Hard to Resist - By Kara Lennox Page 0,64
made a terrible mistake,” Kat said. “I should never have let Ethan go.”
“It’s not too late to change your mind.”
“But what if it is?”
Priscilla grew solemn at the grim reminder. “Maybe you should go to the hospital.”
* * *
ETHAN FELT AS IF someone had put an ax through his head and maybe landed a few blows on his neck and shoulders, too. He had no idea where he was or what had happened to him, but he didn’t dare move or open his eyes.
It seemed much safer to lie very still. Maybe he would drift back into the place he’d been before, the place where he didn’t hurt, where every breath wasn’t an effort.
But he couldn’t reclaim oblivion. In fact, the harder he tried, the more he became aware of various sensations—an annoying, insistent beeping coming from somewhere behind him. The smell of disinfectant. The hard surface beneath him.
And the fact he couldn’t move.
He reached the inevitable conclusion he was in a hospital. That or hell. But he preferred the more optimistic choice. He still had no idea how he’d gotten here. But he recognized a painkiller haze when he felt one. He’d been given morphine once before, when he’d had his appendix out as a teenager.
He also recognized that the haze was lifting. His thinking was becoming more clear. And the pain was getting worse. He wondered if he would have to ask to get more drugs or if they were giving them through a drip. He focused on his arm. He tried to move it.
To his surprise, the muscles responded. But the arm was restrained. And yes, he could feel the needle.
“Ethan?”
An angel. What was an angel doing here? This could be very bad news.
“Are you awake? I saw you move.”
It wasn’t an angel. It was Kat. Nothing could have motivated him more to return to the land of the living.
“Mmph.”
“Oh, Ethan, you are awake.”
“Sort of.”
“Good. Okay, just listen for a minute, because I swore that the moment you were conscious, I had to tell you something, so here it is. I love you. I guess I’ve loved you all along, but I got confused about whether I really loved you or just needed you.”
This was heaven, pain and all. Unless he was hallucinating.
“Wha—” His voice cracked, his throat dry as a drought-ravaged field. He tried again. “What happened?”
“You don’t remember?”
Would he be asking, if he remembered?
“You went to a fire. You rescued a homeless man.”
He did? No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t recall anything about a homeless man.
“The Fourth of July picnic?”
No. He remembered getting ready for the picnic. A checkered tablecloth, a pile of uncooked meat, waiting for the grill.
“How about Tina Campeon? Remember her?”
Tina. The captain’s sister. “I don’t remember her.”
“Good. Let’s keep it that way.”
Ethan was finally brave enough to crack his eyes open. It wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. The light was low in his room or cubicle or wherever this was. And there was Kat, her face inches from his, looking more beautiful than he’d ever seen her look.
He tried for a smile. “Kat.” Had she said she loved him? Surely that was his memory playing tricks on him. He’d been clunked on the head. He couldn’t trust his mind to work properly.
“I was supposed to have a date with Tina.”
Kat sighed. “You did have a date. And I can’t lie—Tina is gorgeous, she’s very nice, she has two darling children, and you two were getting along like—”
“Like a house on fire?”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
“I only talked to her to make the captain happy.” He winced as a spear of pain shot through him.
“Oh, Ethan, you’re hurting. I’ll get a nurse.”
“No. No, I don’t want any more drugs right now. I want to understand what happened.”
“The alarm sounded during the picnic,” Kat said patiently. She looked so cute in her little pink T-shirt. Born to Shop. Yeah, right. “You went to a burning house. A man was trapped inside—”
“Yeah, I got that part. Why are you here?”
“Because I care about you.”
“That’s not how you said it earlier.”
“Because I love you.”
Ethan closed his eyes and settled back against his pillow. He hadn’t imagined it. Everything would be okay now. He drifted off again.
The next time he awoke, the experience was far less pleasant. There was a doctor shouting questions at him, as if he were hard of hearing, and a nurse messing with his IV and changing a bandage on his head. He did learn a little more