dull ache in my left shoulder that never ceases its throbbing. The image of Case at Beck’s graveside, a man broken as I have never before seen one broken.

  But the one looming thing that prevents me from getting out of bed is terror.

  It feels as if my bones have been infused with it. Even the thought of leaving this apartment makes my heart start to race in my chest.

  I feel the adrenaline surge of fear light through me like flame to gasoline.

  There’s this new awareness in me now that I’ve never felt. Before the shooting, I had read about, heard about catastrophic things happening to other people. But that was to other people. Those tragedies didn’t happen in my own life. Or to anyone I loved.

  You always hear people say how life can change in an instant. Go from safe and secure to something not even recognizable as the world you’ve been living in.

  In my dreams, I see Jared’s eyes and the cold blankness of them. He’s become a machine that does not recognize or process human emotion. He’s pointing the gun at me. I watch him pull the trigger with a total lack of ability to stop him. I feel myself falling over and over again, a movie loop on repeat. And every time I hit the ground, I hear the gunfire in another direction, knowing I’m not the only one going down. Holden. Thomas. Beck. Case.

  When I’m awake, I find myself thinking of things I’ve only seen in the news. The Twin Towers and the moment it became clear they were going to fall.

  At the time it happened, Mama hadn’t let me watch footage of it on TV. She said those weren’t images a little girl should have in her head. When I was older in high school, I read a book called Tower Stories. I wanted to learn exactly what had happened that day.

  The book described the regular, normal lives of some of the people who were in the buildings. How they’d gone to work the way they always did and within minutes of getting there, found themselves facing something beyond the worst nightmare anyone could even begin to imagine.

  A plane crashing into a building. Fire and smoke everywhere. Desperate, resigned people jumping from the skyscraper to certain death below. A fate they saw as preferable to burning alive.

  And then there were those who missed the train that morning. Woke up sick. For whatever reason, varied from their typical day of going to work in those buildings.

  They had been spared.

  They must wonder why.

  Like I wonder why I’ve been spared. Why Beck was taken and not me.

  The people who made it out of the building or who didn’t arrive there at all that day. How did they see their lives from that point on? How could they ever look at it the same? How can I?

  I have no idea how to answer this question.

  In order to do so, I will have to look beyond where I am right now. Locked in my apa
rtment, refusing to face anything outside that door.

  I honestly don’t know whether I can do that or not.

  ♪

  I’VE LOST TRACK of the number of days since I left my bedroom. The afternoon sun is streaming through the slats in my blinds when I hear a knock at the door. The knob turns before I respond with, “Come in.”

  I open my eyes. Thomas stands in the doorway, leaning heavily on the cane in his right hand.

  “Hey,” he says, “I hear you like it so much in here you’ve decided you’re never going to leave.”

  For a second, I freeze at the sight of him. But then everything inside me begins to melt. The tears I haven’t cried in so many days are suddenly there again, pouring from me because I’m so grateful to see him. His eyes tell me he’s struggling with all the same things I’m struggling with.

  He hobbles to the side of the bed and kind of collapses next to me, dropping the cane onto the floor. Hank Junior is stretched out at the foot of the bed. He raises his head, thumps his tail hard once at Thomas and then returns to his nap.

  Thomas and I study each other for several moments. He reaches out, slides his arms under mine and lifts me up against him, hugging me with such love and relief that I just melt into him, needing to absorb his quiet strength. And then I realize that we’re both crying, silent shaking sobs that reveal the grief still so raw and real.

  “Hell and back, right?” he says against my ear.

  “I don’t think I’ve made it to the back quite yet,” I say, my cheek pressed against his chest.

  He leans away, looking down at me with fierce determination in his eyes. “We’ll get there, all of us, because there is one thing for damn sure.”

  “What’s that?” I ask softly.

  He pushes my hair away from my face and says, “Bad guys don’t win for good.”

  ♪

  49

  Holden

  I’ve been in the hospital for almost five weeks.

  Time has pretty much stopped having any kind of meaning here. The hospital is alive around the clock, so that there’s no true finite line between day and night.

  Sarah came to see me the day after I woke up from the coma. She sat by the side of the bed, held my hand and cried for me. We talked for a long time, about her life and the guy she had just agreed to marry. I felt happy for her, really happy because she deserves someone who will love her the way I should have loved her.

  My dad has been here at the hospital most of the time. I have to admit, this surprised me. I can’t remember another time in my life when he’s been away from his work for this long. Everything that’s happened has changed him in ways neither one of us would ever have expected.

  Lying here in this room, I’ve had a lot of time to think. Too much time. One of the things I’ve wondered most about is why it so often seems to take a catastrophic event for us humans to see things as they really are. As for my dad, it’s as if a bomb went off and blew aside most of the things he’s placed importance on all my life. What’s left, he sees clearly for the first time, and his guilt is like a visible noose around his neck. I don’t want him to feel guilty though. If I’ve realized anything in these past weeks, it’s how little time there is in this life for regret.

  I’m being released today. Dad offered to rent a car and drive me back to Nashville. But I told him Thomas wanted to pick me up. I think we were both a little relieved at this. To spend that many hours trying to find things to talk about sounds exhausting to me right now. With Thomas, I know I won’t have to talk just to fill up the silence.

  Dad’s flight isn’t until the afternoon, and so he waits with me in my room for Thomas to arrive.

  A nurse helps me get dressed, and I’m sitting on the edge of the bed waiting when Thomas appears in the doorway.

  “Hey,” he says. “’Bout time you got out of bed.”

  “’Bout time you got here. You bring the mule and wagon or something?”

  Thomas smiles and shakes his head. “She’s not as fast as she used to be.”

  My dad stands to shake Thomas’s hand. “How you doing, son?” he asks.

  “A lot better, sir, thank you.”

  “You look good.”

  “I can’t complain.” Thomas looks at me and says, “How’re you doing?”

  “Ready to leave this place.”

  The nurse walks back in and says, “Everything’s taken care of. This is your ride, I assume?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I say.

  “All right, then. We’re going to miss you around here.”

  “I think I’ve outstayed my welcome and then some.”

  “Never. But I know you’ll be glad to get back to regular life.”

  I nod even as I wonder if there will ever again be such a thing.

  “I’ll be wheeling you down to the front entrance of the hospital,” she says and then directing at Thomas, “Would you like to meet us there, young man?”

  “Sure,” he says. “I’ll take the shortcut to the parking garage and meet you down there. Nice to see you, Mr. Ashford. You have a safe trip back to Atlanta.”

  “Thank you for coming, Thomas. I appreciate it.”

  “Sure thing,” he says.

  Dad doesn’t bother to hide the worry in his eyes. “You’ll be all right, son?”

  “Yeah,” I say, “Thank you for being here. For everything.”

  He reaches out and shakes my hand, squeezes my shoulder. “We’ll be talking, okay?”

  I nod and watch him leave the room. I believe we really will.

  ♪

  I’M WAITING AT THE front entrance with the nurse who’s doing her best to assure me that someday not too far from now all of this will just be a bad dream. I don’t know how to tell her I can’t imagine that day ever coming, so I simply nod and try for a smile. Thomas drives toward us from the far end of the parking lot. It’s not until he’s rounding the curve under the hospital portico that I see who’s in the front seat with him. Her name slams into my chest like a train into something unfortunate enough to be caught in the middle of the tracks. It literally knocks the wind from me. I have to remind myself to breathe deep and even.

  “Are you all right?” the nurse asks, noticing.

  “Yeah,” I say, “I’m fine.”

  CeCe is staring straight ahead, not yet having let her gaze fall across me. I, on the other hand, cannot take my eyes off her. Her face alone tells me she’s lost a significant amount of weight. Her eyes have that hollowed out look beneath, like someone who isn’t able to sleep.

  Thomas stops the truck, leaves the engine running, gets out and walks around. I try to stand, but feel the weakness in my knees when they refuse to do as I am trying to make them do.

  “Whoa there, cowboy,” Thomas says, taking my elbow and helping me regain my balance.

  “Thanks,” I say, even as I hate my own weakness.

  Thomas opens the passenger door. CeCe slides to the middle. He helps me in. I thank the nurse.

  “You take good care now, you hear?” she says.

  I nod and close the door.

  As soon as it shuts, I breathe in the subtle scent of CeCe, some kind of clean, minty shampoo that makes me remember pressing my face into her hair and drawing in the smell I associate only with her.

  We’re both looking straight ahead, keeping our shoulders tilted just enough that we don’t touch. I feel the change in her, the wall that might as well be positioned in between us right now. I know the reasons for it. I can imagine every single one she has thought about and blamed herself for and felt guilty over, and I get it.

  I’ve felt so much guilt myself over Beck and what had happened. I knew to expect these changes in her. Thomas warned me, but even if he hadn’t, the fact that we haven’t spoken once since that nightmare night tells me everything I need to know. She’s shut me out and, knowing CeCe as I do, I doubt that she’ll ever let me back in.

  ♪

  WE’RE A FEW MILES down the highway when Thomas looks over
and says, “So how long are you two planning on ignoring each other?”

  I glance across at him, more an excuse to capture CeCe in my line of vision than to actually acknowledge what he’s said, but nonetheless I’m compelled to answer.

  “How are you, CeCe?” I ask. My voice doesn’t even sound like my voice. My question has the neutrality of someone who is fairly indifferent to the answer, and that couldn’t be further from the truth.

  “I’m okay,” she says, not directly meeting my eyes. “How are you?”

  “Better,” I say, although I instantly ask myself, as compared to what?

  She looks down at her hands and says, “I’m sorry I haven’t–”

  “It’s okay.” I cut her off because I don’t think I want to hear her try to rationalize her unwillingness to speak to me or see me since all of this happened.

  I already know the why. For her to say it will only prove that I’ve been right all along, that what happened between us that last day in D.C. might as well never have happened. All of its meaning, all of its hopefulness and rightness disappeared that night beneath the flood waters of another human being’s hatred.

  “Since you two obviously aren’t going to get past initial pleasantries,” Thomas says, breaking the silence, “here’s how I see it. We’re never gonna be the same, none of us. All three of us probably should have died that night. We didn’t, and I don’t know why. I don’t reckon there’s anybody on earth other than Case and the folks who were there that night who understands what that lunatic permanently did to us. If we’ve ever needed each other, I suspect we’re going to even more now. So if we’re not the same, then I’m thinking we oughta be something even better. That’s my plan anyway. I need you both to realize that I’m here for you, just like you’ll be there for me. And I hope you’re going to be there for each other.”

  He looks out the window for a second. I somehow know none of this has been easy for him to say.

  “We’ve been given a chance to write a new chapter. I’m not going to give that asshole the satisfaction of taking anything beyond what he’s already taken. Ya’ll in or what?”