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Until We Fly
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Текст книги "Until We Fly"


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Until We Fly
Beautifully Broken – 4
Courtney Cole

Sometimes, before we fall… we fly.


Dedication

For hearts that are aching, for souls that are broken.

Fluctuat nec mergitur

(She is tossed by the waves, but she does not sink)

Choose not to sink.

Foreward

When I first planned the Beautifully Broken series, I planned it as three books. Pax’s story, Gabriel’s story and Dominic’s story. But, as characters often do, Brand Killien wove his way into my heart, and yours, and he demanded that his voice be heard.

I received SO MANY E-MAILS from readers asking for more Brand, to hear his background, to see him get his Happily Ever After.

This story is for you.

Because you asked.

Prologue

I’m dreaming of bullets and blood. Like always.

There are the screams, of course, because there are always screams. High-pitched and shrill, low and keening. They’re full of pain, full of anguish, full of torment. It’s a torturous sound and I twist and turn, trying to get away from it.

That’s when I realize something.

Outside of my dream, out where the silence is thick and heavy, there’s a sound.

A real sound.

The ring of a phone is breaking the silence apart, splintering the night into a million pieces. My eyes snap open, staring blearily at the clock.

Three a.m.

A call at this hour is never anything good.

Old training kicks in and my senses numb, detaching me from the situation as I fumble for my phone. Whatever it is, I’ll be calm and ready. That’s who I am and what I’m trained to be.

Punching a button, I hold the device to my ear. I wait, expecting to hear my best friend, Gabe, his sister Jacey, or any number of our friends. I’m always the go-to person to bail someone out of trouble, mostly because I am calm and unflustered. I don’t judge people for their shit. For these reasons, I’m used to these calls.

But I’m not used to the voice who speaks in the darkness.

A thin, frail voice I haven’t heard in years.

“Brand?”

The voice is like a punch to my gut and I’m instantly still, every nerve ending frozen.

“Mom,” I utter, the word foreign on my tongue.

She doesn’t acknowledge that I even spoke. She sighs, a shaky sound in the dark.

“It’s your dad. He had a heart attack tonight.”

She pauses and I say nothing, although my heart begins to pound, filling my ears with a rush, rush, rushing sound. My blood is ice being pumped through my veins, chilling my fingers and my toes, deadening every emotion.

I don’t answer her.

A silent beat passes.

Then another.

Finally she speaks again, her voice tired and rough.

“He’s gone, Brand.”

I remain silent and frozen, unable to move, although my palms immediately grow sweaty, my breath rapid in my throat. I’m afraid if I speak, this won’t be real. It will be part of my dream, and when I wake, it will all go away.

So I don’t say a word.

Be real.

“I need you to come home,” my mother adds.

Her call to action frees me and I’m able to move again. I nod, once, curtly.

“I’ll be there.”

Because this is real.

I hang up without another word, my hands shaky.

I stare at my left hand, at my fingers, thick and long. I’m a grown man. Yet the mere thought of my father instinctively causes my hands to shake, like the scared boy I once was. I allow myself to feel the impotent emotion for only one moment, before I channel the fear into rage, a blinding hot rage that I have every right to feel.

My father is dead.

I should be upset, devastated even. A normal person would be.

But in addition to my rage, there’s only one thing I feel.

Relief.

Chapter One

Nora

“Nora, are you listening?”

No.

I turn my attention away from the cars driving slowly by on the small town’s Main Street to look at my father. Maxwell Greene’s piercing eyes are trained on me now, the silver at his temples glinting in the sun, and I gulp.

“Yes, of course,” I lie.

He nods, pacified.

“Good. I know this last year of law school was difficult, but it’s over now. I want you to take the summer off, rest here in Angel Bay with your mother, then in the Fall, you’ll take over the legal team at Green Corp as planned.”

He’s ecstatic, of course, because it’s everything he’s ever wanted. It’s always been the plan, since the moment I started elementary school. Probably, actually, since before I was born.

“What about Peter?” I ask him hesitantly, picturing the middle-aged attorney who until now has been the Vice President of Legal Affairs for our company. He’s always been nice to me, always showed me pictures of his pretty wife and four daughters.

My father rolls his eyes. “He’ll be cut loose. He’s known this was coming for a while, I’m sure. Everyone knew you were at Stanford studying law. They can connect dots, Nora.”

He’s so blasé about ruining someone’s life. I swallow hard, fiddling with the straw in my glass of lemonade. The umbrella from our little bistro table on the wide sidewalk casts a shadow across my shoulders, and I almost shiver. I’m not sure if it’s from the chilly lake breeze, or if it’s from my father’s cold attitude.

He stares harshly at me now.

“Nora, you’ve got to grow a set of balls. There’s no pussy-footing around corporate law. You have to kill or be killed. I need you to be a Greene and do what it takes. Be who I need you to be.”

His voice is even colder than his stare. I shirk away from it out of old habit.

“Okay,” I whisper.

My mother pipes up finally, from across the table, smiling a magnificent smile. Out of all of us, she’s always been the kindest. The sweetest. And she knows I need rescuing right now. I see it in her soft blue eyes.

“Ma belle fille,” she sings, reaching over and grasping my hand. “We’ll have a glorious summer. You can ride Rebel, you can rest on the beach, we’ll get manicures and pedicures… we’ll have tea and croissants. It will be lovely. You need the rest.”

My beautiful daughter. My mother’s French accent is as strong as ever, even though she’s lived in the states since she married my father twenty-five years ago. It charms everyone who hears it.

I smile at her, genuine now.

“Thanks, maman. I’m looking forward to spending time with you. I’ve missed you.”

That’s not a lie.

What I haven’t missed is my father. And the constant lectures about being “a good Greene” and how I need to do what I can for the greater good of the family and our business.

No matter the personal cost.

And my personal cost has been great.

Not that anyone cares.

But the bitterness is welling up again and if I don’t tamp it down, it will overwhelm me. That won’t help anything.

She doesn’t know, I remind myself.

“How’s Rebel?” I ask my mother, purposely changing the subject to that of my old horse. I haven’t seen him since last summer. My mom chatters about him, about how fat he’s getting and I turn away again.

To make my resentment recede, I look at the clouds, at the cars, at the quaint little shops, at the intersection. Anything to distract me, anything to make the bitter taste of what happened to me go away.

She doesn’t know.

But my father does. I glance at him, and the anger rears its head again. Yes, he knows. Do what it takes, Nora.

I grit my teeth. It’s over now. It’s over. No one can fix it anyway. All I can do now is be a good Greene.

With a hard stare, I focus on the intersection again, willing myself to find interest in something else.

Anything else.

A red car comes to a stop, then goes through. Angel Bay is so small that there’s only one major intersection and it’s right here in front of the cafe. There’s not even a light, just a four-way stop.

If you want to people watch, this is the best place to do it.

My mother chats in her charming voice, and I absently stare as a white suburban turns left. A yellow Beetle then lets a young mother pushing a stroller cross the street before he goes. He waves as he passes, a friendly stranger.

I smile. Angel Bay is full of friendly strangers. They’re used to summer tourists, and they’re friendly to each of them, happy to have their tourist dollars, happy to share their little town by Lake Michigan.

Down the road, a faded white bus coasts down the road. Signs are fastened to the sides and I can just make one out.

Honk for the Annual Troop 52 Camping Trip.

I smile again at the little cub scouts who have their faces pressed to the windows. They’re probably headed for Warren Dunes State Park… so they’re almost there, and as little boys often are, they’re getting antsy.

Behind the bus, a huge navy blue pick-up truck follows at a respectable distance. The windows are tinted, but I see a glimpse of sunny blonde hair. I stare a bit harder, out of idle curiosity. People watching has always been a hobby. Watching other people’s lives distracts me from my own.

It’s pathetic, but true.

As the truck draws closer and I get a better view of the driver’s face, I almost gasp aloud.

It can’t be.

I peer closer, my eyes narrowed behind my sunglasses. The driver of the truck is also wearing sunglasses, which makes it harder to see for sure.

But that blond hair… honey blond hair that it looks like it has been kissed by the sun. The chiseled cheekbones, cleft in the chin, the strong jawline, the proud nose. I would recognize that profile anywhere, even through a heavily tinted windshield, even though the last time I’d seen it was almost ten years ago.

Brand Killien.

No way.

I realize that I’m holding my breath and I inhale, still staring at him.

He still looks like a Norse god, still like the boy I had fallen in love with so many years ago. He didn’t know, of course, because I’m four years younger. I was so not on his radar. But he was always on mine…for a couple of reasons.

One, because he’s always been the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

Two, and even more importantly, he makes me feel good. Safe and sound. Like when I’m with him, nothing can hurt me, nothing can touch me.

I fantasized about him every single summer, and then one year, I came back to Angel Bay after a long winter, only to find that Brand wasn’t here. He’d gone away to college and then joined the Army.

Every summer after that, I watched for him to come home.

Every summer after that, he wasn’t here.

People chattered, of course, because Angel Bay is so small and that’s what small town people do. In the tiny grocery, I heard that he became some badass special ops soldier, that he was in the Rangers in Afghanistan. In the café, I heard that something terrible happened to him there, that he’d come home after that.

But much to my disappointment, he never came back to Angel Bay.

Until now.

Butterflies explode in my stomach, their wings tickling my ribs, their writhing velvety bodies pressed against my diaphragm, making it hard to breathe. It’s like even they know the reverence of this moment, the absolute miracle that it is.

Brand Killien is here.

A farm truck pulling a flat-bed trailer lurches forward at the intersection, blocking my view momentarily. I lean forward, trying to subtly find Brand again, just to make sure he’s there, that I hadn’t just imagined him.

That’s when I see the problem, and even though it happens too quickly for me to even scream, it seems to happen in slow motion at the same time.

A dump truck barrels through the intersection from the other side, slamming into the ammonia tank on the farm truck’s trailer.

The explosion is immediate and severe.

I feel the intense rush of heat before I hear the boom. But when the boom comes, it splits apart the sky. It’s so loud that it reverberates in my chest, rattling each of my ribs and setting the butterflies free. Suddenly, I’m in the air. My legs dangle like a pitiful rag doll and the breeze is all around me. I’m in the breeze. I am the breeze.

Things come in visceral snippets now as I fly.

Heat.

Noise.

Screams.

Cracks.

Glass.

My flight is short and I slam into something hard, my head cracking against the floor. The floor?

Blackness.

Heat.

When I open my eyes, I’m not sure how much time has passed, only that my head feels heavy, a splitting pain coming from the back of it. With shaking fingers, I touch it, and my fingertips come back covered in blood.

I look up.

The heat is from fire. And the fire is all around.

I’m in a pile of rubble in what used to be the café. Boards and ceiling and tables are piled around me, and people are on the floor. Dust is everywhere and I can hardly see through it. But I can see the fire.

And I can see Brand.

Like some sort of magnificent and fierce angel, he strides through the dark smoke, and I see him pry the school bus doors open. He leaps inside, and a scant moment later, he emerges with a child in his muscled arms. He hands the child to someone, then goes back into the smoking, charred bus. Over and over, I watch this process.

Some of the children he carries out are bloody, some are limp. But he continues to make the trips.

Finally, he comes out empty handed.

He stands still for a moment, and I see how his shirt is ripped down the front. I can see a chiseled washboard behind the large tear. I see how soot is smeared across his cheeks, and the same soot has turned his hair black.

I see him take a deep breath, I see him look around at the carnage on the street, looking for someone else to save.

And then he sees me.

I do need saved. More than he’ll ever know.

His eyes are a blue so bright that I can’t even name it. Sapphire, maybe? They shine through the soot, through the flames. He focuses on me, then with long steps, he comes to me. Straight to me. Through the chaos, through the havoc.

“Miss, are you alright?” his voice is husky, probably from the smoke. I can’t move.

“I’m stuck,” I manage to tell him. “My legs.”

My legs are beneath splintered boards, boards that used to be a café wall. As I glance up at Brand, I see my parents on the street, standing with an EMT. I can see my mother’s frantic arm movements, and I can read her lips.

My daughter.

I take a breath, but there’s no way she’d hear me if I called. She’ll have to wait.

Brand draws my attention back to him, back to his brilliant blue eyes, by speaking.

“I’m going to get this stuff off of you. I’ll try not to hurt you,” he tells me calmly. With muscular arms, he lifts the jagged boards off of me, one by one. True to his word, he doesn’t hurt me.

When he’s finished, when I’m free, he doesn’t help me stand.

He bends and scoops me up instead.

My head rests against his chest and I can hear his heart as he carries me effortlessly through the mayhem.

Ba-bump.

Ba-bump.

His heart is as strong as he is.

I focus on that, on the strong beats, instead of looking at the people on the floor. Instead of looking at the blood, or smelling the smoke, or having a panic attack.

“Are you okay?” Brand asks me, looking down at me. His face is confident, his voice calm. “You’re going to be all right.”

I nod because I believe him, because how could I not trust a voice that sure of itself?

But then it doesn’t matter.

Because out of nowhere, I hear a nauseatingly loud crack, and all of a sudden, the wall next to us comes down in a mass of metallic shrieks and groans and shards.

It shears my arm, and I can smell the blood.

I’m knocked free from Brand’s safe grasp, yanked from his arms, and I’m falling, falling, falling.

Then it all goes black and stays that way.

Chapter Two

Brand

Fucking son-of-a-bitch.

White hot pain rips through me, from my hip to my ankle. I grimace, trying to pull myself out of the wreckage, to no avail. I’m the one who is stuck now, firmly and painfully in a mountain of broken wood and cinder.

The smoke surrounding me brings back instant memories of Afghanistan, of bombs and blood. But I shake those images away. I’m not there. I’m here. And I’ve got to keep my wits.

The girl.

The girl I was carrying, the girl with the dark red hair and big blue eyes. She trusted me. I saw it on her face.

I twist to find her, scanning everything around me. And then I see her thin arm, sticking out of a pile of rubble. I know it’s hers because of the turquoise bracelet on her small wrist.

“Help!” I call out to the EMTs who are now on the scene. One hears me, and rushes my way, but I wave him toward the girl.

“Get her first!” I tell him. “She’s under that shit. Get her first. It’s crushing her.”

He does as I ask, and it takes two of them to dig her out. I watch them carry her out, I watch how her eyes are still closed, I watch them stretch her limp body onto a waiting gurney before they come back for me.

Fuck.

“Thank you,” I tell them sincerely. They gingerly move the wood and the drywall and the twisted metal that is holding me down, before they roll me onto a stretcher.

“I’m fine,” I try and tell them, as I attempt to get up.

But I can’t get up. My left leg is twisted beneath me, my foot turned an unnatural way. I stare at it, aghast and astonished, noticing the way my knee is turned out, while my ankle is turned in.

Fuck.

I don’t feel the pain, so I know I’m in shock. I drop back against the stretcher, as they wheel me toward a waiting ambulance.

My leg was shattered in Afghanistan. I had multiple surgeries, months of physical therapy and I was only just starting to walk without a limp. And for what? To have it annihilated again? Here in fucking Angel Bay?

Fucking hell.

They load me up and close the door and I stare at the white metal for a second before I close my eyes. This can’t be happening. This isn’t real.

But it’s real.

The sirens, loud and wailing, tell me that.

Numbly, I wait. Then something occurs to me. Why are they using the siren for a broken leg?

I barely have the thought before my fingers grow cold, and my thoughts begin to get fuzzy, muddled.

What the hell?

But then it doesn’t matter, because I’m so fucking tired. Nothing matters, not the pain, or the lack of it, or even the girl.

My arms and legs grow heavy and I close my eyes, a sigh rattling my ribcage.

The girl. Her blue eyes are the last things I see before I close my eyes.

It seems like only minutes before the ambulance shrieks to a stop and I’m being bustled out.

I grab one of the EMTs arms as they race me into the hospital.

“What’s wrong?”

He stares down at me as he runs. “Don’t worry. They’ll fix you.”

I fall back onto the gurney and all I can do is watch everything happening. Waves of utter exhaustion and sleepiness pass through me and all I want to do is close my eyes.

So I do, but I can’t sleep because some damn faceless person keeps asking me questions, all the while other faceless people prod at my leg and cut off my pants.

What’s your name?

“Brand Killien,” I mutter.

How old are you?

“Twenty-seven.”

Are you allergic to anything?

No.

Can we call anyone for you?

“No.”

I open my eyes when they jam an IV into my arm, and the lights are bright, and the medicine feeding into me blurs it all together.

A nurse’s face blurs in front of me.

“You’re going in to surgery, sweetheart,” she tells me. I can’t see her face even though my eyes are wide open. “Your artery was nicked. They have to fix it.”

My fucking artery was nicked?

You’ve got to be kidding me. I survived the bloody hills of Afghanistan. I’m not going to bleed to death here. No fucking way. Holy shit. Why didn’t I have them call Gabe or Jacey… just in case?

I try to mutter that, to tell them to call Gabe, but they can’t understand me.

Another face blurs over me, someone with black hair. “Everything will be all right, sir. Just count backward from one hundred.”

The light swirls, the noise echoes.

Ninety-Nine.

Ninety-Eight.

Ninety-Seven.

Nothing.

Nothing.

I hear my father’s heavy footsteps stepping out of my little sister’s room, closing the door with a click, then leaning heavily on the bannister as he walks down the stairs.

Seventeen-Creak.

Sixteen-Creak.

Each of the seventeen steps groans, and then there is silence once again. Staring up at the ceiling, I wait until I hear the muffler of his old truck fire up before I breathe again.

He’s gone.

Relief rushes through me and I feel stupid. I’m six years old. I shouldn’t be so afraid.

But I am.

I get up to go to the bathroom, something I’d never do when he was still at home. I wouldn’t risk it. I tip-toe into the kitchen and grab a handful of cookies, being careful not to tip over the cookie jar onto the floor, before I make my way back to my room, running through the shadows, leaping into bed.

I turn onto my side and stare out my windows as I chew the chocolate chips. My mother had made them tonight, specially for dinner, only my father wouldn’t let me have one.

“Boys who don’t watch their little sisters don’t get cookies,” he’d told me sternly, eyeing me with his cold blue eyes.

I’d gulp and peered through my eyelashes at Alison. She was happily munching on a cookie, the crumbs gathering on the front of her shirt. Her grubby fingers grasped her sugary treasure and she was oblivious to the trouble I’m in because of her.

“But I was watching her,” I told my father. “I tried to make her come in and wash up for dinner, she just wouldn’t listen.”

My father was unsympathetic. “She’s only four. You have to look out for her. You’re bigger than she is. Are you telling me that you can’t take ahold of her arm and bring her in? Are you that weak, Branden?”

I gulped, shaking my head. “No.”

He shook his head, his steely eyes piercing me. “I’m not sure about that. If it happens again, I’ll have to teach you a lesson. I’ll show you exactly how you can make someone smaller and weaker do what you want.”

Panic welled up in me then, and it wells up in me now, at the mere memory.

I don’t want to get that lesson.

I stare out the window at the lake, watching the water roll gently into the beach. At night, the sand looks silver. The gulls are asleep, so everything is silent but for the rippling water.

A white ball appears, floating to and fro in the tide, and I watch it for a while, watching as it floats, then disappears.

I wish I could be that ball and float far from here.

With a start, I open my eyes and the light is blinding. I squint my eyes toward it, trying to process where I am. Medicinal smells, sterile walls.

The hospital.

I groan, and my throat is raspy. I recognize that feeling. I must’ve had a breathing tube. Surgery. I also recognize the foggy aftereffects of anesthesia.

What the hell?

A nurse bustles through the door, her eyes widening when she sees me awake. Her cool fingers find my pulse, counting the beats.

“Mr. Killien,” she smiles. “I’m so glad you’re awake. How are you feeling?”

I swallow again, trying to swallow past the raw throat.

“I don’t know,” I tell her honestly. “What happened?”

Her eyes are full of sympathy.

“You saved a bus full of kids,” she tells me. “There was an accident, a truck ran a stop-sign and slammed into an ammonia tank. There was an explosion. Do you remember?”

I think on that, and I do remember. I remember the smoke and the blood and the kids.

And then I remember the red-haired girl.

“There was a girl,” I tell the nurse. “A woman, I mean. Red hair. I was carrying her when the building collapsed on us. Is she okay? Did she live?”

God, she had to live. She trusted me. Her eyes, so big and blue, told me that. She counted on me to carry her out and I didn’t.

My gut squeezes and I wince in pain.

But the nurse is already nodding. “Everyone lived, Mr. Killien. And I think you mean Ms. Greene. She’s here and she’s been asking about you, too. Can I tell her that you’re awake? She’s been very worried about you.”

Ms. Greene?

I nod and the nurse smiles.

“I’ll tell her. She’s been waiting here for the last several hours. She was lucky– She and her parents only sustained minor injuries. She didn’t want to leave until you woke up.”

I sigh with relief. Even though I couldn’t carry her out, she’s okay.

Thank God.

I close my eyes, my mind fuzzy from anesthesia. The room spins outside of my eyelids, but inside of them, it’s black and still.

And then someone clears her voice softly.

I open my eyes.

They instantly meet the blue-eyed gaze of the girl.

Ms. Greene.

For a second, there’s something familiar there, something that niggles at me. Do I know her?

But I scan the rest of her… the long dark red hair that flows halfway down her back, her slender body, her lush chest and hips. Even through the fog of medicine, my groin registers her obvious beauty.

I’d remember if I knew her.

She smiles, a brilliant white smile. I notice she has dirt on her cheeks and forehead.

“Are you okay?” she asks, her voice as soft as silk.

I nod. “Yeah. I will be, I guess.”

She looks at my leg sympathetically, her eyes clouded. “I’m so sorry. You wouldn’t even have been in the café if it weren’t for me. It’s my fault you’re here in this bed.”

I’m already shaking my head. No way. I know what it’s like to take responsibility for something that wasn’t my fault. I won’t let this girl do it.

“No,” I tell her firmly. “I wanted to help. If I hadn’t seen you, I’d have seen someone else, so I would’ve been in there anyway.”

Probably.

She shakes her head slightly, the edges of her mouth tilted up.

“Such a gentleman,” she murmurs. She slides into the chair by my bed, graceful and elegant.

“You don’t recognize me, do you, Brand?”

My head snaps up when she uses my name.

She does know me.

I examine her again. Her face. Her nose. Her hair. Her eyes.

Ms. Greene.

The Greenes.

Good lord.

I fight a groan. I’ve been gone from here too long. I’ve forgotten too many things. In this case, the Greenes are an Angel Bay staple. They own a huge lakeside estate that they only reside at in the summers, and they’re members at the country club where I used to work.

I do know her. Or, I remember the girl she used to be. She’s certainly grown up now.

“I used to park your father’s car at the club,” I say slowly.

Nora smiles. “And you picked me up out of the dirt once. Do you remember that?”

I do.

Nora was younger, a teenager then, and her horse had thrown her off. I’d been walking to the clubhouse to get a soda for my break and I’d seen the whole thing. She’d gone sprawling into the dirt, and the first thing she’d done was stare furtively around, to make sure no one had seen.

It was a nasty spill though, so I had gone to check on her. Her hands were shaky and I didn’t want to leave her alone, even though it was strictly against the rules for valet staff to mingle with club members.

“Did my father see?” she’d asked me quickly, her lip caught in her teeth. There was a spot of blood from her braces, and I’d reached out and wiped it off for her. She wasn’t concerned about her cut lip, though. She was terrified that her father had seen her mistake.

“No,” I assured her. “I’m the only one around.”

“Thank God,” she’d breathed.

“Do you want me to go get him?” I asked her quickly, thinking that he might help her calm down.

She’d grabbed my arm, hard, her fingernails sinking in. “Please don’t,” she’d begged, her eyes suddenly full of tears. “Please.”

It had shocked me, her immediate and adamant refusal. It was like she was scared of him. I’d assured her that I wouldn’t get him, and I’d taken her inside to calm her down myself. I stayed with her for half an hour.

“I got written up for that,” I remember slowly. Nora’s face clouds over.

“You did?” she asks in confusion. “Why in the world?”

From the astonished expression on her face, I almost believe that she doesn’t know.

“Your dad complained,” I tell her simply. “Someone mentioned it to him, and he reported me. Valets weren’t supposed to socialize with members, you know.”

“You weren’t socializing,” she points out. “You were helping me.”

I shrug. “It was a long time ago.”

But her eyes are still dismayed. A part of me finds satisfaction in that. Maybe she’s not the ice bitch I expected her to be. With a father like hers, though, I don’t know how that’s possible.

“I just wanted to check on you,” Nora tells me now hesitantly. “I feel responsible and I wanted to help. So I told them they might want to call your mother. You didn’t have any contacts listed in your wallet, and your phone was password protected.”

My mother? I stopped listening to her words as soon as she mentioned my mother.

“Why would they call my mother?” I ask stupidly. Nora shakes her head in confusion.

“Because you were here alone. I didn’t know who else to call. I thought you might want a family member…” her voice trails off as she stares at my face. “I see now that I was wrong. I’m so sorry. I was just trying to help.”

She was. I’m sure of that.

But calling my mother was the furthest possible thing from helping.

“Did she even bother to come?” I ask tiredly. I’d driven twelve hours to get here because she summoned me, and I doubt my mother even bothered to come to the hospital.

Nora shakes her head hesitantly. “She told the nurse that she’d come pick you up when you were released.”

Yet I’d gone into surgery with a nicked artery. For all she knew, I could’ve died on the table and she still didn’t come.

Why does that surprise me? She didn’t bother to call and check on me when I was on the battlefields in Afghanistan, either.

Nausea rolls through my stomach and I swallow hard.

“Well, that’s not a surprise. Thank you for trying to help, Ms. Greene. I appreciate it. I know you must be tired. You don’t need to stay with me.”

She lifts her blue eyes. “Call me Nora.”

I nod. “Okay. Thanks for checking on me, Nora. I’m glad you’re all right.”

Her eyes soften, glistening with something I can’t name. “Thank you for making me okay. You pulled me out, Brand. If it weren’t for you…”

I interrupt. “If I hadn’t pulled you out, someone else would’ve.”

She shrugs. “Maybe. But either way, thank you. I’m going to check on you again tomorrow.”

Something soft lives in her eyes, but then she hides it. I should tell her not to come, I should tell her to not even bother. But the soft look in her eyes, that fleeting expression, kills the words on my tongue. She seems like a person who doesn’t let that softness shine through often.

Instead, I nod. “I’m sure I’ll still be here.”

I glance down at my leg and sigh heavily. Nora almost flinches.

“I hope you get some rest,” she says as she walks out. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She walks toward the open door, and I watch her hips gently sway until she abruptly stops in the doorway. She turns and looks at me, her gaze meeting mine. Electricity jolts between us, between her soft gaze and my own.


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